Lately it has been brought to my attention that my next door neighbor state, Virginia, has been engaged in redrawing of election maps so that they favor a particular party by the demographics of people that live there.
This is obviously wrong to do but it is just nuts to be that people are so blinding by party allegiance that they are perfectly ok with it as long as it benefits their own party. Forget what is just and what is right as long as it benefits me.
The really stupid part about this sort of attitude is that NONE of this is designed to protect "you." The party you support doesn't give a damn about you. The only thing they are interested in is keeping and expanding their own power. Once you are no longer useful to them they will toss you out.
I really try to stay out of this As much as possible but some friends of mine were talking about it and begrudgingly looked at some photos briefly in order to have some sort of idea as to what they were talking about.
Apparently, the above photo is what the voting districts looked like before on top, and what they look like now, afterwards. The red and blue indicates what the population of these areas are likely to vote for.
Is it Actually going to end up that way? Well, I honestly don’t really care but a lot of people are pretty sure that it will.
Now here is the thing: The people that are crying foul now were not that way when this same thing happened in Texas not that long ago but now they are crying and extremely happy that a judge jumped in and ruled this to be unconstitutional. Also, the same people crying are applauding the fact that the Governor of Florida is now claiming that they are going to do the exact same thing in their own state as a punishment to Virginia or something.
If that ends up being true, if they really do that in Florida, where does this shit show end? Is just every state going to rig their elections based on geographical leanings until the entire country is basically cheating in all elections?
Here is the thing with being a free-thinker, which I kind of feel as though I am. Wrong = wrong no matter who is doing it. That's a pretty simple way to view life and it applies to almost anything. It's not any more OK for liberals to rig voting maps than it is for conservatives to do it and if we carry on down this road everyone is just asking for more trouble.
Politics have never been so nasty at any point in my life than they are right now and that is a damn shame.
I will say what I always have. Take the time that you are spending pretending to know what the hell you are talking about in places that don't affect your life - such as Virginia unless you are a Virginian - and focus that on who is running for local office. Those offices actually DO affect your life and it is just crazy to me that the amount of turnout that we get for local elections is something like less than 20%. But when something that is very unlikely to change the life that we have in New Bern is on the ticket, people turn out in droves.
It's sheer madness.