The Best of the Web: Election Edition

“It’s the death of democracy! The world has gone mad! RIP Romney: Never our President, Forever in Our Hearts!” The tumblr “White People Mourning Romney” sprung up fairly soon after President Obama was confirmed the winner of the election, and boy is it telling.

4. 26 Lives That Changed Forever on Tuesday

Through all the dramatic reactions to the Presidential election, Buzzfeed kindly reminded us of one of the most important outcomes of the day: four separate states chose to legalize gay marriage!

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A Comparison Of Slave States And The 2012 Election Map

A fascinating look at how the 2012 election map compares to the 1848 map of slave and non-slave states in America.

The League of Dangerous Mapmakers

The Article: The League of Dangerous Mapmakers by Robert Draper in The Atlantic.

The Text: Every 10 years, after U.S. census workers have fanned out across the nation, a snowy-haired gentle­man by the name of Tom Hofeller takes up anew his quest to destroy Democrats. He packs his bag and his laptop with its special Maptitude software, kisses his wife of 46 years, pats his West Highland white terrier, Kara, and departs his home in Alexandria, Virginia, for a United States that he will help carve into a jigsaw of disunity.

Where Hofeller travels depends to some degree on the migratory patterns of his fellow Americans over the previous decade. As the census shows, some states will have swelled in population, while others will have dwindled. The states that gained the most people are entitled, under the Constitution, to additional representation in the form of new congressional districts, which (since the law allows only 435 such districts) are wrenched from the states that lost the most people. After the 2010 census, eight states (all in the South and the West) gained congressional districts, which were stripped from 10 others (in the Midwest and the East Coast, as well as Katrina-ravaged Louisiana).

The creation of a new congressional district, or the loss of an old one, affects every district around it, necessitating new maps. Even states not adding or losing congressional representatives need new district maps that reflect the population shifts within their borders, so that residents are equally repre­sented no matter where they live. This ritual carving and paring of the United States into 435 sovereign units, known as redistricting, was intended by the Framers solely to keep democracy’s electoral scales balanced. Instead, redistricting today has become the most insidious practice in American politics—a way, as the opportunistic machinations following the 2010 census make evident, for our elected leaders to entrench themselves in 435 impregnable garrisons from which they can maintain political power while avoiding demographic realities.

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The Biggest Threat To Islamic Militants

Don’t give that girl an education; she just might use it.

A Risky Feat: Covering The Arab Spring As A Freelancer

The Article: Rookie Freelancers Risking Their Lives To Cover The Arab Spring by Sarah Topol in The Daily Beast.

The Text: After two days of rough seas, the small fishing boat carrying two seasoned correspondents, rebel fighters, and Ruth Sherlock arrived at the besieged city of Misrata. It was the height of the Libyan civil war and the seasick passengers were eager to make landfall when suddenly, the boat came under fire. Not knowing if the bullets were from government troops or friendly fire from confused rebels, the journalists dove for cover. This is it, Sherlock thought. She was 24, working as a freelancer, with no one to bail her out in one of the most dangerous spots on earth.

Their boat was one of the first to land in the coastal enclave where 600 people had been killed in the first few weeks of fighting, mostly by government shelling of civilian homes. Libya was Sherlock’s first brush with conflict reporting—and unlike the experienced journalists she was traveling with, she had no money, no health insurance, no first-aid training, or even the most basic idea about how to work in a conflict zone.

When I met the petite blonde in the Libyan city of Benghazi in February 2011, she was filing stories for a Scottish newspaper and tagging along to the frontline with older correspondents. I was only two years older, but had been through a five-day hostile-environment training course and was on assignment—expenses paid—for an American magazine. I thought Sherlock was insane. “At the time, I was just so desperate to make it as a journalist, it was all I wanted,” she says.

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