Hi David, thanks for the thoughtful post. By and large I think you are reading this right. The US Constitution grants a great deal of autonomy to the states. We are indeed the United States of America. According to the constitution every item of governance that is not specifically reserved to the federal government is controlled by the states individually. That is probably the heart and soul of our constitution. Obviously, the scope of federal government has grown massively in the last 125 years. In my opinion, this coincides with the “shrinking“ of the world with instantaneous communication and widespread cheap travel.Originally Posted by David Cotterell
The gerrymandering is a state by state issue as I understand it so there are x states gerrymandering one of the ways above and y states doing it the other way and these actions, however opposite in intent and execution they are, are both 'defensible positions and neither are Constitutionally wrong'.
Really?
That just seems like a messed up situation..... It's like 25 states drive cars on the right side of the road and 25 on the left because each state has the power to legislate for its own citizenry for the 'local' good based on that one state's needs without regard to what the effect nationally might be.
Am I reading this wrong or .....?
Dave
So, to pick one example, it is not surprising that blue states gerrymander to favor Democrats and red states gerrymander to favor Republicans. Don’t worry, over time these things change and flip. When I moved to Colorado 40 years ago, it was a solid red state. Then you will remember that it was an important swing state in the Clinton/Bush Sr. era. Now it is solidly blue.
I think gerrymandering for partisan gain sucks by the way, but it is up to the people to fix it if they want to. It is not the Supreme Court’s job, unless a proposed gerrymander runs afoul of a hard and fast federal rule such as the 14th amendment, which prohibits racial discrimination. Many states have tried to fix political gerrymandering by passing laws appointing a bipartisan commissions to draw the lines. But, as we have recently seen, the same voters are willing to jettison their high minded ideals in these partisan times. So it goes. Democracy can be messy
We don’t have to worry about driving on the left side in Colorado and the right side in Kansas, because the constitution reserves matters of true interstate importance to the federal government. So, our defense, our highways, our park system, our interstate shipping, banking, money, and any number of genuinely “federal” issues are happily controlled at the federal level. Liberals favor more federal control of everything ant the federal level i.e. abortion, where conservatives are more comfortable with state control of many issues.
It is a very successful system, and I like it a lot. I certainly understand why the youth of today might be frustrated by a lack of strong central planning, but the youth by definition are very shortsighted and needy. I think history teaches that the American system of federalism is a wonderful system that promotes liberty, maybe at the expense of efficiency, and I hope it lasts for a very long time. Jim
