Election Data Services has analyzed population estimates, and predicts that the census of 2010 will result in shifting eight electoral votes from the east and midwest, to the south and west. Texas is expected to gain 3 new US House seats. States gaining one new US House seat will be Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Utah. The eight states each losing one US House seat will be Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
Here we go with redistricting in Texas…
API: Nobel Laureate [and Political Activist] Harold Pinter dies at 78
By PAISLEY DODDS, Associated Press Writer Paisley Dodds, Associated Press Writer –
LONDON – British Nobel laureate Harold Pinter — who produced some of his generation’s most influential dramas and later became a staunch critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq — has died, his widow said Thursday. He was 78.
In recent years he had seized the platform offered by his 2005 Nobel Literature prize to denounce President George W. Bush, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the war in Iraq.
His writing featured cool, menacing pauses in dialogue that reflected his characters’ deep emotional struggles and spawned a new adjective found in several dictionaries: “Pinter-esque.”
“How can you write a happy play?” he once said. “Drama is about conflict and degrees of perturbation, disarray. I’ve never been able to write a happy play, but I’ve been able to enjoy a happy life.”
Pinter wrote 32 plays; one novel, “The Dwarfs,” in 1990; and put his hand to 22 screenplays.
The working-class milieu of his first dramas reflected his early life as the son of a Jewish tailor from London’s East End.
During the late 1980s, his work became more overtly political; he said he had a responsibility to pursue his role as “a citizen of the world in which I live, (and) insist upon taking responsibility.”
Pinter turned down former Prime Minister John Major’s offer of a knighthood and strongly attacked Blair when NATO bombed Serbia. He later referred to Blair a “deluded idiot” for supporting Bush’s war in Iraq.
He said he deeply regretted having voting for Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
The prize gave Pinter a global platform, from which he frequently and bitterly decried the Iraq war.
“The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law,” Pinter said in his Nobel lecture, which he recorded rather than traveling to the Swedish capital of Stockholm.
“How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?” he asked, in a hoarse voice.
In March 2005, Pinter announced his retirement as a playwright to concentrate on politics. But he created a radio play, “Voices,” that was broadcast on BBC radio to mark his 75th birthday.
Pinter’s influence was felt in the United States in the plays of Sam Shepard and David Mamet.
Friend and biographer Michael Billington said Pinter “was a political figure, a polemicist and carried on fierce battles against American foreign policy and often British foreign policy.
___
Associated Press writers Jill Lawless and Robert Barr in London and Michael Kuchwara in New York contributed to this report.
Washington State’s population grew by 660,000 since 2000. That increase should merit a house seat for the Evergreen State?
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420ap_wa_population_northwest.html
Latest and greatest computerized ANTI-Democracy minority rule gerrymanders in ALL States ALL the time.
Half the votes in half the gerrymander districts is about 25 percent minority rule.
Much worse in the U.S.A. Senate due to many small States.
P.R. and A.V. NOW before it is too late.
Good! More Congressional seats for the liberty-loving GOP, less for the Fascist Democrats. The Dems can steal elections with their ACORN fraud, Kennedy coronations, and their Al Franken antics, but Republicans will steal win in the end with the support of the American people.
Do you have a brain?
All ACORN tried to do was help black americans register to vote in states were the voting offices do nothing to help these people get on the role and create obstacles to keep registered republicans in the majority
The al franken recount is probably one of the most democractic and open recounts ever in the usa; what has happened in minnesota should have happened in 2000
Eric Dondero Says:
December 26th, 2008 at 5:02 am
“Republicans will steal win in the end …”
Yes. This is true. The Republicans will TRY to steal a win in the end …
… but the Republican party is the greatest enemy to liberty in America today. It must die, and it is dying now.
Of course, the Dems are, as a party, evil Fascists. The greens are, as a group, Earth Nazis. The so called Constitution party is a bunch of theocratic Christian socialists. And the various socialists, being socialists, are off in various areas of LaLa Land.
But, the Republicans have been forcing their “common values” on us for far too long. They are the American Communist party and they must die.
Liberty loving GOP? Thats a rich one. More like big government shills.
I can accept that both the GOP and Democratic Party, in their current mold, are almost inherently flawed.
Richard,
Considering that there is talk of increasing the size
of the House to 437 members by giving D. C. a voting
seat and Utah the other to balance the membership
change, it would be interesting to see how that would
affect the 2010 realignmnet. After all, Utah would
already have its 4th seat and with a net gain of one
“new” seat it would prove interesting to see whether
one of the states expected to lose a seat would still
do so or would some other state gain a seat. I notice
also that California is currently not expected to gain
any seats. If that shoud occur it would be the first
time in California’s membership in these United States
that has not happened. It would be further proof that
California has finally become a ‘mature state’. Anyway
we should have some interesting fireworks in 2011 when
we know exactly which states have a change in their
House membership.
Liberty loving GOP? Sure, Der Ahnold Schwartz En Fakers horrible, horrible CALVETS/ CDVA! President Cheney’s and Bush II’s Walter Reed Hospital! The [false] Patriot Act I! The [false] Patriot Act II! Republicrats love Free Speech, like the Democans, you are free to say all the things they want to hear!
——- Donald Raymond Lake, Used Abused and Not Amused!
Krist,
Technically, you’re correct, it SHOULD warrant a new seat, but under an early twentieth century statute which limits the House size, unfortunately, it doesn’t. As long as it is not challenged more and more states will be short-changed seats every ten years.
However if we push for a review of the House size, or for that matter, the states finish passing the 18th century “Article the First” amendment, which would grant a house seat for every thirty to fifty thousand people, and would increase to mirror the population size after every census, we could see some real change in the political landscape.
BTW, Krist, if you read this, a while back I remember you presented a proposal for a proportional representation plan for the Washington State House on your site fixour.us. Are you still planning on getting that going? Thanks.
I have a proposal that would allow the House to grow at approximately the current rate of population growth.
The least populous State would be the “base” by which Representatives are apportioned.
Current apportionment using my proposal
State 2000 Census Population House members
United States 281,421,906 570
California 33,871,648 69
Texas 20,851,820 42
New York 18,976,457 38
Florida 15,982,378 32
Illinois 12,419,293 25
Pennsylvania 12,281,054 25
Ohio 11,353,140 23
Michigan 9,938,444 20
New Jersey 8,414,350 17
Georgia 8,186,453 17
North Carolina 8,049,313 16
Virginia 7,078,515 14
Massachusetts 6,349,097 13
Indiana 6,080,485 12
Washington 5,894,121 12
Tennessee 5,689,283 12
Missouri 5,595,211 11
Wisconsin 5,363,675 11
Maryland 5,296,486 11
Arizona 5,130,632 10
Minnesota 4,919,479 10
Louisiana 4,468,976 9
Alabama 4,447,100 9
Colorado 4,301,261 9
Kentucky 4,041,769 8
South Carolina 4,012,012 8
Oklahoma 3,450,654 7
Oregon 3,421,399 7
Connecticut 3,405,565 7
Iowa 2,926,324 6
Mississippi 2,844,658 6
Kansas 2,688,418 5
Arkansas 2,673,400 5
Utah 2,233,169 5
Nevada 1,998,257 4
New Mexico 1,819,046 4
West Virginia 1,808,344 4
Nebraska 1,711,263 4
Idaho 1,293,953 3
Maine 1,274,923 3
New Hampshire 1,235,786 3
Hawaii 1,211,537 2
Rhode Island 1,048,319 2
Montana 902,195 2
Delaware 783,600 2
South Dakota 754,844 2
North Dakota 642,200 1
Alaska 626,932 1
Vermont 608,827 1
Wyoming 493,782 1
How big of a mob scene – i.e. de facto DICTATORSHIP — is wanted in the gerrymander U.S.A. House of Reps ???
P.R. Now —
Total Votes / Total Seats = Equal votes needed for each seat winner — using pre-election candidate rank order lists.
How many factions of the public are there — in addition to the standard left/right and the moronic battleground middle — who do not know what they are ???
#12 The unratified Article 1, proposed in 1789 would set a floor of 200 representatives and a cap of one representative per 50,000 persons.
Any number of representatives between 200 and around 6000 would be constitutional, including the current 435.