Gerrymandering is a term used for changing a voting district boundary to gain a political advantage. Sure, everybody knows what it is, but the question is how do they do it. We know it’s evil because the present administration is trying to make it happen. As a matter of fact they are in court fighting about it right now. They want to add a citizenship question to the the 2020 census. Okay we will get back to this in a moment. First lets do a little history. Gerrymandering is a eponym. Nope, I didn’t know what it meant either. I looked it up and it means a person, place, or thing after whom or after which something is named. The eponym for Elizabeth is Elizabethan, which refers to the time of Queen Elizabeth I. An example would be, ” In Elizabethan times a man dallied with the ladies and that’s why they found his body in the Thames River without it.”
Gerrymandering was named after Elbridge Gerry. He was a politician and Vice President under James Madison, the fourth President of the United States and one of the founders of the Democratic-Republican party, known today as the Republican party. Elbridge died a few months after being elected Vice President. They say he fell ill after visiting a friend, but that gerrymandering @##! is dangerous and they might have put it in his porridge. Anywho, he is one of the signers of the Constitution and is the only signer buried in Washington DC. He is buried in the Congressional Cemetery on 18 and E St SE. Marion Barry is also buried at this cemetery.
As I said earlier the present administration has declared a holy pilgrimage to the land of Gerrymander and they mean to get there. Besides the census attack, the president has derided the three-judge federal panel in North Carolina that ordered Tar Heel state to take it down. Their redistricting map was straight from the Confederate States Civil War Archives. Any black voting there better have a licence to carry. They are also attacking the Pennsylvania redistricting plan, which corrects the the unfair advantage Republicans had in the Presidential election. Some folks even say it was gerrymandering that got the President in the house.
So what is gerrymandering? Take a look at the slides below. But before we start we have to make an imaginary state. We will call it Sassymouth and the state motto is “Black sass won’t be tolerated.” Sassymouth has 20 Degromatics and 30 Racicans. The Degromatics live in the northern half of the state and the Racicans live in the southern half of the state.
Here is our state Sassymouth and its districts. There are five districts and each district sends one representative to hell. That’s right.. send them. The Degromatics send 2 representatives and the Racicans send 3 representatives. Now the Racicans don’t like it one bit that the Degromatics are sending 2 representatives. They want it all. Black sass will not be tolerated. So they they come up with a plan.
You will not be sending no one to hell today. The Racicans have gerrymandered the boundaries so that they have a majority vote in all the districts. Black sass will not be tolerated!!
Now say somehow there was a Klan meeting on election day and the Degromatics won the election. By using this gerrymandering scheme they could still send more representatives to hell than the Racicans although they are out numbered. Here in this example the Degromatics send 3 representatives. They change the state motto to “If you don’t know, now you know.” A GoFundMe account was set up immediately afterwards and the Racicans sent an order to China for 5000 rebel flags and 200 pillow cases.
Of course with the multitudes of districts these example are just simplistic. It takes some really evil and determined people to figure this @##! % out when you are dealing with a few thousand in a typical district. Not so much when you have a few hundred people, like many of the districts down south where most of the gerrymandering happens. I like to think the Washington Post for that last graphic. Trying to recreate that in Photoshop wasn’t happening. So that’s what gerrymandering is about. So if you are Racicans or Degromatics, this is some evil stuff. Have a great day and remember to check your porridge.
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