The GOP's Next Move to Circumvent Democracy

[TampaYankee]

Well, you have seen prior GOP attempts at intimidating voters at the polls refreshed in the news by the SOTUS refusing to undo a law several decades old the prohibited GOP poll watchers from acosting voters to question their legitimacy.

Then there was the photo ID issue ginned up to ferret out nonexistent fraudulent voters. The only cases of fraud found in the last election were a couple of GOP functionaries, one attempting to vote twice and another one or two trashing voter registrations of Democrats that their voter registration drives unfortunately produced.

Also recall the OH Secretary of State and the Florida Governor who attempted to cut back early voting, some even brazenly only-in-Democrat-leaning districts. Also attempting to purge rolls of active minority voters.

Add to that the Florida Governor cutting back the number of polling locations, and packing the ballot with many pages of legalese fine print to speed of up the process in the fewer polling places available.

I know I'm leaving some out but I think I have made a case.

Now comes a quiet behind-the-scene coordinated move to change the way states apportion Electoral Votes (EVs). Rather than have winner-take-all statewide, there will be an attempt to apportion the EVs by Congressional District.

Why is this bad? Gerrymandering. Either party in power in 'decade years' has the power to draw congressional districts for the next ten years. They draw them in favor of the party in power obviously.

What does this mean in practical terms? Consider OH. Obama actually carried OH statewide. The Liberal pro-union Sherrod Brown won reelection to the Senate over his GOP opponent by 6% margin. Yet the GOP won 12 House seats vs 4 for the Dems. This is the effect of gerrymandering on House Disctricts. You really do not believe all those conservative votes for the House also voted for Sherrod Brown do you? He was designated #1 target for defeat by the GOP Senate Campaign Committee.

Nationwide, the Dem House winners won just shy of a half-million more votes than the GOP House winners. Yet the GOP retained control of the House by 235 to 194 for the Dems. That is the power of gerrymandering.

Now the GOP wants to change the Electoral College to look like the gerrymandered House Districts. Put bluntly, that would permit a super-minority to elect Presidents in perpetuity.

Is the GOP dead set on another Civil War?

If you want to know more about this gerymandered Presidency scheme here is Rachel Maddow's take, one of them anyway. http://stopmakingsense.org/2013/01/17/rachel-maddow-the-gops-electoral-college-scheme-msnbc/

[Guest EXPAT]

I've been hearing about this all week. What I want to know is what the democratic party is doing about it.

[TampaYankee]

I've been hearing about this all week. What I want to know is what the democratic party is doing about it.

It remains to be seen what they can do. I'm at a loss for any remedy other than courts imposing a one-man one-vote rule which has been mandated in the South (more or less) by the Voting Rights Act and subsequent court decisions. That would mean some judicious law suits to set a precedent if one could get the SOTUS to hear the cases.

I'm not sure if this conservative SOTUS would see fit to apply the Fourteenth Amendment so broadly to a class of non-minority citizens. They should but the Constitution leaves voting laws to the states with the exception of the Fourteenth Amendment which extends 'equal' rights to 'minorities' and that means blacks in the minds of conservative justices. We shall see if they are willing to extend it to gays this term but don't hold your breath. Kennedy's populist leaning suggests he would favor the extension which would make a 5-4 decision for one-man one-vote possible, I think. However, this is rank speculation.

[MsGuy]

TY, yesterday the Repubs of Virginia Senate pulled off an ambush redistricting plan revising the 2011 redistricting.. The Repubs secretly (most of their own senators didn't even know about the plan in advance) prepared a gerrymander designed to cram a bunch of black voters around Richmond into a single district, thereby allowing them to create several new districts likely to have a Republican majority.

Because the Vir.Senate currently has a 20 to 20 party division, the trick was to keep the plan totally secret until at least one Democrat was known to be absent for the day and pop it out for a surprise vote. When one black senator attended Obama's inauguration ceremony, they sprang the trap.

After the next state election (if the courts don't block the plan), presumably they will use their new majority to redraw the Federal congressional districts.

These guys just have no shame. By coincidence, the day they picked happened to be MLK Day. (sigh)

[MsGuy]

Maybe it's only because your post attuned me to the issue, TY, but now it seems I run across articles on GOP election rigging everywhere.