Gerrymandering

 Pew explains how the Census colors Hispanic counts http://bitURL.net/?2bph9a.

As Mayor, Ed Koch (1978-1989) always asked New Yorkers: how’m I doing? At 85, he’s decided, we’re doing badly. 

In a New York minute, He’s plotting to reform Albany by purging the state legislature of change-resistant incumbents, pushing for nonpartisan 2010 reapportionment so that competitive challenges to incumbents are realistic.  As Koch said, “the most jealously guarded prerogative of the Legislature is its power to gerrymander districts to keep incumbents in office”

Read on: http://bitURL.net/?84d5av

GERRYMANDERING takes a good, hard look at New York! Stay Tuned!

Texas Lt. Gov Bill Hobby (1973-1991) pens a primer http://bitURL.net/?fmvt69  which offers three great examples of politics shaping census counts:

• In 1940, 13 percent more black men registered for the draft than were counted by the census in that age group.

• Sometimes overseas government personnel have been counted but not included. In 1986 Tom Foley from Washington state succeeded Tip O’Neill from Massachusetts as speaker of the House. In 1991 Congress included the overseas personnel and thereby shifted a seat and an electoral vote from Massachusetts to Washington state. Washington had 8,092 more people than Massachusetts. Would Massachusetts have lost the seat and the electoral vote to Washington had Tip O’Neill still been speaker? Go figure. As O’Neill famously remarked, “All politics is local.”

• Missionaries are not counted. After the 2000 census, Utah sued unsuccessfully for a fourth congressional seat and electoral vote at the expense of North Carolina, contending that Mormon missionaries serving overseas should be counted the same as overseas government personnel.

As a borderline Gen-X’er, it was with great pleasure to open my inbox this morning to find an e-mail from Krist Novoselic, now Chair of a great organization called Fair Vote, once upon a time the member of a band called Nirvana that people my age were really into.  Here’s a nice op-ed he’s put together about redistricting for the Seattle Weekly.

Happy 198th Birthday, Gerrymandering!  On this date in 1812, Elbridge Gerry signed into law the plan that was famously labelled the first gerrymander.  Of course, Patrick Henry tried to draw James Madison out of a district nearly a decade before…

Off to shoot again next week! On deck: New Orleans, and Anamosa, IA.

From the Wall Street Journal: Supreme Court Justice Stevens reiterates his objections to the practice of gerrymandering.

And yes, we’re still making a movie.  Off to shoot more in New Orleans and Iowa in a few weeks, then we’ll try to finish the sucker.

Oops.  Turns out that bashing the census and encouraging your constituents to avoid participation isn’t such a great idea when you’re in a state that might lose a seat in Congress.  I expect the ACORN/Census trashing to go dark in a number of states throughout 2010 as reps realize their districts might disappear entirely if their voters aren’t counted.

Here are my Top Twenty films of the decade, just for the hell of it:
1. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
2. The New World
3. Werckmeister Harmonies
4. Summer Hours
5. Syndromes and a Century
6. The Son
7. The House of Mirth
8. L’Intrus
9. Before Sunset
10. There Will Be Blood
11. Miami Vice
12. Millennium Mambo
13. I’m Not There
14. Twentynine Palms
15. Kings and Queen
16. Clean
17. Inland Empire
18. Bamboozled
19. Vera Drake
20. Colossal Youth

Check out Reverse Shot’s collective countdown.

Gerrymandering consulting producer Sharon Jimenez talks redistricting at LWV Orange County.  (.pdf so takes a bit to load)

The Chicago Sun-Times steps up with a big article on the need for redistricting reform.

Here’s a great story on the film that broke today at CQPolitics.  Bob did a great job of turning my ramblings into something coherent (I’m glad he left out my tangent on redistricting’s relationship to quantum physics; gotta save that stuff for the blog) and provided terrific background.

Not bad for a movie that’s not even done yet…