{"id":2414,"date":"2010-04-21T03:51:16","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T11:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=2414"},"modified":"2010-04-21T04:06:05","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T12:06:05","slug":"challenging-the-gerrymander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/challenging-the-gerrymander\/","title":{"rendered":"Challenging the gerrymander"},"content":{"rendered":"

Few mechanisms have a greater impact on democratic governance than gerrymandering<\/a>.\u00a0 Having incumbent politicians redraw districts entrenches them to the point that their reelection rate exceeds 95 percent.\u00a0 To paraphrase Yakov Smirnoff<\/a>, in gerrymandered districts the voters don’t choose their representatives; the representatives choose the voters.<\/p>\n

Gerrymandering enhances the power of political parties since all of the action is in the primaries, and the general election is a forgone conclusion.\u00a0 Many districts throughout the country have not changed party hands in decades.\u00a0 Thus, any challenges to gerrymandering have been briskly opposed by the parties even more than by the incumbents.\u00a0 In fact, the more talented politicians, the ones who could win in competitive elections, would likely benefit from reform since it would bring them out from under the thumb of their party bosses.<\/p>\n

It’s hard to imagine a circumstance where the parties that control the redistricting process would agree to reforms that would reduce their power.\u00a0 But such a circumstance appears to be taking shape in New York.\u00a0 New York’s legislature is arguably the most dysfunctional in the nation<\/a>.\u00a0 It is legendary not only for its brazen corruption<\/a>, but for the open institutionalization<\/a> of this corruption.\u00a0 After a string of scandals, the door may now be open to a reform movement<\/a> that is attacking this corruption at its root by proposing to eliminate gerrymandering.<\/p>\n

A coalition of brand-name New York politicians and good-government groups are getting every gubernatorial candidate to promise, in writing, that they will only sign off on a redistricting plan drawn up by a non-partisan commission.\u00a0 Whether or not the elected governor will actually veto anything less than that remains to be seen.\u00a0 Whether the governor’s veto of anything less will stand in a gerrymandered legislature remains to be seen.\u00a0 One has reason to be hopeful on the first question.\u00a0 The leading candidate for governor is Andrew Cuomo, despite the fact that he hasn’t officially announced his candidacy.\u00a0 Andrew’s father, former governor Mario Cuomo, is one of the leaders of the reform campaign.\u00a0 After all, it’s no great honor to be lord of a cesspool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Few mechanisms have a greater impact on democratic governance than gerrymandering.\u00a0 Having incumbent politicians redraw districts entrenches them to the point that their reelection rate exceeds 95 percent.\u00a0 To paraphrase Yakov Smirnoff, in gerrymandered districts the voters don’t choose their representatives; the representatives choose the voters. Gerrymandering enhances the power of political parties since all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-scandal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2414"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2422,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2414\/revisions\/2422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}