It's About the Redistricting

Right now, your state legislators are working - in session or out - on re-drawing the voting districts for state legislators and members of Congress. Except in California, where a nonpartisan commission draws the lines, redistricting is the most hyper-partisan activity in the country.

What takes places in secret behind closed doors is a process beside which legislative sausage-making seems civil and transparent. Whether legislators are scratching each other's eyes out over protecting or creating incumbent-safe districts, or making cold deals to sacrifice a troublesome nonconformist in order to maintain the status quo, the losers are always the voters.

The deals are never what they seem to be, and in Wisconsin, repug-majority redistricting is about to destroy months of Democratic work.

Down with Tyranny:

Scott Walker and his army of right-wing zombies in the Wisconsin Republican Party were eager to accomplish several things affecting elections before the recall votes expected to end his absolute power in Wisconsin by returning the state Senate to the Democrats. [Last (week) Democrat Dave Hansen routed Walker puppet David VanderLeest with a 66-34% landslide blowout.] First, they passed legislation that drastically reduces the number of people who will vote, targeting students, African-Americans, seniors and poor people, none of which are GOP constituencies. And now they have rushed through a plan to gerrymander the state's legislative and congressional districts by lumping as many Democrats as they could into as few districts as possible, leaving few contestable districts and as many GOP-leaning districts as they could.

Democrats say it's no coincidence that Republicans are trying to get new boundaries approved before the upcoming recall elections are held in nine state Senate districts.

Six Republican and three Democratic incumbent senators are on the recall ballot in August. If Democrats can pick up a net three seats, they would win control of the Senate.

Approving the GOP plan for legislative boundaries before those recall elections, however, would give Republicans a strong chance to regain control of the Senate in the 2012 elections.

Find out about redistricting reform here.

Liberals know any process that denies voters full participation is anti-democratic and anti-American.