[BigV]

Originally Posted by glatt

What's pissing me off this morning? The Virginia Republicans are cheaters. Fucking cheaters.

The Virginia State Senate is split 50/50 between Democrats and Republicans. On Inauguration Day, one Democrat went to Washington DC to participate in the Inauguration. So while he was out of town, on a federal holiday, the Virginia Republicans pushed through a surprise bill (with only 30 minutes of floor debate) that would redistrict Virginia and take 6 Virginia State Senate seats away from Democrats, and make the Republicans have a solid majority in the Virginia State Senate. The Virginia House is already Republican, so they will most likely pass the Senate's bill, and the Governor is a Republican too. He is criticizing the partisanship of this bill, but refuses to say that he won't sign it into law.

The fucking cheater Republicans in Virginia have consolidated their power through cheating even as the voters in the state are Democrats by statistically significant margin. The 2012 Virginia election went to Obama 51.2% to the Republicans 47.3%.

I want to know why the Virginia Senate is even in session on Inauguration Day. That seems very disrespectful to me. The bill passed 20 to 19, with that one Democrat away at Inauguration and not voting.

It's pathetic that the only way the Republicans can hold on to power in Virginia is to cheat. And it seems to be working.

I don't think the Republicans are limiting their goals to "holding on to power in Virginia". Here's another story about the same group of legislators and how they're manipulating the rules to increase their leverage by changing how Electoral College votes are distributed. These new State Senatorial districts you describe glatt, they're going to be the basis for distributing electoral votes. They're reaching for presidential impact by giving real national currency to the changes in state districts you describe.

Perhaps recognizing the limitations of keeping voters from the polls, Republicans have designed a new strategy for 2016: Selective changes to the electoral college that only favor Republican presidential candidates.

Currently, in all but two states, electoral college votes are allocated on a winner-take-all stasis. Republicans, who for years have toiled to capture the low interest, backwater of U.S. politics, state legislatures, to control redistricting of congressional seats, now want to leverage selectively their advantage to rewrite the rules of presidential elections. Their proposal is to award electoral votes proportionally by congressional district, the very districts they gerrymandered, stuffing as many Democrats as possible into the fewest districts possible. This is how Republicans have solidified their advances in congressional elections; now, in a select number of battleground states where they control the legislatures and the congressional delegations, they want to award electoral votes by congressional district thus off-setting the trends in popular vote favoring Democrats.