State-by-state, the Republicans are using redistricting to tighten their grip
on the country and the states. The courts are helping protect representative
government in some cases, but will it be enough?
(Printable version on my site - click on the printer image.)
Texas is the big, ongoing issue and surfaced first as part of Republican U.S.
House Majority Leader Tom Delay's
gerrymandering strategy.
Republicans were especially blatant here, as one
of the new districts connects two voting areas by a narrow corridor 103
miles long
to create a Republican district and cancel out Democrats.
[In TEXAS] Democrats challenging the reworked districts filed e-mails, memos, proposed
maps, talking points and other communications Wednesday that they say show
the GOP redistricting effort was orchestrated by high-ranking Republicans
in Washington, including Jim Ellis, who was an aide to Republican U.S. House
Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
Ellis spent time in Austin earlier this year as the Legislature considered
redistricting, meeting regularly with individual legislators and reporting
progress back to DeLay. E-mails to DeLay are among the documents filed
with the court.
In another e-mail, Ellis directs DeLay to instruct Texas House Speaker
Tom Craddick to "eliminate House junior staffers ... completely from
the congressional redistricting process." In the final days of the
redistricting debate in the Texas Capitol, DeLay seemed the moderator between
the divided House and Senate as he shuttled
back and forth attempting to broker a deal. [Dallas/FW
Channel 8 12/11/03]
But it's not just Texas, it's a national Republican strategy:
COLORADO Supreme Court
strikes down GOP redistricting bid 12/01/03
Article comments
1 - Mac Diva
I may link to this for one of my blogs, Hal. The 'subtle' ways the Bushites are altering the political landscape are too often overlooked. Blogger is in meltdown mode right now, but I will try to get back to this topic when it becomes available again.
2 - Hal Pawluk
It's hard keeping track of what they're doing - they're smarter about it than they were under Reagan or Bush Sr., and have a hell of a lot more clout than they did back then.
All the more reason to keep at it :-)
If you do link, use this. The item is going to get buried on my site, but that link is a permanent bookmark that goes directly to a printable version.