On last night's Rachael Maddow show, she had a segment on gerrymandering and how it relates to the number of Republicans in Congress.
I've been worried about this for years.
The United States Senate is made up of two senators from each state, regardless of population. This results in small states like Idaho, and Montana having the same number of senators as New York and California. This is a blatantly unfair set-up, and it was probably necessary when the US was being formed: it was the sweetener for the small states.
Now, if the Republicans continue to gerrymander the districts in states that they control, we may continue to lose the house for years to come.
Here's part of an article from Mother Jones magazine:
After Republicans swept into power in state legislatures in 2010, the GOP gerrymandered key states, redrawing House district boundaries to favor Republicans. In Pennsylvania, Democratic candidates received half of the votes in House contests, but Republicans will claim about three-quarters of the congressional seats. The same is true in North Carolina. More than half the voters in that state voted for Democratic representation, yet Republicans will fill about 70 percent of the seats. Democrats drew more votes in Michigan than Republicans, but they'll take only 5 out of the state's 14 congressional seats.
It seems to me that there are issues here which scream out for a lawsuit due to lack of equal representation. I myself got gerrymandered from a liberal district in NJ (Bill Pascrell in the NJ 8th) into a right wing district (Rodney Frelinghuysen in the NJ 11th). Frelinghuysen won the district by about 60/40, so the chances of throwing him out are very slim.