Open Thread – Day Before Mid Term Election 2022
Open thread November 4, 2022, Angry Bear. (angrybearblog.com).
Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.
Open thread November 4, 2022, Angry Bear. (angrybearblog.com).
Gerrymandering = voter fraud (essentially all of it)
How to spot a gerrymandered district?
Harvard (Uni) Gazette – Nov 3
New waves of statisticians, including a team at Harvard, have developed tools they think can help police the longstanding problem of gerrymandering of congressional and legislative districts in states by parties seeking to tip the scales for their candidates.
Gerrymandering has been part of American politics since the 1800s, with results that are at the very least controversial and sometimes illegal, particularly if it’s done to dilute the voting power of communities of color. The battle is renewed every decade in state legislatures when Census figures show which districts need to be rebalanced owing to population shifts. Sometimes violations appear blatant but often they are more subtle, and in either case they can be difficult to prove.
By harnessing the quantitative power of big data computing, these statisticians have developed algorithms that can identify likely gerrymandered maps by putting redrawn districts through hundreds, even thousands of computational tests and simulations. These tools — developed over the past decade often through open sourcing — provide powerful evidence of whether a plan falls outside the norm of a “fair” plan. The tests recently have been gaining traction and increasingly are being used as evidence of illegitimacy in court. …
(However, state control of election procedures is something baked into the Constitution from its very beginning. With subsequent Amendments protecting voting rights, it has been reduced somewhat, and is at least challengeable in court, as it should be. But it was intended by the Framers to protect the lesser-populated states from the predominance in Congress of the more-populated ones.)
It’s perhaps interesting to note that the dozen or so most populous states have enough electoral votes to elect a president, or to dominate the choice of Representatives in Congress. BUT two (CA & NY) are Blue and two (TX & FL) are Red, so that threat is mitigated somewhat. However for Presidential elections, that mitigation doesn’t work as well, since 30 states are dominated by the GOP.
Rough sledding ahead.
But, of course, gerrymandering permits states to have their (often corrupt) way with the design of voting districts to favor one party over another as they see fit.
As one can see, many states have only a few urban districts which are Blue and many rural districts which are Red, yet on the whole their state populations show rough parity by party, not reflected in the makeup of their state legislatures or in the layout of their Congressional districts.
after those lame PINO congresscritters walked back their weak plea for peace, this lady has my vote:
Marjorie Taylor Greene: ‘Under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine’
Trump spooks GOP with abandoned talk of presidential launch on eve of vote
Washington Post – Nov 7
Former president Donald Trump set off a scramble Monday in the Republican Party after he threatened to upend the midterm elections by announcing his 2024 presidential bid on the eve of voting.
Trump told people close to him Monday that he might announce his candidacy at a rally scheduled for Monday night in Ohio, according to three people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential conversations.
The remarks prompting a chain of phone calls from party leaders who have tried for months to keep Trump from announcing until after the midterms. Some of his advisers began communicating to others Monday that efforts needed to be made to talk him out of announcing, two of these people said, while other advisers were egging him on to jump in.
In the end, Trump didn’t announce on Monday night, but he went a step closer, promising “a very big announcement” on Nov. 15 at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The crowd erupted in cheers, and Trump added, “We want nothing to detract from the importance of tomorrow.” …
Sununu laughs, calls timing of Trump’s potential 2024 presidential bid announcement a ‘terrible idea’
Boston Globe – Nov 7
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu openly laughed at the prospect of former president Donald Trump announcing later this month that he’ll again run for office, calling the timing a “terrible idea.”
During an appearance Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” moderator Margaret Brennan asked Sununu for his reaction to Trump’s reported plans to launch a 2024 presidential bid and the impact it could have on the Republican party.
“What does it do to our party? Nothing,” he said. “It will have no effect on anything and I mean that quite sincerely.”
Sununu then laughed while addressing Trump’s potential plans to make the announcement soon. …