Boston Legal, the TV show, uses it’s story lines to address political issues. Tonight it was about politicians using computers to redistrict the city to skew the vote in favor of the Republicans. The bottom line was how the Republican Party tries and has tried to silence dissent e.g. the guy who was just convicted in Vermont for jamming phone lines on voting day to keep the Democrats from calling for the usual get out and vote campaign. And not allowing people into Bush campaign rallys unless they were registered Republicans, which they had to prove ahead of time. All of this gives me a huge sense of panic if I dwell on it too long. Anyway, those of your from Boston…is this true about the redistricting?
As to only this part of your post:
Politicians: Would they do this action?
Action is:
Bad : For the country, the people, morally, corrupt, against the voters whishes who elected them, …
Good : For them personally, give them more power, more money, control, reelection, prestige, protection, …
Of course they will.
I don’t know if its currently going on in Boston (I haven’t heard anything, and I watch Boston news stations), but I’m so dense with that sort of thing, it could be going on and I didn’ t hear about it.
On a historical note, though, the process of redistricting to change votes is called Gerrymandering, named after Massachusetts’ own Elbridge Gerry, who redistricted the North Shore to change votes. The district he created wove through the county in a salamander shape, thus the “mander” part. Nice to see that in 200 years not much has changed.
Redistricting is controlled by the state legislatures, and MA’s has been very firmly in Democratic hands for generations, reflecting the state’s political composition. Its Republican members might as well not even show up, for all the influence they have there. It just isn’t possible to gerrymander a district in MA to produce a solid majority GOP electorate, and it just isn’t possible not to create a solid Dem majority in any district. Occasionally a Republican gets elected to Congress from MA, but only by taking what for the state are middle of the road populist positions. It’s tacitly understood by the voters that declaring GOP membership is for many of its candidates essentially a way to short-circuit the primaries and go right to the general election with resources intact.
The split in MA isn’t between parties nearly so much as between insiders and outsiders, and the insiders take care of each other. There is actually a state law preventing incumbents from being placed in the same district when the maps are redrawn, unless the state loses a seat due to the national census.
The story line is bogus, sorry - but it would have been a documentary if it had been set in Texas 2 years ago.
There was some controversy with recent redistricting in Boston, but nothing to do with Republicans vs Democrats. It was over redistricting for state (not federal) legislature seats, with current state legislators trying to make sure their seats were safe, and opposition from those wanting more balanced minority representation.
The biggest fallout was that the very powerful (and now ex-) Speaker of the House for Mass was eventually indicted (not gotten to trial yet, I believe) for perjury for claiming under oath that he was not involved in the redistricting and knew nothing about it.
On the other hand, the Boston Legal scenario did happen recently, just in Texas, where the Republican dominated state legistature created an unprecendented mid-decade federal redistricting plan in order to squeeze out Democratic Representatives.
And yes, there are quite a few Bush events that you will not be allowed into unless you proclaim your support for him ahead of time. And the Republican phone-jammer is a true case.
As this is GQ, I can’t comment on whether it’s appropriate to panic, of course.