JULY 22, 2014 Saving Democracy in Florida BY JEFFREY TOOBIN A Supreme Court decision that relatively few people have heard of continues to haunt American politics. A decade ago, in the case of Richard Vieth et al. v. Jubelirer, a group of Pennsylvania voters challenged a partisan gerrymander that Republicans had engineered in the state after the 2000 census. By a five-to-four margin, the Court’s conservative majority ruled against the plaintiffs and found, in effect, that state representatives had free rein to draw district lines—even when they were designed solely to protect members of their political party. With that green light from the Justices, partisan gerrymandering has become more of a blight in the past ten years. Armed with sophisticated software, state lawmakers can draw districts with ever-greater precision to include or exclude voters of one party or another. The result is that the vast majority of seats in the House of Representatives (and state legislatures) are not competitive. The constituents don’t pick their representatives; rather, the representatives pick their constituents. Both parties engage in the practice, but Republicans have had better opportunities in recent years, especially since 2010, when the census coincided with a Republican landslide. The G.O.P. locked in gains in a range of states, including Pennsylvania (again), Ohio, and Florida. newyorker/news/daily-comment/saving-democracy-florida
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 17:37:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015