Kamala Harris did not actually lose the 2024 election to Donald Trump. The election rules are unfair, and if Democrats had been able to write better rules that would have allowed more people who liked their policies to vote, Harris would have won. Democrats need to change these rules before the next election to win more votes.
That’s crazy, right?
Well, hold off on that anger.
Last week, after the election of Shomali Figures as Alabama’s newest congressman to represent Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District, several Alabama Republican Party officials, including a former party chairman, basically said that I I recorded everything I said.
The numbers won out because the district boundaries were drawn “oddly.” Republican candidate Caroleen Dobson didn’t actually lose, she just fell victim to a bad map. And to solve this problem, the Republican Party will have to redraw its boundaries, drive those hateful progressive voters who care about their health care and public schools out of their districts, and put more Republican sycophants in there. need to be collected.
OK, I’ve paraphrased a bit, but that’s basically what they said. And they said it out loud, as if it were completely normal.
Past Chairman Terry Lathan said: I don’t know that it (the election) was as wrong as the way the lines were drawn, the way the courts drew the lines. I don’t think this is the end. However, the result of the race must be accepted. CD2 had a very strange line to draw. ”
I agree with Lathan on one point. This district was very strangely painted. At least for Alabama.
Because the line is fair.
A federal court has appointed a special master to draw new district lines for Alabama CD2, following a shocking ruling from the most conservative U.S. Supreme Court in three generations. This happened because Republican lawmakers in Alabama created unconstitutional districts that discriminated against black voters. And those same lawmakers refused to fix that problem even after the Supreme Court’s ruling, choosing instead to entrench racism in the history books.
Federal courts did not give black voters an advantage when selecting new maps for the district. Instead, 48.7 percent of the district’s voting-age residents are black, giving black voters a rationale to form coalitions with like-minded white voters to elect candidates who best represent them. was given a great opportunity.
look? Odd number.
The insanity that adults would find such an arrangement “weird” is truly insane when you step back and think for a moment about how all of this works.
Let’s start with this. Voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around.
ALGOP and Dobson (or any other candidate) have every opportunity to consider what CD2 residents value and want from their representatives and shape their platform to better align with voters. did. That’s how representative government works.
Instead, for some reason, many people find it perfectly natural in today’s political world for parties to field a cookie-cutter group of candidates and then shape districts around the party’s policy agenda. He seems to believe that there is.
That’s no good. Not for either party.
And for someone to say something so loudly and for other people, nay, voters to agree with it, is absolutely amazing. What is everyone doing?
No member of our nation’s legislature, House of Representatives or senators should be re-elected with more than 90 percent of the vote. A job this important shouldn’t be so safe.
Because competitive races push important issues and significant changes to the forefront. The competition gives voice to the marginalized and shines a light on the plight of the downtrodden and forgotten.
Consider what happened in the CD2 race. Both Mr. Dobson and Mr. Figures were forced into places that might be hostile to their political brands. But they went and listened, each learned important lessons from that visit, and each shifted to important topics.
A similar thing happened during the presidential campaign, where both Trump and Harris were thrown into uncomfortable environments and listened to people whose political views differed from their own. And once again, both candidates reversed course on several important issues.
I’m not talking about abandoning long-held beliefs or abandoning basic ideals. I’m talking about listening to voters, the real people politicians are meant to serve, and creating policies that better serve those people.
This does not happen in gerrymandered districts, regardless of who they are gerrymandered for. And it’s long past time we stopped tolerating the insanity of politicians who draw their own district boundaries.
These things should be done by committees of uninvolved experts and computers, all based on a pre-determined set of guidelines and rules to draw districts that favor voters rather than political parties. We are drawing the line. It is possible and has been done in other states.
Until it’s done here, nothing will change for the better.
