Collin C. Peterson Quotes

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

American voting districts are, across a lot of the country, deeply messed up by having been gerrymandered by right-wing politicians.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I've got the most beautiful district. I can understand why Republicans want it.

In Maryland, we have the unfortunate distinction of being the most gerrymandered state in the entire nation.

I think its time to get a reapportionment process that frankly takes out the incumbency protection and the raw politics of the process.

My State Senate district was in the northern part of Oklahoma and they were redrawing the districts.

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).

Reapportionment is not friendly to a lot of communities and it hasn't been too friendly to mine.

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

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

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.

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

There once was a time when people chose their congressmen. Now congressmen choose their people.

First they gerrymander us into one-party fiefs. Then they tell us they only care about the swing districts. Then they complain about voter apathy

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.

Redistricting is the nastiest form of politics that there is.

We have to end political gerrymandering in this country. We have to end it.

Bullies have played a dirty trick to force me out of office by re-drawing my Congressional district to cover a largely rural area of north Florida and include 22 prisons, and convicted felons can't vote.

I will be damned if the people in South Florida are going to dilute the legal votes of my constituents, who have a right to an honest, fair, representative republic.

Equal constituencies' sound fair. So why is Labour so against the constituencies bill and why do we call it gerrymandering? Because, like so much Tory rhetoric, it sounds good, but if we look beyond the soundbites it becomes clear that it covers policies that promote narrow sectional interests.