Ratf**ked

"The explosive account of how Republican legislators and political operatives fundamentally rigged our American democracy through redistricting,"--NoveList.

Journalist David Dalcy's explosive look at the new frontier of political dirty tricks--a coordinated assault on representative democracy through gerrymandering. Here, Daley documents an unprecedented effort by Republican legislators and political operatives to hack American democracy through an audacious redistricting plan called REDMAP. Following the election of President Barack Obama, a group of men--including Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie, and Chris Jankowski--envisioned a daring campaign to flip state legislatures, where the power to redistrict is held, in battleground states in advance of post-census redistricting. Republican politicians nationwide then pressed their advantage by aggressively redrawing state and congressional lines in their favor. While gerrymandering has long been a quirk of our system, during this decade--thanks to state-of-the-art technological advances in map-making and voter tracking as well as a flood of dark money after the Citizens United decision--it has ushered in a thoroughly entrenched and hyperpartisan Republican era. If our politics appear more broken and extreme than ever, REDMAP explains why. Launched with just $30 million, this entirely legal scheme has proven to be one of the most successful, yet damaging, games of political "moneyball" in American history. Deeply troubled by this development, Daley began an investigative odyssey that led him to uncover the stories behind these new districts, hacked and cobbled together by a new breed of wonks, stat geeks, and political hatchet men. Delving into court documents, cutting-edge statistical analysis, and interviews with many of the REDMAP architects themselves, Daley reconstructs this never-before-told story and pulls back the curtain on one of the greatest heists in American political history: our democracy.--Adapted from dust jacket.