Discover the most popular and inspiring quotes and sayings on the topic of Redistricting. Share them with your friends on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, and let the world be inspired by their powerful messages. Here are the Top 100 Redistricting Quotes And Sayings by 92 Authors including Lincoln Steffens,Albert Wynn,Richard Rothstein,Benjamin Disraeli,John Stossel for you to enjoy and share.
Whenever anything extraordinary is done in American municipal politics, whether for good or for evil, you can trace it almost invariably to one man. The people do not do it. Neither do the 'gangs,' 'combines,' or political parties.
I hate to lose the constituency that I've worked with, but I've got 170,000 people to meet in my new district.
Today's residential segregation in the North, South, Midwest, and West is not the unintended consequence of individual choices and of otherwise well-meaning law or regulation but of unhidden public policy that explicitly segregated every metropolitan area in the United States.
That fatal drollery called a representative government.
It's not about electing the right people. It's about a narrowing their responsibilities.
On any state elections map, the reservations are blue places. Native people are most often progressives, Democrats, and by no means gun-toting vigilantes.
Racial discrimination in elections in Texas is no mere historical artifact. To the contrary, Texas has been found in violation of the Voting Rights Act in every redistricting cycle from and after 1970.
You and I are forever at the mercy of the census-taker and the census-maker. That impertinent fellow who goes from house to house is one of the real masters of the statistical situation. The other is the man who organizes the results.
If you believe in democracy, make arrangements to distribute property as widely as possible.
It's been a concern of mine for years that the mainstream media coverage of culture and politics takes place in two nodes, Washington and New York, and yet all the voting goes on somewhere else.
There are two sorts of political communications operators in this business. There are people who see the population as they would like them to be, and there are people who see the population, ruthlessly, as they actually are. There is the wishful-thinking element, and there is the winning element.
We're going to form a republic where the people of each district and the Capitol can elect their own representatives to be their voice in a centralized government. Don't look so suspicious; it's worked before.
I am not interested in splitting the white vote.
Legislators invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind.
There's something very dangerous happening in states across the country. A wave of legislation, introduced in more than two dozen states, would allow people to discriminate against their neighbors.
People are voting for Conservatives in greater numbers, but it's not translating into Conservative seats.
When you assemble from your several counties in the Legislature, were every member to be guided only by the apparent interest of his county, government would be impracticable. There must be a perpetual accomodation and sacrifice of local advantage to general expediency.
Every state in which anyone other than the statesman has to concern himself with politics is ill organized and deserves to perish by all these politicians. Another
Across the nation, the election protection movement attracts ordinary citizens who educate their neighbors about their voting systems and the private companies that built and run them.
You want to represent the country and you want elected officials that are representative of the country.
The fundamental division of powers in the Constitution of the United States is between voters on the one hand and property owners on the other.
The bigger the State, the smaller the citizen
Rep. James Clyburn, the state's only black congressman
controls 20 percent to 25 percent of the primary vote.
To survive, the people in neighborhoods are going to have to secede.
Locally, I'll vote one way and nationally, maybe another.
It's to the Capitol's advantage to have us divided among ourselves.
Another tool to cause misery in our district. A way to plant hatred between the starving workers [of the Seam] and those who can generally count on supper and thereby ensure we will never trust one another.
If you can't be a populist in Arkansas, you ain't going to be a populist in Washington.
The principle is that every member needs to represent their district.
The Delta is a conservative place, .. District 28 is a very conservative district. We don't have many conservative districts in the Delta. Mississippi is a conservative place. We need to keep it that way.
The GOP needs to figure out a way to become more appealing to new constituencies.
Our goal is to displace the entrenched powers in Washington, restore the rightful balance between the state and federal government.
Every male citizen of the commonwealth, liable to taxes or to militia duty in any county, shall have a right to vote for representatives for that county to the legislature.
I think that the voters should choose the elected officials, not the elected officials choose the voters.
There's a lot of bleeding idiots in t'country and they deserve some representation.
The next Republican that will win will campaign in the Latino community, will campaign amongst Asian-Americans, will campaign in the black churches, will campaign in college campuses.
Elections are rarely perfect.
The whole red state/blue state thing is very interesting. Watching that shift over the years.
Americans of our own time - minority and majority Americans alike - need the continued guidance that the Voting Rights Act provides. We have come a long way, but more needs to be done.
Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests.
Our object must be to bring our territory into harmony with the numbers of our population.
When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses.
Democracy involves that old-fashioned thing called working it out.
Democrats do best in urban centers, Republicans in outer suburbs and rural areas.
Congress requires states to draw single-member districts.
What we need is not more Federal government, but better local government.
The increase in straight-ticket party voting in recent years means that competitive congressional races can tip one way or the other depending on the showing of the candidates at the top of the ticket.
Elections have consequences.
A majority in all parties do, I think, want to see local government recover its old vigour and independence.
Virginia and Maryland attorneys argued this is a national problem and needs a national solution. I'm hoping that with a federal court agreeing this is inequitable, Congress will now act and do the right thing for the District.
I'd propose that each central-city child should have an entitlement from the state to attend any school in the metropolitan area outside his own district - with per pupil funds going with him.
We live in a very different world than the one that we inherited from our parents and from our grandparents. Times are changing, and states must adapt to win.
For me it's more important to look at each constituency individually and find a community I feel I can serve to the best of my abilities, and where I feel I can make a real difference, and further their cause.
Our best protection against bigger government in Washington is better government in the states.
To give you some background, I represent the largest manufacturing district and the largest agricultural district in Ohio.
They are voting whether to keep a governor two years or four. I think a good, honest governor should get four years, and the others life.
If you get so unequal that people believe they don't have a chance, that the field isn't level for them and their children, that puts democracy at risk.
One of the problems in Washington is there are far too many politicians who desperately just want to get re-elected.
the land of their birth; the Urban Areas Act of
I was the Secretary of State of New Jersey in November 2000. I paid careful attention to the challenges that stemmed from inadequate voting systems in various places.
In never-ending efforts to defeat incumbent officeholders in hard times, the public is perpetuating the source of its discontent, electing a new group of people who are even less inclined to or capable of crafting compromise or solutions to pressing problems.
I will represent all of the people of Ohio, regardless of their background. I don't care if you are a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian or a vegetarian, I will be blind to race, religion or any kind of orientation.
The importance of local governance may not be obvious to an America accustomed to treating city and state downfalls with doses of federal comeuppance. Sometimes there's a reason for that - the Civil War. More often, all reasoning seems absent - No Child Left Behind.
district: small,
The situation of having to belong to a state to which one does not wish is no less onerous if it is the result of an election than if one must endure it as the consequence of a military conquest.
History shows one important fact: the results of competitive special elections from Hawaii to New York are poor indicators of broader trends or future general election outcomes.
What does it take to get you on board with building this district to mirror Coral Gables or the Hamptons?
It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote.
Let's say there are 500 sons and daughters like you in each state. Then we could control the government.
I love seeing America vote, through the prism of my older working class neighborhood in Riverside, California.
Today we voted as Democrats and Republicans. Tomorrow we begin again as New Yorkers.
New York City has 2 million rats. We used to have 8 million rats. Now we're down to 2 million. You know what that means? We lose four electoral votes.
Give the vote to the people who have no property, and they will sell them to the rich, who will be able to buy them.
Strong efforts have been made in Ohio to curb the authoritarianism of our Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, as he has purged people from lists in our State in particular precincts where voters are heavily minority.
Texas is now a cornerstone of the electoral college for Republicans.
If we're going to win this battle over fiscal responsibility, we need more of the people who vote right and fewer of those whose seniority is their only selling point.
Well, in San Francisco if someone's against you, they know how to vote you out of an area. If someone's against you in Louisiana, or if I wrote a book and they did not like it or me in Louisiana, they might shoot me anytime.
The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood - rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky - they all turn out in one day.
The thing that we tell - that I tell - members is, 'Vote your district. Vote your conscience; just don't surprise us.'
The voters in District 8 shared our vision that Washington is broken, and we're going to go up there and fix it.
First, take the government of the Indians out of politics; second, let the laws of the Indians be the same as those of the whites; third, give the Indian the ballot.
We don't want Washington Democrats running the House of Representatives.
People actually occupy around 3 per cent of the earth's land surface. If 1,200 square feet was given to every person in the world, they would still all fit into an area the size of Texas - whether the Texans would object is an altogether different issue!
Texans don't want to sit back and watch Austin turn into Washington, D.C. State leaders in power keep forcing people to opposite corners to prepare for a fight instead of coming together to get things done.
When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty.
Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair's-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother?
We're half the people; we should be half the Congress.
God made this country for us," he wrote to Governor Grey. "If it were a whale, we might slice it in half. But it cannot be sliced. We will have to fight for the land that lies between us." Governor
For states in demographic decline with ever more lavish social programs, the question is a simple one: Can they get real? Can they grow up before they grow old? If not, then they'll end their days in societies dominated by people with a very different worldview.
When you nominate for a seat, the expectation is that you serve that district and serve that seat if you are elected.
[Proportional representation is a] device for defeating democracy, the principle of which was that the majority should rule, and for bringing faddists of all kinds into Parliament, and establishing groups and disintegrating parties.
As far as the political landscape in our state, I think that what we continue to see is that Tennessean voters are more independent and more conservative, and they are watching issues very closely; they are watching votes very closely.
We're going to restructure the state government into a government that's responsive to the needs of New York state taxpayers.
In the Constitution of the American Republic there was a deliberate and very extensive and emphatic division of governmental power for the very purpose of preventing unbridled majority rule.
It is always tough to win every booth right across the electorate because there are different issues in different parts of the electorate.
In a democratic age, you can't buck demography - except through civil war.
With these kinds of proposals, the devil is in the details. We're going to examine this realignment closely. We will fight any measure that compromises our needs - now or in the future.
When you cannot achieve a majority, it's a good idea to get rid of minority stakes.
I'm fed up with democracy. In a democracy, people vote for the mayors. I wanted to build a city where I will choose the citizens.
I think sometimes Richmond, especially the House of Delegates, thinks too small ... Richmond is not doing what needs to be done, forward thinking, big bold ideas.
Chapter Four : The things that go bump in the night ... are probably registered voters in Cook County