I am originally from Texas. The fourth largest city is there. 3 of the top 10 largest cities are there and 5 of the top 20. There is also a large Hispanic population. When you look at demographics, Texas is very purple and could easily go blue.
Texas Republicans aren't idiots. They are well aware of this fact and worked to mitigate it. Gerrymandered to hell so that areas that would be blue are now mixed with predominantly red areas to dilute the vote.
Basically, Republicans can only win by cheating. I mean, they could play fair and say "hey, a ton of people don't like our policies. Let's listen to the constituents and see what we can do to adjust part of our platform to win them over". Instead "look, we are the party of the wealthy and the angry white guys. Let's keep this train going"
I agree, but would like to point out that they abandoned small government conservatism 30 years ago, republicans are now the party of the police state and authoritarianism. Them being fiscally conservative is as much a lie as the WMDs in Iraq were.
NPR was running a story about that conservative Gerrymandering consultant that passed away last year.. and his daughter found his/their plans for the Census and other stuff...
Anyways, I was shocked at what he has historically said out loud. Seemingly to a pretty open committee he just overtly stated, "Normally, the people get to vote for the candidate, but re-districting allows the Politicians to pick the voters..." and more.
I was like super-villain shit. I know it's news, but I a little surprised I'm not hearing more about it. It 100% shows who and what the conservatives are doing as the minority party in this country that allows them to (up until recently) control all 4 branches of the government and most state governments.
JayNotAtAll on June 8th, 2019 at 14:10 UTC »
I am originally from Texas. The fourth largest city is there. 3 of the top 10 largest cities are there and 5 of the top 20. There is also a large Hispanic population. When you look at demographics, Texas is very purple and could easily go blue.
Texas Republicans aren't idiots. They are well aware of this fact and worked to mitigate it. Gerrymandered to hell so that areas that would be blue are now mixed with predominantly red areas to dilute the vote.
https://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2018/aug/16/beto-orourke/texas-one-nations-most-gerrymandered-states/
https://m.chron.com/news/politics/texas/article/Ranking-Texas-most-gerrymandered-districts-13024898.php
They also put in efforts to make voting difficult in bluer areas.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/investigation-into-alleged-voter-suppression-in-texas-kansas-expanded-by-house-oversight-committee/2019/03/28/3e2ace74-5190-11e9-8d28-f5149e5a2fda_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8cc832925e01
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/kz58qx/how-the-gutting-of-the-voting-rights-act-led-to-closed-polls
Basically, Republicans can only win by cheating. I mean, they could play fair and say "hey, a ton of people don't like our policies. Let's listen to the constituents and see what we can do to adjust part of our platform to win them over". Instead "look, we are the party of the wealthy and the angry white guys. Let's keep this train going"
theclansman22 on June 8th, 2019 at 15:15 UTC »
I agree, but would like to point out that they abandoned small government conservatism 30 years ago, republicans are now the party of the police state and authoritarianism. Them being fiscally conservative is as much a lie as the WMDs in Iraq were.
lasssilver on June 8th, 2019 at 15:24 UTC »
NPR was running a story about that conservative Gerrymandering consultant that passed away last year.. and his daughter found his/their plans for the Census and other stuff...
Anyways, I was shocked at what he has historically said out loud. Seemingly to a pretty open committee he just overtly stated, "Normally, the people get to vote for the candidate, but re-districting allows the Politicians to pick the voters..." and more.
I was like super-villain shit. I know it's news, but I a little surprised I'm not hearing more about it. It 100% shows who and what the conservatives are doing as the minority party in this country that allows them to (up until recently) control all 4 branches of the government and most state governments.