{"id":932,"date":"2006-11-17T00:03:47","date_gmt":"2006-11-17T05:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=932"},"modified":"2006-12-21T09:15:34","modified_gmt":"2006-12-21T14:15:34","slug":"reapportionment-in-iowa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=932","title":{"rendered":"Reapportionment in Iowa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.centrists.org\/pages\/2004\/07\/7_buck_trust.html\">This website<\/a> explains how the Iowans reaportion their legislative and congressional districts. It concludes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;<font face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Gerrymandering is having a profound impact on the political process.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The practice sharply reduces the number of competitive elections to the US House of Representatives.\u00c2\u00a0 For example, in 2002, only four challengers were able to defeat incumbent members of Congress, the lowest number in modern American history, according to political scientists Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann.<\/font><font face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Non-competitive districts lead to entrenched, polarized legislatures.\u00c2\u00a0 Incumbents fear primary challenges from even-more-extreme partisans, not the other party, as a result of their &#8220;safe&#8221; districts.<\/p>\n<p>By contrast,\u00c2\u00a0the non-partisan\u00c2\u00a0redistricting process has helped move\u00c2\u00a0politics in Iowa\u00c2\u00a0back toward the center.\u00c2\u00a0 Most Iowa politicians know they must appeal not only to their party, but also to independent voters and voters affiliated with the other party.\u00c2\u00a0 This inevitably leads to an emphasis on bipartisan cooperation and\u00c2\u00a0the public&#8217;s best interest.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><\/font>&#8220;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This website explains how the Iowans reaportion their legislative and congressional districts. It concludes: &#8220;Gerrymandering is having a profound impact on the political process.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moderation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}