Okay, read Megan ‘Patron’ Luther’s story, it has all kinds of great information on redistricting, but this line towards the end says it all;
With 12 Republicans and three Democrats on the committee, support is expected for the Rausch and Olson (Republican) map.
Why even have Democrats on the committee? IMO there should be 5 indies, 5 Repubs and 5 Dems on the committee to make it fair. The current makeup is completely partisan. Dumb.
It is based upon who holds the most seats, and thus will be heavily weighted towards Republicans.
One could argue that this is what the voters wanted (they did after all elect those people to office giving one party a huge advantage), and if you allowed both (or all) parties to bicker about it, the voters who make their voices heard would be harmed.
I think it is a tad silly myself because they fight about this stuff every decade, but the GOP has controlled SD Politics forever, so it isnt like it is a significant issue at this point. They drew the last map, they drew the map before that, they will draw this map, and they will draw the next map too.
If they really want to take the power away, all they need to do is align districts with counties, and then base the number of seats upon the population of that county. Thus Minnehaha and Lincoln and Pennington and Brown would all have more seats than counties like Roberts or Butte or Sully or Jackson. Within each county there wouldn’t need to be division – just each seat being equal. So in Sioux Falls we would have to vote for a pile of people in every election, but at least it would take the power away from people to gerrymander districts.
Yea I know… logical ideas are stupid.
There are some good liberty minded independents within the republican party which the core neo-cons do not like. I think some of this redistricting is to also keep them from running against their underhanded counterparts by splitting them from the other guy or gal’s district.
Also sort of related – Let’s say you went to a Tea Party meeting with the mind of working together to help defend liberty from a new law Sanford wants or a simple protest against these pipelines in defense of the property owner, anti-war, anti Patriot Act, etc.. That would be a core Republican thing to do, but unfortunately there is this Allen Unruh who thinks he’s the boss of these meetings and all knowing… if he didn’t hear it in Rushbo or Glenn Geck (Beck) you are some kind of leftist freak.. What we have here is real COINTELPRO or dis-info at work.
As an end result the good people tend to become intimidated and stay away..