http://handwrittenresults.com

I post about this site as a kind of pre-cursor… the end goal of this blog is to allow people to express their anger about the current state of Gerry-mandering to their elected officials in an effective way. Most of all, I want folks to be able to do all that from their computer with a few clicks. Handwrittenresults.com is going to figure into that, for sure…

From the article:

“In the Assembly, then new Speaker Willie Brown was struggling to increase the 50% support he held among the Democrats while holding on to the Republican votes that had elected him the previous November. But Assembly redistricting proved difficult. The seats short of population were in Democratic areas (Bay Area, Los Angeles). Brown thought to resolve it by dropping a Republican seat in the Bay Area and a Democratic seat in LA. Republicans, believing a ‘fair’ redistricting would give them net gains, revolted. They withdrew their support for Brown. But Brown survived because the dissident Democrats closed ranks behind him.

Redistricting made Brown a Democratic Speaker in fact.”

http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2007/10/much_at_stake_i.html

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/12/08/031208fa_fact 

From the article:

”

“There are now about four hundred safe seats in Congress,” Richard Pildes, a professor of law at New York University, said. “The level of competitiveness has plummeted to the point where it is hard to describe the House as involving competitive elections at all these days.”
—
Members of the House now effectively answer only to primary voters, who represent the extreme partisan edge of both parties.
—
James Madison, in the Federalist Papers, said the House was meant to be a“numerous and changeable body,” where the members would have “an habitual recollection of their dependence on the people.” While the House was supposed to be impetuous, the Senate was intended to be stable. Madison said that senators would serve six-year terms as a defense against “the impulse of sudden and violent passions” of the House, and the members of the Senate were to be elected by state legislators, providing a further level of insulation from the popular will. (The Constitution was amended to require direct election of senators in 1913.) The Senate had to remain stable, Madison wrote, because “every new election in the states is found to change one half of the representatives.”

“

http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html

From their site:

”

The shortest-splitline algorithm for drawing N congressional districts (part of our ballot initiative)

Formal recursive formulation

1. Start with the boundary outline of the state.
2. Let N=A+B where A and B are as nearly equal whole numbers as possible.
   (For example, 7=4+3. More precisely, A = ⌈N/2⌉, B=⌊N/2⌋.)
3. Among all possible dividing lines that split the state into two parts with population ratio A:B, choose the shortest. (Notes: since the Earth is round, when we say “line” we more precisely mean “great circle.” If there is an exact length-tie for “shortest” then break that tie by using the line closest to North-South orientation, and if it’s still a tie, then use the Westernmost of the tied dividing lines. “Length” means distance between the two furthest-apart points on the line, that both lie within the district being split.)
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.

Asterisk: If anybody’s residence is split in two by one of the splitlines (which would happen, albeit very very rarely) then they are automatically declared to lie in the most-western (or if line is EW, then northern) of the two districts.

See high-precision computer-generated pictures for all 50 states.

“

http://www.fairvote.org/index.php?page=1389

From their site:

“The Re-Redistricting Crisis
Typically this process has been brutal and unfair, but occurred only once every decade. Then came House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s infamous drive in 2003 to undo his home state of Texas’ incumbent-protection gerrymander with a Republican plan adopted over the objections of increasingly desperate Democratic state legislators. The Democrats’ flight to neighboring states drew national attention, but it was Texas Republicans’ successful unseating of four Democratic House seats through the re-redistricting process that caused party leaders to salivate.

In Georgia, in the wake of taking control of state government in 2004, Republicans in 2005 redrew the Democratic gerrymander of 2005. They piously defend the proposed lines as more compact, but their primary motivation is clear: two more Republican House seats in 2006.

Democrats talk of retaliation. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer is no stranger to effective gerrymandering — Democrats in his state of Maryland used redistricting to oust two Republicans in 2002 — and has spoken with several Democratic governors about redrawing congressional lines in their states. “