US Democracy Braces for a Decade Under Minority Rule

We have to all act like Southerners now. (image source -David-Horsey)

The US Under Minority Rule

Wait -- we haven't been invaded.

There are "minorities," and then there are "minorities."

When it comes to minority governments, MeanMesa cannot mentally dispatch the lesson of Iraq.  After the invasion, that is, even after the ostensibly "sectarian slaughter" of the civil war had begun, the nation of Iraq still suffered continuing violence based almost solely on the fact that the Iraqi Sunni minority were convinced that they were, in fact, the Iraqi majority.

For years the Sadam Hussein regime had employed Baathist "ground troops" to provide the marching muscle needed to support the autocratic dictatorship.  Because these Baathists were recruited from the Sunni population, the worst part of the autocracy's brutal mayhem was, naturally, directed at the understandably rebellious Shi'a majority. 

The point here is that this arrangement placed the Sunni minority in a situation making the "majority" versus "minority" misperception one which could very conveniently be quite durably "re-interpreted."  With this carefully fabricated error firmly in place the Sunni predictably saw events unfolding in Iraq through a very twisted frame of reference -- one which obscured the political reality of the country, and one which caused plenty of bloody, violent trouble for the US invaders.

All this is included in this post because it has such a very disturbing similarity to contemporary US domestic politics.

In the United States voters are quite realistic about winning and losing elections.  They theoretically vote for candidates, parties and platforms they find attractive, and when candidates win those elections, these voters expect, roughly, at least, some semblance of the same issue to be present in the subsequent practices of governing.

Further, elections in the United States squarely embrace the "majority rule" idea in our Constitution.  A majority of votes should result in that elected majority in power after the election.  Our Founders obviously thought that this would be a clever way to keep citizens sufficiently satisfied to avoid frequent civil wars. Although every election's outcome will inevitably leave some voters frustrated, the idea was that their collective commitment to democracy and their "good natures" would see them through until the next election when they would, again, have a chance to steer things more toward their own way.

This theory for representational democracy depends on voters actually voting.  In 2010 the large majority of Americans had no appetite at all for the "tea bag philosophy" of hopeless austerity and mindless 1950's ideology, yet when the election results came in, the country had regressed socially by a half century. 

A "Tea Bag Revolution?"  Not Hardly.

However, right here we have to "drill down" to expose some of the deeply buried realities at play.  Passing by the essentially irrelevant, dusty hordes of illiterate tea baggers protesting with their misspelled signs amid the wheelchairs and summer flies, we need to consider the ambitions of the corporate oligarchs who have sponsored such a grotesque effort at political influence.  

The fabricated goals on the inflamed tea baggers' signs are NOT the goals of the plutocrats funding and organizing their "inflammation."

No, the "puppet masters" could not care less about 99% of the drivel presented by their staggering, yet useful, tea bag minions -- gays getting married, abortion clinics and doctors, immigration bills and so on.  However, these same "puppet masters" are brutally addicted to that last 1% of the tea bag messaging -- taxes.

In fact, long ago when the tea bag "movement" was just being launched by the corporate lawyers employed in the Freedom Works think tank, the term "tea" was initially presented as an acronym for "Taxed Enough Already."  The Freedom Works CEO, failed politician Dick Armey, soon realized that his largely illiterate, comically zealous, stumbling, mumbling "ground troops" found any question concerning the US tax code incomprehensibly complex and quite beyond their cognitive capacity.

Yet, when it came to the directing motivation for all this public relations imaging, the scheme of the oligarchs funding it remained hidden behind the media's command mission to create a maelstrom of tea bag fog and feathers.

The unseen "big picture" scheme of the money class defined their two precious goals:

1. The development of a large majority of American voters -- both right and left -- strongly dissatisfied with the government, and,

2. Employing that dissatisfaction politically to maintain and protect the advantages of the tormented US tax code they had invested so much to create.

As the calendar pages unfolded toward the 2010 mid-term election, the media had carefully groomed a deep, stoic malaise among most normal voters.  While the mouth foaming tea bags were infuriated under the continuous teasing of the likes of the Freedom Works think thank, the more rational voters had been fed a daily ration of hopeless inconsistency with faux "comparisons" between the new President's campaign and his Administration's actual performance amid the brazen "red meat" GOP saboteurs in the Congress.

The oligarchs' goal was a tactical increase in the Congress -- especially in the House of Representatives, and the plan was to make this possible by a frontal attack on the state legislatures begun even before the Bush autocracy had finally collapsed.  While the rest of the country sat at home bewildered by the relentless pain of an unceasing economic catastrophe -- and losing confidence in the President, the Super PAC cash trucks were rolling into state Republican campaign offices.

The freshly minted tea bag majorities in the state legislatures would have, as their first order of business, the task of further and even more drastically gerrymandering their state's Congressional districts.  They dutifully grabbed the census results along with the instructions from the craven owners of the Republican Party.

Under the provisions of our Constitution when a population minority is concentrating resources to "take command" of the government -- or even, as is the case now with the House, a crucial part of the government --  the conflict need not be decades long at all. If a maximum of the assets can be effectively applied for a period of a single year or less, that is, applied precisely when the census has been completed, and the Constitutional mandate for establishing Congressional election districts "comes due," a political equivalent of blitzkrieg can be inflicted upon the democracy in a way the Constitution's authors never imagined.

The GOP's "Miracle" of 2010

State Legislatures Pre-2010 -( Source)

By the time the 2010 mid-term arrived half the states in the country had been redistricted into snake-like swarms of screaming tea bag voters surrounded by vast, innocuous districts filled with more sensible -- and more despondent -- citizens.  Before the coup state legislatures across the country looked like the map on the left.

This partisan picture generally reflected the state of the nation's politics.   In blog 2008 blog posts David Burns recapped the statistical model presented by the New York Times with what he calls a "bubble map."

The 2008 "Bubble Map" (image source)

"It’s good to see the overlap of these bubbles because it shows that red and blue co-exist in the same places. It’s a finer distinction than the red state/blue state point of view." [Read the article here.]

The Burns article continues with a chart showing the "shift map" which indicates the change in votes with respect to Parties.

The 2008 "Shift Map" (image source}

"Another striking map is the Voting Shift map which shows where each party received more votes in 2008 than they did in 2004. There’s a very identifiable red streak from Texas to West Virginia that’s interesting because it’s so well defined, localized and contained." [Read the article here.]

These models of American voting proclivities paint a fairly coherent picture of the country's political "mind set" for the period.  In the anticipated political "flow of things" this political environment would have continued to produce Democratic majorities in the Congress for some time, at least, for several subsequent elections.

So, what happened?  What political manipulation led to the current state of affairs?

Sadly, the answer has very little to do with political manipulation.  Instead, it has everything to do with election manipulation.  For a clearer view of the scheme which ultimately produced the current madness of John Boehner's admitted ballot minority delivering control of the House of Representatives we can look directly down "the dragon's throat."

How the Minority Saw 2010

Here is an excerpt from a November, 2010, post by Citizen Link, a self-identified Public Policy Partner of Focus on the Family. [Visit the site here.]

According to the National Conference on State Legislatures (NCSL), voters handed over to the Republican Party 19 state chambers previously dominated by Democrats.  This translates into a pickup of six Senate chambers and 13 House chambers (see NCSL map below).

To put this in perspective, Democrats lost 20 chambers to Republicans in 1994, and gained none. Conversely, Republicans lost 21 chambers to Democrats and gained one chamber following Watergate.

The conference also reported that the GOP received an overall net gain of at least 675 state-level seats – the most since 1928 – allowing it to gain control of chambers even in traditionally liberal states.

Karl Kurtz with NCSL said the GOP not only took control of chambers, but also beefed up its presence.  Twenty-four seats were added in the Texas House, 16 in the Missouri House, 15 in the Kansas House, 14 in the North Dakota House, nine in the Wyoming House and eight in the Oklahoma House.

“Republicans gained seats in virtually every state,” Kurtz wrote. “The change was unidirectional. The only state in which Democrats appear to have made a net gain in both chambers is Delaware, where they netted one seat.”

LEGISLATURES THAT FLIPPED

• Alabama: House and Senate (First time GOP has controlled both chambers since Reconstruction)
• Colorado: House
• Indiana: House
• Iowa: House
• Maine: House and Senate
• Michigan: House
• Minnesota: House and Senate (Senate in GOP hands for first time in history)
• Montana: House
• New Hampshire: House and Senate (Over 100 seats in the House went to GOP)
• North Carolina: House and Senate (First time GOP Senate since 1870)
• Ohio: House
• Pennsylvania: House
• Wisconsin: Assembly and Senate

This is especially important for the 2012 presidential elections, as states like Iowa, New Hampshire and Ohio are testing grounds for presidential candidates.

Republicans now have control of 55 legislative chambers, Democrats control 38 and two chambers – Alaska and Oregon – are split.  Three chambers are still undecided – Oregon, New York and Washington. This is a tidal wave reversal. Prior to the election, Democrats controlled 60 chambers, while the GOP held 36 and two chambers were split.

A few chamber switches caught even the most politically savvy off guard. The Maine House, Minnesota Senate and Oregon House were not considered “in play” this cycle; however, voters knew otherwise.

LEGISLATURES CONTROLLED BY CONSERVATIVES

Republicans control both chambers in the following states:

• Alabama
• Arizona
• Florida
• Georgia
• Idaho
• Indiana
• Kansas
• Maine
• Michigan
• North Dakota
• Ohio
• Oklahoma
• Pennsylvania
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Utah
• Wisconsin
• Wyoming

All told, this conservative sweep through the states is significant, in terms of offering up and/or defending state marriage amendments, pro-life initiatives, fiscal discipline measures, and defending constitutional freedoms.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Review the NCSL’s 2010 Legislative and State Election Results.
Review the Census’ “Political Party Control of State Legislatures by Party: 1985 to 2009.”
Review the Census’ “Composition of State Legislatures by Political Party Affiliation: 2008 to 2009.” 

The "Rectangle" Amendment to the Constitution

Making Congressional Districts into Boxes

MeanMesa has proposed Constitutional Amendments in the past -- notably one concerning the legislative division of the Supreme Court into a group of six, equally "supreme," courts selected by lottery to hear cases.  You can read this post here:

The 28th Amendment - Death By Legacy

That April, 2012, commentary was the prompted by the Citizens United decision, but since then, the Roberts Court has aggressively provided a subsequent series of decisions specifically targeting the country's Constitutional imperatives concerning elections and voter enfranchisement.  By the November, 2012, Presidential election approximately 4.5 Mn voters had either been directly  denied the rights guaranteed by the original Constitutional enfranchisement or had been confronted with labyrinthine new registration and identification requirements.

A 29th Amendment to the US Constitution would legally settle enfranchisement issues in all states and establish Federal Election Courts, but MeanMesa thinks it should also stabilize rules for setting boundaries of Congressional districts, affirming a durable and permanent remedy to the treasonous, cynical anti-democracy gerrymandering, the tactic frantically developed by the desperate remnants of the GOP as they confronted their continuing inability to win elections otherwise.

MeanMesa has also previously posted about the current democratic sabotage being inflicted by gerrymandering Congressional Districts.  You can read this post here:

A Mathematician Redistricts Congress

Let's do some thinking.  

The problem we face issues from a variety of origins, but one of them is extremely obvious.  The Constitution, interpreted in a sly way to appease the Southerners still stinging from the Civil War, set out the process of establishing Congressional election district boundaries under state governments.  Since then, there has been no end to the mischief -- delivered opportunistically with resurrected waves of "alternating villains," that is, delivered at the hands of both Republicans and Democrats.

When democracy is being undercut by what is "present or absent" in the Constitution [or in its interpretation], it represents a Constitutional crisis and a threat to the democracy.  This isn't the only case of this kind of threat "knocking at the door" these days, but this is about specifically fixing this one.

Rather than simply continuing to "gore one ox after another," depending on whom is holding the sword at the moment, such an amendment could stabilize -- if not policy -- at least politics.  And, THAT would be a start.

In the historical picture of things, the Republican Party could very well be on its death bed at the time of this posting.  This means that another "Party" will quite possibly be rising up like a Phoenix to step into its vacated place.

There is simply too much "inertia" to consider adopting some form of government radically different than the famous "two party system."  In this event the importance of fair, Constitutional elections would be very great.  With one established Party [the Democrats] and a newly formed party [say, the Greens], continuing inequities in the election mechanism would not lead anywhere good.

Number 29 could be called the "Rectangle Amendment." [Read the post linked above.]

Just don't quit voting.

LAST CHANCE!! JOIN NOW!! MeanMesa's Fabulous New 501C4: MAPPEMAJIC

How do these people -- even possibly --

 ever wind up in the Congress?

Here's a little fantasy from the MeanMesa "horror collection."

 It will explain everything.

This tale begins as a "family matter."

My wife demanded that I accompany my brother-in-law to some kind of political rally in near-by  Buffalo Junction.  She insisted that I go in order to keep her brother, Harold, a 50's something Tea Party zealot, from simply getting drunk, arrested and lost for a week -- his usual pattern on out of town visits.

Grudgingly I packed some underwear and my sports coat along with a spare pair of more or less presentable black loafers.  At least our expenses for the trip were being paid for by Harold's new campaign sponsor.  Harold dutifully appeared at our house at 7:30 AM sharp, fairly sober but dressed in an awful pair of checked trousers and a slightly soiled Polo shirt -- a shirt which did painfully little to disguise the man's giant belly.

Off we went.

Amazingly, Harold had arrived in a new band new Buick to make the 200 mile trip.  "Did someone loan you a car, Harold?"

"Nope.  This lil' beauty's all mine.  My campaign bought it for me as a gift." he answered, driving away unsteadily.  "Ain't no secret thet I'll have to drive all over to talk to mah voters."

Now, Harold had run in every election for County Commissioner since the 1980's, losing every time, and, in fact, losing every time by a larger and larger margin.  My wife had told me that Harold was considering a run as a Tea Party Republican in our district's primary for the US House of Representatives, but I had given the news very little thought after that.

The precise reason that Harold kept losing elections was because he had no support, no policy ideas and a really bad reputation as a hollow blow-hard. His understanding of governing was limited to a few, usually mangled, talking points he had picked up from right wing radio. Our neighbors, in fact, had always considered him something of a nuisance.  I had never met a single voter who would admit to ever voting for him a single time, much less one who might have thought he had something to offer the local government.

The next election was still more than a year away, and my hope was that after this conference or whatever it was Harold might just change his mind and be reconciled with just watching FOX on television, drinking beer and, being perpetually unemployed, living on his wife's money.  And, after my "little errand" of baby sitting him for this meeting, I would return home to a grateful wife.

However, the conversation in the car rapidly grew very disturbing.

"You must have found some campaign donors, I guess."  I offered as casual conversation.

"Don't yew wurry nun about thet.  I found me a campaign donor, got mah' campaign all financed real good, 'n I plan to walk away with that House seat.

Mah' donor's payin' fer this here conference so's I'll be able to win thet 'lection when th' tahm cums."  Harold grumbled, easing the car into the fast lane.

Harold's false Southern accent had always puzzled me. To my knowledge he had never even left the state, much less ever travelled to the South.  He had begun speaking this way when George W. Bush had been appointed to the Presidency by the Supreme Court.

"Ah alreddy know thet 'afore I start talkin' public, Ah'm gonna' hef to read this heah little book mah donor give me so's Ah'll know fer sure whut I think 'bout stuff. If Ah kin do thet okay, mah donor's got a plan fer everything else -- he keeps sayin' thet redistrictin's comin' up on account o' thu census 'n all jest afore my 'lection."  Harold rambled.

"Gosh.  That sounds pretty good.  Who is this donor?"  I asked.

"Oh shore.  Naturlly yew wann'a know thet!  Wahl, thet raht theah's one of thu rules.  Ah don't evah tell no one who mah donor is.  Just figger thet he's a good whaht Chrishtun patriot.  Thet's all yeew need t' know."  Harold snapped.

The rest of the ride was peacefully silent.  Harold, usually a tragically insecure ne'er do well, seemed to be suddenly sporting an unanticipated optimism.

Mile 41 Motel

After half a dozen confused circles around the center of Buffalo Junction, Harold finally located the cross street, recklessly accelerating his new Buick down the back street toward the motel meeting room hosting the conference.  In minutes we were making our way through a half empty parking lot to the meeting room, a fairly dilapidated place pretentiously announced on a the surviving ruins of a small, haggard, sun bleached sign as the "Highway 41 Motel -- Conference Forum."

I was grateful that Harold's campaign donor was at least providing us separate rooms at the dump.

After checking in, an embarrassingly excited Harold herded me toward the meeting along a long, seedy hall way.  An over dressed man sat at a reception desk near the door of the meeting room.  Directly behind him, I saw an over sized sign advertising the group hosting the meeting.

Harold drew a business card from his jacket pocket, comparing it to the sign behind the reception desk.  "This is it!!  This raht heah's MAPPEMAJIC!!  We'r at the raht place!"  he exploded. "These folks gonna' fix it so's I kin win thu 'lection!!"

He immediately began scrawling his name, address and a few other items on the official registration form.  When he had finished, he stared blankly at the broadly smiling man at the reception desk, pointed his thumb at me and said "This heah's mah aid.  Ah ain't registerin' him."

The greeter responded with a knowing smile, "Of course.  You two can go right on in."

Harold was ecstatic.

Once we were in the meeting room it became clear that Harold was to join a line of strangely similar "new candidates" for "additional registration procedures."  No one seemed to mind if I tagged along next to him, however, the raucous mood which prevailed around the rest of the gathering had changed into a far more somber, executive business meeting atmosphere.

Harold was suddenly surrounded by a group of men in expensive suits, apparently lawyers.  One of them was explaining the arrangements which had been made to provide "MAPPEMAJIC election services" to get Harold through the candidate nomination process.

"We're going to pay plenty to get your state legislators to gerrymander a Congressional District where you can win your primary, so, our...uh... investors want to be sure that you'll 'remember' them once you're elected."  one of the lawyers rambled.  "Just sign here, and head on to the next station."

Harold scrawled his name on the paper with absolutely no hesitation.  It was unusual for him to act so confidently.  The over sized advertising signs were everywhere, but I couldn't tell if Harold even noticed -- much less read any of them.

Harold, for the first time, looked puzzled.  "I shore plan to 'member mah donor all raht, but how a'mah gonna know whut thet donor wants me t' do?  Ah don't even know whut his name is yet."

Suddenly everything was becoming clear.  Harold didn't have any idea who was "footing the bill" to hire MAPPEMAJIC or paying for his campaign.

The lawyer responded fluidly.  "Don't worry.  We've already prepared a list of staff members you'll be needing once you get to Washington.  They'll be able to tell what your...uh...donor thinks about bills and issues."

The next "station" was a very business-like group of "image consultants."  While one bunch measured Harold for his new wardrobe of suits, shirts and ties, another group was "inventorying" the physical improvements that would be necessary for his new role in the national spot light.

Handing him the already prepared round trip tickets for his flight to the secret candidate "fix it farm" in California, one quietly explained what all would be done.  "You'll be getting a mouth full of brand new teeth from a full set of dental implants, and you're going to have nice head of hair once the doctors have finished with the replacement surgery.  We're setting a preliminary weight loss target at 40 pounds, but don't worry, these guys know how to do that so you'll never feel a thing."

As we moved to the next table, Harold, smiling broadly now, turned to me and said, "Ah'm gonna look so 'Congreshinyul' thet neetha' yew nor thet damned bitchin' wahf o' mine's even gonna' recogonahz me!"

Another group of "suits" had just finished with the man in line before us.  He was clearly some kind of rancher or farmer. Dressed in boots and a worn out cowboy hat, he kept spitting chewing tobacco every few seconds.  As Harold and I approached their table, the man seated there fumbled to find Harold's file in a box of folders.

Opening the papers in the manner of an accountant, he reviewed Harold's accounts.  He withdrew a cashier's check from amid the papers and laid it carefully on the table top.  "I see that your donor has prepaid your MAPPEMAJIC membership dues.  You just need to endorse this check, and we can add you to our official client list."

Harold clumsily took the ball point the man offered, and endorsed the back of the check.  As he turned it over, I peered over his shoulder just long enough to see the check's face.  It was a cashier's check made out to "MAPPEMAJIC election services" in Harold's name for $1,000,000.  On the "subject" line were only the cryptic words: "for services rendered."
 


"Of course there will be an additional payment due once you win the election," the accountant explained, "but your 'campaign donor' has already signed a promissary note for that expense.   After that there will just be the annual dues of $275,000, but you should be able to pay those easily from your political 'war chest.'  It only sounds like a lot of money because you haven't had time to get used to it yet."

After reviewing Harold's file, the accountant was satisfied that everything was complete.  He pointed to the audience area of folding chairs, "Go ahead and find a couple of good seats for the short presentation of MAPPEMAJIC client services.  Welcome aboard!"

 
The convention's speaker introduced himself and quickly referred the attention of the motley crowd of future Congressmen to the giant wall board directly behind him.

Harold whispered to me, "Am Ah 'spossed to unnerstan' thet?"

Before I could answer, the speaker had gone on to explain that these election districts had already been gerrymandered by MAPPEMAJIC so client candidates who otherwise had no chance of ever being elected would win elections and become Congressmen.  Harold immediately understood.

"Now that you are all MAPPEMAJIC members, we intend to do exactly the same thing for you!  Just think of yourselves on the night following election day.  You have already packed your socks and clean underwear for your victorious trip to Washington, D.C. where you will be Congressmen!"  he continued.  "MAPPEMAJIC is a complicated thing to call this, but that just keeps everyone who isn't here guessing!"

"We just think of ourselves as a sort of 'election district map design' organization.  There are plenty of voters out there ready to elect you guys. Once our newly designed district boundaries are in place, none of you will have the problem of all the voters in your new district who won't vote for you. Your Congressional success is just around the corner!"

The excitement among the strange group in the audience was palpable.  Harold, himself, was clearly lost in a haze of an imaginary fantasy where his teeth were straight, and he was wearing the fine new suits which were practically already waiting for him in Washington.


"When you're walking through the halls of the Capitol, everyone's going to think you're important!" the salesman delivering the talk droned on for almost an hour.  "There will be fancy dinners in fancy restaurants, nice cars driving you around and a great office right down the street from the White House!  And, of course, women."

The over weight hill billies in the audience gasped, salivating.  Noting this, the speaker jumped right back to the point.

"Those Washington, D.C. women are attracted to a powerful man, and when I say 'powerful man,' I'm talking about you!"  he added, sealing the deal.  "So get out there and get ready for your election campaigns!  Remember who your friends are!  And, remember to mention MAPPEMAJIC to folks with the same ideas that you have!" 

The road trip back from Buffalo Junction was a nightmarish torture. I finally tuned the Buick's radio into a AM FOX station and watched Harold's eyes glaze.


Additional MeanMesa reading on this topic:

A Mathematician Redistricts Congress

A Mathematician Redistricts Congress

 The 2013 GOP House of Representatives:

 An Embarrassment to Democracy

We've heard plenty -- including posts on this blog -- about the anti-democracy tactics being successfully employed in states where the entire state government is under Republican/ALEC control.  When a state governor, the state house and the state senate are entirely prepared to enact anti-democracy schemes, the results are not pretty.

In the 2013 election we can see the grisly results of this multi-state tactic.  Although a majority of votes were cast in the election for democratic candidates, the control of the Federal House of Representatives remained in the hands of John Boehner and the tea baggers.  When too many "Democratic" Senators refused to back Reid's proposal to reform the filibuster rule in the Senate, effective control of that body remained in the regressive hands of Mitch McConnell.

We can point at Boehner and McConnell easily enough, but we must remember that neither of these two "representatives" actually represents anyone in the states where they were elected.  Even the most generous over view of the "legislative habits" of these two, along with their respective cronies, hardly suggests that they have any particular interest in the needs of any visible constituency or the country.

Understand in no uncertain terms.  The Republican minority in the Federal Congress does, actually, represent the interests of a constituency.  It's just that this constituency is not the voters who put them into office -- or, of course, the rest of the country, either.  

These Federal boys work for billionaires.  So do their "little brothers" at the state level who have managed to successfully "crow bar jimmy" the districts back home.

This post is going to concentrate on the state level "monkey business" which resulted in the fall of majority rule in the House of Representatives.

A Few Thoughts About Gerrymandering

If you think that the farmers and ranchers in the red state "fly over" country are zealously independent now, try to imagine what this was like in the early days of the nation.  West of the Mississippi a crop of ruthless, rural barons emerged almost at once as the conquered territories were transformed into states.  The wealth and power of these earliest oligarchs was derived primarily from exploiting their ownership of various natural resources -- oil, cattle land, timber, gold and the like.

South of the Mason Dixon Line we found similar oligarchs whose wealth was derived from primarily agricultural holdings operated by slave labor.

This entire class jealously protected their advantages -- regardless of the legitimacy of how those assets had been accrued.  We may think of "Robber Barons" as banking, oil, rail road and manufacturing magnates, but this category of oligarchs operated mainly in the industrialized areas of the East.  Of course, the "Easterners" jealously protected their own holdings.

As it become increasingly clear to this class that the Federal Government was not only here to stay, but likely to become more and more of a presence as time bore on, their "control issues" began to surface.  When the end of the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation and other developments started their predictable intrusion into the previously slave driven Southern enterprises, every effort was, naturally, made to promote artificial priorities such as states' rights and to do everything possible to sustain their apartheid past by controlling the election of US Representatives.

In no time, these efforts began to "deliver the goods."  The Southern oligarchs, firmly in command of their state's federal legislators were able to extract all manner of corrupt economic advantages while undercutting any potential Negro voting influence with glacial Jim Crow Laws.

The rural Western oligarchs, seeing how profitable this had been for their Southern counterparts, began their own states' rights moves.  Sewing every possible granule of "distrust for the Feds" among the voters, the cattle-oil-gold barons established themselves as a trustworthy bulwark against federal intervention in their state policies.

In both regions the underpinning of the anti-democracy appetite was the same.  If you were an oligarch, your interests would be far better served if you controlled the "democracy" than it would be if the masses of Americans did it with their votes and through normal kinds of representative government.

The heavy weights in the East may have been the last "pigs at the trough," but they jumped into "remanufacturing democracy" on their own in no time.

How the House Was Designed To Work

MeanMesa will take advantage of an interesting summation of our current dilemma from SilverBuzzCafe (Read the entire article here. )

Rebalancing The House Of Representatives

I’ve been pondering the problem of gerrymandering – the manipulation of electoral boundaries to take advantage of voter demographics. The Republicans have a significant majority (234 to 201) of the seats in the House of Representatives. However, they only won 48% of the popular vote versus the 49.2% that the Democrats won. They managed to retain control of the House because of gerrymandering by the Republican controlled States. 

The situation is now so skewed that the Democrats need 53.5% of the popular vote to gain a majority, whereas the Republicans only need 46.5%. The Republicans have a 7% advantage in a process that is supposed to be democratic. It’s a problem that will be very hard for the Democrats to overcome.

There are some other inequities in the system too. The House of Representatives is supposed to give a proportional share of power to each State based on population. The House controls spending, so States with a large population should tend to contribute more to the Federal government in taxes than small States, so it seems fair enough. There is always the problem that a small State with very high income per capita may be contributing more money than a larger one with low income occupants, but the principle of honoring the wishes of the majority comes into play. That power is balanced by the Senate, which has two Senators per State, preventing small States from being bullied by large ones.

Descending to straight mathematics, we see the United States population -- as it was recorded in the 2010 US Census -- as just under 309,000,000 (309 million) citizens. (Read more: 2010 US Census )  These citizens are represented in the US House by 435 US Representatives.

That all sounds simple enough, but there are just a couple of "special rules" which have been incorporated to make things more fair.  Although the states are divided into Congressional Districts, those districts don't cross state lines in order to create an equal ratio of citizens to Representatives.  There is also a "lower limit" as to the number of Representatives a state will have.  This provides a state such as Alaska -- one with very low population -- the opportunity not to be simply "bumped out" of the House, that is, left with no representation at all or left sharing a Representative with, say, Montana.

The following chart shows the number of citizens represented by a single House Member.  The idea was that this number would be very close as the population of states was compared.  If that were the case, the line across the top of the bars would be basically horizontal.  (You'll probably have to click on the image to find your state along the bottom of the chart.)

(Chart source.)

In practice, the allocation of the number of House seats per State has also gotten out of balance. The chart above shows the number of votes needed to elect a single Representative by State. California and Texas need around 700,000 people to get a Representative, whereas over-represented States like Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming only need around 200,000. Washington, DC is allocated the same number of seats as the lowest scored State. California has about 12% of the population and 12% (53) of the seats in the house, whereas Wyoming has 0.18% and 0.68% (3) respectively. Interestingly, the States that are disproportionately over-represented also tend to be the ones that contribute the least per person in Federal tax Dollars. However, both parties seem to be equally hit by this particular inequity.   (Read the article here.)

Back to Gerrymandering

If you happened to be a Republican Governor in a state with both state houses controlled by Republicans, you had a chance to redistrict, that is, redraw the boundaries of your Congressional Districts, after the US Census in 2010 had been completed.

If there were a way to cleverly perform that redistricting chore which could very carefully group collections of Republican and Democratic voters so that more of the new Congressional Districts had a majority of Republicans and just a sprinkling of Democrats, your state would wind up with more Republican Representatives and fewer Democratic Representatives.

Of course, you would not be outrightly disenfranchising the Democrats in your state, but you would be collecting them together in a special way which would make them a majority in fewer of the new districts you were creating resulting in a slightly larger number of Republican House members. This is exactly the reason why the US House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans when more than a million voters cast Democratic ballots.

This is also what is precisely what is meant by the term: "gerrymandering."

The result would be that your state would send a larger number of Republicans to the House of Representatives even though simply counting the number of ballots cast for each party would suggest the opposite.  However, for such anti-democracy schemes to actually work, the boundaries of the districts which are created for this purpose become grotesque.

The graphic below illustrates some examples of these bizarre Congressional Districts.  Similar district boundaries can be found all across the country in Republican held states.  Let it be added, Democrats are not even close to being "as pure as the driven snow" in this matter, either.

Examples of extreme gerrymandering

The intention is simple enough to understand.  By traipsing along a corridor on both sides of an Interstate or extending weird filaments of districts miles from population centers, the exact, desired "mix" of registered voters can be parcelled out to produce the exact election results desired.

Naturally, when we consider each case of these wildly manipulated district Congressional boundaries all across the country, there is a story of malice and conspiracy behind every one.  The current disaster in Washington is ample evidence of the anti-democracy menace posed by the practice.

The malady has never before reached the degree of the grave threat we are facing today.  One of the two established political parties has forsaken even the possibility of formulating policy which might attract a straight majority in elections and, instead, now commits its entire political effort at exploiting traditional vulnerabilities in the established electoral system.

When we look at each of the two issues brought out [above] in this post we see two serious, fundamental, problems with the system currently in place.  Some Americans have more and less access to the "representative" part of our "representative" democracy based on their state of residence, while others send "representative" delegations to the Congress which are clearly not "representative" and could have not won majorities in Congressional district elections other than arcane, snake-shaped, gerrymandered monstrosities.

The anti-democratic impact of this practice is further aggravated by the brazen voter suppression crimes being routinely conducted by states entirely under the thumb of the GOP -- and, entirely under the thumb of the oligarchs who own that party.  The prospect of the Supreme Court setting aside Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act makes ideas such as the one presented here even more immediately relevant.

None of this is acceptable.  Regardless of the original conspiracies which initially established each of the individual cases of this electoral mayhem, the task of correcting it falls directly to us.  Now.

 Re-Shaping Congressional Districts

 a Part of Election Reform

While MeanMesa visitors who pay attention to the commercial version of national news have recently heard  plenty about the problem of gerrymandering in Republican controlled states, they have also heard very little about what might be done to re-establish the representational fundamentals.  In fact, that same reporting seems to imply that any sort of meaningful correction to the current district boundaries is simply "out of reach" for citizens wishing to bring elections back to some semblance of rationality.

This is not the case.

MeanMesa is certain that we would hear the howls from some Congressmen in "safe" districts if it were even suggested that they might have to face an election where all sorts and varieties of living, breathing people were going to make that decision rather than entire land areas with painfully tailored boundaries inhabited by equally exclusive partisan voters.

Let's get the easy part out of the way first.  We know how many Congressmen we are going to elect.  We also know how many citizens are theoretically to be represented by each one.  We know the population of each state as reported by the census.  Of course, we also know all about the "special rules" which set the minimum number of representatives for low population states.

Presented with this data set, an eighth grader could assign the right number of Congressional districts to all the states in the union.  There would, naturally, be a few unavoidable inequalities in his final product, but it would look nothing like the bar chart up above in this post.  His result would show that almost exactly the same number of citizens was being represented by each Congressman.

Importantly, that is not what the chart above shows.  In fact, what the chart above shows isn't even close to that kind of equal representation.  Some of the most egregious discrepancies are indicating an almost two to one difference.

Of course there have been efforts to curtail the outrages of gerrymandering, but we can see that none of them were even marginally effective.  For the remainder of this post, we can:

1.  look at some of the traditional anti-gerrymandering plans, 

2. briefly analyze why such grotesque schemes were driven by the dated technology of the census, and

3. propose a modern solution which can reinvigorate the principles of democratic representative government.

Now, doesn't that sound like more fun than simply complaining?

Anti-gerrymandering Plans for Voting District Boundaries

The following sample is from WIKI: "Gerrymandering."  It is included here simply as an example of the pre-technology complexity of such schemes.  (Read the entire WIKI article here. Footnotes have been removed, but internal links remain enabled.)

Objective rules to create districts

Another means to reduce gerrymandering is to create objective, precise criteria to which any district map must comply. Courts in the United States, for instance, have ruled that congressional districts must be contiguous in order to be constitutional. This, however, is not a particularly binding constraint, as very narrow strips of land with few or no voters in them may be used to connect separate regions for inclusion in one district.

Minimum district to convex polygon ratio

One method is to define a minimum district to convex polygon ratio. To use this method, every proposed district is circumscribed by the smallest possible convex polygon (similar to the concept of a convex hull, think of stretching a rubberband around the outline of the district). Then, the area of the district is divided by the area of the polygon; or, if at the edge of the state, by the portion of the area of the polygon within state boundaries. The advantages of this method are that it allows a certain amount of human intervention to take place (thus solving the Colorado problem of splitline districting); it allows the borders of the district to follow existing jagged subdivisions, such as neighbourhoods or voting districts (something isoperimetric rules would discourage); and it allows concave coastline districts, such as the Florida gulf coast area. It would mostly eliminate bent districts, but still permit long, straight ones. However, since human intervention is still allowed, the gerrymandering issues of packing and cracking would still occur, just to a lesser extent. Also, it would not allow convex coastline districts, although this could be remedied by a secondary calculation using a "polygon" with a border being a defined distance from the shore

Shortest splitline algorithm

The Center for Range Voting has proposed a way to draw districts by a simple algorithm. The algorithm uses only the shape of the state, the number N of districts wanted, and the population distribution as inputs. The algorithm (slightly simplified) is:

1. Start with the boundary outline of the state.
2. Let N=A+B where N is the number of districts to create, and A and B are two whole numbers, either equal (if N is even) or differing by exactly one (if N is odd). For example, if N is 10, each of A and B would be 5. If N is 7, A would be 4 and B would be 3.
3. Among all possible straight lines that split the state into two parts with the population ratio A:B, choose the shortest. If there are two or more such shortest lines, chose the one that is most north-south in direction; if there is still more than one possibility, chose the westernmost.
4. We now have two hemi-states, each to contain a specified number (namely A and B) of districts. Handle them recursively via the same splitting procedure.
5. Any human residence that is split in two or more parts by the resulting lines is considered to be a part of the most north-eastern of the resulting districts; if this doesn't decide it, then of the most northern.

This district-drawing algorithm has the advantages of simplicity, ultra-low cost, a single possible result (thus no possibility of human interference), lack of intentional bias, and it produces simple boundaries that do not meander needlessly. It has the disadvantage of ignoring geographic features such as rivers, cliffs, and highways and cultural features such as tribal boundaries. This landscape oversight causes it to produce districts different from those an unbiased human would produce. Ignoring geographic features can induce very simple boundaries.
While most districts produced by the method will be fairly compact and either roughly rectangular or triangular, some of the resulting districts can still be long and narrow strips (or triangles) of land.
Like most automatic redistricting rules, the shortest splitline algorithm will fail to create majority-minority districts, for both ethnic and political minorities, if the minority populations are not very compact. This might reduce minority representation.

Another criticism of the system is that splitline districts sometimes divide and diffuse the voters in a large metropolitan area. This condition is most likely to occur when one of the first splitlines cuts through the metropolitan area. It is often considered a drawback of the system because residents of the same agglomeration are assumed to be a community of common interest. This is most evident in the splitline allocation of Colorado.


As of July 2007, shortest-splitline redistricting pictures, based on the results of the 2000 census, are available for all 50 states.

Minimum isoperimetric quotient

See also: Compactness measure of a shape

It is possible to define a specific minimum isoperimetric quotient, proportional to the ratio between the area and the square of the perimeter of any given congressional voting district. Although technologies presently exist to define districts in this manner, there are no rules in place mandating their use, and no national movement to implement such a policy. Such rules would prevent incorporation of jagged natural boundaries, such as rivers or mountains. When such boundaries are required, such as at the edge of a state, certain districts may not be able to meet the required minima. Enforcing a minimum isoperimetric quotient would encourage districts with a high ratio between area and perimeter.

First, we can try to "wrap our minds around" the prospect of doing something like this then explaining the results.  This scheme, regardless of the motives behind it, is practically guaranteed to deliver a product so complex that it will reinforce the very suspicious assumption that the actual working details of the democracy are beyond the grasp of common citizens.

Explaining Several Centuries of Gerrymandering

Next, let's allow our imagination to describe the actual process of traditional redistricting.  We see a basement room filled with long Formica tables where the staff from State legislators are pouring over huge paper maps of their constituent districts.  Greasy hamburger wrappers on the floor are already tempting the mice and cock roaches.

The maps themselves, now falling apart from the continuous "trial boundary lines," are covered with eraser crumbs, a literal cloud around the latest pencil lines setting the district boundaries.  At the end of the table, a road weary political hack is pounding out another few feet of tape from his ten key adding machine.  The cigarette smoke in the place is even thicker than the electoral avarice.  Heavily stained coffee cups have now been set aside, each one filled with cigarette butts and cold Maxwell House.

For the nineteenth time, the lines are once again erased, adjusted, replaced, trimmed, expanded and the process is repeated.  The geometric shape of the proposed districts grows more extreme and arcane with each attempt.

These tattered maps showed "roughly" where voters in specific districts lived, registered and voted.  They also showed the more or less permanent polling place locations.  When the election results from the last few elections were added, the gerrymanderers sitting around that table had everything they needed.

There was also a sense of stoic disassociation floating around with that cigarette smoke.  Every one present knows that a similar crew of "redistricters" was sitting through the same endless task in another basement somewhere.  Those would the the corresponding staff of the opposing party.

When the two contradictory boundary plans had been completed, there would be the inevitable court case for the next step.  An innocent judge -- we hope it will be an innocent judge -- would then laboriously reconcile the district dream boundaries.

Months later, the back breaking judicial task would be completed.  Neither party of the deadlocked State legislature would be pleased with the results, but the party in power would have managed to extract a cluster of tiny advantages from the final plan -- advantages which ultimately delivered one or two quite artificial, "safe" or even "safer," Congressional election districts and the correspondingly larger numbers of partisan House Members.

While this may be a great cartoon, this isn't funny. (image source)

All of this mischief was not only made possible by the state of electoral districting technology of the past, but it was also made inevitable by the savage political ambition of those with access to the decision making.  The rectifying technological possibilities have, of course, advanced significantly, but, unhappily, the ambitions remain just as cravenly intense today as they did then.

This anti-democratic practice was, occasionally, even openly defended by those most involved in the corruptly bewildering, manipulative process.  "We want these residents to be in one district because they have such common interests or common backgrounds."

Just remember that the elections results of the 2012 election handed control of the House of Representatives over to the party that lost the election.

Making The New Districts -- Every Ox Gets Gored

Don't kid yourselves. Unlike those old Formica gerrymandering tables of the past, every modern campaign equips itself with a cold steel data set containing the precise longitude and latitude of the pillow on every voter's bed.  The location of voters is neither a post election surprise nor a pre-election mystery.

Further, developing a "state sized" Cartesian field where every single registered voter can be located by a simple "x and y value" isn't any sort of high tech trick either.

The census has already provided the population data needed.  With that in hand, we can count on every state to jealously calculate the number of Representatives to be elected which is also the number of people living in the soon to be designed district which will elect that Representative.

A hundred years ago, the location of polling places was a consideration.  Voters had to endure a wagon trip taking a day or two just to get to cast a vote.  This is, of course, totally a thing of the past.  In Albuquerque any registered voter can show up at any polling place, have a ballot printed and cast his vote.

Next, we can return to our "not really so funny cartoon."  Those voters wanted a "consolidated" election district.

What does that mean?

For starters we can look at the grotesque examples shown up above, and we can decide that these are not the "consolidated" districts those voters had in mind.  Let's define some rough rules for the definition of "consolidated."

Why not rectangles?

We can begin at one corner of the state and start marking out rectangular shapes of various sizes, each one having just the right number of voters in it.  To avoid a politically "convenient" rectangle shape which happens to be 75 miles long and 800 feet wide, we can establish a minimum "balance" ratio of each rectangle's height to width, that is, each rectangle's North to South dimension compared to the same rectangle's East to West dimension.

Let's say that these dimensions must fall between the ratios of three and five.  This means that we may wind up with a variety of shapes for our boxes, but that  each box will be a rectangle with sides meeting these proportional limits.  This means that each rectangular district we create will be "consolidated."

When a state boundary is irregular because it, for example, follows a river or a coast line, we can employ the old tried and tested surveyor's technique of "double meridian distances."  The only additional "rule" might be to limit the length of the straight chords following the irregular side to, say, one thousand feet or less.  [The shorter the chords are, the more accurate the areas will be.]

But remember, Congressional districting is not about land, it's about people.

All this may sound confoundingly complex, but trust MeanMesa.  A ten year old PC could pull this off in a matter or minutes by raw trial and error.

What Happens

After the initial screaming begins to die off a bit, we find a very different map of political realities in the wake of these simple changes.

A Representative elected in one of the rectangular districts will have to earn his keep by actually representing all the voters -- including the ones who didn't vote for him -- in his election district.  And, horror of horrors, that constituency is going to be a mish mash of every kind of citizen.  The day of the "single agenda" Representative from a perpetually "safe" Congressional District will have ended.

Part of the notable challenge of preforming the responsibilities of being a member of the House of Representatives is to devise a way to actually represent the interests of the people who elected you.  A legitimate Congressional constituency has interests which conflict with each other.  When every effort is made to either exclude voters with such conflicted interests or strand them in synthetic district boundaries without even the most remote chance of constituent representation, democracy is not served -- it is subverted.

MeanMesa thinks that this could improve things immeasurably. Right away.  Some of the "creatures of darkness" prowling around the House of Representatives today would find their "divine right" to be outrageously out of touch had evaporated.

There are serving House members who could not even briefly "hold their own" in a civil conversation with MeanMesa.  Asimov famously said: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

These incompetents have conspired to do violence to our democracy.  The American voting booth is where these outrages end.