Redistricting reform.
This is neat, because it combines my hatred of partisan politics with my deep love for maps. Behold: the 3rd Congressional District of Virginia:
This is a textbook example of Republicans in the Virginia state legislature carving out the Democratic strongholds in their home districts (the 2nd, the 1st, the 4th in particular) and duct-taping them together, leaving one seat for the Democrats and several safe seats for the Republicans. In this case, you have Bobby Scott representing the inner cities of Norfolk, Portsmouth, Hampton and Newport News, the poor rural areas of Charles City and Surry counties, and the east and south ends of Richmond. The area highlighted is predominantly African-American, which correlates strongly with Democratic votes.
Meanwhile, Randy Forbes (R, 4th) represents mostly white, affluent Chesapeake all the way up to mostly white, affluent Chesterfield County, and Thelma Drake (R, 2nd) represents all of affluent Virginia Beach, the rural Eastern Shore and parts of Norfolk and Hampton. It's cherrypicking in order to minimize the opposition seats, and everyone does it. Tom DeLay of Texas got into a bit of trouble for doing the same thing in his state. And since you can only redistrict after every census, it allows for a long period of partisan stability, plus accounts for the high reelection rate of incumbents. Barring scandal or tragedy, Bobby Scott probably won't ever lose his seat in the 3rd to a Republican. And he should have to worry about that, just as much as Thelma Drake ought to (please God) lose her seat to a Democrat. But the system is set up to prevent that from happening. If there is one thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on, it's how to keep themselves in power, to the exclusion of all others.
Fun fact: it is said that if you drive down I-85 in North Carolina's 12th Congressional District with both your car doors open, you can kill everyone in the district.
7 comments:
love it.
not gerrymandering, just the post!
Interesting post, Ben.
Also interesting is Virginia's 5th Congressional district, which counter-balances liberal Charlottesville with virtually all of conservative, rural southside VA. Thus Cville, which routinely votes upwards of 75% Democratic and has no Republicans on City Council, is represented by Virgil Goode Jr. :/
This unfortunate result of partisan gerrymandering has led to 5th District liberals like myself being extremely frustrated with representation by someone who sponsored the US-Mexico wall and endorses English as the official language of the US.
Lastly, Virgil Goode is largely in office because of the wonderful reputation in the 5th district of his father, a Democrat-turned-Independent-turned-Republican who brought good roads and jobs to the area. But I digress...
Check out the district map here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:VA_5th_Congressional_District.png
Oops... Here's the district map
At least the 5th is "compact and contiguous," though. I don't think there's any reasonable district that could be drawn around Charlottesville that would result in a Democratic majority. It would have to be linked with Northern Virginia somehow, or looped around again to the East End of Richmond. I'm not sold on the 5th being a result of gerrymandering, necessarily. You have to draw a line around 600,000 people or so, and there just aren't enough liberals in the western parts of Virginia to make it work.
Regardless, Virgil Goode is a tool. There was some hilarious example of his toolishness recently that I can't remember, but yeah. He sucks.
Yay! Ben has an issue! :)
[edited]
I'd also note that for VA's 5th district, Goode is one of the only republicans to be elected since the civil war -- and he was elected as a democrat, then switched parties.
At face value, the 5th seems like more of a naturally drawn district than the 3rd -- like ben says. Anyway.
I'm not sure I'd qualify gerrymandering as a partisan issue though. No one is for gerrymandering. It's just something people do when no one is watching
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