Editorial: Trump doesn’t want your vote in 2024. Just your obedience while he trashes the U.S. again.
By Bill McKibben.
The 2020 presidential election is just days away, and already we’re learning about how you will be deciding who to vote for in 2024.
First, there’s this from Politico:
The final push for a new system of congressional districting comes after the GOP-controlled State Legislature passed a proposal with some of the nation’s most anti-gun legislation in recent decades. And one of the most controversial provisions was the elimination of the voting-age population as the basis of district boundaries. At the last minute, the Legislature added a two-part population-based system of redistricting, which would allow GOP legislators to eliminate the most-voted congressional district in their current or future state. The GOP leaders of both the State Senate and Assembly say it is a matter of statesmanship. Meanwhile, Democrats are calling the GOP scheme unenforcible, immoral, and an assault on the very concept of representative democracy.
For the record, Pennsylvania is actually a constitutional free state, meaning that it is up to residents to vote for and elect their state officers. It is not up to politicians to decide who gets elected. The Constitution is clear on this.
Now, this is not a unique problem in Pennsylvania. This is a serious problem in the entire country. The solution to this problem is to get the Republican Party from Pennsylvania out of the White House in 2020. It is impossible to fix the problem by doing away with primaries. People will still want to vote their conscience, and the only way to get around primaries for the foreseeable future is to have primaries controlled from Washington.
But let’s take a look at the problem more closely. In Philadelphia, the most recent vote in the current election cycle gave Democratic candidate Conor Lamb the best chance of becoming a state Senator in Pennsylvania:
There are a couple of issues here. One is in the race’s geography. Philadelphia is a city where Democrats are a tiny minority. The other is in the race’s demographics. That’s why the Republican Party is fighting this race. Pennsylvania is a purple or red state, depending on the voting population. It used to be