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House Candidate Lets Web Users Set His Schedule
brahn at actblue writes "From ABC News: Jeff Seemann, running for one of Ohio's seats in the House of Representatives, '...has an unusual approach in deciding how to spend his campaign. He asks Web surfers: Should he sleep in? Prepare for his debate? Campaign door to door?' (More coverage here and here.)
Best of all: Jeff is fighting back against Diebold and their paperless voting machines -- and they're based in his district!"
To see a more obviously gerrymandered district (which might just be because I'm more familiar with the state) look at Indiana's.
Every little "bubble" you see shooting off of a large district is a larger town that was stuck in the district in order to absorb the democratic votes from it. For instance, the northeast and southeast parts of Marion County (Indianapolis, mostly district 7) are included in the 5th district, which except for those areas, is almost all rural, or very high income (north of Indy).
Similary, the southeast side of Ft Wayne (very low income, heavily Democratic) is separated from the rest of the city.
The 4th district was drawn almost specifically to put Purdue and IU in the same district (very liberal tending towns, and most residents are younger and less likely to vote) and then lump them in with nothing but rural voters.
It's sad that part of the reason that Indiana sends so many Republicans to Congress is because the Republicans at home are the ones that drew the districts for them. (They packed as many democrats as they could into the 7th and 1st district, and spread the remaining ones around well enough to make them ineffective.
I think that congressional districts should follow cultural and economic boundaries as well as possible. That way, you have voters you have a vested interest in the same thing represented by one person. It makes no sense for a person in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the poorest city to be represented by the same person as that of the richest person in the richest neighborhood. (Southeast side of Indy and Carmel, respectively)
What?
If a politician ran on a platform of almost total transparency I would like to think he would get total voteage.
Republican or Democrat doesn't really matter when you worry they do something meriting impeachment behind closed doors.
Politicians that do this WILL win it's as simple as that.