State Legislatures and Redistricting

[Dgov]

Thanks nclib. It appears that the only states Democrats can really "milk" several seats out of are Illinois and California. I wonder if the Democrats here in CA are actually going to have the balls to be nasty when it comes to redistricting this time around. As for the GOP, I think their gains out of this are going to be minimized because many GOP states where the population is growing quickly have increasing numbers of minorities, and thus either the VRA will require them to make new Democratic (minority) seats, or the GOP legislators will do it themselves out of necessity to protect their current incumbents.

Two things: 1) the reason the Democrats don't gerrymander the hell out of California is because the GOP holds 1/3rd of the seats in both houses, and basically says that if the Dems try to do a partisan gerrymander, they'll just shut down the state government.  It's how they've managed to avoid it for the last 30 or so years, despite monolithic Democratic control.

2) Minority growth in Republican states, especially Texas, is going to be a huge boom for the Republicans.  You can draw a 27-9 Republican plan in Texas (Currently 20-12), and still fall completely under VRA rules, creating 2 Hispanic Majority and 2 Black-Majority Districts (assuming they get 4 new seats) without ugly Gerrymandering.

[Dgov]

Dems controlled the state government in 1981, which allowed them to create their own map for the 80s.

Texas Democrats have always been the kings of Gerrymandering.  In the 1960s, they were able to draw a 24-0 Map (admitteldy by drawing non-equal population districts), which to this day was the best gerrymander in the country.  They were also extremely effective in the 90s, where they added 3 Safely Democratic seats for a 22-8 Delegation despite the Republicans actually winning the congressional vote.

It's one of the reasons i don't feel any sympathy for the Dems Delay outed in 2003--they were basically only there in the first place because their seats were drawn to be safe.

[Dgov]

Thanks nclib. It appears that the only states Democrats can really "milk" several seats out of are Illinois and California. I wonder if the Democrats here in CA are actually going to have the balls to be nasty when it comes to redistricting this time around. As for the GOP, I think their gains out of this are going to be minimized because many GOP states where the population is growing quickly have increasing numbers of minorities, and thus either the VRA will require them to make new Democratic (minority) seats, or the GOP legislators will do it themselves out of necessity to protect their current incumbents.

Two things: 1) the reason the Democrats don't gerrymander the hell out of California is because the GOP holds 1/3rd of the seats in both houses, and basically says that if the Dems try to do a partisan gerrymander, they'll just shut down the state government.  It's how they've managed to avoid it for the last 30 or so years, despite monolithic Democratic control.

What monolithic Democratic control are you talking about? In the last 30 years the Republicans have won 5 out of 7 gubernatorial elections.

I was referring more to the state legislature, where the Democrats have held on constantly since the 70s aside from two years after 1994.  The Democrats had complete control of the state government in 2000 IIRC, and instead opted to go for the bipartisan route, mostly because the Republicans basically told them that they'd shut down the government if the Dems tried a partisan Gerrymander.

[Dgov]

Concerning California, if Prop 20 passes and Prop 27 goes down to defeat, the citizens commission will be drawing all districts, so full Dem control of Gov and legislature is less important.

Actually, that will be an interesting process to watch.  Given that prop 20 has some provisions about maintaining income hegemony within their districts, it might actually be very similar to the current map.

[Dgov]

Concerning California, if Prop 20 passes and Prop 27 goes down to defeat, the citizens commission will be drawing all districts, so full Dem control of Gov and legislature is less important.

Actually, that will be an interesting process to watch.  Given that prop 20 has some provisions about maintaining income hegemony within their districts, it might actually be very similar to the current map.

That's a retarded provision to have.

Yeah it is.  But i'd still much rather take that power from the legislature.

[Dgov]

I really don't care, I don't know what sort of agenda the Alabama Republican party would wanna pass that's already not implemented anyway. Unless they wanna go the way of Oklahoma and start banning Sharia law. But I don't understand...

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What was this guy's margin of victory? Because it sounds like he cares more about what the state as a whole wants than who his district wants. It's like a Republican Californian assembly person or senator changing to Democrat after this election where Democrats swept everything... southern Democrats are weird. Power obsessed?

Sort of.  The Reason most were Democrats to begin with were because the Democrats were the majority party and being the minority sucks.

In fact the only surprising result so far is that no Democratic house members have announced plans to switch.  The GOP picked up like 9 or so after 1994 from mostly Conservative districts (though admittedly there's not many of them left)