Asked whether two “unconstitutional” acts make a right as Democrats look to counter GOP redistricting efforts, Ken Martin said, “In this case, I would say yes.”
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin defended California’s redistricting efforts while criticizing Republicans’ own efforts as unconstitutional.
“If they’re going to do this and continue doing this nonsense, which is unconstitutional and illegal, we’re going to be forced to do it ourselves in other states,” Martin said in an interview with NBC News, referencing GOP redistricting efforts.
Asked whether two unconstitutional acts make a right, Martin said, “In this case, I would say yes.”
His comments come as Californians will decide Tuesday whether to approve the state’s Prop 50 ballot measure, which would allow the state to redistrict to favor Democrats in the midterm elections. The move came in response to Republicans’ redistricting efforts in Texas to favor the GOP, which sparked redistricting battles in state legislatures across the country.
I hope in the future, we will adopt better laws binding both sides. Political gerrymandering divides us into extremes and ensures a lot of voters—in many cases, such as Texas, a majority—disagree with their leaders without any means of effective redress. It’s unhealthy for the nation long term.
But for the time being, you have to fight with the tools you have in order to give the future the chance to do the right thing.
Ending gerrymandering is as simple as doing the popular vote.
Popular vote doesn’t work for the House, which is intended to be local representation. It can be fixed by setting the number of representatives based on a set number of people per representative instead of having a max size and having a neutral third party draw the districts.
The president should absolutely be elected by popular vote.
That’ll make zero difference.
Which then moves the problem to preventing subversion of the supposedly neutral third party. See also: every other appointed regulatory body.
it actually could if you did it by party and they had a roster of who would be positioned up to winning the whole house. Its my understanding parliments work somewhat like this but I may not be understanding that correct.
Electoral lists are a feature of some parliamentary systems. They largely ensure that party apparatchiks can impose candidates on the voters by guaranteeing the lifers safe seats. That means you get to vote for a party but have no choice about the person.
I assumed the lists were done in the parlimentary equivalent of primaries.
Yes, if we had a completely different system it would be different.
That’s not really simple at all. Amending the constitution with both sides so divided is not just impossible, but likely to see Republicans gaining more ground than Democrats.
But what if I’m an unpopular ghoul who wants to use an elevated platform to commit crimes?
Then you should be good to go.
Finally! I’ve been wondering when a white man, such as myself, was gonna catch a break!
Edit: oh god, this needs an
/s, doesn’t it? Fucking hell, why do shit-assess like this actually exist?I agree. Im not much for the crowd that says dems should do things things like trump and maga do them but this is quite clearly self defense.
We won’t. Both parties are fine with things as they are
We need new parties
The reality is the parties cannot be displaced or remade from the outside. They must be seized from within through primaries.
Yeah, how’s the Whig party doing?
It fell apart due to the internal pressure of trying to keep together pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions while barreling toward a civil war over that very issue. It was destroyed from the inside, which backs up my point.
Big difference between falling apart and having something new arise from the remains, compared to the same organization continuing with minor internal changes.
Unless you can force them to fall apart, the difference is somewhat academic.
I think I got side-tracked on the “inside” vs “outside”portion of your statement.
What I’m saying is that “primaries” are not the only tool, and perhaps not the most effective. Not that there’s a lot of precedent.
What I think would happen is the party becomes irrelevant to its constituents and just kind of falls into irrelevance or effectively ceases to exist.
That’s very different from “seizing from within through primaries”, which can effect change but probably not the level of change which is the goal here.
Republicans were already
Dems cannot be, I don’t think