09-12-2019, 10:35 AM
(09-12-2019, 01:36 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: For starters, I didn't make any arguments, I gave data on the last election. Then I gave my opinion that the NC GOP was desperate and was willing to turn to undemocratic means of retaining power as the population shifted blue again.
Your response is also flawed in that it ignores the fact that my post references the extremely gerrymandered nature of the state where one party was fractured to ensure that another party had a comfortable cushion in politically diverse parts of the state. Prior to the 2012 changes, Democrats and Republicans traded control with 7-6 splits most elections, reflecting the balance within their state. There were 5 solid districts for each party and 3 swing districts. After gerrymandering, the split went 9-4 then 10-3 (7 solid R, 3 solid D) despite the same voters living in those areas. The Gerrymandering of the General Assembly is also well documented. The NC GOP continues to resist the courts orders to construct maps openly without the use of election data. They asked the courts to make a millionaire GOP operative who ran the first gerrymandering the "nonpartisan referee". They tried to use pre drawn maps and even planned on having the state lottery randomly draw numbers to select between one of the many skewed maps the GOP submitted.
So, sure, a popular vote split of district elections will not be proportional to seats won, but we're not talking about that. We're talking about a concerted effort to eliminate proportional representation by artificially creating the imbalance you described and ignoring requirements that the process be neutral.
Next time leave out the patronization at the end.
I would simply reply that you muddy the waters of your own argument when you include data that isn't relevant or could be misleading.
