Michigan Gerrymandered Districts Favor Democrats?
A big issue this election season was the discussion around gerrymandered districts which Michigan’s Proposal 2 is supposed to fix.
Well if we look at the election results it appears that these gerrymandered districts actually helped Democrat candidates out. In an article published in Mlive the executive director of Voters Not Politicians, Katie Fahey, the group that successfully pushed for the redistricting-oriented Proposal 2 was quoted in the article stating:
I think that when you look at the election results and you see some of the districts where Democrats got 80-plus or 90-plus percent of the vote for a certain candidate, and yet in the other ones you see about a 60 percent vote for a Republican or a little less
Ms. Fahey how exactly can you have a district that votes “80-plus or 90-plus percent of the vote” for a certain party and their candidate and not think that district was not gerrymandered to vote for that party or candidate?
That means those districts she points to were and are gerrymandered to vote for Democrats. Again how do you get 90 plus percent of a large group of people to agree on one candidate? There are some districts in Michigan and around the country that Republicans do not even run a candidate in some elections.
Even Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, D-Flint appears to agree with me. He was quoted in that article stating:
Objectively, the Michigan Senate is the most gerrymandered chamber in the country. So obviously, I think we sent a strong message that we picked up five seats, the most since Watergate
If the districts were gerrymandered how did you pick up that many seats?
I think this past election proves that we do not appear to have that bad of a problem when it comes to gerrymandered districts.
Now do not get me wrong, as I say on my radio program if you need a pick me up and want a chuckle or an outright belly busting laugh look at the district map for the state of Michigan. That map was drawn by both the Republican and Democratic Party.
If fact click on the link below and give yourself a laugh:
We do need a fix to those districts but if we allow humans to still be involved in drawing those districts we will not fix the politics involved in redrawing those districts.