The New York Times reports that an exhaustive study of election results in 2022 finds almost half of all partisan races only had one candidate on the ballot. See the article here.
The New York Times reports that an exhaustive study of election results in 2022 finds almost half of all partisan races only had one candidate on the ballot. See the article here.
673 Partisan candidates in Michigan had no challenger. That includes “vote for 2” races where there were 2 positions to fill. The grand majority of those candidates were Republican. Usually these were County Commissioners or Township positions.
Single member districts make many, if not most, legislative districts non-competitive. Both major parties collude thru gerrymandering to create “safe” districts for each other, and limit the competitive districts to a handful in any given election. They are getting better at it across the country, such that the margin of seats controlling the House of Representatives is now only a handful. The Democrats may actually win the House this fall, but it won’t be by more than a half dozen seats.
Proposals to limit gerrymandering usually consist of establishing so-called “independent” commissions to do redistricting. These are usually only marginally successful, because the commissions are generally chosen in such way to insure equal representation of both major parties, generally to the exclusion or only marginal participation of anyone outside the two major parties.
A bolder solution, IMO, would be to encourage multi member districts such that the voters create their own virtual constituencies with their actual votes. One idea that i have mentioned before would be to require Congressional districts to be of a minimum geographic size, such as 1,000 square miles. In practice, this would mean that rural districts would generally continue to be single member, which I think is appropriate because rural areas tend to be demographically homogeneous, and that metro districts would tend to be multi-member.
New York Times? FAKE NEWS.
Better knowed as the Jew pork slime.
Archived copy: https://archive.ph/5Sr05
There is an interesting focus on urban v rural communities having election contests under-represented by Democrats and Republicans. That’s not an accident. It’s only in recent US history that state legislative district boundaries were drawn out of consideration of “fair districts” or criteria such as age, race, electoral history and other factors to draw them together. What was jerrymandering before to ensure a particular interest group is represented now includes political jerrymandering to create representative districts based on race which serves as a proxy for the urban v rural divide.
The quiet part of this article is the discussion on voters who have left the uniparty because of how ineffective their vote has become and how poorly represented these voters, often a plurality in a voting district, by the uniparty.
Townships are NOT gerrymandered because they are Townships. Most Michigan Townships have a Supervisor, a Treasurer, a Clerk, and 2 Trustees. Sometimes they have 4 Trustees.