I was at the India Society of Pittsburgh independence day picnic today. They're a pretty cool group trying to bring together the various Indian subcultures in the Pittsburgh area that tend to be kind of insular otherwise. Anyway, two US representatives, Mike Doyle (Democrat) and Timothy Murphy (Republican) were on hand to give speeches. I thought Doyle's speech was quite good, mostly encouraging the Indian community to be more politically active. Murphy served up a few platitudes and personal shout-outs, but nothing too inspiring. Since it's an election year, I looked up the congressional races for the relevant districts. Due to the 2002 redistricting in Pennsylvania, Doyle is running unopposed (after being forced to defeat another popular Democrat in the 2002 race), and Murphy is defending this lovely district that was essentially created for him. Yaaay, democracy! Here's a New Yorker article from a few months back that has some discussion of the Pennsylvania gerrymandering (which was upheld by the Supreme Court this year).
Note to self: 600 miles of driving followed by a red-eye in one day is no fun. Time for bed.
2 comments:
Just to be fair: The other side of the aisle is doing the same thing, a quick google for "redistricting in favor of democrats" pulls up a bevy of links.
http://www.tennessean.com/local/archives/01/11/11820288.shtml?Element_ID=11820288
I find redisticting in this fashion to be pretty offensive, regardless of who it favors. Districts should be determined by a common sense formula , not some exercise in the arcane to gain an unfair advantage.
Agreed; I'm sure the Democrats take advantage of this stuff whenever they have the opportunity. I would argue, however, that the case of the second Texas redistricting that was pushed through by Delay because the Republicans didn't have enough control during the first one was especially egregious (traditionally, redistricting only occurs once per census). Anyway, this proposal seems like a nice solution to the problem (along with some others), or at least a good start.
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