NYT: Elections With No Meaning

[dw]

Published: February 21, 2004 in The New York Times

...snip...

Congressional races whose outcomes were in real doubt were a rarity: nearly 90 percent had a margin of victory of 10 percentage points or more. It is much the same at the state level, only worse. In New York, more than 98 percent of the state legislators who run for re-election win, usually overwhelmingly. Anyone who knows anything about New York's state government knows that's not because the populace is thrilled with the job they're doing.

A major reason legislative elections are becoming a charade is that the parties that control the redistricting process now routinely follow the dictum of "pack, crack and pair." They pack voters from the other party into a single district and crack centers of opposition strength, dispersing opponents to districts where they will be in the minority. They redraw lines so two incumbents from the other party will wind up in one district, fighting for a single seat. Using powerful computers, line-drawers can now determine, with nearly scientific precision, how many loyal party voters need to be stuffed into any given district to make it impregnable.

This sort of hyperpartisan line-drawing was evident in Texas last year, when Republicans pushed through a plan that, by aggressively packing and cracking Democratic voters, could unseat as many as 8 of the state's 17 Democratic members of Congress. Now a local prosecutor is investigating charges that a political action committee run by Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, may have illegally used corporate contributions to help Republicans take control of the State House of Representatives — control that the party needed to have a free hand in redrawing new Congressional districts. The investigation is revealing just how much planning Mr. DeLay and the national party put into their Texas strategy, which seems to have involved every political player in the state except the voters.

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[Jack Rabbit]

1. Is America any longer a democracy?

American democracy is in danger, but it is not lost beyond hope. That is why the election this November is so important and why the defeat of Bush must be the outcome.

The election of 2000 was stolen. Anybody who says otherwise is either a liar or a fool. The September 11 attacks have been used as a pretext to circumvent civil liberties. Concentration of media ownership makes informing the public with differing points of view or even providing simple, important fact difficult.

These attempts to re-redistrict legislative boundaries is a naked attempt at assuring one-party rule.

We need to unite and defeat the anti-democratic movement that the Republican Party has embraced.

[donhakman]

2. The way I picture it...