NH should reject gerrymandering

Late last month, in a 3-2 decision, the New Hampshire Supreme Court found that partisan gerrymandering is not a matter for the state courts to decide. The ruling follows the 2020 U.S. Census, the subsequent redistricting of state legislative and Executive Council district boundaries, and the 2022 midterm elections. With this election, Republicans established solid control of the NH state Senate, 14-10, and Executive Council, 4-1, despite receiving fewer votes than the Democrats. The recent state Supreme Court ruling is not surprising given that partisan gerrymandering gives an electoral advantage to the incumbent party and Gov. Sununu appointed the three justices who wrote the majority opinion.

Gerrymandering poses a grave threat to democracy at both the state and national levels, empowering the incumbent party to obstruct the interests of strong voting majorities. According to RepresentUs, a nonpartisan anti-corruption organization, New Hampshire is one of the 27 extremely gerrymandered states in the U.S. Congressional gerrymandering has given Republicans control of the U.S. House of Representatives and, in combination with the Senate filibuster, has blocked legislation supported by large majorities of Americans on a wide range of issues, including reproductive rights, climate change, gun safety, voting integrity, campaign finance reform — even gerrymandering itself.

Gerrymandering is named after Gov. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, who signed a bill in 1812 that created a misshapen state senate district that resembled a salamander. Although old, the problem has become much worse since the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2019 that partisan gerrymandering can’t be challenged in the federal courts. Computer technology has given map makers the ability to maximally game the redistricting process and the Republican Party has become increasingly radicalized.

Gerrymandering can be eliminated by having maps of voting districts drawn by independent redistricting commissions (IRCs) rather than by partisan state legislatures. Currently, 17 states use IRCs to draw their maps. In 2019, New Hampshire lawmakers passed a bipartisan bill to create an IRC, but Sununu vetoed it.

All the current Democratic candidates for the New Hampshire Legislature, Executive Council and Governor support the establishment of an IRC to eliminate partisan gerrymandering.

Bill Black

Hanover

Letters got it right on Trump

I want to thank your readers who wrote to the Forum (Nov 18), disgusted by the Trump rally in Claremont. Trump deliberately invoked Nazi propaganda in his speech. Regurgitating phrases about rooting out and exterminating vermin as Hitler proposed. At that time, these orders were carried out with the help of ordinary people just like those in the crowd applauding and waving Trump signs. As a person who fits the profile of a left leaning Jew, the “enemy,” the scene was hauntingly familiar.

I can’t help but wonder if Trump’s supporters understand the code he is using and how they are being manipulated. Trump is the heinous reincarnation, and personification of all that is totalitarianism with the same violent, threatening, intimidating and dehumanizing rhetoric. We must continue to speak out in the face of this malignant language.

Trump is not defending democracy, he is desperately defending his empire. He gladly took his supporters’ hard earned money meant for his election fund and used it for his legal fees. By sowing division he is able to distract from the serious problems that all of us and the planet are facing.

Little do his supporters know that he intends to come for them too someday, with authoritarian edicts that take away all of our civil rights and collective freedoms as human beings. These are what we have in common and what should unite us.

Sharon Racusin

Hanover

It’s too late to deal with Trump

Beginning in 2015, I began writing letters to this publication and to others about the dangers posed by Donald Trump to the American experiment. While those warnings are now being echoed by others, it is too little and too late. At some point during the past decade we crossed over into a world in which our fealty to feelings became more powerful than our commitment to reason. And democracy demands a commitment to reason.

Try this experiment. ask any Trump supporter which they would choose: four more years of Joe Biden at the helm based upon a verified electoral majority, or four years of Donald Trump in power by any means necessary. I have played this game, and the results have been eye-opening. Virtually everyone I asked chose rejection of the democratic process if it meant four more years of “liberal rule.” Their arguments, stunning echoes and hypnotic recitations of the words Donald Trump speaks over and over.

We are a nation whose citizens are driven by feelings of outrage and fear. Reason has been abandoned, and madness reigns. It is time we admitted that we are no different from the men and women who followed Hitler into the abyss. And it is too late for us. Doanld Trump is the most adroit mass-manipulator of human emotion to emerge since the rise of Adolph Hiter, and his spell over the tens of millions grows by the minute. The American experiment is over. Welcome to the empire.

Dan Weintraub

Quechee/Boston