Thank you. Read the article. He rejected a cap on the NC state income tax, as well. We need a cap on income and property taxes, but we also need to boot out corrupt politicians. Gerrymandering is probably rampant in other states, as well, e.g., Illinois, NY, New England.
Thanks. That was interesting. We do live in interesting times.
February 27, 2019 at 12:36 am
John M.
Gerrymandering was never a problem in North Carolina as long as the Demorats were in charge. THEIR Gerrymanders were just fine with liberal judges were asked to rule on it. Same thing for the illegal ballot collection we’re seeing in the 9th District. …as long as the Demos had the majority…
Regarding the above link, I never read articles that appear in websites which require me to subscribe to the site in order to read an article, or, as in this case, require me to whitelist them by excluding their site from my adblock function in order to gain access to their content. So I found the story at another site that has no such requirements:
A good work-around for websites that force the whitelist is to use an archiving website like: https://archive.fo/
Throw their URL into the archive search to see if it’s already archived and, if not, make it so…
Another advantage is that allows you to share the website content without further generating any ad revenue for them by giving out the archived URL instead of the original… and if they pull down or modify the article, it’s still available…
February 26, 2019 at 11:04 am
Doggo
I have never figured out how a judge can declare a constitutional amendment “Unconstitutional”. Amending the constitution (following the legal procedure) is, by definition, how to make a change constitutional. This seems like over-reach to me.
February 26, 2019 at 2:42 pm
TomZ.
In this case, the legislature was not properly elected because the districts were improperly redrawn after the last census. Therefore the legislature had no authority to submit the amendments to the voters.
The decision, from judge G. Bryan Collins, has a simple premise: North Carolina’s General Assembly is the product of districts so gerrymandered that its members don’t truly represent the state’s electorate. Therefore, says Collins, the General Assembly “is not empowered to pass legislation that would amend the state’s constitution.”
A judge just threw out Pennsylvania’s district map before the 2018 elections, throwing the Dems some extra US House members, blaming gerrymandering. Is this the new liberal tactic, have the judges get rid of the “solidly Republican” districts?
Sounds like this is a knife that cuts and stabs in more than one direction, DildoCrats and RepubliTards alike.
Voting districts should be a simple geometric shape, square-ish or circular-ish, centered on a central urban area; NOT looking like an octopus, a lizard, or a snake with a broken back.
the reason gerrymandering districts, was originally so that Blacks had a chance to get elected, because white democrats would vote for a yellow dog, but not a Black Man(or Woman).
This ruling will end up biting the DNC in the ass, eventually, if a return to honestly drawn districts occurs…
The judges contention in this case was that blacks were being “disenfranchised” so there is no intention to have honestly drawn districts; the intention is to disenfranchise some white voters. The courts are no less biased than the legislature, possibly more, because they are less accountable to the people. This is particularly true of his negation of amendments that were passed by popular vote, not solely by actions of the legislature.
February 26, 2019 at 7:38 am
GWB
a simple geometric shape […] centered on a central urban area
No. They should be shaped like neighborhoods. The people you live with, the folks who have formed a community, should be the basis of voting districts.
Ideally, this is how local precincts would be built, and those would be the basis of the districts for state representation, which would be the basis for national representation.
Not sure if you can make that happen nowadays, though, given that many neighborhoods aren’t really communities.
(And, they still shouldn’t look like an octopus or whatnot, if they’re based on communities.)
Note that all of these schemes seek to avoid anything like a _community_. Just basing it off of zip codes and local government authority components like fire districts, which are in turned based on intensely localized standards are studiously evaded _because_ there is no room for abuse.
Slavers never change. No matter the language. No matter the color of skin. No matter the Laws cast, voided or perverted to meet their ends. There is profit to be found for the wielders of chains.
Redistricting could be done by computer and the strategy of “GO”. The state is divided by geometric shapes called squares and each “square” will represent a portion of the population of the state. Each side will choose their key piece and will alternately choose the adjoining piece next to it. Choices will be based on the membership of the state house. So if one side has dominance then they will get more choices. Of course this will cause butt ache so you use a computer to piece together a coherent state map. One modification would be to start with a key piece for every congressional district allotted to that state. So in California the dems would start with about 50+ key pieces and build from there. The GOP could choose to dilute their districts or concentrate their fire power in a few areas. Probably will look like one of those county maps after the election. Just a thought…
Y’all must have incredible faith in bureaucrats and politicians to propose a “fair” system with that much wiggle room. They could open up cracks and gaps big enough for a Prius.
Have to agree with kadaka. Farm/ag states are sparsely populated in the rural areas, because that’s where agriculture/farming is done. Only the larger cities in those states are heavily populated, mostly because that’s where jobs are.
In CA, you have 3 or 4 coastal cities with massive populations, and there’s the political voting base. And that isn’t gerrymandering, it’s just demographics.
Looking at some of the districts in those heavily populated cities you’ll see some very convoluted and twisty/windy districts, all created to either concentrate or dilute some demographics.
Here in New Hampshire, the NH House district where I reside is composed of two towns. Their only common town line is located in the middle of a lake. There is no direct means of getting from one town to the other via roads. You have to go through a third town to do so. It is only by boat (in the summer) or by snowmobile (when the lake is frozen over) you can cross from one town directly into the other.
Or to put it another way, “You can’t get there from here.”
We are fortunate that both towns have a similar sized population, similar demographics, similar political makeup, and similar needs/wants. But that could change at any time in the future and the two towns could be on opposite sides of a particular issue that could end up with one town being hurt by the other should their viewpoint prevail. The towns would now work at cross-purposes to each other, and not in a healthy manner.
“Only the larger cities in those states are heavily populated, mostly because that’s where jobs are.”
More importantly these days, that’s where the “sanctuaries” are. A “political voting base” bought, paid, and protected to provide a particular set of political outcomes may indeed result in a certain set of demographics, but it is also the very definition of gerrymandering.
Invasion, jingoism, and carpetbagging are what the last Civil War was all about. That is quite certain to be what the next one will be about too.
February 26, 2019 at 12:20 pm
MAJ Arkay
No, JTC. Carpetbagging was a product of Reconstruction.
As applied in this context carpetbagging simply means taking advantage of illegal political seizures and control which is what happened post the last civil war and is happening now pre the next civil war. That could have been made more clear.
February 26, 2019 at 3:26 am
Punta Gorda
…and the one key thing that ALWAYS gets glossed over… people write the algorithms that computers will use to make those decisions. Just like Diebold machines counting votes… always subject to behind the scenes shenanigans.
Or, for that matter, the leftward political bias built into the Google search engine by algorithms composed by Silicon Valley kids seeking to impose their Intersectional Utopia on our thinking.
February 26, 2019 at 3:34 am
Halley
What do Dims fear and loathe the most?
A. The rule of law
B. Free and fair elections
C. The US Constitution
The thing is – under normal processes – none of this should affect 2020. The census will be done in 2020, then the election, then the legislatures will re-write the districts. Of course, that’s why they’ve been flinging poo for the last 8 years or so – to set up the case for Dems owning enough seats everywhere to get to re-write things in their favor.
The time has come for a governor (or the President) to confront one of these corrupt judges’ rulings by repeating the famous statement of that Democrat patriot, Andrew Jackson: “The judge has made his ruling; now let him enforce it.”
Okay, I’m going to tell you guys to go to Baen’s Bar(Pamela, watch out for the Dirty Old Men), the Politics table, and check the various threads concerning Gerrymandering and the various ideas on what would result in ‘Properly drawn’ districts.
The acknowledged problem(s) happen to be what such a radical redistricting would do to Blacks and other Minority voting blocks…
Gerrymandering is like discrimination. Officially in America, there is discrimination (bad racism) and Affirmative Action (good racism). Similarly, the federal government decides that some gerrymanders are forbidden and must be destroyed, while others are mandatory and must be preserved (e.g., the ones that preserve voting blocs for “preferred” minority populations). You can’t destroy the “bad” gerrymanders without destroying the “good” gerrymanders, and the fedguv gets to decide what is good or bad.
If whites don’t want to be in the same districts as blacks, they are shamed as racists; if Hopis demand not to be in the sane district as Navajos, that is instead declared a sacred mission… despite the fact that the Hopi reservation is completely surrounded by the Navajo reservation, so the “solution” is visibly ludicrous.
For that reason, my district (AZ-02) is one of the most ridiculously shaped in the USA… but has no real opposition because it is the way everybody wants it, including the people inside it. The lesson being that some people get to say who they want in their political neighborhood, while others will never be left alone to choose the same for themselves.
All you have to do to read articles that try to get you to whitelist their page is use the “private” window feature foundon most browsers – I know its on Firefox (which is why I use it)
Now, I will whitelist a site that I support, and use personally, but I also post links to various social media pages, and since I am acting as a marketing arm by extending an individual, sometimes obscure web page’s media without compensation, I don’t suffer any “pangs of remorse”
And what’s really ludicrous is that it is considered BAD and WRONG to concentrate an ethnic group in a small number of districts but it is equally BAD and WRONG to scatter them in many districts where they are small minorities in each district. Instead of those alternatives they are to get the maximum of districts where that ethnic group is something like 55% to 60%, so as to maximize their influence and their dominance of other ethnic groups. Whites in general or Jews in particular don’t count, of course. In general, Aframs and “Hispanics” (Mexicans? Cubans? Puerto Ricans? It varies.) have a higher priority than Asians, American Indians, or others. Never mind that most Mexicans are part Amerindian (but not from U.S. tribes).
Really really ludicrous!
38 Comments
Uh-oh.
(Link to that?)
Para usted, señora.
NC judge throws out voter ID and income tax constitutional amendments
Thank you. Read the article. He rejected a cap on the NC state income tax, as well. We need a cap on income and property taxes, but we also need to boot out corrupt politicians. Gerrymandering is probably rampant in other states, as well, e.g., Illinois, NY, New England.
Thanks. That was interesting. We do live in interesting times.
Gerrymandering was never a problem in North Carolina as long as the Demorats were in charge. THEIR Gerrymanders were just fine with liberal judges were asked to rule on it. Same thing for the illegal ballot collection we’re seeing in the 9th District. …as long as the Demos had the majority…
Regarding the above link, I never read articles that appear in websites which require me to subscribe to the site in order to read an article, or, as in this case, require me to whitelist them by excluding their site from my adblock function in order to gain access to their content. So I found the story at another site that has no such requirements:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/nc-judge-strikes-down-voter-id-amendment
A good work-around for websites that force the whitelist is to use an archiving website like: https://archive.fo/
Throw their URL into the archive search to see if it’s already archived and, if not, make it so…
Another advantage is that allows you to share the website content without further generating any ad revenue for them by giving out the archived URL instead of the original… and if they pull down or modify the article, it’s still available…
I have never figured out how a judge can declare a constitutional amendment “Unconstitutional”. Amending the constitution (following the legal procedure) is, by definition, how to make a change constitutional. This seems like over-reach to me.
In this case, the legislature was not properly elected because the districts were improperly redrawn after the last census. Therefore the legislature had no authority to submit the amendments to the voters.
A liberal NC ruling that does liberals no favors
A judge just threw out Pennsylvania’s district map before the 2018 elections, throwing the Dems some extra US House members, blaming gerrymandering. Is this the new liberal tactic, have the judges get rid of the “solidly Republican” districts?
Sounds like this is a knife that cuts and stabs in more than one direction, DildoCrats and RepubliTards alike.
Voting districts should be a simple geometric shape, square-ish or circular-ish, centered on a central urban area; NOT looking like an octopus, a lizard, or a snake with a broken back.
the reason gerrymandering districts, was originally so that Blacks had a chance to get elected, because white democrats would vote for a yellow dog, but not a Black Man(or Woman).
This ruling will end up biting the DNC in the ass, eventually, if a return to honestly drawn districts occurs…
The judges contention in this case was that blacks were being “disenfranchised” so there is no intention to have honestly drawn districts; the intention is to disenfranchise some white voters. The courts are no less biased than the legislature, possibly more, because they are less accountable to the people. This is particularly true of his negation of amendments that were passed by popular vote, not solely by actions of the legislature.
a simple geometric shape […] centered on a central urban area
No. They should be shaped like neighborhoods. The people you live with, the folks who have formed a community, should be the basis of voting districts.
Ideally, this is how local precincts would be built, and those would be the basis of the districts for state representation, which would be the basis for national representation.
Not sure if you can make that happen nowadays, though, given that many neighborhoods aren’t really communities.
(And, they still shouldn’t look like an octopus or whatnot, if they’re based on communities.)
Note that all of these schemes seek to avoid anything like a _community_. Just basing it off of zip codes and local government authority components like fire districts, which are in turned based on intensely localized standards are studiously evaded _because_ there is no room for abuse.
I wonder when the ropes will come out, and who will be the first “strange fruit”? Libtard judges? Or Libtard politicians?
“Blackbird singing in the dead of night,
Take these broken wings, and learn to fly.
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise…….”
Slavers never change. No matter the language. No matter the color of skin. No matter the Laws cast, voided or perverted to meet their ends. There is profit to be found for the wielders of chains.
For given value of slaves and chains…resist!
Get loose from the noose that’s kept us hanging about.
https://www.google.com/search?q=back+in+black&rlz=1C1JZAP_enUS802US802&oq=back+in+black&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.6261j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
More poetry and truth from blasts of the past.
So much truth…
Redistricting could be done by computer and the strategy of “GO”. The state is divided by geometric shapes called squares and each “square” will represent a portion of the population of the state. Each side will choose their key piece and will alternately choose the adjoining piece next to it. Choices will be based on the membership of the state house. So if one side has dominance then they will get more choices. Of course this will cause butt ache so you use a computer to piece together a coherent state map. One modification would be to start with a key piece for every congressional district allotted to that state. So in California the dems would start with about 50+ key pieces and build from there. The GOP could choose to dilute their districts or concentrate their fire power in a few areas. Probably will look like one of those county maps after the election. Just a thought…
Y’all must have incredible faith in bureaucrats and politicians to propose a “fair” system with that much wiggle room. They could open up cracks and gaps big enough for a Prius.
Have to agree with kadaka. Farm/ag states are sparsely populated in the rural areas, because that’s where agriculture/farming is done. Only the larger cities in those states are heavily populated, mostly because that’s where jobs are.
In CA, you have 3 or 4 coastal cities with massive populations, and there’s the political voting base. And that isn’t gerrymandering, it’s just demographics.
Looking at some of the districts in those heavily populated cities you’ll see some very convoluted and twisty/windy districts, all created to either concentrate or dilute some demographics.
Here in New Hampshire, the NH House district where I reside is composed of two towns. Their only common town line is located in the middle of a lake. There is no direct means of getting from one town to the other via roads. You have to go through a third town to do so. It is only by boat (in the summer) or by snowmobile (when the lake is frozen over) you can cross from one town directly into the other.
Or to put it another way, “You can’t get there from here.”
We are fortunate that both towns have a similar sized population, similar demographics, similar political makeup, and similar needs/wants. But that could change at any time in the future and the two towns could be on opposite sides of a particular issue that could end up with one town being hurt by the other should their viewpoint prevail. The towns would now work at cross-purposes to each other, and not in a healthy manner.
“Only the larger cities in those states are heavily populated, mostly because that’s where jobs are.”
More importantly these days, that’s where the “sanctuaries” are. A “political voting base” bought, paid, and protected to provide a particular set of political outcomes may indeed result in a certain set of demographics, but it is also the very definition of gerrymandering.
Invasion, jingoism, and carpetbagging are what the last Civil War was all about. That is quite certain to be what the next one will be about too.
No, JTC. Carpetbagging was a product of Reconstruction.
As applied in this context carpetbagging simply means taking advantage of illegal political seizures and control which is what happened post the last civil war and is happening now pre the next civil war. That could have been made more clear.
…and the one key thing that ALWAYS gets glossed over… people write the algorithms that computers will use to make those decisions. Just like Diebold machines counting votes… always subject to behind the scenes shenanigans.
Or, for that matter, the leftward political bias built into the Google search engine by algorithms composed by Silicon Valley kids seeking to impose their Intersectional Utopia on our thinking.
What do Dims fear and loathe the most?
A. The rule of law
B. Free and fair elections
C. The US Constitution
(answer: D, all of the above)
E: Truth
The most feared thing for Liars…Lawyers.. oh $hit! Same thing!
Someone that upholds the 2nd, can shoot and not miss.
The thing is – under normal processes – none of this should affect 2020. The census will be done in 2020, then the election, then the legislatures will re-write the districts. Of course, that’s why they’ve been flinging poo for the last 8 years or so – to set up the case for Dems owning enough seats everywhere to get to re-write things in their favor.
The time has come for a governor (or the President) to confront one of these corrupt judges’ rulings by repeating the famous statement of that Democrat patriot, Andrew Jackson: “The judge has made his ruling; now let him enforce it.”
Okay, I’m going to tell you guys to go to Baen’s Bar(Pamela, watch out for the Dirty Old Men), the Politics table, and check the various threads concerning Gerrymandering and the various ideas on what would result in ‘Properly drawn’ districts.
The acknowledged problem(s) happen to be what such a radical redistricting would do to Blacks and other Minority voting blocks…
Gerrymandering is like discrimination. Officially in America, there is discrimination (bad racism) and Affirmative Action (good racism). Similarly, the federal government decides that some gerrymanders are forbidden and must be destroyed, while others are mandatory and must be preserved (e.g., the ones that preserve voting blocs for “preferred” minority populations). You can’t destroy the “bad” gerrymanders without destroying the “good” gerrymanders, and the fedguv gets to decide what is good or bad.
If whites don’t want to be in the same districts as blacks, they are shamed as racists; if Hopis demand not to be in the sane district as Navajos, that is instead declared a sacred mission… despite the fact that the Hopi reservation is completely surrounded by the Navajo reservation, so the “solution” is visibly ludicrous.
For that reason, my district (AZ-02) is one of the most ridiculously shaped in the USA… but has no real opposition because it is the way everybody wants it, including the people inside it. The lesson being that some people get to say who they want in their political neighborhood, while others will never be left alone to choose the same for themselves.
All you have to do to read articles that try to get you to whitelist their page is use the “private” window feature foundon most browsers – I know its on Firefox (which is why I use it)
Now, I will whitelist a site that I support, and use personally, but I also post links to various social media pages, and since I am acting as a marketing arm by extending an individual, sometimes obscure web page’s media without compensation, I don’t suffer any “pangs of remorse”
Only in America… At least, let’s hope so.
And what’s really ludicrous is that it is considered BAD and WRONG to concentrate an ethnic group in a small number of districts but it is equally BAD and WRONG to scatter them in many districts where they are small minorities in each district. Instead of those alternatives they are to get the maximum of districts where that ethnic group is something like 55% to 60%, so as to maximize their influence and their dominance of other ethnic groups. Whites in general or Jews in particular don’t count, of course. In general, Aframs and “Hispanics” (Mexicans? Cubans? Puerto Ricans? It varies.) have a higher priority than Asians, American Indians, or others. Never mind that most Mexicans are part Amerindian (but not from U.S. tribes).
Really really ludicrous!