The Republicans did it in 2010. The strategy was to control the state legislatures when the census came out so they were in charge of redistricting. THAT is why it takes more votes for Democrats to win than it does for Republicans.
Rachel Maddow has done segments about this tactic and so has NPR. It was called Operation RedMap.
Understanding Congressional Gerrymandering: 'It's Moneyball Applied To Politics'
June 15, 20161:36 PM ET
Heard on Fresh Air
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross, who's off this week. Our guest today, Salon's editor-in-chief David Daley, has a new book that he says began with a simple question. When President Obama won re-election in 2012 and a Democratic tide gave the party a big majority in the Senate, why did the House of Representatives remain firmly in Republican hands? The result was even more striking since voters cast 1.3 million more ballots for Democratic House candidates than Republican ones.
The answer, Daley decided, was effective gerrymandering of House districts following the 2010 census. And it's state legislatures that draw most of the congressional boundaries across the country. The result of Daley's research is his new book, which details an effort by Republican strategists to put money and campaign resources into targeted state legislative races in key states in 2010, so Republicans could control the statehouses and control congressional redistricting. Daley's book has a title I can't say on the radio. It refers to a crude term for a political dirty deed done cheaply. I'll approximate the title as "Rat-bleeped: The True Story Behind The Secret Plan To Steal America's Democracy" [Actual book title is "Rat-F*****: The True Story Behind The Secret Plan To Steal America's Democracy."]
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DAVIES: And the critical link here, of course, is that in most states, it's the state legislature that draws the congressional boundaries. They do the redistricting after each census. So he's getting at Congress by going to statehouse and state Senate seats often little-known to voters. This was called Operation RedMap. Explain the idea.
DALEY: The idea was that you could take a state like Ohio, for example. In 2008, the Democrats held a majority in the statehouse of 53-46. What RedMap does is they identify and target six specific statehouse seats. They spend $1 million on these races, which is an unheard of amount of money coming into a statehouse race. Republicans win five of these. They take control of the Statehouse in Ohio - also, the state Senate that year. And it gives them, essentially, a veto-proof run of the entire re-districting in the state.
More with transcript and audio of full program:
http://www.npr.org/2016/06/15/482150951/understanding-congressional-gerrymandering-its-moneyball-applied-to-politics
This is why we need to get out the vote for ALL Democratic candidates at ALL levels!
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