BB credibility… shot!
They have lots of tech-savvy enablers at home and abroad who are happy to help the GOP out in exchange for things like lower corporate taxes or the lifting of sanctions (in addition to the more traditional pricey consulting fees).
The fact that Nancy Pelosi is the face of the Democrat Party today shows me that the Dems are not serious about attracting new and/or younger voters. They were on the right track with Obama, but seem to have forgotten his lessons. There’s even talk of Joe Biden running for president! Yeah, that’s the ticket. “They go old, we go older!”
Not sure I understand. How would legislative maps, rigged or not, give us Trump? Electoral College votes are allocated by population, which is done by the Census.
You can gerrymander the hell out of Congressional lines, but you can’t really do anything to the Electoral College.
Whoever has the power gerrymanders. If you look at traditionally Democrat states, like Maryland, it is gerrymandered to the hilt. Look at the 3rd, 4th,7th and 8th Districts. They are shameful. It is not a matter of Rs v Ds. It’s a matter of who has the power.
Choosing between Hillary and Trump is like choosing between crashing your car into a wall at 15 mph or 150mph.
Yes, you would rather not crash your car at all, but if you have no other choice then 15 mph is the best choice by far.
Nitpick: saying “Democrat party” is a right-wing tic. Makes people think of rats. Otherwise your comments are on-point.
But the republicans did it, so it’s okay. They’re real americans! /s
By making sure that more districts are gerrymandered to reflect a particular demographic and political orientation. There are tons of “safe” districts, with the majority of those being represented by republicans and there has been a movement to get the GOP further to the right on a variety of issues, but most especially social issues (abortion, gay rights, racial equality, etc).
And of course you can change the electoral college. The constitution itself is a changeable document.
And it was the right that gave us a racist shit-stain like Trump.
I think I wasn’t clear. The apportionment of electoral votes is set by the census and can’t be changed. California gets 55, Virginia gets 13, Alaska gets 3. Only two states award EV’s other than “winner take all” – Nebraska and Maine.
My point is that Trump would have won his same total of EV’s regardless of how the lines inside those states are drawn. You can’t gerrymander the Electoral College any more than you can gerrymander the U.S. Senate.
Except it already has been by the 12th amendment… And a state’s electors equals to the number of Congressional members (in both houses), and hence changes with changes to the number of congressional districts in a state.
So, no, it’s not and hasn’t been static (which is the entire point of the ability to amend and change the constitution), and the number of electors changes with the number of districts. It’s directly related to gerrymandering of districts.
I think you’re conflating two different points here. Yes, electoral votes are based on number of congressional districts. But congressional districts aren’t awarded via gerrymandering, it’s based on the ten-year census. Gerrymandering is simply a term for how the state breaks up the districts that they’ve been awarded after the census count so that the party in power (mostly the GOP, though the Dems have a few good gerrymandered states like Maryland) can maintain a majority, both in the state legislature and the reps they send to Congress.
You do know that it’s legislatures, which are not immune to politics, are the ones who carry out the mapping on congressional districts, right? I’m unsure how you think that’s unrelated in that case. Yes, the census is key, but HOW DISTRICTS ARE SHAPED BY THOSE NUMBERS are where the gerrymandering comes in.
Thanks. That’s the point I was trying to get across. Each state gets X Representatives and 2 Senators. Electoral College votes are X+2. X can be all GOP or all Dem. They can move lines, change from GOP to Dem and back again all they want, but it’s always X+2.
X is set from the Census every 10 years. It’s not like California, where X=53 can say “No, screw it, we’re sending 100 people to Congress.” That X is set for 10 years and it don’t move a lick.
Which means, even if the maps were drawn to favor Democrats as much as possible, and Democrats ran every state delegation, Trump STILL would have won.
Little cryin’ BB. Sad!
Not quite. Every 10 years the census does its thing. The total number is divided by 435 to get a number of people per seat. Then state populations are divided by that number to see how many seats they get.
States can gerrymander the hell out of the number of seats they get, but the number each state gets, and thus their EC vote, remains fixed.
Take the State of Hypothetical (aka The Decimal State), with it’s nice round 10 seats in Congress.
In 2010, Hypothetical got 10 seats in the House and has 2 Senate seats. The state legislature went hard core GOP that time, and gerrymandered all 10 seats to the GOP. Hypothetical has 12 EVs.
In 2016, Hypothetical decided enough of the GOP, and went hard Dem. The legislature then re-drew the maps to elect 10 Democrats. Hypothetical STILL has 12 EVs.
The number of people in a state isn’t static. It’s still related to the number of representatives, which isn’t always static.
