Emails Reveal Wisconsin GOP’s Gerrymandering Intended to “Waste” Opposition’s Votes

[hue]

http://wepartypatriots.com/wp/2012/08/07/emails-reveal-wisconsin-gops-gerrymandering-efforts-to-be-quite-dubious/

Merriam-Webster defines gerrymandering as the following: “to divide (a territorial unit) into election districts to give one political party an electoral majority in a large number of districts while concentrating the voting strength of the opposition in as few districts as possible.” With the dawn of each decade, the new census allows each state’s legislature to redraw its district maps to coincide with population shift. Standard practice has always been that districts are redrawn as fairly as possible while giving some leeway to protect the incumbent politicians of the party in power. The word gerrymandering, which has a negative connotation, comes from 1812. Then-Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry redrew districts to gain political advantage leaving some to be shaped like a salamander. Gerry + Salamander = Gerrymander.

In the modern age of technology — where emails always surface and nary a backroom deal goes un-unveiled — we now frequently get a look into how politicians manipulate the system to benefit their party for years to come. In Wisconsin, where the Tea Party hit the ground running in 2010, the notion of fairness was thrown out the GOP window going 75 on I-39.

New documents obtained by the Wisconsin State Journal show that Badger state Republicans did little to hide the political motivation behind their decisions. On May 4th, 2011, State Senator Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa) wrote to Tad Ottman, the aide of then-Sen. Majority leader Scott Fitzgerald, proclaiming her giddiness that the GOP was in charge of the gerrymandering saying, “This is such a big task. So glad we are in control!”

A look into Vukmir’s email reveals a desire to “waste” as many of the opposition’s votes as possible.

[Scuba]

1. Thanks for posting. Worth noting that the "both sides do it" argument is invalid. Re-districting..

... occurs only once each ten years, after the Census is conducted.

Wisconsin has never had one party in control of both halves of the Legislature when re-districting occurred.


Source: http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Redistricting_in_Wisconsin

[FBaggins]

2. How does that impact the "both sides do it" argument?

Do you really think that the Democrats are motivated solely by what it best for the state and not at all by a desire to have as many "D" districts as possible?

Or that redistricting would avoid all gerrymandering if we controlled the entire process?

Wisconsin has never had one party in control of both halves of the Legislature when re-districting occurred.

I think you mean that we never had control of the entire process. I think we controlled both halves of the legislature after both the 1980 and 1990 census (and republicans controlled it in the early 60s).