Carol Moseley Braun Quotes

California is among several states that already have fought their way out from under partisan gerrymandering by taking line-drawing authority away from the Legislature.

Try to un-gerrymander these districts so that you're not packing all the Democrats into one district, so you've got districts that are competitive, so that you've got a shot at electing Democrats. But that's more a long-term proposition, if it can even be done.

Redistricting is one of the purest actions a legislative body can take.

Redistricting reform is one of the most important issues we can tackle.

Redistricting is a deeply political process, with incumbents actively seeking to minimize the risk to themselves (via bipartisan gerrymanders) or to gain additional seats for their party (via partisan gerrymanders).

We cannot always count on a severely gerrymandered legislature itself to find and implement a remedy [to gerrymandering.]

In democracy, as quaintly understood, voters pick their representatives. American democracy increasingly reverses that. Legislative districts are drawn to protect incumbents who, effectively, pick their voters.

Political gerrymandering makes the incentive for most members of Congress to play to the extremes of their base rather than to the center.

Even in Madison’s day, the practice of gerrymandering for partisan advantage was familiar. In the late seventeen-eighties, there were claims that Patrick Henry had tried to gerrymander Madison himself out of the First Congress. The term was coined during Madison’s Presidency, to mock Elbridge Gerry, the governor of Massachusetts, who in 1811 approved an election district that was said to look like a salamander.

So the - the part of the problem is not just the rhetoric. It's the fact that we - we're so polarized in what we've done to each other as parties over the last thirty years in redistricting that it's very, very hard to overcome your own constituencies and move to the middle.

I think I've had my fill of electoral law.

The composition of the primary is so different than when I was first elected governor in 1978.

My tentative plan is to gerrymander all of those crazy libs right out of the section and replace them with right-thinking Americans..

Properly done gerrymandering will increase the weight of some votes and nullify the effect of others, in order to ensure with near certainty that elections will yield the outcome desired by the incumbents.

Political gerrymanders existed in colonial times and continued through the framing. The Framers provided a remedy for the problem: the Constitution gives state legislatures the initial power to draw federal election districts, but authorizes Congress to “make or alter” those districts

If legislators are allowed to continuously redistrict throughout the decade, you are going to have no way of using elections to remove unpopular officeholders because the lines will be redrawn to ensure their reelection.

Redistricting has always taken place behind closed doors, with zero public input

As nearly as practicable one man's vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another's.

No one ever asserts that politics has no role in apportionment or redistricting.

It has become a cliché that voters no longer choose their legislators. The legislators choose their voters.

In our system today, many people don’t have to win general elections; they just have to win primaries.

Redistricting will determine the future control of Congress.

Every individual who participated in the redistricting process knew that incumbency protection was a critical factor in producing the bizarre lines.... Many of the oddest twists and turns of the Texas districts would never have been created if the Legislature had not been so intent on protecting party and incumbents

Considering the question of Reform … the Queen thinks the proposal of merely adding neighboring towns to the small boroughs an improvement on the original plan, which contemplated the taking away of members from some boroughs, and giving them to others. Thus the animosity may be hoped to be avoided which an attack upon vested interests could not have failed to have produced. Much will depend, however, upon the completeness, fairness, and impartiality with which the selection of the towns will be made which are to be admitted into the electoral district of others.

Gerrymandering is not hard. The core technique is to jam voters likely to favor your opponents into a few throwaway districts where the other side will win lopsided victories, a strategy known as “packing.” Arrange other boundaries to win close victories, “cracking” opposition groups into many districts.