Me? I don't care one way or the other, why me? :P
Hollered.
Oddly enough, after you've changed the thread title to "Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker", I'm back here to talk about one of the state senate recalls.
As we know, John Lehman won a recall election against incumbent Van Wanggaard. However, Wanggaard is not conceding, and as of June 15th, has requested a recount
. The recount is expected to finish by July 2nd.
The numbers have budged only slightly so far.
edited 29th Jun '12 9:58:03 AM by GlennMagusHarvey
Maybe I should have changed it to "The Wisconsin Politics thread"...
In any case, there have been a couple of competing proposals to reform the Wisconsin recall system. Both parties apparently want to change the law that allows recall incumbents to raise unlimited cash, while Rep. Robin Vos wants to limit the recall process to "crimes and malfeasance". Another state rep, a Democrat (I can't find who) wants to allow the recall of individual bills Ohio-style (which could be put on the next scheduled election instead of a special election).
I approve of all those measures. Recalls are interesting but I don't know that they're really fit for "Oh this guy has bad policy." And the ability to recall bills sounds fair. Though look to Michigan for how the power structure will fuck that up given half the chance.
Incidentally in regards to union stripping, it would appear (from talking to a few of my friends-that aren't ultra conservatives) that even non-tea party types are in favor of that not necessarily because they oppose unions in concept, but because they've come to the conclusion that unions do not make workers better off, and are just corrupt entities.
SOMEONE has an image problem.
edited 29th Jun '12 10:50:59 AM by TheyCallMeTomu
Update on the 21st state senate district recall recount: Recount has concluded. The final tally: Lehman wins by 819 votes.
Also, Wanggaard campaign considering a lawsuit.
scratching at .8, just hopin'
So this should keep Walker under control until he can be voted out?
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.
Well, if the Dems defend all their seats it will.
This good or bad? I have no idea how Wisconsin or US politics in general work.
The Republicans currently control the Wisconsin State Senate (and the Wisconsin State Assembly and the governorship of Wisconsin). The Republicans control the Wisconsin State Senate by a 17 to 16 margin, with one of their seats about to change to Democratic control, which would change party control of the State Senate.
Wanggaard is the incumbent Republican state senator from the 21st district. Lehman challenged Wanggaard in the recall election against Wanggaard on June 5th, and Lehman has won.
However, this victory is somewhat moot since the Wisconsin State Senate is not scheduled to meet between now and next January, and by then, the WISS will have not only John Lehman but also the senators re-elected or newly elected in November 2012.
Given that the Democrats will have a 17-16 majority after Lehman takes the oath of office, they must play good defense and not have a net loss of any seats this November. It may be a bit more difficult since the Republicans fucked up* current Democratic state senator Jim Holperin's district a bit and he's also retiring from his office.
edited 2nd Jul '12 8:04:53 PM by GlennMagusHarvey
* How to fuck up a district: the process known as redistricting. Also sometimes known as "gerrymandering".
Every ten years, as required by the United States Constitution, a census is taken of all the people in the country (citizens and noncitizens too), to see how many people live where. This census is used to draw district lines that divide states into federal House of Representatives districts and state legislature districts. Each such district generally elects one representative for its corresponding legislative body, under typical first-past-the-post rules (whoever gets the most votes wins). So, for example, the federal House of Representatives contains 435 (voting) members (plus a few non-voting members who people don't usually care much about, sadly); each member represents a district consisting of about 700,000 people, give or take a few tens of thousands (since it's never perfect).
The doctrine of "one person one vote" has meant that districts should have roughly equal populations. However, apart from this rule, each state gets to choose how to draw district lines. Some states have independent commissions drawing district lines, or special rules on how the lines must be drawn (e.g. can't split counties, which is the case in Iowa, I think).
Unfortunately, the people who get to choose how to draw the lines are, in many states, the people who hold elected office as legislators, and whose re-elections (or whose party's prospects) are highly dependent on exactly how the lines are drawn. It also doesn't help that, while you cannot find out how an individual voter voted, you can very easily find out the partisan vote distribution of a whole community (such as a city, a town, or a voting precinct) or even whole states and demographic groups (e.g. ethnicities, age groups, etc.) and predict their future voting patterns from it.
Redistricting is the process of using updated census numbers to redraw the lines. Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing the lines to favor certain outcomes. There are many techniques of gerrymandering; two basic ones are "packing", where you stuff people who don't like your party into a district full of them and help your party win the surrounding districts, "cracking", where you break up a concentration of voters who don't like your party by assigning little pieces of their locale to districts that mostly like your party.
Absent other rules, when one party controls the redistricting process (usually by controlling the governorship, state senate, and state assembly/house), they tend to create maps that are very favorable to their party, and when party control of these entities is divided, they tend to create maps that are friendly to incumbents of both parties, with the most senior members getting the nicest districts for themselves.
Of course, sometimes gerrymanders can be stupid. Demographics can change, leading what used to be a safely D-favoring or R-favoring map to become a bunch of swing districts that are hard to defend, or vice versa. When this happens, the gerrymander is known as a "dummymander".
Sometimes gerrymandering can lead to really ugly district shapes. There was an Illinois U.S. House district known as "earmuffs"; there were some south Texas U.S. House districts known as "fajita strips", and there's been an upstate New York state senate district described as "Abraham Lincoln riding a vacuum cleaner". (To be fair, Lincoln's top hat was all one county. But the vacuum cleaner's pipes were pieced together.)
Man, I remember the earmuff district. It's two majority Latino areas and then a stretch of highway which doesn't even run directly between them; it kind of meanders off to the side for a bit before coming back to the other one. I remember my AP government teacher back in high school telling us that this district was used as an example of gerrymandering in classes across the country.
The 17th district is also almost as ugly, and rather resembles a scorpion
◊.
Yet another Wisconsin legislature thing, and also related to redistricting:
Courtesy of Daily Kos Elections:
relevant links:
Speaking of redistricting...
It appears that my home has been switched from District 2 (Robert Cowles) to District 30 (Dave Hansen).
@ Tomu: You do the honors.