Maryland Congressional Districts
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Anonymous
| Can someone explain how Maryland has the most insane freakshow Congressional District maps in probably the entire country? How did they get that way? How is it legal? I don't even think Jackson Pollack could come up with patterns like the ones that make up MD Congressional Districts. What is the history behind them? |
Anonymous
The Supreme Court decided that it didn’t care about gerrymandering. Maryland Democrats have a supermajority in the state legislature and the party is concerned about holding the House. And Maryland is one of about three or four states with a strong Democratic gerrymander while the Republicans have about 20 of them. Also Steny Hoyer really wants the University of Maryland in his otherwise southern Maryland district for some weird reason that I don’t know, other than he went there. |
Anonymous
| Also, they were normal until the Republicans started gerrymandering all those other aforementioned states after the 2000 census. |
Anonymous
Connie Morella (R) was gerrymandered out in 2003. Roscoe Bartlett (R) was gerrymandered out in 2013. Don’t pretend both parties do do this. And Maryland Democrats are trying to gerrymander the last Republican congressman, Andy Harris, out of office. |
Anonymous
Both parties absolutely do this. The Republicans have trifectas in way more states so they do it a lot more. |
Anonymous
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Stop talking about other states. No one cares if you're a MD resident. Because other states do something wrong means you have the green light to do the same thing wrong too.
MD districts are the most insane maps I've ever seen. |
jsteele
Site Admin Online
Site Admin Online
I disagree with the bolded. Because Republican-led states have engaged in severe gerrymandering, they have gained an advantage in Congress. The choice left to Democrats was to either to unilaterally disarm and let Republicans continue their advantage or to engage in the same behavior. Democrats in Maryland, Illinois, and New York have chosen to copy Republican tactics. At the same time, Congressional Democrats support a federal anti-gerrymandering law. Republicans oppose such a law. Therefore, if you want sane maps, you should support the Democrats' efforts. |
Anonymous
Yes, that was after the 2000 census as I pointed out above. 2003 was the first year she wasn’t in office, because she lost in the 2002 election which was the first one since lines were redrawn after the 2000 census. Just like this fall’s elections will be the first since the 2020 census.
Yes, see above, but that was after the 2010 census. Republican gerrymandering got way worse after the Tea Party wave election. Maryland reacted by trying to gain a seat for the party since they were getting outfoxed by Republican legislatures in dozens of other states.
Why are you pretending they don’t? “In the 26 states that account for 85 percent of congressional districts, Republicans derive a net benefit of at least 16 to 17 congressional seats in the current Congress from partisan bias. Just seven states account for almost all of the bias. Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania consistently have the most extreme levels of partisan bias. Collectively, the distortion in their maps has accounted for seven to ten extra Republican seats in each of the three elections since the 2011 redistricting, amounting to one-third to one-half of the total partisan bias across the states we analyzed. Florida, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia have less severe partisan bias but jointly account for most of the remaining net extra Republican seats in the examined states.” https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/extreme-maps State courts have had to repeatedly overturn Republican-drawn maps in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Here’s a map of the worst states for gerrymandering as of 2017 according to the Election Integrity Project. Admittedly Maryland is orange but there are a whole bunch of other states that are red for more than one reason. 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uo2mtb5oyl5bu1k/PEI-US-2016%20Report.pdf?dl=0
Actually, there were some other options that were way worse for Harris that they didn’t pick. Here’s one; it even looks less “insane freakshow” than the one that passed: |
Anonymous
You haven't seen Texas and Ohio, I take it? Why is gerrmandering bad for the Dems, but perfectly fine for the GOP? We should end ALL gerrymandering, but if the GOP is going to do it, then the Dems should be allowed to as well. |
Anonymous
I don't give a crap about Texas. I live in the DMV...Dems go on and on about voter rights an gerrymandering, yet they have one of the most epic freakshows in the entire country right in these parts in MD. Talk about hypocrisy. How can you possibly stand for voters rights and stand against gerrymandering when you yourself are one of the worst offenders in the entire country? And based on the reading I've done, MD's freakish mutant districts that look like metastisizing cancers have been around a lot longer than most other states' gerrymandered districts. Dems really taught everyone else how to do it base in what they did in MD. |
Anonymous
OK so you asked a question, received multiple factual answers, and yet you still have the same questions that have already been answered, just with terrible cancer analogies. You may not care about Texas but the Democrats who make up the supermajority in the Maryland state legislature care about the composition of the U.S. House of Representatives. And all you want is for Democrats in Democratic states to unilaterally disarm - like we have in many states which already use an independent commission for drawing district lines - so the Congressional Republicans can have all of the advantages that gerrymandering offers. And no, twenty years is not “a lot longer than most other states.” Conservatives have been gerrymandering the Deep South forever. Connie Morella was at my wedding and she would want you to stop asking the same questions over and over. |
Anonymous
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The answer is that whether Democrat or Republican, Maryland politics have always and historically been - and the Assembly in particular- one of the most corrupt in the country. We are talking centuries of corruption.
For example, until the state Constitution was amended by ballot initiative in 2020, Maryland was the only state in the country where the legislative branch did not have authority over the state budget. The Governor would propose a budget and the Assembly could only vote it up or down. They could not change or amend it. The voters of Maryland changed the Constitution in 1916 to take this power away from the Assembly because they were disgusted with the levels of corruption. Also keep in Maryland that Maryland’s history of having state and local politicians go to prison is a decades long tradition that is unmatched. Our most successful statewide politician, Spiro Agnew, ended up in jail. More recently we have Mosby, Pugh, Dixon, Leopold, etc. It is not normal for a state to have so many corrupt officials. It’s baked into the political culture and DNA of Maryland just as much as Old Bay. So it should surprise no one that Maryland has that most ridiculously and shamelessly gerrymandered Congressional districts in the country. |
Anonymous
Illinois say: hold my beer |
Anonymous
Oh. So you mostly wanted to rant. Okay. And no, this didn’t start with the Dems. If the Dems were going to start a trend that would actually be replicated by Republicans, it would be much more likely to start with something like strengthening voting rights. |
Anonymous
At least Illinois has Lincoln and Obama to call their own. Maryland has William Donald Schafer? |