Tony Quinn Quotes

There's no question about it, from a big picture standpoint, our No. 1 goal must remain reapportionment, because if we allow ourselves to get ruthlessly gerrymandered in reapportionment as we did last time, we can forget any reasonable chance of getting control of the U. S. House of Representatives until well into the next millennium.

Redistricting is one of the purest actions a legislative body can take.

Reapportionment is not friendly to a lot of communities and it hasn't been too friendly to mine.

If legislators are allowed to continuously redistrict throughout the decade, you are going to have no way of using elections to remove unpopular officeholders because the lines will be redrawn to ensure their reelection.

The task of redistricting is best left to state legislatures, elected by the people and as capable as the courts, if not more so, in balancing the myriad factors and traditions in legitimate districting policies. The task of redistricting is best left to state legislatures, elected by the people and as capable as the courts, if not more so, in balancing the myriad factors and traditions in legitimate districting policies.

It has become a cliché that voters no longer choose their legislators. The legislators choose their voters.

We're all candidates all the time. Claude Pepper is eighty seven, and he's worried about redistricting in 1992.

The main question that is decided by an election in our country is, which political party shall have the privilege of dispensing the offices of Government?

There once was a time when people chose their congressmen. Now congressmen choose their people.

Redistricting will determine the future control of Congress.

California is among several states that already have fought their way out from under partisan gerrymandering by taking line-drawing authority away from the Legislature.

Florida is one of the first states that sort of gives the legislature a very clear criteria for re-drawing electoral district maps. Basically, all the criteria do is tell the legislators that you can't draw a seat that helps yourself or a political party. That's really critical.

Redistricting is a deeply political process, with incumbents actively seeking to minimize the risk to themselves (via bipartisan gerrymanders) or to gain additional seats for their party (via partisan gerrymanders).

In the House, Republican prospects have been buoyed by several successful rounds of redistricting, which have sharply reduced the number of competitive seats and given the Republicans a national advantage of at least a dozen seats.

In America, unlike England, unlike Israel, unlike Japan, other democracies, we have elections that have staggered terms.

We must return conservatives to the majority in the U.S. Senate.

In a democracy, supposedly we hold power by what we do at the ballot box, so therefore the more we know about political power the better our choices should be and the better, in theory, our democracy should be.

No one likes the Electoral College, expect perhaps those who were elected because of it. No one likes gerrymandering, except those doing the gerrymandering. No one likes the filibuster, except those doing the filibustering.

Outcome of these elections is not in doubt due to simple fact that there is only one candidate for each position…. You may be wondering why party propaganda machine attaches such importance to electoral campaign and surrounds it with such unparalleled pomp and circumstance.

Properly done gerrymandering will increase the weight of some votes and nullify the effect of others, in order to ensure with near certainty that elections will yield the outcome desired by the incumbents.

We cannot always count on a severely gerrymandered legislature itself to find and implement a remedy [to gerrymandering.]

If a member of Congress doesn’t pay attention to process of reapportionment as the result of the census, he ends up being called “former Congressman.”

One goal of empowerment is to gain influence in as many elections as possible.... Beware of plans that pack you into super-minority districts, that ghettoize minorities.

No one ever asserts that politics has no role in apportionment or redistricting.

Wherever you have votes, you have power.