Gerrymander 5k: run highlights absurdity of Republican redistricting

[turbinetree]

Runners taking part in a 5km race in a small city in North Carolina on Saturday afternoon could have been forgiven for feeling dizzy, as they followed a zig-zag course that took them, literally, all around the houses.

The event was intended as a live demonstration of the absurdity and insidiousness of the way voting boundaries have been re-drawn – or gerrymandered – in Asheville, a liberal town at the western end of the state.

The head-spinning route of the “Gerrymander 5k” turned sharp corners and went forward and back on itself, snaking through town and wriggling along barely populated streets and odd blocks with no sidewalks.

-snip-


After Barack Obama won the White House for the Democrats in 2008, Republicans raised massive election war chests. In 2010, they duly won control of the House of Representatives and many state legislatures.

State legislatures have the power to redraw electoral boundaries every 10 years, to coincide with the national census. Many Republican-controlled statehouses took advantage of the 2010 census and fast-emerging, house-by-house mapping software to reshape electoral districts, packing opposition voters into fewer seats or, as in Asheville, dividing and diluting them with a majority of Republicans.

“North Carolina is particularly known for gerrymandering,” said Alana Pierce, president of the League of Women Voters of Asheville-Buncombe County, which organized the 5k run.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/05/gerrymander-5k-run-asheville-north-carolina-republicans

[oasis]

1. Wake up America!

[klook]

2. Brilliant way to publicize the absurdity of gerrymandering.

I love Asheville. Those people have great spirit. They’re a bright spot in a region that is infested with Deplorables.

[Scarsdale]

3. Without dirty tricks,

the repubs. would not stand a chance. They HAVE to cheat, it is the repub. way. Hillary was saiilng along, certain of victory, when McConnell refused to hold hearings for Merrick Garland, President Obama's choice for the SC. He said "The next president will fill that vacancy" SOB KNEW at that time who would be going to the WH. I hope Mueller is investigating him and Lyin' Ryan for collusion.

[tiredtoo]

4. Michigan residents are circulating a petition to put an end to this.

Well at least put it on the ballot. Petition states districts will be drawn by independent committee of 4 members of each party and 5 independent voters. No elected officials or family of same, No lobbyists and all decisions would be made public. (Transparency).
When it passes it will be a constitutional amendment. Last time the public passed a ballot issue the republicans in Lansing overturned it and made the new law with a spending attachment. In Michigan appropriations measures cannot be contested. They are nasty assholes.

Michigan residents, if you are looking for a place to sign go to http://www.votersnotpoliticians.com
Thanks for your support.

[Fred Sanders]

5. Gerrymandering is electoral fraud on steroids. It is an abomination to representative democracy.

It is corruption on a grand scale. Any court of law not seeing that is being willfully blind and itself corrupt.