This response if fifteen years late - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP
I get the argument in favour for that, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is rigging elections. It only makes the US more of a functioning democracy again (which it isn’t currently) if it helps in getting both sides to agree to outlaw election rigging by gerrymandering. I would not hold my breath.
I agree that it could lead to finally banning gerrymandering entirely, but I don’t consider it rigging. It’s legal, so it’s just a form of Hard Ball, and the Dems wouldn’t be doing it if MAGA hadn’t done it first.
It’s about time the Dems started fighting fire with fire.
Yes, it is legal, election rigging via gerramandering is legal in the US. That’s the problem. Fighting rigging with rigging, can reestablish a balance, but it doesn’t make the system more democratic or elections fair.
The problem is that election rigging is transferring power of electing someone from the voters, to the currently elected party, which in turn just fortifies their position and makes transition of power ever harder.
I still wouldn’t call it rigging, because it IS legal. It’s more like influencing in a legal manner.
Is it fair? No, but it’s legal, so it’s NOT rigging, by definition. It’s the same with the Electoral College. There are ways to manipulate it, and they aren’t specifically illegal, so it’s not rigging.
Make gerrymandering and Electoral College illegal, and then manipulating them would be rigging.
It is functionally election manipulation, making it much harder for election based overthrow of government, just out in the open and legal. If that is enough for you to not call it rigging, so be it. It doesn’t change what it is and what it does. Remove voting power from the electorate transferring it to the party/parties currently in power.
I criticise what it is and what it does, not the terminology. The issue is that this is not the only major deficiency in the US election system. Another one being that effective limitless bribing of parties, via election campaigns has been legalised as well. Yes, you might also come in and say, because it is legal it is not bribing. I don’t care. It functionally is, legally, call it whatever you like.
On top of that, the Electoral College almost seems benign as it is different, even though it is highly problematic as well. It is as such not changing, ie manipulating the outcome of the election in a dynamic matter, depending on who was previously in power in the state. It is my understanding, that while the voter will could be ignored, it is still the case that the electoral college is basically just doing what the state level results would suggest.
There has been a lot of MAGA discussion about gaming the Electoral College as well, like splitting a state’s votes between parties. Its the next frontier after gerrymandering, although the gerrymandering thing hasn’t worked out so well for them this time, so maybe they’ll reconsider messing with the Electoral College.
Ah, who am I kidding? These MAGA morons never learn from their mistakes, they just blame somebody else, and keep being stupid.
Sure. The Electoral College is certainly a weak point as well, but giving all those other gaping weak points, reaching all the way up to the top of the judiciary, I’d be surprised if they’d even need to exploit the Electoral College. But never say never.
I was thinking about this the other day and if you’re gonna gerrymander a state, having a state-wide vote about it first makes it a bit more fair.
Also, MAGA is trying to gerrymander states so they don’t have ANY Democratic representation, just Red districts, even if they have a Democrat population approaching 50%. They are deliberately denying representation to nearly half their state.
Get the fire hose, let’s paint the rest of the country blue too!
As long as we also get rid of conservative aspect of the Democrat party and make it one for the workers instead of big money interest, sure.
Oh but it’s fine when you do it, Red? Fuck you, go
poundeat sand.*fuck
Democrats tried to ban gerrymandering for the last decade. Republicans have ALWAYS voted against it.
They know they lose when they don’t cheat and they are upset Democrats are not playing nice anymore.
also they cant gerrymander too hard, or they affect thier states republican strongholds. thats why they add in VOTER Suppression to top it off.
is there any actual benefit to having it subdivided at all in the first place? it just seems like another thing to fight over and undermine the value of particular voters.
The sort of idea of it is/was to give farmers and people living in rural i.e. less population dense areas a “fair” amount of voting power compared to cities. The idea does make sense to some extent, as city dwellers often make up a majority of the population, and are unlikely to have the farmers best interests in mind, which could be problematic for everyone. But this already shaky line of reasoning has been abused pretty much since its inception by the party in power to swing the vote in their favor by redrawing lines
Theoretically you get hyperspecific representatives. Maybe a district in the west would want to vote differently than a district in the east. Theoretically your vote is still just as valuable and you’re voting with your geographic peers.
In reality it just gets optimized for party votes and you end up with this
I’m in Texas. The far end of my district is over 400 miles away… And my district isn’t even the worst example.
whoopsie doodle
I like how apparently a partisan judge is trying to block this now.
Texas: Fuck voters, we’re doing it without them.
CA/VA: Let’s defer to the voters as we should. Ok, they voted for it.
Partisan Hack Judge: Wait, no, not like that.
Ok. First. Awesome! More. More. More of this. Democrats actually doing something. I’m happy.
Now, second, once you do something like this you have to be ready to fight HARDER now. My pessimism and time spent watching the Democratic party gives me an awful taste in my mouth.
If any, if fucking any Democrat tries to do the “what we need is to not allow blue states or red states to do this. We need reasonable democratic districts” they should be immediately be removed from the party. They are either delusional or just a Republican fascist. The Republicans aren’t suddenly going to “be reasonable”. Shut the fuck up and get out of politics.
The fact that their evil dickhead grifters are doing overtime to cry and blame the Dems for not taking the gerrymandering laying down is awesome. We’re only here because of Trump demanding Texas gerrymander for five seats. You cocksuckers don’t get to punch someone in the face then complain when they fight back. I fucking hate right-wingers with all of my being. Horrible traitorous human beings.
They control all 3 branches of the federal government, so I warmly welcome them to pass a law or ruling that makes partisan gerrymandering illegal.
If fighting fire with fire is what’s needed to make them feel like it’s a problem, then so be it.
they cant, thats why they tried to pass the voter suppression bill, Save act.
It bugs me that there is such a simple solution: just count total votes
This is for members of Congress. Simply counting total votes would mean 100% of the delegation to the house are from whatever party gets 50%+1 votes.
Yes, the majority of votes would elect the district’s chosen candidate. That’s correct.
You’re confusing the districts with Presidential election results.
In the presidential election the district lines actually don’t matter in terms of the outcome. They are just usually reported on election night as “by district”. This is likely what you are confusing or misremembering.
But, the state itself is based on a popular vote for the presidential election that determines who wins ALL of the states “electoral college votes”. Yes, stupidly confusing i know.
Meaning after counting all the votes in the entire state the winner is declared based on popular vote and ALL the “electoral votes” of those states will go to that winner.
Now, this is true for all BUT two states. Main and Nebraska are the exception. Their electoral votes are not “winner take all” for the popular vote. So, if it was one of those states what you are thinking would be correct actually. They split their electoral votes of the state based on the districts.
What is being discussed about districts in the OPs image is the redrawing of district maps. Each district elects a single representative in The House of Representatives. This is won by popular vote within each district and each district is independently represented. The votes from one district have nothing to do with the votes from another in this case.
This has always been a means of drawing the lines such that more of a certain party is likely to get more representatives. But, historically, this has primarily been aggressively done in red states. Especially in the south in order to reduce black voter and minority voter representation. Usually by attempting to draw a single district with as many black and minority voters as possible so they only get one representative.
Hope that clears up the confusion. You’re being downvoted but I think you’re just confused in a very purposely confusing electoral system.
All congressional districts already work like that. Gerrymandering is the practice of re-drawing distirct borders within an area so that your team has more districts with your voters as the majority.
The whole point though is that everybody is supposed to get equal representation.
Yokels surrounded by empty land want their 3x voting power back, boo fucking hoo. I’m proud of my state right now. SCV better not shit the bed on this one.
Their crocodile tears have been delicious.
Totally on board with outlawing this shit entirely, by the way, but also totally over getting punched in the groin by the people who go low.
It’s also a great way of pressuring Republican politicians into actually banning it.
“You don’t like us playing by the rules you wanted? Help us change the rules then!”
They’ll only accept losing the power to gerrymander if it hurts Democrats more than Republicans.
Virginia has had a bipartisan districting commission intended to discourage gerrymandering since 2020. Unfortunately, it’s designed terribly and just passes districting powers to the state Supreme Court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistricting_in_Virginia
The US just needs to have PR and stop doing this flawed fptp stuff
We’ll have to do it more. There’s a reason they could only gerrymander 5 more seats into a state the size of Texas, and that’s because Texas was and is already gerrymandered to shit.
They still don’t want a ban because even after a few high profile Democrat gerrymanders, Republicans still benefit more.
The funny part is where you think Republicans would abide by their own ban, if not outright reverse it, the second they have a chance to reverse power.
that’s an easy solve though…
it’s pretty easy to put a number to how gerrymandered a region is: ungerrymandered means that if you were to look at all the votes in the state without districts that’s your ideal ratio… if you then add districts and that ratio is different, it’s perhaps gerrymandered
so if the goal is to stop gerrymandering, you get a bunch of states to sign some interstate compact that measures gerrymandering across the country and says any state that’s part of the compact will (perhaps in the next election, perhaps based on projections for the current voting maps based on prior voting behaviour) gerrymander to an equal or greater degree to offset or punish gerrymandering overall… ie you can gerrymander your state but at best it’ll mean nothing when it comes to the ratio of votes
Exactly that, I have stopped a while ago, I’ll joke with some of the naive ones say I can upset them with one sentence but, tell I mean in jest but I can act just like them, they ask what and I say one simple phrase that works every time loL “all Republicans must die” Then I say I don’t want to be serious about it so…
Punctuation my dude
You know how MAGA has been full of shit every step of the way, trolling the libs with ragebait? Yeah, let’s do that to them all the way to 2028.
Exactly. The ONLY thing that stops a bully is to bully them right back, only worse, so that makes MAGA the only acceptable target for the most vicious bullying conceivable. They deserve, they have EARNED, our worst treatment possible. Shun them, humiliate them, embarrass them, sideline them, make fun of them, call them names, give them mean nicknames, give them the worst assignments, fire them, steal their lunch, waste their time, tell them No, be completely unfair, mean, and relentless. Make them CRY.
Add Anti-vaxxers to the list. They deserve to be bullied, too.
Exactly only Snowflake’s in this country is the GOP group of pedophiles
