In case you missed it this week The Huffington Post ran an article that exposed many of us to a memo released by the Republican State Leadership Committee The memo summarized a project called the RSLC’s Redistricting Majority Project (REDMAP). If this is your first time hearing of REDMAP, I will provide a short description. For those of you familiar with REDMAP, skip the next paragraph.
The GOP adopted a national strategy to gain control of state legislatures and, after doing so, redraw Congressional Districts in the most favorable manner. Most of know that each state is given a certain number of Congressional Districts based on population and then the state is divided to create these districts. Many of us might just assume that the state is divided in the easiest possible manner to have equally populated geographic areas. However, in the case of gerrymandering (drawing the line to increase the number of congressional seats your party will win), you can get the following:
To explain further, here are an equal number of dots (10 green and ten pink), but depending on where you draw the lines to get an equal number of four congressional districts, the pink dots can have a 3-1 advantage or the green dots can have a 3-1 advantage.
Unfortunately gerrymandering is nothing new and both parties have redistricted congressional areas in their favor. Though there are two relatively new aspects of this strategy. This is the first time that a national campaign has occurred and that a party is bragging about being able to retain the majority in the House because of gerrymandering (nationally, voters cast their ballots for Democrats one million more times than Republicans and yet Republicans retained a 33 seat majority in the House). In addition to using gerrymandering to retain power in the House, the Republicans are now using their local power in an attempt to change states that traditionally vote for a Democrat for President to have their electoral votes decided by Congressional Districts rather than winner take all http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/01/15/16533072-the-gops-redmap-memo?lite . If this is allowed, a state that has a majority vote for a Democrat could have the majority of their electoral college votes issued to the Republican candidate.
Seems to me that Republicans are realizing that they are losing the argument on issues so they are resorting to other tactics to win elections. I hope the people in these states will prevent their local politicians from changing their electoral college appropriation. However, more importantly, I hope voters realize that local politics matter. I know there is a much greater turnout when there is a national election of interest, but local elections usually play a greater role in our lives and in a representative democracy, it is our responsibility to elect the best candidates and hold them accountable.