Pennsylvania's Supreme Court Throws Out the State's Gerrymandered Map

Thank you. I disagree with your opinion that EC prevents mass voter fraud.

But . . . if it does, then why is the GOP running around screaming "mass voter fraud"?

 

Jake, I never said EC prevents massive voter fraud. What sentence confused you?

 

“We all know”...yep Mexicans who are not citizens all risk being deported and paying thousands in fines...lol.
There is no evidence of this voter fraud you believe. What makes you think for fraudulent voters didn’t vote for Trump?
Wow you saw one person attempt to,vote in another district! One..now that’s proof. Bet he voted for trump

 

Yep. Two things a court cannot do, however:
- Force a legislature to pass legislation
- Force an executive to sign it.

 

There is evidence. I don't have it on me. Since it doesn't benefit politicians to investigate, I'd have to gather all of it myself. 60 Minutes did a report on voter and SS fraud a few years ago. All of that is true. One instance of voter fraud is evidence it can happen much more and very likely does. Actually, Trump wasn't running. It was a woman and I offered for her to vote via absentee ballot, but she didn't want to do that. Why? Cause she would have to write and her handwriting wasn't the same as the person she was using to cast a vote. She knew where she lived. She wasn't prepared to answer properly. She even told us her district. lol It wasn't ours. I believe Obama was running in his first election. She was a white woman, if that is important to you. It wasn't to me. She did not get in trouble. She probably should have, though I think she left a peed her pants. That's just a guess. She seemed upset and nervous because we took our jobs seriously.

Oh, and Mexicans or illegals? All they need is a driver's license, a paycheck or a utility bill with their name and address to prove who they are and vote.

 

Even the republicans admit there is no wide range voter fraud. If you can only give one example, that’s pretty good.
When I moved here I probably would’ve been filled with some suspicion because I was in the wrong place. I wonder if that person saw me as upset and nervous. I was pissed!

 

What? Her district, the old one, was right down the road and she was told where she should be voting. An absentee ballot would have counted her vote, even if she was in the wrong district when she filled it out. She was told that, too. There are many examples. I gave one. What am I, your slave? It takes a bit of intelligence to figure out. Elections aren't a surprise. There is plenty of time to find out where to vote.

 

As they should the State Supreme Court has no jurisdiction here. The state sonstitution gives plenary power to draw districts to the state legislature.

The state supreme court said the districts must be “compact and contiguous geographical territory” and respect “the boundaries of existing political subdivisions contained therein.” The state constitution says no such thing.

Democrat judges have decided to give Democrats a leg up with authority they do not hold. Why is it Democrats are always trying to undermine the political process?

 

Because the state constitution gives plenary power to the legislature. And map drawn by the court would be unconstitutional.

 

According to the non-lawyer from alabama?

 

buzz wrongo. The state Supreme Court decides what is constitutional, not the lege.

 

How do we know there is massive fraud in US voting? I have never seen a single study or court finding to support that. Nor do experts on elections agree its occurring. Nor have I seen actual evidence offered for this view.

Regardless, that has nothing to do with this issue which is about drawing voting lines to favor one party. It certainly was not created to prevent voting fraud.

 

You misunderstand.
ONLY the legislature can draw the map, as the legislature than plenary power in that regard.
The court, in drawing any sort of map, usurps the power of the legislature.

 

Another thing you know nothing about. Otherwise she wouldn’t write something so ridiculous

 

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Just Released Its Newly Fair Congressional Map

The old map:


The new map:



Republican challenge to Pennsylvania map likely to fail

 

I meant it prevents fraud by taking away the incentive for fraud. If 70% of a state supports a certain candidate, and it's those state officials counting all the votes, there's a very good chance that they'd try to falsely record it as higher, if the popular vote across the entire country was what counted. With the winner take all system in each state, states would have no need to do this.

So why not have the federal government just handle the entire election?
It's called decentralization of power. With 50 separate state governments, each responsible for counting their own votes, it's a lot harder for any large-scale collusion to take place to defraud the elections.

Not a 100% fair system, of course, but you have to understand why it's set up that way and the potential downsides to the other options.

 

I am against gerrymandering by both parties and it should be made illegal. It makes no sense for dominant political parties to decide election boundaries and for politicians to pick their voters instead of the other way around and is an attempt to avoid democracy and the voice of the people. Political boundaries should be picked by bipartisan commissions with the help of computer programs which are more than capable of computing fair boundaries.

 

How do you make "gerrymandering" illegal? Set all the current boundaries in stone so that they cannot be changed?

You can't just solve all the problems by passing a law against them, you know.

 

I have not looked into how to make it illegal much but we can either pass a law banning it, if it is unconstitutional courts can strike it down, or we can pass a constitutional amendment. I do not believe boundaries should be set in stone because populations change. We should simply do what we do now but in an unbiased fasion and take the control away from political parties and politicians and give it to non-partisan commissions using computer programs. Many states already have commissions that decide boundaries and this results in much fairer and common sense boundaries.

I believe that the people should be the ones to decide their leader and politicians should have no right to decide who their voters are and the only reason gerrymandering happens is to subvert the will of the people. Both democratic and republican gerrymandering states should stop and resume with fair elections.

 

You obviously haven't thought through how any of that would actually work.

You could write in big bold letters "GERRYMANDERING IS ILLEGAL" in the state constitution and it likely wouldn't really change anything.

 

So the court set up a gerry mandered situation in favor of democrats....

 

Using the 2016 election results, the new map would be an 11-7 split in favor of Republicans (instead of the current 13-5).

So yea...not a gerrymander for democrats.

 

As I have mentioned many states already use independent commissions to draw lines and it works well. These states have good rules for how these commissions are selected and operate and it works well. We also have computer programs to draw districts and these can be used and this is a fool proof way of doing this. The good news is that we don't have to put up with corruption and there is a better way.

 

The way to get rid of gerrymanding is to do what Iowa does. Have a bipartisan committee decide on the districts.

 

What is this country coming to if politicians are no longer permitted to gerrymander election maps? There goes another traditional American value down the tubes.