If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention......

[osodecanela]

I will readily admit, I am a left of center, dyed in the wool liberal. (This is the beginning of a quasi-political essay, so if you have no interest in American politics, tab on forward.)

Yesterday marked a very sad day in the history of the American labor movement; Michigan became the 24th 'right-to-work' state in the union. Why is this important? 'Right-to-work' states have over all lower wages and lower benefits for most workers. After the rather decisive election the Republican-controlled legislature in Michigan realizing that they were going to be significantly less Republican after the first of the year, very rapidly pushed through this right-to-work legislation to get it to the Republican governor tout suite for his signature. "It's all about jobs, jobs, jobs," is the Republican mantra. The governor states he's trying to keep jobs from moving to Indiana.

As I watched the coverage on this last night, on Rachel Maddow, I found myself scratching my head. Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and even Ohio went rather solidly for Barack Obama at the polls last month. Why is there such a staunch Republican control in their state legislatures, and for that matter their executive branches? As a Californian, this makes very little sense to me. It turns out there has been significant gerrymandering in all of these states, not to mention elsewhere. Sadly, it got significantly worse after the 2010 census. As Democrats, we did not show up to the polls as we needed to in 2010. Democrats as you may recall, lost control of the house at that point. This was also however the year of the census, which has brought about subsequent redistricting in much of this country due to shifts in our population. Republicans have been extremely adroit in redistricting making it so there are lines drawn concentrating Democrats in just a handful of places, and splintering remaining populations so that Republicans are favored. This is led to some very surprising results for those of us who thought we were on a level playing field. When you look at the total number of registered Republican versus Democratic voters, to see state delegations that are so lopsidedly Republican, when the number of registered voters are not is disturbing to say the least. According to statistics that Rachel Maddow quoted last night, it takes roughly 2 1/2 registered Democrats to equal the voting power of one registered Republican.

California underwent redistricting last year, done by a nonpartisan commission, as opposed to many other states where the party in power in 2010, had the ability to redraw the districts. Further in our primary system it's now the top two vote getters that will face each other at the election, no matter their party. This led to districts where two people of the same party actually faced each other in November. It is also interesting to note that post redistricting, Democrats now hold a super-majority in both our state senate and house. Further, in all the years that I have lived in California I've never had it take more than 20 min. to be able to vote. I look at the reports from Florida and Ohio where voters spent hours upon hours in lines waiting to cast their ballots, and for the life of me, I do not understand why this is the case in this country in 2012.

This strikes me as being about control of power, nothing more. In a representative democracy, one that holds itself up to be a model for the remainder of our world to follow, how is this the current state of affairs within this country?

Comments

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Gerrymandering is very open and explicit; districts are drawn by sophisticated computer programs operating on census and other data, so as to maximize the chances of Republicans being elected in those areas. Democratic strongholds are broken up while Republican majorities are entrenched. It would not surprise me if Democrats did it at every opportunity as well, it's literally standard procedure now. It's a fascinating bit of operations research going on there, unfortunately it's not healthy for democracy.

[osodecanela.livejournal.com]

My point precisely. Gerry-mandering has been around for a long time. The term itself goes back the the early 1800's and that it's still an acceptable practice is itself unacceptable, at least to me.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I look at the reports from Florida and Ohio where voters spent hours upon hours in lines waiting to cast their ballots, and for the life of me, I do not understand why this is the case in this country in 2012.

I can't find it now, but a member of Obama's campaign team had a good essay about how this came about. Basically, it was mostly due to a combination of (a) budget cuts due to the parlous state of finances in many municipalities and (b) unexpectedly high turnout. And the effect was worse because (b) was especially high in areas suffering from (a), because a lot of the unanticipated turnout was made up of minorities and young people, who tend to be concentrated in less well-off urban areas. That's why one of my neighbours had to wait several hours to cast his vote in Chicago, a solidly Democratic city in Obama's home state. (The decennial census, which shifted around polling places for thousands, also didn't help at all.)

Of course, you may well be aware of all that and really be asking, "What the hell are our priorities the money was taken away from the elections budget in the first place?" For that, the best answer is that low turnout favours incumbency so there's not much incentive for politicians to favour policies promoting full enfranchisement.

[osodecanela.livejournal.com]

Hmm, social marginalization. Imagine that.

It's a perpetuation of power and wealth into the hands of the powerful and the wealthy. I am not a fan of oligarchy, particularly when it perpetuates suffering. The marginalization of people and their ability to access adequate healthcare radicalizes me more each passing year.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Word.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

I've never experienced a major wait to vote, either in Oregon or here in California. I find the ridiculous waits in some other states offensive - there's simply NO excuse for the 8+ hour waits I've heard of. We keep hearing what a mess California's finances are in - but we can still manage to have a properly run election!

I'm still not sure how I feel about the "top two" system - but having the districts drawn by the nonpartisan commission is a wonderful thing, and something that I hope people in states that have been gerrymandered to hell start pushing for in their own states.

(I kinda wish our law went a bit further, requiring the commission to publish an explanation as to why the districts are what they are - but maybe that's gilding the lily.)

[putzmeisterbear.livejournal.com]

It is beyond outrageous. Beyond Appalling.

[broduke2000.livejournal.com]

I've been voting my mail for about a decade now. So, since they count those ballots last, I never get to actually see my vote do anything on TV, other than contribute to the final tally a week later.

And then I don't know if it's even counted. The instructions say my signature has to match in order to count. How do I know how I signed in, a decade ago?

[blachubear.livejournal.com]

Everytime I hear stories of these hungry power GOP governors & congressmen in the house, it always come back that day on November 2010 when Americans decided to stay home for different reasons. I know that mistake will cost the middle class & the poor dearly. Now voters know that all elections are very important including dog catcher. You should also Google the story "The Fiscal Cliff Talks Might Be John Boehner's Last Stand As Speaker". It talks about Boehner's just playing tough to not sign the deal until January 3rd, the day they'll vote for Speaker Of The House. So instead of solving the country's problem, all he cares about is keeping his position as Speaker? What a bunch of assholes. Oh yeah Ed Shultz mention on his show that a couple of GOP Congressmen is playing politics with the funding to fix the places that was hit hard in New York & New Jersey during Hurricane Sandy. Again, what a bunch of assholes.

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

Texas is a right to work state and has been as long as I can remember. I consider myself left of center but I'm not a fan of labor unions, I like the idea, and I recognize the contributions of the labor movement to the quality of modern work life, but I think unions do a disservice to their members. The way you protect and empower workers is by creating a workforce that can compete on quality, expertise, experience, excellence and efficiency, not by writing make work rules into contracts. I've experienced too many stupid union rules to ever want to support one. (Examples - "if you need to make more than 10 copies, or copy more than 10 pages, you must submit your job to the union print shop, not use the entirely convenient copier in the hallway", "if a piece of test equipment needs to be moved from one test bench to another two feet away, you must submit the job to the union logistics service which will take 2 days to accomplish your 30 second task", "engineers may not use soldering irons, all rework tasks must be scheduled through the union electrical technician shop, even though you only need connect two wires together". And so on - these are actual rules in actual places I've worked.
Unions are a good example of good ideas gone bad. To my mind hiring a union shop should mean that I'm getting the absolute best workforce money can buy, and then I won't mind paying a premium to get it. Too often work rules seem to protect union workers from competition by workers who can do a better job. It's the opposite of a meritocracy.