A New York Times editorial:
Elections With No MeaningTotalitarian nations hold elections, but what sets democracies apart is offering real choices in elections. In recent years, contests for the House of Representatives and state legislatures have looked more and more like the Iraqi election in 2002, when Saddam Hussein claimed 100 percent of the vote for his re-election. In that same year in the United States, 80 of the 435 House races did not even include candidates from both major parties. Congressional races whose outcomes were in real doubt were a rarity: nearly 90 percent had a margin of victory of 10 percentage points or more. It is much the same at the state level, only worse. In New York, more than 98 percent of the state legislators who run for re-election win, usually overwhelmingly.The reference to totalitarianism is telling (if understated) here, because this is exactly what today's gerrymandering efforts are attempting to do. Aided by newer and smarter computers, what was once a "best guess" human endeavor has evolved into the science of hyperpartisan line-drawing. While you might still get a vote, it simply doesn't count. This is merely another form of disenfranchisement; perhaps a different "flavor" than the E-vote issues, but still a denial of the vote to the electorate.
And this is important: It does not matter if the tampering is in your favor. Be it gerrymandering, E-vote tampering, targeted scubbing of voter roles, or any of the other forms of vote rigging, once you figure out that your vote does not matter, you'll stop voting.
[From Black Box Notes.]
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