Maps Show Lazy Lawyers At Fault In Redistricting
Thursday, May 24, 2012 at 05:05PM |
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You know the world has truly turned upside down when I find the best information on a given subject not in the main stream media, but in the bluehampshire web site. That's the case with these maps posted yesterday on the redistricting lawsuits. I reproduce them here with full credit.
Republicans in the New Hampshire House did not even come close to meeting the 2006 Constitutional amendment requirements (pushed by Paul Mirski and Bill O'Brien--you just can't make this stuff up) of every town or ward with 3291 people having its own Represenative.
It's even worse, however. Constitutional Review Committee (wanna bet that'll be gone come December) Chair Dan Itse continues to try to defend the indefensible, claiming that the O'Brien/Mirski/Mosca plan is acceptable because it meets the federal mandate of ten percent deviation.
What he refuses to admit (at least not publicly) is that ten percent is merely a safe haven recommendation, and in fact is NOT A REQUIREMENT. Any plan exceeding ten percent might have required justification, the kind of thing any good lawyer could have easily provided. Instead of good lawyers, we have fallen victim to LAZY LAWYERS in this state. They should have all been fired when they made up the fiction that ten percent was necessary. They should have been replaced with lawyers who could have done their job, show how the ten percent deviation needed to be expanded in more now that the new amendment is in effect. They could certainly have argued that ten percent has NOT been used in the past.
Only the lazy--lazy lawyers, lazy legislators, lazy leaders--would insist on handcuffing the state with the ten percent mandate when by going to something like 14 percent deviation, both the federal and state constitutional mandates could be met.
In fact, as I've noted here before, the plans passed by Republican-controlled Houses ten years ago had deviations as high as 22 and then 16 percent.
Had the redistricting panel not been handcuffed with the hard and fast ten percent fiction, we could have produced a plan all would have been happy with. Pelham could have had its own Reps and Hudson its own Reps (with only a 6.2 percent deviation). Plymouth could have stood alone as required by the New Hampshire Constitution. So could Meredith. As I look at this map, I see that Littleton does not get its own Rep; my plan had a solution for Littleton, but Republican leadership threw it aside arguing that a Democrat might get elected in Bethlehem/Franconia if a megadistrict were not created. Let Mirski try to deny this; hook him up to a lie detector right alongside yours truly; and bring in Rep. Spec Bowers while you're at it--he's the one who created the illegal monstrosity at Mirski's behest.
Republican leadership broke the law due to both laziness and an attempt to gain political advantage.
It is truly sad, sad, sad, but true.
A quick look at the map would lead anyone with even a passing knowledge of numbers to easy solutions for many towns if deviation were only slightly expanded, not even t the 16 or 22 percent level Republicans found acceptable ten years ago!
Only the lazy have prevented us from arriving at an acceptable solution.
Hopefully, the courts will not recognize chronic laziness as an excuse for unconstitutional redistricting.
Thanks to the Blues for graphically pointing out what I could--and have--spent thousands of words explaining here.
Reader Comments (2)
What ever happened to winning elections on merit? Why the sense of need for tricks, game-playing, strategizing? Forget the power plays and get to work!
Disheartening!
What ever happened to winning elections on merit? Why the sense of need for tricks, game-playing, strategizing? Forget the power plays and get to work!
Disheartening!