Current districts stretch imagination.
Posted on 10/19/2011 7:03:06 AM PDT by TBP
Maryland is home to some of the most gerrymandered congressional districts in the country. But the decennial redistricting getting underway gives Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley and state leaders a chance to remake the partisan, unrepresentative districts created 10 years ago under Gov. Parris Glendening, another Democrat — districts that have harmed Democratic and unaffiliated voters as much as they have Republicans.
And the good news is officials don’t have to spend much time reviewing voter rolls and computer data to achieve this good-government outcome. All they have to do is adopt the plan offered by Maryland Republicans. Yes, you read that correctly.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Interestingly, the plan would also wind up creating three minority districts, whereas O'Malley's plan only has two -- and their minority population is diminished. Yet the Democrats will claim that the GOP plan is anti-minority.
Current districts stretch imagination.
Personally, in the age of computers, I don’t see why it would be so hard to do a completely nonpartisan redistricting by using a computer algorithm to draw boundaries around N geographic regions (where N is the number of Congressional districts) such that each region has roughly (within a specified margin of error) the same population, bearing in mind not to split residents of the same street address into different regions, with the minimum combined perimeter size around all regions.
Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Considing existing political & geographic boundaries (street, precinct, city, county lines) and compliance with the Voting Rights Act and the "one man, one vote" standard.
Both of them?
Hah....I used to live right in the middle of district 6. Never paid attention to its shape. No wonder it was the only conservative place in MD. There’s that one small section of Montgomery Co staving off the poison from the rest of it in district 4. Since leaving in 2007, however, I’ve heard about the leftist incursions into Frederick. Funny how they’re fleeing the mess THEY created in Montgomery through their policies.
The proposed districts (in the Democrat plan) are even worse.
The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th are held together by pieces of string.
They're doing the same thing by fleeing Prince George's County south into Charles County, bring their ideologies and pathologies with them.
Sad to say, I actually benefit from the rat plan. Andy Harris would become my rep. I just moved to MD, but it will be the first time in my life I was represented by someone who represented my interests. Either way, the republican plan is far better and more equitable.
The House of Delegates approved the O’Malley Gerrymander. Hopefully, we can stop it in the Senate. Maybe, since it reduces the minority presence in the two minority districts, we can file a Voting Rights Act suit.
But the legisl00ture went ahead and picked the O’Malley map, anyhow.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
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