Voting Rights Include Fair And Proportional Representation

This adds to the case that the 2018 mid- terms represented a big blue wave at the Congressional level:

Democrats received more than 8 million more votes than Republicans during the 2018 midterms, according to NBC pic.twitter.com/IHpbcM73dR

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 20, 2018

Steve Benen notes:

...[T]he Democratic lead in the U.S. House popular vote now stands at 7.8%, up from 7.7% yesterday, and it may yet inch higher. For comparison purposes, note that in 2010 – which was widely seen as a GOP “wave” cycle – Republicans won the U.S. House popular vote by 6.6%. In 1994, which was seen as a Republican “revolution,” the GOP won the U.S. House popular vote by 7.1%.

Unfortunately, decades of Republican gerrymandering in State legislative districts has led to results like this (click on image to enlarge):

The gain of over 300 State legislative seats was a great beginning for Democrats this year -- but only just that, a beginning.  Tellingly, in Michigan and several other states voters supported initiatives to end gerrymandering through independent redistricting commissions. 

At the Federal level, the courts are taking up cases to end gerrymandering of Congressional districts. The Brennan Center for Justice provides a snapshot of those efforts here.

Voting rights -- including the rights of voters to be fairly and proportionally represented -- will be an ongoing battle as the Republican Party seeks to maintain reactionary (white) power in an increasingly hostile political and demographic environment.  In the past, Democrats have been accused of being asleep at the switch in these partisan redistricting battles.  But with the 2020 Census looming and new Democratic control of a number of key Statehouses (including key Secretary of State wins), we have an opportunity to begin to level the playing field, and we know what we need to do and how important it is that we do it.

BONUS:  Good question --

About 60 million people turned out to vote for Democrats for the House this year. That is a **crazy** number. (Republicans got 45m votes in the 2010 wave.)

And this was sort of missed. Why so many stories about Trump voters in truck stops and not so many about "the resistance"?

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 18, 2018

BONUS II:  Here's your answer. Sic transit gloria, America.

Tweet Of The Day - Republican Panic Time

Yesterday, in special off- year State legislative elections in Republican districts in South Carolina, Iowa and Wisconsin, Democrats outperformed their 2016 presidential-year election results by from 13 - 27 percent.  Significantly, Democrat won a rural, Republican district -- Wisconsin State Senate District 10  -- by 9 points, even though she was outspent by the Koch- backed Republican, and Trump won the district by 17 points.

Did you miss the special elections results yesterday?

Democrats over performed the 2016 election results by an average of 20%.

SC HD-99: D+13.08%
IA HD-06: D+20.44%
WI AD-58: D+24.90%
WI SD-10: D+27.52%

Keep working hard & we’re going to flip a lot of seats in November. 🌊

— Millennial Politics (@MillenPolitics) January 17, 2018

Since Trump was elected, Democrats have flipped 34 Republican- held State legislative seats, versus Republicans flipping only 4 Democratic- held seats.

Resist. Organize. Vote. Change will come.