Gerrymandering

Tickets still available for Saturday 5/1 and our new screening on 5/2.  Click here for more.

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.

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…

Gerrymandering made the editorial page of the New York Times today.  The piece discusses the corrupted redistricting process in the New York legislature, but could easily have been written about similar political machinations in Illinois, Massachusetts or Florida.

In other news, I was interviewed about the film by CQ Weekly this afternoon. Will post a link when the story’s up.

I don’t watch the show, but maybe I should - this review suggests that some major plot developments have stemmed from the gerrymandering of school districts.

I wonder how something like this might have fit into the film…

When you can, check out Redistricting the Nation which just launched today.  It’s instantly one of the coolest, most accessible and user-friendly sites about redistricting going (and I’m not just shilling because they linked us on their homepage).  We had the good fortune to interview Dana and Tamara from Avencia, the generator of the project, a few weeks ago and are working them into the cut now.  Try drawing a district, or check out your own district’s compactness.

Off to Chicago for the NCSL Redistricting conference tonight…