California District 1 winds its way thru Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino, Lake, Sonora, and Napa counties; while California District 2 winds its way thru Siskiyou, Trinity, Shasta, Tahama, Glenn, Butte, Yuba, Colusa, Sutter, and Yolo counties.

Texas District 25 winds its way thru Hidalgo, Starr, Jim Hogg, Duval, Live Oak, Karnes, Gonzales, Caldwell, and Travis counties. Texas District 28 is similar.

Utah District 1 winds its way thru Juab, Tooele, Box Elder, Cache, Rich, Summit, Morgan, Davis, Webber, and Salt Lake counties.

Alabama District 7 winds its way thru Tuscaloosa, Pickens, St. Clair, Greene, Hale, Perry, Sumter, Chocktaw, Marengo, Dallas, Wilcox, and Clarke counties.

New York District 23 winds its way thru Clinton, Franklin, Essex, Hamilton, Fulton, Saint Lawrence, Jefferson, Lewis, Oswego, Oneida, and Madison counties.

Indiana District 9 winds its way thru Monroe, Brown, Bartholomew, Jackson, Jennings, Ripley, Dearborn, Ohio, Switzerland, Jefferson, Scott, Clark, Floyd, Harrison, Perry, Crawford, Washington, Orange, Dubois, and Spencer counties.

Up to ten, fifteen, or more counties can be touched in just one congressional district. It's a gerrymander thang.

These facts illustrate the point that election officialdom is bounded by county lines and state lines, however, these gerrymandered congressional districts have no such political boundaries. This is problematic and it exacerbates the problem.

If counties use different voting machines and techniques, you could have ten different types of voting procedures for one congressional district. Add precints to the count, and it becomes more and more obvious that political cacophony and helter-skelter are apt descriptions for the gerrymander world.

Further, if a congress member wants to challenge election results for only one congressional district, that congress member may have to pay up to ten, fifteen, or more counties for a recount.

You know what I mean ...

The Brennan Center paper is VERY IMPORTANT AND EASY READING.

Everyone interested in vote-fraud should take a minute and read the whole thing. It is also a positive experience, because reading it is a reexperience of the truth that rational arguments can be devastating to spin.

Dredd, I don't really get why you are focussing on a PERENNIAL problem in this crisis. We are not going to be able to change the gerrymandering that has been the modus operandi for 220 years any time soon.

Voting machines, lack of paper ballots to recount, registration scams, SecStates unwilling to do recounts, courts unwilling to force them, newspapers unwilling to make politicians pay for blocking recounts --- those are our main problems.

"California District 1 winds its way thru Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino, Lake, Sonora, and Napa counties;"

Are these not equal-population distributions? 370,000 people per district. Obviously, if you were to use a county-based apportionment, the population served by Assembly representatives would vary wildly.

"California District 2 winds its way thru Siskiyou, Trinity, Shasta, Tahama, Glenn, Butte, Yuba, Colusa, Sutter, and Yolo counties."

These are TINY populations in these various counties, compared to behemoths on the coasts and inland along the 99. That's why these districts are so packed with counties, compared to gerrymandered districts in large counties.

Your point about the difficulty of recounting by county is accurate, but there is no resolution, unless Siskiyou county, with 45,500 persons, decides to import 320,500 voters!

Paul in LA #2

You said "Dredd, I don't really get why you are focussing on a PERENNIAL problem in this crisis."

But you did not ask me to explain. Instead you went into your analysis.

I have no problem with your analysis, as far as it goes, however, I do think you owe me the courtesy of asking me where I am coming from on this.

I will assume that you would like to know, and so I provide that answer.

It is simply to point out to us that we face an incredible, wide spread, well orchestrated, and diabolical effort to destroy the American democracy.

While America in general sleeps.

I want us to know that the foe, whether ignorant, unwise, red-neck, hooligan, sophisticated, dumb, or whatever, is going to kick our ass and destroy us if we do not prevail.

And I invite your efforts to counter that power of darkness as it settles upon this land.

We do not need "friendly fire" against those who resist this mega-monster. Our "fire" must be directed toward the enemy of the people.