I Voted

[billroper]

Have I mentioned how much I hate gerrymandering?

(By the way, can we take as given that my opinion on the subject is "Bad when done by Republicans, bad when done by Democrats, good if we can all manage to give it up, but unilateral disarmament is probably a bad idea as it benefits the crooks in charge."?)

Comments

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Aiee. Bad local choices, I take it?

I agree with you completely. I have never figured out why it is that congressional districts are decided by congresscritters. That's like handing bank robbers the vault combination. I really don't know how it should be done, but the way it's done now is Just Plain Wrong.

[billroper]

Actually, no local choices. In most cases, the Republicans aren't even running someone for these offices.

There was -- other than the Presidential primary -- exactly one contested primary on the Republican ballot. And a vast majority of lines with no option whatsoever.

[dave-ifversen.livejournal.com]

Gee, that's what the Democratic primary ballot usually looks like out here in the wilds of DuPage. :-)

[billroper]

Yeah, not good there either.

One party rule is a wonderful instrument for corruption.

[filkermanque.livejournal.com]

Well, decided by the state legislatures, anyway. And, actually, there are apparently a few states that do it with independent panels (although I'm not quite sure how you can guarantee an impartial panel if you have more than two parties).

What we need is a soulless, incorruptible algorithm.

[qnofhrt.livejournal.com]

I voted too. As Dave said, there are very few choices on the Dem side here in DuPage county. You can see what we mean here:

http://www.villagechronicles.net/home/item/2107-vote-local-to-make-a-difference

[billroper]

Sadly, the ballot I was confronted with looked even worse than yours. You have multiple candidates for Congressional districts. We have one sacrificial lamb. I had to vote for a write-in candidate to have anyone to vote for as my state representative.

[samwinolj.livejournal.com]

Other than the Presidency, there were no contested offices on my local ballot, and, as you say, for the vast majority of offices the ballot was blank. It was like "voting" in the Soviet Union, save that even the solo candidates won't win.

I don't care for the Republicans anymore than I care for the Democrats, but dammit, I wish they'd at least try. We really need a loyal opposition.

[smoooom.livejournal.com]

what's gerrymandering?

[smoooom.livejournal.com]

ok, I looked it up. We really don't live in democracies do we. Any of us.

[madfilkentist]

Named for a Massachusetts politician who, from what I've read, wasn't too bad a guy otherwise. The temptation to rig things in your favor reaches far.

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

Yep. We can take it as that.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

I feel you, but then, I live in The Earmuffs -- IL 5th Congressional District. Amusingly, my old house, clear across town, was ALSO in the earmuffs (opposite ear).

Any district-boundaries description that includes "x miles of the northbound lanes of I-294" is definitely gerrymandering.

[billroper]

Yes, well, that's traditional. In order to annex O'Hare, Chicago ran its boundaries down the middle of a river...

[almeda.livejournal.com]

I am also bemused at the very Chicago-ness of my mixed pride, queasiness, and knowledge-that-I-will-benefit at/from the fact that our new alderman is Deb Mell -- yes, of those Mells. She knows how to kick ass, take names, and make sure things get done ... the Chicago System in full swell. The City That Works, indeed; but at least I don't pretend it's "fair" or "democratic".

It's definitely modern feudalism. But it can be FUNCTIONAL, in a city-government sense, if well performed, IMHO. Daley fils was a power-mad dictator, but he was one whose policy aims I mostly agreed with, don'cha know, so I kind of argued with myself every election.

I also love that (my) Alderman Mell's publicly stated that she's going to marry her long-time girlfriend (and now legally civil-unionized "domestic partner") the instant it is legal to do so in Illinois.

[groblek.livejournal.com]

Complete agreement here. I'm cautiously optimistic about our experiment here in California with an independent commission to draw the new district maps. Mostly because of the amount of complaining I've heard from the establishment of both parties since we passed the proposition putting it in place. Time will tell though. I don't think guaranteed one-party rule is good for anyone except politicians who want a guarantee of employment.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

I'm not sanguine about the "independence" of any particular group. The only solution I can see is to enforce some unambiguous measurable criterion for compactness (e.g. a district must include at least x% of the land area within a circle that encloses the entire district), but good luck getting a loophole-proof formula adopted.

[billroper]

I think that you have to measure both compactness and number of existing "political" entities that are split in determining the goodness of fit. For example, our towns in northwest Cook County are shaped funny due to the railroad lines and the annexation wars as they grabbed land to expand up to each other. Thus, a district that kept all of Des Plaines in a single unit would be politically compact, keeping that group of citizens with a shared interest together.

Gerrymandering

[jdonat.livejournal.com]

At one point not too long ago, the Village of Oak Park was part of 5, yes 5 US Congressional districts. I could walk from Roosevelt road to Van Buren and be in 3 districts in that short time. The far southern end, to Harvard St. was in the 11th, from Harvard to the middle of I-290, the 4th, and the part just north of I-290 was the 7th. Then the northern part of OP was divided between the 7th and two other districts. No clout for us! The little stripe of the 4th was to connect 2 mainly Latino areas (Gutierrez).

It's been fixed, for now. Oak Park is in the Illinois 7th District.

Re: Gerrymandering

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Gutierrez is The Earmuffs, aka my district. This year he's actually got a Democratic rival, PLUS a native-Spanish-speaking Republican opponent. This is my most contested race.

[groblek.livejournal.com]

We've been finding out here that it's a difficult mess to meet all the legally required criteria, and certainly there's still room for gaming the system. Right now I'm not asking for loophole-proof, just for an improvement over having the legislature set their own districts.