Raptorpat

mike pants

"The only people with the power to redistrict are sitting legislative majorities, who yes, can use that power to insulate themselves and their party. But don't worry, you have recourse! Your recourse is to use the electoral system to vote out those legislators who have already used this very power to insulate themselves from your criticism."

Each state has it's own laws that govern redistricting, so there are 50 different sets of rules. To make matters worse, Roberts wrote a SCOTUS decision that says federal courts have no jurisdiction (absent civil rights cases), so there are 50 different state supreme courts whose decisions can each only affect their respective state. So NY, like many Dem and swing states has a "independent" redistricting commission that is supposed to draw the lines in a bipartisan manner with input from both parties. This was codified in a state constitutional amendment, so the legislature can't override this process by passing a law (because if the constitution and statutes conflict, the constitution supersedes). They can to override the commission map with supermajorities, but the state court blocked a rewrite that was nakedly partisan - so there are limits. Texas and Florida have no equivalent requirements. There are the basic rules about having to redistrict after a census, but their statehouse majorities can do whatever they want, how often they want. Just naked partisanship, no restrictions. And now they're lining that up behind legal theory that intentionally race-based districts (to comply with the Civil Rights Act) are de facto illegal, even though SCOTUS hasn't thrown the CRA out yet, as their legal justification for deleting all the blue off the map. Ohio is a genuinely shitty case where reformers screwed up and then got doubly screwed. A public referendum passed placing restraints on OH redistricting, and as a penalty required a mandatory map rewrite after two cycles if a partisan map is adopted. Multiple state supreme court decisions struck down the maps as too partisan, and they literally just ran out the clock until it was too late to force a redraw. The outgoing chief justice (that the republicans ignored) spearheaded a second public referendum last cycle to fix the flaws in the system, and the republican secretary of state intentionally used blatantly misleading language on the ballot - asking voters if they want to allow gerrymandering - and so the referendum failed and naked partisanship won out again. And as it turns out, the forced redraw isn't actually a penalty - it just gives the republicans a built-in mid-decade opportunity to refine their map a little more. So NY and CA are trying to figure out how to get around their self-imposed rules to negate the shitty states. For NY, that requires another constitutional amendment. One was introduced in the legislature this week that would allow lawmakers to completely disregard the rules around the independent redistricting commission, specifically in the event where another state pursues a mid-decade redraw. But even if that was a good idea and voters approved it, the earliest it could take effect is the 2028 election. Granting legislatures the premiere authority to decide their own configuration is probably the single greatest, uncorrectable flaw in this entire system of democratic government. And that was 240 years before John Roberts said "yeah... and it's not our problem."

Happy birthday @SnapItCrackItPopIt!

* Since Andrew Cuomo’s stunning primary loss to Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani – and his subsequent independent campaign launch – not one of his previous elected backers has publicly reaffirmed their support for him in the general election. * In a closed-door meeting yesterday with some of the city’s biggest business leaders, Andrew Cuomo suggested he might adopt a more conciliatory strategy towards President Donald Trump if elected New York City mayor, The New York Times reports.

i think you pasta'd the wrong link

I don't really go on for work, someone linked something and I stumbled into it within two minutes.

I had had a report rejection on a literal neo-nazi and I asked the grok which basically agreed twitter is terrible and walked me through how to request a manual report, because there's no direct way to appeal a rejection. stupidest timeline I swear

If they do a full-fledged census redo, I don't think it would actually be a full redo. They would just lie and come up with excuses to say the 2020-22 numbers were wrong or that they're subtracting estimates of undocumented people (even though excluded them violates the constitution). But TX, OH, and FL are just rewriting their maps because they can, another census isn't actually necessary.

Florida’s Republican House Speaker wades into Trump’s redistricting war By Romy Ellenbogen Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau August 7, 2025 2:15 PM https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article311623357.html

MrD deserves a lot of things YOU HEAR THAT @MrD1718

happy birthday @LoverDemon!

Adams was denied matching public funds on account of all the campaign finance violations.