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Gerrymandering Using Census Clustering And GIS

Posted by timothy on from the as-if-incumbents-need-much-help dept.

dpplgngr writes "According to this BBC article, Map redrawing angers U.S. Democrats, Republicans in Texas are making use of Census data and mapping software to redraw districts, signficantly altering the election process, and resulting in the lowest overturn of incumbents in history."

5 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Actually, there's another reason incumbents win by bmetzler · · Score: 2, Informative

    Gerrymandering isn't the only way incumbents stay in power. Campaign finance reform also allows them to stay in power. This is because of the drive to keep money out of politics just further reinforces the edge that incumbents have finacially.

    It takes money to win unfortunately, and if you restrict the ability to raise money, you impede the ability for a challenge to run a competitive campaign.

    If you are concerned about low turnover in the US house, gerrymandering or increasing the number of representatives is not the place to be looking. These are non-issues. Allow donors to give as much money to a candidate as they desire. Then the campaign will be more competitive.

    -Brent

  2. One-Sided Reporting by CustomFort · · Score: 3, Informative

    The BBC is talking about this as if this were the Republicans in Texas coming out of the blue and just turning this on the Democrats. What a load of shit.

    For those of you who don't remember, or don't care, Texas was a Democrat state a rather short period of time ago (about 20 years). Most of the uproar is from the Republicans trying to reverse the grossly partisan gerrymandering that took place just a little while ago to keep the Republicans from coming to power.

    The Texas Constitution requires new boundaries to be drawn every 10 years. In 1991, the last redistricting, both the Senate and the House were strongly controlled by Democrats ( 77% in the Senate and 62 % in the House). http://www.fairvote.org/redistricting/reports/rema nual/tx.htm
    That explains very well with maps what exactly happened in 1991, and even further back.

    Take my area for example. US District 21 extends from San Antonio all the way to El Paso, making it one of the largest districts in Texas. This was created to make a very strong Republican District so that the rest of the districts in the area could feed off of the Democrats.

    Even though the Bexar County Area is about 65% Republican, our representation in the state legislature is 70% Democrat. And one of those 3 Republicans is a moderate.

    Another interesting fact is that while it is illegal to redistrict based on race, it is perfectly legal to do it based on Political Parties.

    1. Re:One-Sided Reporting by guyanonymous · · Score: 2, Informative

      Oh, piffle. The article explains quite clearly that the Democrats did their own gerrymandering back in 1991. "One-sided", indeed.

      The maps and analysis at fairvote.org are nice, though.

    2. Re:One-Sided Reporting by moof1138 · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Most of the uproar is from the Republicans trying to reverse the grossly partisan gerrymandering that took place just a little while ago to keep the Republicans from coming to power."

      As a Texan, I have to say that is a totally false and highly partisan mischaracterization of the situation prior to the Republican's abusive redistricting. What actually happened was that both parties had fought in our legislature and could not come up with a solution for the redistricting. So the map was drawn by a nonpartisan panel of federal judges, based on the 2000 Census figures. A year later, the Republicans got enough control to push their new redistricting along, and a new Republican map was pushed through which was not based on any new Census information, but was purley designed to try to get a political advantage.

      --

      Hyperbole is the worst thing ever.
  3. Oohh those idiots who don't read the article! by spitzak · · Score: 2, Informative

    Oh my god, what's wrong with the "biased" media, somehow this got into the article:

    "There is little sympathy for him (Frost) either.

    "Prior to last year's map redistricting, the most significant gerrymander in Texas was carried out by the Democrats in 1991.

    "They carved up the state to favour their side, and the figure at the helm that year was a certain... Martin Frost.

    Of course you didn't read the article. No, facts might be inconvienent for your world-view.