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Notes -
Virginia is voting on redrawing their congressional districts today. Here is the Wikipedia entry.
The main highlight is that it would change Virginia from 6-5 democrat-republican split to a 10-1 split. It is being sold by Democrats as an effort to counter Republican gerrymandering in other states. It is being panned by Republicans as unfair representation, and an election map that looks like Fairfax county (rich county in northern Virginia) gets to elect about half of the state's representatives.
I'm a Virginia resident. So I've been getting lots of mailers about the issue and simple vote "yes" or "no" signs are everywhere.
I'm very frustrated with the whole thing. First for Trump kicking off this fight. Second with the Democrats in Virginia that have made a ridiculously bullshit map. I still have yet to hear anyone from the "yes" side explain how this is good for Virginia other than "fight Trump". I even read one article that had a title implying it would be about voters not feeling represented, and it turns out the content of the article was about democratic leaders addressing the democrat voters in the now single solitary red district. No content about how Republican voters might feel in the 10 other districts.
If this level of bullshit is on the table I feel like other proposals that get shot down for being "crazy" in normal times might end up back on the table. Like a bunch of Virginia counties seceding and joining West Virginia. Or the right to giant congress
I'm frustrated that you think Trump started this. All of the Dem redistricting proposals are in response to Texas redistricting, which is a legally mandated response to a 2024 5th Circuit ruling saying "no, you cant have racially discriminatory districts", which is generally a thing democrats claim to oppose, except when it helps them.
The fundamental truth is that currently the DNC is the overwhelming beneficiary of gerrymandering efforts, and the push in Virginia about the 759th finger on a very crowded scale.
If the DNC is the overwhelming beneficiary, why can basically every D stronghold find 4-6 house of rep seats just lying on the ground ready to be stolen, and ever R stronghold is hemming and hawing because their currently gerrymandered majorities might turn into dummymandering because Trump is eating shit so hard? This Not even going into the fact that the senate exists.
It seems like reality disagrees with your perspective here, so how do you bring the two into line?
Louisana, Texas, Florida, Indiana. Contrast with Connecticut, California, and now Virginia. It seems like math disagrees with your conception of reality.
Those are what I'm talking about, actually. Those states were already so gerrymandered that they are at risk of a Peter Magyar style dummymander; Texas and florida in particular were so map spaghettied that they are gonna have to take some real risks in this last round of the thing that they weren't doing.
All (read: like, 60-70%, allow me some hyper-bowl-eee as a treat) the D fuckery is safe and has been safe for years if not decades; they've just been too pussy to pull the trigger, trump finally gave them the excuse to put on their big boy pants and abandon civility.
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