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Monday, November 12, 2018

The Great American Turning


A Bipartisan Commission Must Follow The Final Report
...our nation still has a lot to understand and learn about this category 3 ordeal...
The Great American Turning

NewYorkerSatire, Americans Want Alert System Enabling Mueller to Text Them When This Emergency Is Over

Web:

UPDATED 11/12/2018 WP, Cornered and Raging, Trump Begins His Coverup. Here’s How Democrats Can Respond and SMH, Donald Trump Is Cornered and He Knows It and C-SPAN, How Fascism Works; New Yorker's Jelani Cobb in Discussion with Jason Stanley and Timothy Snyder
"...Trump [our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al.] has no political skills. Nor does he know how to govern. But neither of this matters any more. He is fighting - not for his political life, which is all but over, but for his very liberty. The end game, as US commentators are already calling it, is likely to get very ugly. But it is the end we are looking at, which means we can look forward to it being over..."--Sydney Morning Herald, Anne Summers--
...don't forget to laugh...NewYorkerSatire, Rick Scott Accuses Democrats of Trying to Thwart G.O.P.’s Successful Voter Suppression...


UPDATED 11/11/2018 Reuters, With Trump Sitting Nearby, Macron Calls Nationalism A Betrayal and DW, German Politicians Remember Nazi Kristallnacht Pogrom and AP, Germany: Merkel Warns of Modern Racism on Kristallnacht 80th [Anniversary]



“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism: nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,” --Emmanuel Macron, Armistice commemoration ceremony, Nov 2018--


...our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. and its "friendship" with malign state actor Putin must stand alone on any global stage...their concerted efforts toward malign statesmanship demands nothing but continuous castigation and opposition...

UPDATED 11/11/2018 Atlantic, It’s Probably Too Late to Stop Mueller  ...it should surprise almost nobody that our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. would appoint an unfit, unwell, and unbalanced Attorney General∴, least of all our Republican leaders...it is likely key Republican leaders have advised our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. on how to truncate the Mueller probe...at least until we learned of Whitaker's compromising history...some Republican leaders equate a "compromising" history with a "conservative" history...




...and  AP,Appeals Court Hears Argument That Mueller Probe Is Invalid and  WP, Roger Stone Associate Challenges Mueller’s Special Counsel Appointment and Intercept, Jeff Sessions Replaced by Aide Who Said Mueller Should Be Barred From Probing Trump Finances and AP, Jeff Sessions Pushed Out After A Year of Attacks from Trump and NYT, Trump Installs a Critic of the Mueller Investigation to Oversee It...

...it is highly likely that part of the backstory for today's firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions is found in these documentsÅ:

Å...those wanting to understand Russia's malign United States presidential election, 2016 electioneering activity in the frame of a political communications researcher might enjoy Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President What We Don't, Can't, and Do Know; Kathleen Hall Jamieson; 2018 (OUP)

∴...appointees unable our unwilling to accommodate our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. quickly become roadkill under the bus (a career preserver)... 
...a constitutionally compliant President of the United States should expect appointees to carry out policy...our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. should have no such expectations... 
...those rationalizing our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al.'s rectum-ramblings as partisanship are deluding themselves and harming our nation...
...Jeff Sessions's recusal from overseeing Mueller's investigation into Russia's malign activity prevented him from providing any "protection", which our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. expects from the DOJ...!!!!

...don't forget to laughå...NewYorkerSatire, Rick Scott Accuses Democrats of Trying to Thwart G.O.P.’s Successful Voter Suppression and NewYorkerSatire, Putin Loses Control of the House






å...wow, the press is as fed up with the rectum-ramblings of our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. as the rest of us...


...hey, Republicans how long are you going to subject our citizenry and nation to our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al.'s abusive rectum-ramblings?...


UPDATED 11/09/2018 NYT, Sizing Up the 2018 Blue Wave and NYT, Night of Firsts: Sharice Davids, Ayanna Pressley and More Make History in Midterm Elections and WP, The Historic Firsts of The 2018 Midterms and Reuters, Trump Points to Republican Gains, Broaches Cooperation with Democrats and Reuters, Loss of U.S. House leaves Republicans More Tied To Trump Than Ever and Reuters, Trump Vows To Resist Any Democratic Effort To Investigate White House

...kudos to Tom Perez, the DNC et al., representatives-elect, and our citizenry for supporting unprecedented diversity in our lower chamber...a trend presaging the upper chamber in 2020?...stated differently kibosh the Kobash or  Rouda the Rohrabacher...

A More Diverse Nation

...the hatred espoused by the White Nationalists that our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. enthusiastically exploited while an obsolete Republican Party et al. unabashedly observed, will never make America great...


...our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. and Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) may need to consult a dictionary for the definitions of harassment and oversight?...

...don't forget to laugh...NewYorkerSatire, Trump Warns That Democrats Would Drag Nation Back to Days of Tolerance and Decorum and NewYorkerSatire, Unskilled Wisconsin Man Unable to Keep Job



UPDATED 11/06/2018 WP, Could Losing The House Actually Help Trump In 2020?

...our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. and an obsolete Republican Party are beyond help...ignore their harmful slogans, dogma, and demagoguery...if they think they can make America great with White Nationalists and related propaganda, let them go for it...the results will be as hilarious as this dick...........tator's propaganda poster... dont' forget to laugh...

Dick...............tator's Propaganda Poster
...and vote...
UPDATED 11/04/2018 WP, Trump’s Hate And Lies Are Failing; Two New Studies Show Why and WP, ‘Pushing Every Button’: Trump Mobilizes The Government In Campaign’s Final Days

...don't forget to laugh...NewYorkerSatire, Americans Would Feel Safer If a Huge Caravan of Angry White Men Left the Country+ and TheOnion, ‘Kanye Must Be Back On His Meds,’ Says Nation Technically Having Conversation About Mental Illness




LateNight, The Migrant Caravan, Long-Distance Dating

Steve King [R IA-5] is the Racist-est
(AP, Iowa Rep. Steve King Keeps Low Profile Amid New Controversy)


+...it would be myopic for our country to miss the opportunity to directly deal with the residual racism and racists...it's unfortunate that it took our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. and an obsolete Republican Party to present the opportunity...but here it is...


UPDATED Halloween Axios, Exclusive: Trump Targeting Birthright Citizenship with Executive Order

...more rectum-ramblings from our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al...it's difficult to imagine a scarier Halloween declaration from our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. than "I'm your dick.............tator", however deluded...


...don't forget to laugh...NewYorkerSatire, Trump Strips Citizenship from Children of Immigrants, Thus Disqualifying Himself from Presidency


UPDATED 10/29/2018 WP, Let’s Stop Asking Trump for Comfort After Tragedies...

...send former Presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Carter to Squirrel Hill...

... WP, How Much Responsibility Does Trump Bear for The Synagogue Shooting In Pittsburgh? and WP, Thousands Signed A Letter Saying Trump Was Not Welcome In Pittsburgh. He Plans To Visit Anyway and AP, Anti-Semitic Incidents Were On The Rise Even Before Shooting and Atlantic, A Brief History of Anti-Semitic Violence in America and CBSNews, NYPD On The Hunt After Orthodox Jewish Man Attacked In Brooklyn...

...our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. is fomenting its ilk...with the help of a silent and obsolete Republican Party; Making America Great Again...MAGA...


...removal from office is the remedy for any public officeholder equating a bunch of torch carrying white racists chanting "Jews will not replace us" with those protesting their deluded hateful conspiratorial tropes, then for an encore calls our press "the enemy of the people"...

...don't forget to laugh...NewYorkerSatire, Fox News Says Megyn Kelly’s Blackface Comments Not Racist Enough to Get Old Job Back...


UPDATED 10/19//2018 Reuters, Trump's Lawyers Preparing Answers To Questions In Russia Probe: Source

...don't forget to laugh...TheOnion, Frightened Don Jr. Asks If He Can Sleep In Dad’s Bed After Bad Dream About Being Indicted and TheOnion, Trump Administration Urges Saudis To Stick To Killing Random Yemeni Civilians...

Frightened Don Jr. Asks If He Can Sleep In Dad’s Bed After Bad Dream About Being Indicted

LateShow, Here's Why White Supremacists Are Chugging Milk


UPDATED 10/03/2018 Frontline, A Meeting in Trump Tower. A Response Dictated on Air Force One


UPDATED 10/03/2018  NewYorker, Trump’s Mocking of Christine Blasey Ford and the Dark Laughter of His Audience and USAToday, President Donald Trump Unpopular Across Globe and America's Standing Dropped, New Poll Shows and Pew, Trump’s International Ratings Remain Low, Especially Among Key Allies

...hey, who needs the "key allies" when our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. is pursuing a "lover affair" with the thugs in North Korea and Russia (unrequited in the case of authoritarian China)...

...don't forget to laugh...NewYorkerSatire, Trump Says It’s a Very Scary Time for Men, Because Women Can Vote Them Out of Office and Twenty Million Witnesses Come Forward Claiming They Saw Kavanaugh Lie Under Oath



UPDATED 09/29/2018 USAToday, Federal Judge: Democrats in Congress Can Sue Trump in Emoluments Case and Scribd, Senator Richard Blumenthal, et al., v. Donald J. Trump, Case 1:17-cv-01154-EGS Document 59 Filed 09/28/18 Page 1 of 58

...our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. incredulous that monetizing the Executive Office of the Presidency of the United States for personal gain is challengeable in federal court...

...don't forget to laugh...NewYorkerSatire, Obama Saddened That Kavanaugh Did Not Blame Him at Any Point


UPDATED 09/28/2018 Reuters, Trump Calls Kavanaugh Testimony Powerful, Calls for Senate Vote and WP, ABA, Yale Law School dean call for FBI probe into Kavanaugh allegations, delay in confirmation

...the Senate must decline to vote or outright reject our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. and Republican Party's efforts to "cram-down" the Kavanaugh nomination, pending a FBI background investigation into the women's allegation of sexual assault and completion of a thorough vetting process...

...here's a Trump supporter who like our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. and a segment of the Republican Party thinks groping daughters is no big deal...


UPDATED 09/28/2018 President Trump addresses U.N. General Assembly and CFR, Narcissistic Nationalism: Trump’s Second UN General Assembly Address and Atlantic, The World Just Laughed at Donald Trump and Atlantic, Full Transcript: Donald Trump at the United Nations General Assembly



...more rectum-ramblings from our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al...we laugh at its delusional self-appraisals, too...it has been our "great embarrassment" to have our unstable, unfit, unwell, and unbalanced "new" alt-white-house et al. so pretentiously "representing" our nation....

...continuous chaos and delusions rarely couple to constructive change....

...don't forget to laugh...NewYorkerSatire, Trump Brags That He Got Much Bigger Laughs at U.N. Than Obama...





UPDATED 09/21/2018 NYT, Rod Rosenstein Suggested Secretly Recording Trump and Discussed 25th Amendment and NYT, The Plot to Subvert an Election, Unraveling the Russia Story So Far and NYT, A Timeline Showing the Full Scale of Russia’s Unprecedented Interference in the 2016 Election, and Its Aftermath


















Originally Published September 16, 2018; Last Updated  November 12, 2018; Last Republished November 12, 2018:
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Thursday, November 8, 2018

Is Georgia's Secretary Of State Criminally Suppressing Voters

..Is Georgia's secretary of state criminally suppressing voters...former President Carter has called on Brian Kemp to resign...not only must Kemp resign...the DOJ should must launch an inquiry...

...the upside of gerrymandering is the possibility of gaining more seats than your expected fair allocation of seats...to get this unfair allocation a party must distribute "their" finite number of precious partisan voters across many districts in "just enough numbers" to win, but no more (i. e. "waste" a precious partisan voter)...to determine what is "just enough" the gerrymanders generally use "historical voting patterns and turnout"...
...now the downside of a gerrymander...enter an ultra qualified charismatic politician who is able to "energize" their voters to turnout in numbers far exceeding the expected historical averages (i.e. Stacey Abrams)...the "just enough" allocation of the precious partisan voters in a particular gerrymandered district is "swamped"...and the opposition wins the gerrymandered district...

...this may be why Georgia's Secretary of State is very, very, very, concerned with the Democratic turnout...there are not enough reliably Republican voters in the gerrymandered district to cover the huge turnout...enter voter suppression (i.e a method of reducing the excessive turnout to the expected historical averages and those used when drawing the gerrymandered map)...

Web:

UPDATED 11/08/2018 WP, Stacey Abrams Legal Team Holds News Conference


UPDATED 11/04/2018 USAToday, Georgia's GOP Secretary of State Alleges [w/o Evidence] State Democrats Tried To Hack Registration
UPDATED 11/03/2018 Reuters, U.S. Courts Rule Against Georgia On Voter Suppression Cases and NYT, Fired Up’ Voters in 22 States Are Outpacing [by 80%] 2014 Early Ballot Counts
UPDATED 11/03/2018 Vox, Why American Voter Registrations Are Disappearing and NewYorker, Are Police Targeting Get-Out-the-Vote Efforts in Georgia?

Vox, Why American Voter Registrations Are Disappearing

...don't forget to laugh...WP, The GOP Has A Preexisting Condition: Bigotry

RealTime, New Rule: Win or Go Home
...the caravan is "marching" like a bunch of D-0 Army recruits...better send Seal Team Six-Red and the 3rd Airborne Group to stop this "invading force"...(AP, Fact Check: President Trump’s Rhetoric and The Truth About Migrant Caravans)...make sure you pack the C-130s with extra MREs, doctors, and medical supplies...the "threat" will welcome offers of nourishment and medical attention...because the "threat" will likely mistake soldiers for border agents be ready to tell the surrendering "threat", in Spanish directions to the nearest border patrol agent... (WP, Trump’s Border Deployments Could Cost $200 Million by Year-End)

LateNight, Trump's Racist Fearmongering Is His Latest Scam
(WP, In 649 days, President Trump Has Made 6,420  False or Misleading Claims)









Originally Published October 31, 2018; Last Updated November 08, 2018; Last Republished November 08, 2018
0 comments

Special Interests And Spinmeisters Efforts To Surreptitiously Capture Our Legislatures

Originally Published June 19, 2017; Last Updated November 08, 2018; Last Republished November 08, 2018:

Special interests' and spinmeisters' (overlords) efforts to surreptitiously capture our legislatures has stalled in a standoff at the United States Supreme Court.

Our "representative democracy" has retrogressed to a form of feudalism where the overlords convey a fiefdom (safe-seat) to their congressional vassal in exchange for that vassal's allegiance2. What is the voters' roll in such a retrogressive feudalism, beyond revolt?


Today, the court has stayed the Wisconsin gerrymandering1 case of the Western District of Wisconsin, case No. 3:15-cv-00421 while it hears the questions presented by Gill, Beverly R et al. v. Whitford, William et al. (16-1161).

Get media background about the case at Fair Elections Project Newsroom and Loyola, Litigation in the 2010 cycle for status of redistricting lawsuits.

 SupremeCourt:

UPDATED 04/23/2108 TexasTribune, Texas Redistricting Fight Returns to the U.S. Supreme Court. Here's What You Need to Know  (QP, Docket for 17-586) and USSC, Transcript Oral Arguments 17-586

UPDATED 03/28/2018 Reuters, Supreme Court Finds Solution Elusive in Pivotal Electoral Map Case Hum,I thought by definition the motto of our Supreme Court is:

 "We provide equal justice under the law...by 'upsetting settled expectations'"

It is difficult to imagine a Supreme Court case that does not "upset settled expectations"...the lesser courts decided those cases!

UPDATED 03/20/2018 Reuters, Supreme Court upholds Pennsylvania [State Supreme Court Drawn] election map in win for [Fair Elections] Democrats

It seems useful to distinguish between electoral and district maps drawn with partisanship and those drawn to carry out dogma (aka extremely asymmetric map). The latter is rarely, if ever desirable in a democracy.

UPDATED 02/05/2018 Reuters, U.S. Supreme Court Allows Revamp of Pennsylvania Electoral Map

Kudos to our judiciary branches (federal and state) who've demonstrated an ability to rein in our "out of control" legislative and executive branches on issues of fundamental significance to our ongoing experiment in democracy3.
"...The Jan. 22 Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling gives Republican legislators until this Friday to submit a revised map to Democratic Governor Tom Wolf, who would have until Feb. 15 to sign off on the changes. If those deadlines pass without an agreement, the state court said it [special masters] would rewrite the map itself..."--Reuters--
UPDATED 10/07/2017 WP, The Supreme Court discussed my research on gerrymandering. There were some misconceptions and RegisterNapa, Guest editorial: Free pass must not be given to partisan gerrymandering

UPDATED 10/04/2017 Gill v. Whitford Oral Argument Official Transcript October 03, 2017

In a bit of Möbius loop irony the Chief Justice seems to imply that our democracy depends on biased and asymmetric redistricting maps!

A decision by the Court that partisans must run their races on an unbiased and symmetric field is not mandating proportional representation. It's the Court simply saying when partisans run races they must race on the same field. One partisan cannot run the 100 yard dash on a circular inner ring while another runs the hurdles on an elliptical outer ring!
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: No, but you're going to take this -- the whole point is you're taking these issues away from democracy and you're throwing them into the courts pursuant to, and it may be simply my educational background, but I can only describe as sociological gobbledygook.

MR. SMITH: Your Honor, this is -­ this is not complicated. It is a measure of how unfair the map is. How much burden can the party -­

JUSTICE BREYER: Can you say this? Look, don't agree with me just because it sounds favorable, because he won't in two minutes. Can you answer the Chief Justice's question and say the reason they lost is because if party A wins a majority of votes, party A controls the legislature. That seems fair. And if party A loses a majority of votes, it still controls the legislature. That doesn't seem fair. And can we say that without going into what I agree is pretty good gobbledygook? (Laughter.)

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: And if you need a convenient label for that approach, you can call it proportional representation, which has never been accepted as a political principle in the history of this country.

MR. SMITH: Your Honor, we are not arguing for proportional representation. We are arguing for partisan symmetry, a map which within rough bounds at least treats the two parties relatively equal in terms of their ability to translate votes into seats. That's -­

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: That sounds exactly like proportional representation to me.
The Court need not await a protected-partisan to sit on the infield watching others futilely race around the track before providing standards, which cut partisan gerrymandering—or as Justice Anthony Kennedy put it during oral arguments write into law that:

"...all legitimate factors must be used in a way to favor party X or party Y,..."
—Anthony Kennedy, Oral Argument, Gill v Whitford—

UPDATED 10/08/2017 Oyes, Gill v. Whitford Oral Argument Argument Audio


CasesInNews:

UPDATED 11/08/2018 WP, Federal Judges in Gerrymandering Case Toss Maryland’s Congressional Voting Map
 and Case 1:13-cv-03233-JKB Document 222 Filed 11/07/18 Page 1 of 68
"...BREDAR, Chief District Judge, concurring in the judgment: Partisan gerrymandering is noxious, a cancer on our democracy. See Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267, 292 (2004) (plurality opinion) (concluding that severe partisan gerrymanders are incompatible with democratic principles); Ariz. State Legislature v. Ariz. Indep. Redistricting Comm’n, 135 S. Ct. 2652, 2677 (2015) (stating that to curb partisan gerrymandering is to restore “the core principle of republican government” that “voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around”) (quoting Mitchell N. Berman, Managing Gerrymandering, 83 Texas L. Rev. 781, 781 (2005)); Gill v. Whitford, 138 S. Ct. 1916, 1940–41 (2018) (Kagan, J., concurring) (“At its most extreme, [partisan gerrymandering] amounts to ‘rigging elections.’”)..."
UPDATED 06/25/2018 USSC, Abbott v. Perez 585 U. S. ____ (2018) June 25, 2018 and NYT, Supreme Court Upholds Texas Voting Maps That Were Called Discriminatory {except,  Tarrant County] and Vox, Supreme Court Splits 5-4 on Texas Racial Gerrymandering Case

UPDATED 06/18/2018 Reuters, Supreme Court Declines To Curb Electoral Map Manipulation and Reuters, Supreme Court Rejects Republican Bid To Block Maryland Electoral District and Benisek v. Lamone and Gill v. Whitford
...curiously the Court, acknowledges that guidance on partisan gerrymandering has been lacking for five decades and plans to continue the trend...declaring a state resident assigned, by a partisan politician to one state district is not specifically harmed (i.e. lacks standing to challenge) by what a partisan politician is doing in any of the other districts of that state...a questionable declaration, at best, which unnecessarily complicates partisan gerrymandering while encouraging much less judicial economy...

UPDATED 06/02/2018 Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate

UPDATED 01/30/2018 BaltimoreSun, Md. Should Lead the Way on Redistricting Reform, Starting Now and Chronicle, Duke Research Makes Mark on Federal Court Cases Over North Carolina Gerrymandering

UPDATED 01/27/2018 UnionConcernedScientists, Science and the Law: Two Pillars of Truth Intersect at Political Boundaries and UCS, Sociological Gobbledygook or Scientific Standard? Why Judging Gerrymandering is Hard
"...More fundamentally, there is no constitutional basis for dismissing Plaintiffs' claims as judicially unmanageable—not because they are irrelevant, unreliable, or incorrectly applied, but simply because they rely on new, sophisticated empirical methods that derive from academic research. The Constitution does not require the federal courts to act like Galileo's Inquisition and enjoin consideration of new academic theories, and the knowledge gained therefrom, simply because such theories provide a new understanding of how to give effect to our long-established governing principles. See Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way 97-101 (1989). That is not what the founding generation did when it adopted a Constitution grounded in the then-untested political theories of Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. That is not what the Supreme Court did when it recognized that advances in our understanding of psychology had proven that separate could not be equal. And that is not what we do here...” CAUSE v. RUCHO, @page 75
Our Supreme Court must help our nation "up its game" by demonstrating a preference for concepts derived using science over those derived using wacky theology, fairy tales, a tooth fairy, Santa Claus, myths, or gobbledygook etc.

UPDATED 01/26/2018 Economist, Republicans in Pennsylvania Ask the Supreme Court to Restore Their Map
UPDATED 01/25/2018 NewYorker, The Courts Take Aim at Partisan Gerrymandering

...don't forget to laugh...


UPDATED 01/22/2018 PhillyDotCom, Pa. Supreme Court Strikes Down Congressional Map as Unconstitutional, Orders Change Before May Primary and Reuters, Pennsylvania Court Orders New Congressional Map Due to Gerrymandering and AP, Pennsylvania Court Throws Out Congressional Boundaries and PA Supreme Court, Jan. 22, 2018 - Per Curiam Order, League of Women Voters, et al. v. the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, et al. – 159 MM 2017 and PACourts, League of Women Voters, et al Selected Postings
“[...the Congressional Redistricting Act of 2011] 'clearly, plainly and palpably violates the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.'--Reuters quoting court order--
UPDATED 01/18/2018 NYT, Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks North Carolina Gerrymandering Ruling (N.C.'s brazen legislature should redraw the unfair and asymmetric maps while it awaits the Supreme Court ruling.)  and Vox, How to Spot an Unconstitutionally Partisan Gerrymander, Explained and Economist, The Supreme Court Takes on Two Redistricting Cases from Texas (Perez v Perry) and  NYT, A Case for Math, Not ‘Gobbledygook,’ in Judging Partisan Voting Maps and Salon, Mr. Chief Justice, It’s Not “Gobbledygook”: New N.C. Ruling Shows How to Fix Gerrymandering

UPDATED 01/11/2018 News&Observer, NC Congressional Districts Struck Down as Unconstitutional Partisan Gerrymanders and  NYT, North Carolina Is Ordered To Redraw It Congressional Map and BrennanCenterLink2Opinion, League of Women Voters of North Carolina v. Rucho and Scribd, Common Cause Et Al v. Rucho Et Al and NYR, Will the Court Kill the Gerrymander?


The President Pro Tempore of the North Carolina Senate seems unsure what to do next...how about doing exactly what the district court has ordered...produce fair district maps by January 29, 2018!
"...No  later  than  5  p.m.  on  January  29,  2018, the  State  shall  file  with  the  Court any enacted proposed remedial plan, along with:..."
Significantly the court has ordered special masters for producing a remedial plan should North Carolina's Senator Philip E. Berger et al. be unable to do so.

Why would anyone think a politician asserting a right to entrench "their party" to disadvantage others could fail to produce a fair district map? Or a politician that asserts a right to pick their voters obviating a voter's constitutional right to pick their politicians!


UPDATED 01/04/2018 NYT, Two Ways of Looking at Gerrymandering and Governing, Redistricting Cases Could Redefine State and U.S. Politics in 2018

Protection from racial gerrymandering gets equal protection and partisan gerrymandering gets speech/association protection—really?

UPDATED 12/28/2017 WisContext, Gaps, Guardrails And The Fast-Advancing Math Of Partisan Gerrymandering and WP, The Supreme Court Gets a Second Chance to Quash Gerrymandering

UPDATED 12/09/2017 USAToday, Supreme Court to hear second case challenging election districts and NYT, Justices to Hear Second Partisan Gerrymandering Case and WP, Supreme Court will take up a second gerrymandering case this term
UPDATED 11/22/2017 Jurist, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Orders Lower Court To Hear and Rule on Gerrymandering Case by End of Year and ConstitutionDaily, Pennsylvania Court Will Expedite Big Gerrymandering Case

State's high court  unpersuaded by arguments to stay the gerrymandering case League of Women Voters, et al. v. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, et al. - 261 M.D. 2017 while the Supreme Court decides Gill v Whitford; orders lower court to hear and rule on League of Women Voters et al. before end of the year.

UPDATED 11/04/2017 FiveThirtyEight, The Supreme Court Is Allergic To Math and SciFri, Does Math Have A Place In The Courtroom?




UPDATED 11/02/2017 Quanta, The Math Behind Gerrymandering and Wasted Votes and Quanta, How to Quantify (and Fight) Gerrymandering
UPDATED 10/26/2017 NewYorker, Ginsburg Slaps Gorsuch in Gerrymandering Case and TuftNow, Rebooting the Mathematics Behind Gerrymandering

Understanding all possible district maps is an ongoing dynamic process mostly related to available computational power, which need not limit mandating fair maps today and fairer maps tomorrow!

UPDATED 10/14/2017 NYMag, Will Justice Kennedy Sink Partisan Gerrymandering — or Save It?


UPDATED 10/12/2017 NYT, How Computers Turned Gerrymandering Into a Science†

It seem brazen, at best for partisan proponents of extreme gerrymandering to argue that state legislatures have need unconstrained power to engineer extreme partisan redistricting maps they publicly pretend are the result of chance.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Thank you, counsel.

MS. MURPHY: Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court: Plaintiffs have not identified a workable standard for determining when the inherently political task of districting becomes too political for the constitution to tolerate. Indeed, the only thing plaintiffs have added to the mix since LULAC is a wasted votes test that identifies court-drawn maps as enduring partisan gerrymanders and conveniently favors their own political party.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: You've probably considered the hypo many times. Suppose a state constitution or state statute says all districts shall be designed as closely as possible to conform with traditional principles, but the overriding concern is to increase -- have a maximum number of votes for party X or party Y. What result?

MS. MURPHY: I think if -- if you have something that says the ultimate principle that we're going to follow is abandon all other criteria in favor of partisan advantage, at least you're closer at that point -­

JUSTICE GINSBURG: I don't think -- I don't think that was the question. It was it satisfies all the traditional criteria, contiguous, but it was a deliberate attempt to maximize a number of seats that Republicans would hold.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: This is mandated by the state constitution.

MS. MURPHY: I don't think that in a world where the legislature is required to and is, in fact, complying with a number of other metrics and is as one of those things taking into account partisan advantage, that you've proven a constitutional violation.

JUSTICE ALITO: That's not a -- that's not a manageable standard. It's not a manageable standard that you cannot have a law that says draw maps to favor one party or the other.

MS. MURPHY: I think it's -­

JUSTICE ALITO: That seems like a perfectly manageable standard.

MS. MURPHY: If it's on -­

JUSTICE ALITO: You cannot have that.

MS. MURPHY: -- the face of the statute, I think you have a different scenario because at least at that point, you know the intent. You know there's no debate to have about the intent of what the legislature is doing and if they are intentionally drawing for one purpose or another.

JUSTICE KAGAN: But there are plenty areas of law, Ms. Murphy, where we look at intent beyond the face of a statute. And, you know, sometimes that's harder than other times. We understand it can be difficult. We understand in other cases it can be easy. But we do it all over the place in our law. We don't -- we don't say, oh, if it's not on the face of the statute, we're never going to look at it. So if your answer to Justice Alito is well on the face of the statute, that's certainly a manageable standard, I guess I would ask why not if it's not on the face of the statute? But you absolutely -- you know, but you have good evidence that there was the intent here, and you have good evidence that the intent led to a certain kind of effect, which was to entrench a party in power.

MS. MURPHY: I think what differentiates this from a lot of other contexts is that here we have opinion after opinion from this Court, dissenting opinions, concurring opinions, plurality opinions, what have you, saying that considering politics in districting is not in and of itself inherently unconstitutional.

JUSTICE GORSUCH: Ms. Murphy -­

MS. MURPHY: So just finding the intent isn't a problem.

JUSTICE KAGAN: But the -­

JUSTICE GORSUCH: I'd like to go back to Justice Breyer's question, and it would be helpful to get an answer for me on that. What criteria would a state need to know in order to avoid having every district and every case and every election subject to litigation? Because the -- the standard that's given in -- in the lower court here was, well, a little bit of partisan symmetry problem, a little bit of an efficiency gap problem, not a real set of criteria. And here, you know, is it 7 percent, how durable, how many elections would we need? How much data would we have to gather? Walk us through Justice Breyer's question and provide some answers, if you -- if you would.

MS. MURPHY: Sure. So I think some of the problems with the criteria that have been suggested, in particular with the test that's focus on these symmetry metrics, is that so far the metrics that we have, I mean, they identify false positives roughly 50 percent of the time. And I don't know how a legislature is supposed to comply with criteria that can't differentiate between a court-drawn map and a map drawn for partisan advantage. So, when you start with the partisan symmetry concept, you automatically have the basic problem that you have to have some way to decide what is the appropriate partisan asymmetry.

JUSTICE GORSUCH: Okay. But what are the questions -- you know, I need two years or two cycles worth of data. I need an S curve of a certain shape and size. I need an efficiency gap of something. What are the numbers, what are the criteria we'd have to fill in as a constitutional matter in order for a state to be able to administer this?


† The author conducts sponsored conferences and workshops for Tufts, Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group, Geometry of Redistricting Summer School.

UPDATED 10/09/2017 Hoover, Gerrymandering at SCOTUS

It's unclear why the author would want to ever return to partisan gerrymandering once having left it? Partisan politicians capable of understanding, representing, and responding to a diverse cross-section of residents in our states is exactly what the nation is lacking and so desperately needs! Our Supreme Court routinely does optimization problems with multiple constraints.

Reducing partisan gerrymandering is a path of no return our Supreme Court and nation should not just happily travel, but sprint down!

UPDATED 10/04/2017 C-SPAN, Greg Stohr on Gerrymandering



UPDATED 10/03/2017 Reuters, U.S. Supreme Court Justices Divided in Major Voting Rights Case and Twitter, #FairMaps and ScotusBlog, Tuesday round-up and C-SPAN, Gill v. Whitford Oral Argument Reaction


Imagine our nation with a Supreme Court that is diffident, concerned, or anxious about constraining "raw assertions" of Machiavellian-like political power by our politicians or worse becomes a partisan in such assertions?

It's highly likely that Chief Justice John Marshall did not have in mind a manageability standard or plan to handle the hoped for centuries of litigation that would follow his Supreme Court decision in Marbury v Madison!

UPDATED 09/28/2017 AmerProspect, Slaying the Partisan Gerrymander  and Governing, Will the U.S. Supreme Court Take a Stand Against Partisan Gerrymandering?

It's not clear how an unbiased symmetric redistricting map threatens, even infinitesimally, any legitimate state interest? Our Constitution's 10 Amendment does not stand for the proposition that a state has a protected interest to do whatever its politicians can dream up and that special interest will fund†!


† Special interests view these "partisan-protected-seats" as a beneficial investments. Economists view them as harmful and inefficient rent-seeking, which in the case of redistricting can last 10 or more years! Our citizenry view them as unresponsive corruption, which harms our democracy. How will the justices on our United States Supreme Court view them from their "partisan-appointed-protected-seats"?

An interesting question, which the justices will not directly decide is: can a "partisan-appointed-protected-seat" turn into a "partisan-protected-seat"? If yes, how can that transformation be quantified and its chance reduced? Should it?

...don't forget to laugh...


UPDATED 09/21/2017 Reuters, Fight over electoral district boundaries heads to Supreme Court
UPDATED 09/16/2017 NYT, Splitting 5-4, Justices Put Texas Redistricting on Hold
 UPDATED 09/01/2017 SPG, Fighting Gerrymandering with Blue Waters and Vox, The Algorithm That Could Help End Partisan Gerrymandering


Generating a very large population of random unbiased redistricting maps seems extraordinarily useful, with applications far beyond providing judges with a simple and accurate method for judging a proposed redistricting map's fairness (i.e. skewness or asymmetry). Hopefully, it's receiving the necessary funding and super computing (Blue Waters) time (processing nodes)?

"...if you look at the data in all U.S. House elections in the last say four decades the average re-election rate is in the mid 90s, so these elections are not competitive..." --Wendy K Tam Cho--
UPDATED 08/28/2017 USAToday, Political maps under fire as Supreme Court case on tailor-made districts looms and USC, 16-1161 GILL V. WHITFORD Oral Argument Scheduled for October 03, 2017 @ 10am


At least Pennsylvania's creative politicians used a seafood and steak house (Creeds) instead of the usual boring old uninhabited interstate highway to make sure the district is contiguous!
UPDATED 07/24/2107 Ozy, Not So Supreme and Vox, The Research That Convinced SCOTUS To Take The Wisconsin Gerrymandering Case, Explained


UPDATED 07/10/2017 BostonGlobe, It’s unfair and Unjust. So Why Has Gerrymandering Lasted This Long? Isn't gerrymandering just one of many methods used to manipulate election outcomes in modern democracies?
UPDATED 06/30/2017 Wisconsin Gazette, Milwaukee County supervisors urge state to change redistricting process as issue heads to high court and Quartz, The Supreme Court case that could shift how Americans vote rests on a simple math equation and WP, The Supreme Court is in no hurry to protect voters from gerrymandering
GIS: 

UPDATED 09/06/2017 GISGeography, The Ultimate GIS Dictionary
UPDATED 04/09/2018  Intercept, Countdown:How the Trump Administration Is Botching Its Only Trial Run for the 2020 Census and MTCommerce, Geographic Update Partnership (GUPS) Training Webinar and The U.S. Census Bureau's Geographic Update Partnership Software (GUPS), a QGIS based solution and 2017 U.S. Census Bureau's BAS Program Webinar and Census, Block Boundary Suggestion Project Participant Guide

UPDATED 06/22/2017 GIS Fundamentals and Mapping 1-20: Introduction (playlist) and QGIS for Your Platform and Documentation for QGIS 2.14 (Practice Data, TIGER/Line Shapefile, 2016, nation, U.S., 115th Congressional District National)

UPDATED 06/22/2017 OSGeo Foundation, and API Earth Engine

 Twitter:

UPDATED 08/28/2017 Tuft's, Metric Geometry & Gerrymandering Group

Blogs:

UPDATED 08/28/2017 OhioStateUniversity, Moritz College of Law
UPDATED 08/28/2017 SCOTUSBlog, Gill v. Whitford

Web:

UPDATED 11/07/2018 WP, Voters Are Stripping Partisan Redistricting Power from Politicians In Anti-gerrymandering Efforts
UPDATED 07/26/2018 NYT, New Emails Show Michigan Republicans Plotting to Gerrymander Maps



UPDATED 06/14/2018 WP, Lessons in Gerrymandering and CCRC, We Draw The Lines


UPDATED 06/03/2018 PGP, The Princeton Gerrymandering Project Is Expanding!
UPDATED 05/29/2018 AmandaE, Men are Not Angels: Need for a Redistricting Framework and SeattleTimes, Colorado Lawmakers Send Redistricting Reforms To Ballot and Vox, Ohio’s Gerrymandering Rreform Was Just Approved By The State’s Voters


A formal redistricting framework must make sure ALL maps drawn as part of the iterative redistricting process are systematically preserved and open for publicly perusal.

UPDATED 03/03/2018 CBSPitts, Pa. Supreme Court's Congressional Redistricting Map Means Big Changes


If your dogma and extreme agenda requires you to win in a gerrymander district or to suppress voting and voters you might want to reconsider your dogma and extreme agenda or leave politics. If you're a "specialist" that helps politicians to gerrymander districts or suppress voting and voters get a new specialty.

UPDATED 03/01/2018 Vox, How Pennsylvania Rigged Its Electoral Map


UPDATED 02/20/2018 Wired, The Geeks Who Put a Stop to Pennsylvania's Partisan Gerrymandering and WP, New Pennsylvania Congressional Map Erases 1,100 Miles of District Borders and Reuters, Republicans Will Sue to Block Court-drawn Pennsylvania Congressional Map

...can't wait to hear Pennsylvania's lawyers tell our Supreme Court it must protect the unconstitutional process of allowing our politicians to pick their voters instead of protecting our voters' constitutional right to pick their politicians!...

...or that they need more time to produce more skewed congressional district map so they can use their really screwed skewed map for the upcoming May 2018 election!...

UPDATED 02/15/2018 ConstitutionDaily, Governor Rejects New Pennsylvania Voting Map (no approved map, no problem; just use the court approved special master's map)  and KHYY, GRAPHIC: Pa. Republican Leaders Propose New Congressional Map on Eve of Deadline and WP, GOP Leaders Unveil Revamped Pennsylvania Congressional Map and NYT, The Great Republican Power Grab and WP, Pennsylvania Has to Draw New Congressional Districts, but Getting Rid of Gerrymandering Will Be Harder Than You Think

UPDATED 02/08/2018 NYT, Eric Holder’s Group Targets All-G.O.P. States to Attack Gerrymandering
UPDATED 02/05/2018 Yes, Inside the Move to End Gerrymandering
UPDATED 12/14/2017 American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Redistricting and Representation


(see also, Arxiv, Evaluating Partisan Gerrymandering in Wisconsin, Gregory Herschlag, Robert Ravier, Jonathan C. Mattingly pdf)
UPDATED 08/28/2017 NewYorker, A Summer School for Mathematicians Fed Up with Gerrymandering and Wired, What I Learned at Gerrymandering Summer Camp and WP, The U.S. Could Be Free of Gerrymandering: Here’s How Other Countries Do Redistricting



UPDATED 06/25/2017 Census, 2020 Census Program Phases
UPDATED 06/24/2017 TUM, Greater Democracy Through Mathematics
UPDATED 06/22/2017 Loyola, All About Redistricting and Brennan Center for Justice, Redistricting
UPDATED 08/28/2017 Moon Duchin - Metrics of Fairness A geometric group theorist on gerrymandering:



UPDATED 06/22/2017 SnagFilms, How Elections Are Rigged - "Gerrymandering"


Wired, Gerrymandering Has a Solution After All. It's Called Math
Ballotpedia, Understanding Redistricting and Redistricting in Wisconsin


CrashCourse, Gerrymandering: Crash Course Government and Politics #37


Courthouse News Service, Supreme Court Takes Up Wisconsin Gerrymandering Case
NYT, Justices to Hear Major Challenge to Partisan Gerrymandering and CampaignLegalCenter, Supreme Court Will Hear Oral Arguments In Landmark Partisan Gerrymandering Case, Gill v. Whitford


Res:

UPDATED 03/11/2018 BrennanCenter, Extreme Maps and BrennanCenter, Partisan Gerrymandering
UPDATED 08/30/2017 DukeUniv, Quantifying Gerrymandering
UPDATED 07/17/2017 JoweiChen, The Impact of Political Geography on Wisconsin Redistricting: An Analysis of Wisconsin’s Act 43 Assembly Districting Plan
UPDATED 06/20/2017 Wikipedia, Gill v. Whitford and Gerrymandering in the United States
UPDATED 06/20/2017 Priceonomics, Can an Algorithm Eliminate the Unfairness of Gerrymandering?
UPDATED 06/20/2017 Hein, Chicago Law Review, Partisan Gerrymandering and the Efficiency Gap Nicholas 0. Stephanopoulost & Eric M McGheef
UPDATED 06/20/2017 Justia, Vieth v. Jubelirer  541 U.S. 267 (2004) and Davis v. Bandemer  478 U.S. 109 (1986)
Public Mapping Project, Wisconsin
Legislative Technology Services Bureau, Wisconsin Legislative Map Library (Includes Act 43)
GeoPlatform, United States Map with 114th Congressional District Overlay
 United States Census Bureau Wisconsin Congressional District Maps: 115th and 113th
Wisconsin's Application for Stay Pending Resolution of Direct Appeal
Gill v. Whitford Opinion and Order 15-cv-421-bbc (Western District Wisconsin)


 Redistricting Mathematics:
 
AP, Analysis Indicates Partisan Gerrymandering Has Benefited GOP

 Census Bureau:

"...At this stage in the life cycle of a decennial census, the Census Bureau would ordinarily be focused on fine-tuning systems and operations and not on making significant changes to its plans. The Task Force concluded that the DOC’s recent decision to add a question on citizenship status to the 2020 census is inconsistent with the “proper performance of the functions” of the Census Bureau, which was one of the areas where the DOC requested public comments..."--Letter Report on the 2020 Census--
Census, 2020 Census Program Management Review, Jan. 26, 2018






-----notes-----


1. UPDATED 09/26/2017 Special interests invest enormous sums of money to corrupt our legislatures, which returns a value near zero if "their" patron politician leaves office. A positive return on investment is more likely if "their" politician remains in office—enter gerrymandering. Eliminating gerrymandering will  decrease that chance and perhaps end the corrupting investments altogether?

Unfortunately, our United States Supreme Court has historically eschewed these "messy political issues" tending to characterize corrupting special interest investments as speech. But, before stalemate and standoff turns into shooting and deadlocked democracy it may want to reconsider what's messier, deadlocked democracy or political questions.


Interestingly, our United States Supreme Court can avoid a "messy political question" by turning it into a mathematics problem, here and there? For background on the case origin see Harvard Law Review, Whitford v. Gill District Court Offers New Standard to Hold Wisconsin Redistricting Scheme Unconstitutional. and Three Practical Tests for Gerrymandering: Application to Maryland and Wisconsin Samuel S.-H. Wang Princeton University 

Explore Gerrymandering in Your State Using Princeton Gerrymandering Project Tool and Info

2. A disobedient vassal is dissiesined from their "safe-seat" (fiefdom) when the overlords choose another perceived obedient vassal for a "primary challenge" against the disobedient vassal. Repossession and reconveyance of the "safe-seat" (fiefdom) by the overlords is known as "getting primaried".

Using the electoral process to make sure an obedient vassal perpetually occupies a "safe-seat" transforms "one-person-one-vote into one-vassal-no-vote and undermines a "representative democracy".

3. Our nation's current schism is likely more dangerous and detrimental than extreme partisanship would imply? Think of Carl Schmitt's "friend-enemy" distinction.
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