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How some politicians are fighting back against gerrymandering
In North Carolina, Democratic state Senate candidate Kate Barr is knocking on doors and meeting voters in a district just outside of Charlotte — but she’s not running to win.
In fact, she admits that she can’t win.
“We live in a gerrymandered district,” said Barr. “I actually live in a gerrymandered state.”
Gerrymandering, a portmanteau made from combining former Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry’s name with salamander — because the district drawn up in his favor looked like the amphibian — is the term for when states draw electoral boundaries to favor one party.
“North Carolina’s voting maps have been drawn so that, at least in this case, the Republican Party will keep their power almost no matter what, and I’m running to call them out, even though I can’t win,” Barr said.
“I think I’m supposed to lose by 27%,” she said. “It’s like the Mount Everest plus of political gerrymandering.”
Despite the fact that there are roughly an even number of registered Republicans and registered Democrats in North Carolina, the state legislature has a Republican supermajority. That same legislature drew district lines making it almost impossible for Barr to win her state Senate race.
In Springfield, Illinois, the Democratic-dominated legislature did the same thing, drawing Republican Rodney Davis out of a decade in Congress.
Davis, who grew up in Taylorville, Illinois, and rose through local politics before being elected to Congress, said his district was “changed drastically.”
After the 2020 census, Illinois Democrats in charge of drawing new maps turned Davis’ competitive 13th district into a Democratic stronghold, putting Taylorville in a neighboring district that was much more conservative.
In addition to shaping Congress, heavyhanded gerrymandering can also breed political extremism, as party loyalty becomes more important and bipartisanship suffers.
Professor Sam Wang, who heads the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, gives North Carolina and Illinois failing grades for the fairness of their maps.
“If one party gets control of the process or one faction gets control of the process, then they can have free reign,” Wang said.
“The danger of politicians picking their voters is that there is an overwhelming temptation to self-deal and have a situation where they never have to face competition, Wang added.
But there are alternatives to partisan power grabs. California, Missouri, Arizona and Colorado use citizen commissions, not politicians, to draw district lines. In Ohio, where Republicans have drawn district lines to strongly favor their party, voters will decide this November whether to create their own citizen commission.
But the futility of the current situation fuels Barr and those holding the line to support her cause.
“Every vote I get is two middle fingers to Raleigh about what we expect to see in our voting maps,” she said.
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McDonald’s investing $100 million to lure customers back to the fast food giant after E. coli outbreak
McDonald’s is investing $100 million to bring customers back to stores after an outbreak of E. coli food poisoning tied to onions on the fast-food giant’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers.
The investments include $65 million that will go directly to the hardest-hit franchises, the company said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that slivered onions on the Quarter Pounders were the likely source of the E. coli. Taylor Farms in California recalled onions potentially linked to the outbreak.
The E. coli outbreak has sickened 104 people in 14 states, federal health officials said in an update on Wednesday.
At least 34 people have been hospitalized, and four developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a serious condition that can cause kidney failure. An 88-year-old man who resided in Grand Junction, Colorado, died, as previously reported. The illnesses began at the end of September, and the most recent onset of illness occurred as of Oct. 21, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The Food and Drug Administration has said that “there does not appear to be a continued food safety concern related to this outbreak at McDonald’s restaurants.”
However, the outbreak hurt the company’s sales.
Quarter Pounders were removed from menus in several states in the early days of the outbreak.
In a statement Wednesday obtained by CBS News, McDonald’s said it had found an “alternate supplier” for the approximately 900 restaurants that had temporarily stopped serving Quarter Pounders with slivered onions.
“Over the past week, these restaurants resumed the sale of Quarter Pounder burgers with slivered onions,” McDonald’s said.
CBS News reached out to McDonald’s on Saturday for a statement regarding the reported investment.
Health officials said Saturday they have confirmed the first U.S. case of a new form of mpox that was first seen in eastern Congo.
The person had traveled to eastern Africa and was treated in Northern California upon return, according to the California Department of Public Health. Symptoms are improving and the risk to the public is low.
Mpox is a rare disease caused by infection with a virus that’s in the same family as the one that causes smallpox. It is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals.
Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new form of mpox in Africa that was spread through close contact including through sex.
More than 3,100 confirmed cases have been reported just since late September, according to the World Health Organization. The vast majority of them have been in three African countries – Burundi, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Since then, cases of travelers with the new mpox form have been reported in Germany, India, Kenya, Sweden, Thailand, Zimbabwe, and the United Kingdom.
Health officials earlier this month said the situation in Congo appears to be stabilizing. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated Congo needs at least 3 million mpox vaccines to stop the spread, and another 7 million vaccines for the rest of Africa.
The current outbreak is different from the 2022 global outbreak of mpox where gay and bisexual men made up the vast majority of cases.