Jonathan Hayward Quotes

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.

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

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

By using the latest sophisticated software, state legislatures can carve out districts that guarantee electoral victory for one party or the other, often in the service of protecting incumbents.

What's historically been referred to as 'gerrymandering' can more aptly be labeled an incumbent protection program.

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

Redistricting is the nastiest form of politics that there is.

[When redistricting] there is no such thing as non-partisan…. Beware of non-partisan, or bi-partisan staff bearing gifts. They probably are not your friends.

These districts at the federal and state level that are gerrymandered tend to produce a lot of extremism.

Gerrymandering at its essence is supposed to be used to reflect the changing geography to ensure representation. But we know that politics gets involved and it's used to benefit whoever's in control. That's the problem we have with gerrymandering.

…by gerrymandering the State, seven hundred Democratic votes were equal to one thousand Republican votes.

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

... elections are no longer representative.

There's no question about it, from a big picture standpoint, our No. 1 goal must remain reapportionment, because if we allow ourselves to get ruthlessly gerrymandered in reapportionment as we did last time, we can forget any reasonable chance of getting control of the U. S. House of Representatives until well into the next millennium.

The task of redistricting is best left to state legislatures, elected by the people and as capable as the courts, if not more so, in balancing the myriad factors and traditions in legitimate districting policies. The task of redistricting is best left to state legislatures, elected by the people and as capable as the courts, if not more so, in balancing the myriad factors and traditions in legitimate districting policies.

Redistricting makes the inequities in campaign financing even worse. Most elections are so noncompetitive due to how the lines are drawn that big donors already know who's going to win. So they give to the likely winners to curry favor.

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.

Around the nation, lawmakers have drawn up their districts with such perverse precision and aversion to competition, that legislators rarely face competitive challenges.

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).

The Republicans in the House and Senate took the district that I firmly represent, 22 in south Florida, from a D plus one to a D plus five almost a D plus six district, which means you are given a five to six percent registration advantage to Democrats. They drew in more Democrats into the district I represent.

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

The right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of a citizen’s vote just as effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise.

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

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

This new [redistricting] plan basically does away with the need for elections.