Why are extreme abortion laws taking over America? Blame gerrymandering

[Demovictory9]

For that matter, why would Ohio, Alabama, Missouri and other states establish similar “fetal heartbeat” laws that are far more restrictive than their constituents support?

One important answer is gerrymandering: redistricting voting districts to give the party in power an edge – making it almost impossible for the other side to win a majority of seats, even with a majority of votes. Sophisticated geo-mapping software and voluminous voter data turned this ancient art into a hi-tech science when the US redistricted after the 2010 census.

Republicans recognized the opportunity. Democrats snoozed. Nine years later, they’re still paying the price, particularly in swing state legislatures. A little-known group called the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) launched a devastatingly effective strategy called Redmap – short for the Redistricting Majority Project. It dropped $30m of dark money into sleepy local races, flipped legislative chambers blue to red, and gave the Republicans control over drawing the vast majority of local legislative and US House seats – and with it, the power to remake the political playing field for the next decade.

Republicans took such advantage that they have controlled state legislative supermajorities in otherwise competitive states even when voters prefer Democratic candidates by hundreds of thousands of votes. This nullifies elections and insulates lawmakers from a majority that seeks to vote them out of office.

Despite lacking any mandate for an extreme agenda in a closely divided nation, Republican lawmakers have pushed through new voting restrictions, anti-labor laws, the emergency manager bill that led to poisoned water in Flint, Michigan, and now, these strict abortion bans. Electorally, there’s little that Democrats can do to stop it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/02/how-gerrymandering-undermines-democracy-us-elections

[Wounded Bear]

1. K & R...for visibility...nt

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. I fear you're quite right........but now we know.

Now we're awake, and ...........we're pissed off.

Time to get busy and kick some Republican ass off the stage.

[Hoyt]

3. Chicken or Egg? I blame the ignorant white wingers who elect GOPers.

Gerrymandering helps keep these losers in office, but the voters are OK with it and main problem.

[Buckeyeblue]

4. How did our leaders get caught flat footed on this?

It's a simple enough strategy. In Michigan we passed a statewide initiative to take districting out of the legislature's hands. We need to push this in other states.

[EffieBlack]

5. In Ohio and other swing states, I blame Democrats who refused to vote for Democrats in 2010

supposedly to "teach Obama and Pelosi a lesson" because they thought they weren't progressive enough. As a result of their temper tantrum, many of these statehouses flipped to the Republicans. And it happened in a decennial year just before the state legislatures redrew their electoral maps, which allowed them to gerrymander the hell out of their states - way to go, political geniuses ...

[Arkansas Granny]

6. K & R

[delisen]

7. 2020, like 2010 is a reapportionment year. State legislature races are critical

as they were in 2010.

When Democrats focus on and fund mainly presidential races we may win the big race yet still find ourselves without power, gerrymandered once again for the next ten years.

When Democrats do not publicize what is already known about Russian hacking into data bases we may easily lose the presidency or win the presidency but still have our agenda blocked by a Russian-complicit U S Senate.

A democratic candidate for the state legislature in Florida, Ryan Morales, has just reported his campaign has been hacked by a site in Russia.

Morales says the hacker's email address – [e-mail] – and IP address were traced back to Russia by both him and his host platform WP Engine. Yandex, per their website, is a Russia-based company that specializes in internet-related products and services, including search and information services, navigation and online advertising, among others.

"I don't know if they were just trying to shut me down or whatever they were trying to do," Morales says. "But they were messing with me."


https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2019/05/31/democratic-florida-house-candidate-ryan-morales-claims-russians-hacked-their-way-into-his-campaign-website.

We know from FBI and Mueller Report that Russia got into Florida's election system in 2016
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/18/politics/russian-hacking-mueller-report/index.html

We know that Russians interfered in Florida in 2018 where Bill Nelson lost his Seats seats by just 10,000 some votes.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/os-rubio-russian-hacking-florida-20190506-story.html

Our elections are not secure from foreign adversaries --yet as far as I know no current democratic candidate has forcefully addressed this issue and some Democrats as well as media are still trying to wrongly frame the 2020 election as just a matter of winning less than 100,000 presidential votes in 4 states.

[certainot]

8. but it's all based on republicans living in an alternate reality with their own facts

because democrats let them have 1500 coordinated radio stations to sell whatever they want

gerrymandering might as well be drawn relative to their radio signals - those people are voting republican because they believe republican radio and its little brother faux and they elect misogynist racist fascist radicals who vote lock step for this shit