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From Reuters: Democrats eye gains in Pennsylvania trial on 'goofy' gerrymandering
Excerpt:
Both the Electoral College and more importantly Gerrymandering are the two greatest travesties of voting-justice in America. It is time we, the sheeple, should be rid of both.
Only the popular-vote, undiminished by political manipulation (of the Electoral College and Gerrymandering), can make of America a Real Democracy ....
Excerpt:
In Pennsylvania state Senator Daylin Leach’s bid to win a seat vital to the Democratic Party’s chances in 2018 elections of taking control of the U.S. Congress, his opponents may not be his biggest obstacle.
Leach is running in one of the country’s most gerrymandered congressional districts, one with such a twisting, winding shape that it has earned the derisive nickname “Goofy Kicking Donald Duck.”
The 7th congressional district has become a national poster child for critics of gerrymandering, the process by which one party draws district boundaries to ensure an advantage among voters. Democrats say the lines have helped Republicans like U.S. Representative Patrick Meehan, the four-term incumbent Leach seeks to unseat, to stay in office.
The litigation is part of a growing set of legal challenges to partisan redistricting, including a U.S. Supreme Court case out of Wisconsin that could for the first time establish a constitutional standard to measure the legality of such map-making. The high court is scheduled to decide that case by June 2018, five months before the midterm elections.
“The politicians are not supposed to pick their voters; the voters are supposed to elect their leaders,” said Mimi McKenzie, an attorney with the Public Interest Law Center who represents the League of Women Voters and other Pennsylvania voters.
Spokesmen for the state’s Republican legislative leaders, defendants in the case, said the redistricting followed the process laid out in the state constitution and that the U.S. Supreme Court has said political considerations can play a role.
Both the Electoral College and more importantly Gerrymandering are the two greatest travesties of voting-justice in America. It is time we, the sheeple, should be rid of both.
Only the popular-vote, undiminished by political manipulation (of the Electoral College and Gerrymandering), can make of America a Real Democracy ....
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