Quotes About Gerrymandering

California is among several states that already have fought their way out from under partisan gerrymandering by taking line-drawing authority away from the Legislature.

In order to maintain American democracy we need to tackle the problematic influence of big money donors, corporate political action committees and dark money contributions. We must put an end to partisan gerrymandering and the blatant attempts at voter suppression being pushed in Republican-led states across the country.

American voting districts are, across a lot of the country, deeply messed up by having been gerrymandered by right-wing politicians.

To understand the impact of this combination of gerrymandering and the geographic factors, consider that Barack Obama received some 5 million more votes than Mitt Romney did in 2012 yet carried only 209 House districts. Romney carried 226.

In the North, they do it a different way. They have a system that's known as gerrymandering.... It means when Negroes become too heavily concentrated in a certain area, and begin to gain too much political power, the white man comes along and changes the district lines.

The Christian religion is so manifestly contrary to the facts, belief in it can only be held with the most delusional gerrymandering imaginable.

Elbridge Gerry, the fifth vice president of the United States—under President James Madison—and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. (Due to his incessant fiddling with voter districts in Massachusetts to shape them in his favor, Elbridge Gerry infamously inspired the term "gerrymandering.")

Around the nation, lawmakers have drawn up their districts with such perverse precision and aversion to competition, that legislators rarely face competitive challenges.

Since 2000, Republican policies have suppressed Democratic voting; since 2010, Republican gerrymandering has given the Republicans a heavy systematic advantage in Congress; and the last two Republican presidents have won the White House while losing the popular vote to their opponents.

Gerrymandering at its essence is supposed to be used to reflect the changing geography to ensure representation. But we know that politics gets involved and it's used to benefit whoever's in control. That's the problem we have with gerrymandering.

Fighting gerrymandering is one thing. The other thing is insuring we have the right candidates for the people and not the right candidates for the Party.

Norquist meetings have expanded to forty-eight states. Via ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), conservatism has spread at the state level, allowing conservatives to take over state legislatures, gerrymander congressional districts, and take over the House of Representatives with a minority of national voter support.

A few states have taken redistricting out of the hands of partisans and put them in the hands of fair-minded committees. Every state should do the same.

Equal constituencies' sound fair. So why is Labour so against the constituencies bill and why do we call it gerrymandering? Because, like so much Tory rhetoric, it sounds good, but if we look beyond the soundbites it becomes clear that it covers policies that promote narrow sectional interests.

Indeed, it's not a stretch to say that most voters no longer choose their representatives; instead, representatives choose their voters.

Since populist movements have achieved an influence beyond their numbers, fixing electoral irregularities such as gerrymandering and forms of disproportionate representation which overweight rural areas (such as the US Electoral College) would help. So would journalistic coverage that tied candidates' reputations to their record of accuracy and coherence rather than to trivial gaffes and scandals. Part of the problem, over the long term

The eight members of Congress on his side are all in safe congressional districts, gerrymandered so cartoonishly that they could probably drop their pants in the middle of the hearing, start sucking their thumbs, and not only would they be reelected in two years, they would also run unopposed.

It doesn't entirely make sense that if 51 senators are from one party, and they can stick together, they can do whatever they want. Especially in this age of blatant, shameless gerrymandering.

A mostly anonymous figure until his death in 2018, Hofeller liked to describe gerrymandering as "the only legalized form of vote-stealing left in the United States." He once told an audience of state legislators, "Redistricting is like an election in reverse. It's a great event. Usually the voters get to pick the politicians. In redistricting, the politicians get to pick the voters.

In Maryland, we have the unfortunate distinction of being the most gerrymandered state in the entire nation.

Much needs to be done to fix the gerrymandered system so that each citizen has one equal vote, and so that each vote can be simply counted by a fellow citizen. We need paper ballots, because they cannot be tampered with remotely and can always be recounted.

Much needs to be done to fix the gerrymandered system so that each citizen has one equal vote, and so that each vote can be simply counted by a fellow citizen.

Gerrymandering isn't just a recent phenomenon, though; the word was coined in 1812 when Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry went to such egregious lengths to redraw the state senate districts in his party's favor that one district took on the shape of a salamander.

The Republican Party's gerrymandering efforts were also having unintended consequences. For years the party had poured resources into state legislatures in order to redraw congressional districts and lock in Republican control. But this strategy also left incumbents susceptible to primary challenges by candidates who were more radical than they themselves were and who had their pick of billionaires to fund their campaigns.