by Marcin Gomulka
After all this "mandate map" madness, here is a simple yet informative one:
500 pixel wide,
255 red pixel for Bush,
5 white pixel for Nader,
240 blue pixel for Kerry.
—
(picture resized to 50% to stay within layout limits)
Back to Main
November 11, 2004
Mandate Map Madness
Comments
David S. Broder in todays WaPo on gerrymandering and automatic reelection No Vote Necessary – Redistricting is creating a U.S. House of Lords.
… it turns out, Mica, a 61-year-old, six-term Republican House member from Winter Park, Fla., was the beneficiary of a venerable Florida law saying that if you are unopposed and no one has filed notice of a write-in campaign against you, your name doesn’t appear on the ballot. Since Mica had no primary opponent, his constituents never encountered his name at any point this year.
Mica’s case is not unique. Five of Florida’s 25 representatives ran unopposed this year, four of them, like Mica, with no primary opponent. Around the country, 30 others were similarly unchallenged. In Florida, as in other states, even those who had opponents waltzed to victory. Nationally, more than 85 percent of House incumbents won by landslide majorities of more than 60 percent. In California, with 53 House members, only three fell short of that mark. In Florida, only one of the representatives — the famous Katherine Harris — received less than 60 percent of the vote. The district lines in these and most other states were drawn by partisan legislatures to protect incumbents of both parties from the inconvenience of competition.
…
At the founding of this republic, House members were given the shortest terms — half the length of the president’s, one-third that of senators — to ensure that they would be sensitive to any shifts in public opinion. Now they have more job security than the queen of England — and as little need to seek their subjects’ assent.
Without apology, they enjoy being “automatically reinstated in Washington.”
Gerrymandering in the hand of politicians in a two party system is a death sentence to democracy.
Posted by: b | Nov 11 2004 18:19 utc | 1
b
if a ‘democracy’ has in fact ever existed
still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 11 2004 18:27 utc | 2
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_11/005108.ph
Pre Civil War political map, looks familiar
same as it ever was same as it ever was
Posted by: anna missed | Nov 11 2004 19:31 utc | 4
Oh b,
That (fuck the south) was way better than coffee, hi ho hi ho, it’s off to work..
Posted by: anna missed | Nov 11 2004 19:36 utc | 5
Some funny rant
I’m all for insensitive humor, but that piece is sheer class contempt.
Posted by: slothrop | Nov 11 2004 19:46 utc | 6
…..I am sensible, Sir, that all which I have asserted in my detail is admitted in the gross; but that quite a different conclusion is drawn from it. America, gentlemen say, is a noble object. It is an object well worth fighting for. Certainly it is, if fighting a people be the best way of gaining them. Gentlemen in this respect will be led to their choice of means by their complexions and their habits. Those who understand the military art will of course have some predilection for it. Those who wield the thunder of the state may have more confidence in the efficacy of arms. But I confess, possibly for want of this knowledge, my opinion is much more in favor of prudent management than of force; considering force not as an odious, but a feeble instrument for preserving a people so numerous, so active, so growing, so spirited as this, in a profitable and subordinate connection with us.
First, Sir, permit me to observe that the use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed which is perpetually to be conquered.
My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not always the effect of force, and an armament is not a victory. If you do not succeed, you are without resource; for, conciliation failing, force remains; but, force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left. Power and authority are sometimes bought by kindness; but they can never be begged as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence.
A further objection to force is, that you impair the object by your very endeavors to preserve it The thing you fought for is not the thing which you recover; but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in the contest. Nothing less will content me than WHOLE AMERICA. I do not choose to consume its strength along with our own, because in all parts it is the British strength that I consume. I do not choose to be caught by a foreign enemy at the end of this exhausting conflict; and still less in the midst of it. I may escape; but I can make no insurance against such an event. Let me add, that I do not choose wholly to break the American spirit; because it is the spirit that has made the country.
Lastly, we have no sort of experience in favor of force as an instrument in the rule of our Colonies. Their growth and their utility has been owing to methods altogether different. Our ancient indulgence has been said to be pursued to a fault. It may be so. But we know if feeling is evidence, that our fault was more tolerable than our attempt to mend it; and our sin far more salutary than our penitence……
from Edmund Burke’s speech on conciliation with America, March 22nd 1775
Posted by: Edmund Burke | Nov 11 2004 19:52 utc | 7
Digby reminds us how President Lincoln understood what the Red States wanted.
Posted by: Citizen | Nov 11 2004 20:57 utc | 8
I have to wholeheartedly agree with the ranter. F— the south and their self rightious asses.
My question is though, how can we cut off the dough. I say we start at the state level, again, and get reps and governors that refuse to forward the money.
Posted by: jdp | Nov 11 2004 20:58 utc | 9
And the state level is the only reliable way back to verified elections.
Posted by: Citizen | Nov 11 2004 21:05 utc | 10
Another Way To View The Map — a different sort of “colour divide.”
I tend to agree w/slothrop that a great deal of class contempt is being spewed in the fts rant — along with a kernel of truth: the US political system has been permanently gerrymandered since the git-go to give undue weight and influence to the Southern states. this has been pointed out and expanded on by other posters earlier so I won’t go through it all again, but the issues are all tangled up together.
there’s a core/periphery dynamic within, as well as outside, a rapacity-based economy. cities “loot” the rural areas around them, stripping them not only of raw materials but of labour — the city being a large centralised market gets control of commodity pricing, forces prices down to near or below subsistence level, farm kids see where their best chances are and leave the farm for better opportunities in the big city, family farms go under and are bought up by absentee landlords who convert the original landholders to tenant farmers or sharecroppers, etc. a natural resentment builds up in the rural areas. if the rural areas are then mollified or bribed into complaisance by subsidies from the city’s excess wealth, the city folks resent the subsidies going to the people they have (however unintentionally, as individuals) pillaged and pauperised. if the rural areas have, for historical reasons, a grandfathered gerrymander giving them undue influence over the national political agenda, then the city folks (as with our recently quoted ranters) feel that not only are they being taxed heavily to support those “unproductive backward hicks,” the backward hicks are presuming to call the shots and interfere with the city people’s god-given right to run everything. and so it goes…
the history of slavery in the South (illuminated by the Then and Now map I just posted) gives the Northern urban population a further stick w/which to beat their “backwards” brethren; the persistence of racism throughout the country adds to the general sullenness, resentment, fear and rage of the white (de facto) peasant and sharecropper…
it is probably worth thinking about my good friend RootlessCosmo’s musings on “the psychic wage”. it has a bearing on all this. a psychic wage is paid to city people to help them endure the often hellish conditions of urban life: their conviction of their own cleverness, sophistication, and superiority. a psychic wage is paid to the lowest man in the hierarchy when he imagines himself ineffably superior to even the smartest woman, and to the poor Whites when they imagine themselves inherently superior to even successful Blacks, and so on.
people get angry when their jobs are taken away. they get angry when their savings lose value or their retirement is threatened. but they get really angry, dangerously, crazily angry, if anyone messes with their psychic wage.
Aside from the map, Spengler, as fascist or as rassist or as whatever he may be, has a point: Power and the evangelical womb
The demographic shift in favor of “red” (Republican) versus “blue” (Democratic) states helped President George W Bush win last week’s election, American commentators have observed. What we have observed thus far is only the thin end of an enormous wedge. Religious (“red”) Americans will continue to have children, and secular (“blue”) Americans will continue to extinguish themselves.
…
44% of the US population of 285 million as of the year 2000 census were evangelical (or “born again”) Christians, according to an August 2000 Gallup poll. Let us assume that these 125 million evangelicals average three children per family during the next generation, and that the non-evangelical population averages 1.6 children per family. Within one generation (assuming a 0.5% death rate for both groups), evangelicals will form a majority of 61% of the population. This does not take into account the higher birthrate of devout Catholics, who tend toward social conservatism.
…
Those who were horrified by the religious character of the US presidential election had better grow a tougher hide. That, the available evidence shows, only was the beginning.
Posted by: b | Nov 11 2004 22:06 utc | 12
“Wikipedia has put together an incredibly good piece on the strange election of 2004. Of particular importance is the discrepancies map:”
Voting locations that used electronic or other types of voting machines that did not issue a paper receipt or offer auditability correlate geographically with areas that had discrepancies in Bush’s favor between exit poll numbers and actual results. Exit polling data in these areas show significantly higher support for Kerry than actual results (potentially outside the margin of error). From a statistical perspective, this may be indicative of vote rigging, because the likelihood of this happening by chance is extremely low. A study of 16 states by a former MIT mathematics professor places the likelihood at 1 in 50,000.
Posted by: beq | Nov 12 2004 0:00 utc | 13
Yep, he had a point to some extent. Yet, in the past we had something like 99% of superstitious illiterate people, and now we still have a high % of learned liberal people. That said, it is a major issue, notably in countries like US and Israel. Of course, that kind of issues can be dealt with, providing liberals want to use the right means. Mankind has shown it can be quite good at “population control”.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Nov 12 2004 1:04 utc | 14
calling all votewatchers.
Original letter and follow up letter from Reps. Conyers, Nadler, Wexler, Holt, Scott, et al to GAO Comptroller Walker Requesting Investigation of Voting Machines and Technologies Used in 2004 Election —
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/gaoinvestvote2004ltr11804.pdf
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/gaoinvestvote2004ltr11504.pdf
As usual, Spengler has only a tenuous grip on reality. Only Amish and old-fashioned Mormons have fertility rates of 3 plus. Any group that makes up about 44% of the national population will have be close to the average, and I’d eat my metaphorical hat if the real figure was higher than 2.1. Even conservative Christian women are influenced by the same factors as other women: the high “capital expeditures” of raising children in a rich society, the desire for a career, etc. Mind you, even a small difference in fertility could make a big difference over many decades. But as Joe hints at, values can change over time, and over its history the US has seen several rises and declines in evangelical Christianity.
No one will have a monopoly on the mandate map forever, although the factions battling for control may change in ways we can’t predict today.
Posted by: Harrow | Nov 12 2004 4:38 utc | 16
re b’s post on House of Representatives w/computer selected guaranteed districts – I read that #incumbents not re-elected=3.
Also, before Soviet Union fell, there was less turnover in US Congress than Soviet Duma.
Posted by: jj | Nov 12 2004 10:05 utc | 17
For the n-th variation on the “mandate maps”
the following two links (before, and after) from a Massachusetts site provides
before and
after from a Massachusetts site provides a somewhat contrarian view, with another non-standard but perhaps illuminating map.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 13 2004 6:38 utc | 18
Tom Engelhardt at TomDispatch.com has done a nice analysis of the many electoral and other maps that have been popping up over the past week or so. Incorporates and expandes upon a good number of the maps from DeAnder’s friend Cosma. Don’t know how to do the link thing so here is the url: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=2002
Posted by: conchita | Nov 15 2004 2:55 utc | 19