How the GOP Rigs Elections ... gerrymandering, voter-ID laws, and dark money

[L. Coyote]

How the GOP Rigs Elections --- https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gop-rigs-elections-gerrymandering-voter-id-laws-dark-money-w515664
With a combination of gerrymandering, voter-ID laws and dark money, Republicans have tipped the political scales in their favor. Will it be enough to keep Democrats from claiming victory in 2018?
By Ari Berman

On a quiet, tree-lined street in Racine, Wisconsin, in a neighborhood known as the Danish Village for its Scandinavian ancestry, sits a two-story white house with a large American flag hanging from the porch and a pro-police "We Back the Badge" sign in the yard. It's the home of Republican state Sen. Van Wanggaard, a 65-year-old former cop whose blond hair resembles that of Dennis the Menace.

Two houses to the south, Wanggaard's state Senate district – the 21st – abruptly cuts off to exclude the rest of the largely Democratic neighborhood. This used to be one of the state's most competitive Senate districts, encompassing all of rectangular-shaped Racine County, a 50/50 mix of urban and rural communities in southeast Wisconsin. But since the GOP gained control of the state's government in 2010, and redrew the legislative maps, the district is now shaped like a horseshoe .................

[L. Coyote]

1. Ari Berman, "Give Us the Ballot"

Politics and Prose ---- Aug 19, 2015
What is a democracy without voters? The 1965 Voting Rights Act should have been a given; instead, it was a long struggle. One that is not over yet. Berman, a correspondent for The Nation, a frequent commentator on NPR and MSNBC, and the author of Herding Donkeys, shows that what looked like the grand achievement of the civil rights era has lost ground in the subsequent fifty years, embattled by gerrymandering, purging of voter rolls—notably in Florida in 2000—voter ID rules, and a Supreme Court decision declaring part of the law unconstitutional.

[L. Coyote]

2. Ari Berman: Voter Suppression May Have Thrown Wisconsin To Trump

The Majority Report with Sam Seder --- Oct 25, 2017

[uponit7771]

6. +1, makes sense to start to look at provisional ballets in VSM states like Wisconsin

[ProudLib72]

3. Look, they need all the help they can get

If this were a PE class picking dodge ball teams, the rethug would be the scrawny kid hiding behind the bleachers picking his nose, wetting himself and crying if anyone even looks at him. No one in their right mind would ever choose Peter Peepee for their team!

"Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I go gerrymander maps."

[L. Coyote]

4. Cheating is the last refuge of a dying party.

And this year, even that won't be near enough. The gig is up.

[Cha]

5. KICK!