Rorting the voters

[Gob]

In much of the US, it is the politicians who get to draw lines on maps - not independent judicial or quasi-judicial bodies such as those entrusted with this task in Australia and elsewhere in the developed world.

Instead of voters choosing their congressmen, this is when members of Congress choose their voters. In a few states, sitting members have actually retained the services of much-maligned lobbyists to push their bids for electoral survival and party chiefs have multimillion-dollar budgets for challenges in more than a dozen states.

In states that account for slightly more than half of the 435 electoral districts in Congress, the political party in power at the state level has exclusive control of the process. After the Republican tsunami in last year's midterm elections, that means Republicans call the shots on the shape of 202 districts ahead of an election next year, and the Democrats in just 47 districts.

But weep for voters, not the Democrats. When the Democrats have been up in the polls, they have wielded the scalpel with the same savage self-interest that drives this year's Republican-controlled redistricting committees.

The result is an absurd, partisan twisting and bending of electoral boundaries, to shore up sitting colleagues and, at the same time, to expose congressmen from the other side to defeat.

Or, in the case of Illinois' fourth district, pictured, what one pundit describes as a ''gerrymandered gerrymander'', an effort to create a single Hispanic electorate to dilute the influence of a rapidly expanding community in Chicago's other districts.

The gerrymandering is so effective that in many districts the only meaningful election is the parties' primary polls to select candidates.

In state elections in Virginia last month, the boundary rigging was so tight that Republican and Democratic candidates faced off in just 27 of 100 districts - and in all but five races, the winning margin was around 10 per cent. A 27 per cent turnout seemed to confirm voters saw the pointlessness of it all.

Blaming computer-assisted gerrymandering for robbing the poll of any semblance of a contest, The Washington Post editorialised: ''The pols picked their voters and drew their maps based on maximum self-interest … leaving manipulated voters to cast all but meaningless ballots in what amounted to cartographically rigged elections.''

In neighbouring Maryland, the Democratic Governor, Martin O'Malley, has reshaped the voting map to ensure a sizeable chunk of his party's supporters in the Washington suburbs is in each of the state's eight congressional districts - requiring one district to snake, sausage-like, for more than 300 kilometres to pick up the African American, Asian and Hispanic voters whom the governor hopes will make life uncomfortable for a particular sitting Republican opponent.

In North Carolina, where the Republicans last year won control of both state houses for the first time in more than a century, they conjured up new boundaries that are expected to deliver them 10 out of 13 congressional districts, in a state reckoned to be evenly split in its support for the two parties.

Bent on winning three of four new districts in Texas, the Republican establishment bent the boundaries so bizarrely in their own favour that a panel of judges has been appointed to review their pencil-work, a process by which the Democrats hope to pick up those vital new seats. These state-by-state boundary wars are vital given that next year, the Democrats have to win 25 new seats to regain a majority in the House - in a contest in which perhaps just 20 districts will be seriously in play.

It was famously suggested that ''even a roomful of chimpanzees with crayons'' would do a fairer redistribution than either side of US politics.

But this year, California opted for something different - appointing a non-partisan Citizens Redistricting Commission, which has brought sanity to the boundaries with a map that is likely to give the Democrats 37 of 53 federal seats, up on their current hold in 33 districts.

By comparison, the gerrymander was so tight in 2004 that not a single California seat changed hands in a combined 153 federal and state electoral contests.

After the last census, in 2000, Texas became a redistricting bloodbath as Republicans reconfigured what had been a Democrat gerrymander. This year, political veins are being slashed in Illinois in what some observers tout as the Democrats' revenge for what happened in Texas. Illinois voters elected 11 Republicans and eight Democrats last year but after the elimination of one seat for population adjustment, the new Democrat-drawn boundaries for the state are expected to return a dozen Democrats and half as many Republicans.

For all the redistricting angst in such a litigious country, American courts have been curiously indifferent - the US Supreme Court reportedly has heard only two cases claiming politically-motivated redistricting and in each the bench ruled inconsequentially.

Justin Levitt of the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles confines himself to the refined tones that we expect from academia in his analysis of a system he describes as unique among industrialised democracies in how it wires such an inherent conflict of interest into the heart of the democratic process.

But in an email exchange, Professor Levitt underscored the political imperative by drawing my attention to the language of a Democrat redistricting committee chairman in Illinois in 2001, when American politicians last gouged the political landscape.

According to court evidence, the Democrat warned one of his committee colleagues: ''We're going to shove [the redrawn map] up your f---ing ass and you're going to like it. And I'll f--- any Republican I can.''

Paul McGeough, the Herald's chief correspondent, is based in Washington. Peter Hartcher is on leave.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/ ... z1fh6699aq

[dgs49]

On the other hand, the gerrymandering is all based on the premise that the voters are like lemmings who will vote for their party's candidate regardless of anything other than party affiliation. The fact is, they are free to vote for anyone they want, and can switch their individual party registration at any time.

If the voters are getting screwed, it is purely an act of autoeroticism - they are screwing themselves.

The flip side of the coin is that in districts where a party has a theoretical "lock" on the election due to an overwhelming majority in registrations, they often field candidates so odious that no intelligent voter would pull their lever on a bet. Does the name Barney Frank mean anything to you? Ted Kennedy? Charles Rangel?

There are occasional examples of a state that tries to develop logical districts without regard to voter blocs, but we live in an age of "Identity Politics," where we are all identified as simply members of one victim group or another (maybe several). Any system that failed to carve out a few districts for each minority group would be excoriated in the media, and probably ruled "unconstitutional," by one court or another.

[dgs49]

What the hell is "rorting?" Is it fun?

Is it better to be the Rorter than the Rortee?

[Gob]

rort [rɔːt] Austral informal
n
1. a rowdy party or celebration
2. a dishonest scheme
vb
to take unfair advantage of something
[back formation from rorty (in the sense: good, splendid)]
rorty adj

Rort is a term used in Australia and New Zealand. It is commonly related to politics, or, more generally, a financial impropriety, particularly relating to a government programme. The term was first recorded in 1919 and is a derivative of the older "rorty" a 19th century London slang word—meaning “fine; splendid; jolly; or boisterous”. The term is also used as a verb to mean the action of defrauding, (e.g.: he rorted the system.).

A slang word in common usage, popular in the New South Wales branch of the Australian Labor Party, where it typically referred to such practices as branch stacking, the term came into widespread use after the travel rorts scandal of 1997, in which a large number of Federal politicians were accused of misusing travel allowances. Three ministers David Jull, Peter McGauran and John Sharp resigned as a result, and Labor frontbencher Nick Sherry attempted suicide.

[Grim Reaper]

The fact is, they are free to vote for anyone they want, and can switch their individual party registration at any time.

Anyone they want, as long as it follows what the majority of their district wants. Who cares which candidate they want to actually vote for.

[Scooter]

On the other hand, the gerrymandering is all based on the premise that the voters are like lemmings who will vote for their party's candidate regardless of anything other than party affiliation. The fact is, they are free to vote for anyone they want, and can switch their individual party registration at any time.

If gerrymandering wasn't known to work, politicians wouldn't bother to do it. The fact that even in elections where there are huge swings in popular vote from one party to another, 90+% of incumbents are routinely re-elected, speaks to an electoral system that is rotten to the core. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the U.S. Congress in jigging the rules to ensure its own survival.

[Grim Reaper]

I also like the insinuation that voters are idiots who should vote for who they're told to vote for by the people trying to stay in office.