How do Republicans in elections? By cheating
Chris Bowers over at MyDD looks at how Republicans get their hands on the levers of power where it matters, at state level, where their cheating can have huge consequences not only
locally, but nation-wide:
With the occasional exception of Ed Rendell, Republicans control nearly every aspect of government in the “big three” swing states, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Not only does this give them an advantage in Presidential Elections, as seen by, among other things, Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell, but the gerrymandered maps in these congressional district rich states are almost single-handedly responsible for the current Republican majority in the House. Despite Bush only winning 50.6% of the vote in these three states, by legal means or otherwise, in the 62 CD’s in these three states, Republicans control 42 seats, or 67.7%. That is worse than we do in Texas under DeLay’s map.
How do they do it? Largely, through illegal corporate contributions funneled into the campaigns of state AG’s and Secretary’s of State.
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Two important states, two Republicans winning with illegal corporate contributions, two terrible House maps, and big time electors being cast for Bush. A few days ago I wrote a diary over at Dailykos entitled You Do Not Want Election Reform that called for a county and state level strategy to achieve election reforms rather than a federal one. These are two perfect examples for why such a strategy is needed. By controlling the levers of elections in statewide races, Republicans have been able to not only do serious damage to Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida as states, but they have managed to overwhelmingly influence the balance of power in the federal government. No Republican control of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and there would be no President Bush, and probably no Speaker Hastert.