Gerrymandering Contributing to Political Strife in the United States.

Gerrymandering. A word that draws contempt from the right and left. One of the few areas of agreement that everyone agrees should be changed and today that’s a rarity. Few issues are agreed upon these days by the far right and left, auditing the Federal Reserve, crime is bad, terrorism is bad and gerrymandering is bad. The two political parties jockey for control of state legislatures every ten years so as to draw up the most advantageous districts for their respective political parties. And we get dead elections as a result. We end up with Nancy Pelosi, the late John Murtha and 359 out of the 435 districts “safe” for the incumbent.

Florida 8th Congressional District

In 2000 98% of the incumbents won re-election and 64 incumbents did not even have an opponent. Incumbents out spend their opponents typically 9 to 1. Unless an incumbent gets caught in bed with a transvestite or tapping for sex in a bathroom stall their odds of winning are at least 90%. This allows the congress to go far right or left without fear of losing political power. Nancy Pelosi is perhaps the most corrupt incompetent Speaker of the House ever but she is assured of an easy victory come the fall of 2010. Why should she moderate her leadership style?

Florida 24th Congressional District

Here in Orlando we have two early front runners for the Republican nomination from District 8 and 24 that live 3.4 miles apart. Now as a city dweller I am ecstatic about this development, I hope they both win but it’s not representative of the other rural and inner city members of these districts. Who wouldn’t want double representation for Orlando and the suburbs? Hey I will take that in a New York minute.

The average congressional district is made up of 700,000 constituents and the population of Orlando and neighboring Winter Park where these two reside is 258,602. I feel bad for Titusville, New Smyrna, Port Orange, Deltona, Deland, Eustis and rural Marion County but it sure is good for us city dwellers. To be fair I should point out these are two of the 76 congressional districts that are competitive.

So how do you make elections more competitive? One simple way would be to mandate whenever possible any urban with a population over 500,000 have one representative. Urban areas including the suburbs should have one representative if possible. Splitting large urban areas with completely rural areas means one side or the other will not have representation. Urban areas should include the ghetto and the suburbs competing against each other. The rural areas will be huge districts but they will be represented. Does anyone in rural Marion County think they are being represented well by the far left loon Alan Grayson?

Alan Grayson is a city boy and he belongs in Orlando competing with Todd Long for the suburban vote including neighboring Winter Park. Winter Park and Orlando have been best buddies for decades and it makes little sense having two congressional representatives representing each city. But like I said if Todd Long and Karen Diebel win I will not be complaining. Works for me.