[RD] Death to the Gerrymander

[Berzerker]

Where in that quote does it say I support or oppose anything?

you said:

You can preserve drawing districts to prioritize minority representation while also getting rid of partisan gerrymandering

I asked how you preserve them without gerrymandering and you said:

you don't seem to understand that there are different reasons for gerrymandering, and you can end one kind (partisan) without necessarily ending gerrymandering altogether.

So you support gerrymandering to preserve minority seats in Congress, right? Seems logical based your arguments. What do you think, Lex?

 

[metalhead]

Does that post state what I personally support? Yes, or no?

 

[Berzerker]

Yes, you support racial gerrymandering to preserve minority seats... The "you" in your responses is your position, not mine.

edit: will you be returning to the shutting down the government thread to defend your straw man? You disappeared after confusing past tense with present tense to rudely accuse me of claiming the Senate was voting on the CR.

 

[Zkribbler]

The Penn. Supreme Court has re-drawn the map.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...ngressional-map-which-could-benefit-dems.html

 

[hobbsyoyo]

And the Republican controlled legislature has threatened to remove the judges over their ruling and refused to redraw the boundaries, thus forcing them to do it.

And I love how Fox made the headline 'could benefit the democrats' instead of 'is more equitable for all citizens'.

 

[Arwon]

That map is still kinda jaggedy. Are they following local government boundaries, roads, rivers, or what? 12 v 13 15, then 17 v 18, and 8 v 9, are the three that jump out.

 

[Lexicus]

And I love how Fox made the headline 'could benefit the democrats' instead of 'is more equitable for all citizens'.

At this point these are mostly the same thing.

 

[BvBPL]

Delaware gerrymandering before the Supreme Court this week in Benisek v. Lamone following Democrats redrawing map explicitly to establish a district that would be unwinnable to GOP incumbent. Should be interesting.

 

[metatron]

A Clinton judge would be a lot more likely to strike down partisan gerrymandering than Neil Gorsuch is. You can preserve drawing districts to prioritize minority representation while also getting rid of partisan gerrymandering, so now you're conflating two things that have nothing to do with one another to stubbornly stick to your original, poorly thought out point.

The two things do have a lot to do with each other. In some cases one follows the other as a matter of law...and math.

I made the case at some length, if you remember:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/race-based-gerrymandering.626192/

The point still stands: Can you reconcile electing a fair number of Representatives in terms of partisanship with electing a fair number of minority Representatives?
In North Carolina today? Probably.
Forty years ago? Probably not.
In Mississippi today? Probably not either?

In fact this is demonstrated by the very tool @Cutlass has provided:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-maps/#Compact

There are three objectives here: Compact districts, partisan fairness, minority empowerment.
In a fair number of places theses three goals are irreconcileable unless voting patterns were to change.

 

[Oerdin]

The claim that you can preserve packing for minorities (in order to create minority majority districts) and yet still eliminate gerrymandering just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. After all that is half of the packing and cracking needed for gerrymandering. I am sure others have linked to it in the past but 538 had an excellent multipart expose on gerrymandering and one whole podcast was dedicated to just the Voting Rights Act requirements. Listening to the experience in NM where they tried to degerrymander yet still comply with the VRA... It only helped at the margins.

To end gerrymandering you have to get rid of the VRA or at least tge requirement for minority majority districts.

 

[metatron]

The two things do have a lot to do with each other. In some cases one follows the other as a matter of law...and math.

I made the case at some length, if you remember:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/race-based-gerrymandering.626192/

The point still stands: Can you reconcile electing a fair number of Representatives in terms of partisanship with electing a fair number of minority Representatives?
In North Carolina today? Probably.
Forty years ago? Probably not.
In Mississippi today? Probably not either?

In fact this is demonstrated by the very tool @Cutlass has provided:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-maps/#Compact

There are three objectives here: Compact districts, partisan fairness, minority empowerment.
In a fair number of places theses three goals are irreconcileable unless voting patterns were to change.

I am sure others have linked to it in the past but 538 had an excellent multipart expose on gerrymandering and one whole podcast was dedicated to just the Voting Rights Act requirements.

Erm...yes?

Oh, i think @Lexicus had a gif for that.

 

[Berzerker]

I was listening to a Democrat today blaming a gerrymandered minority seat on the Republicans. You see, Democrats didn't want minority voters lumped into a district to ensure a minority in Congress, the Republicans did that to dilute the minority vote in surrounding districts.

 

[Arwon]

The claim that you can preserve packing for minorities (in order to create minority majority districts) and yet still eliminate gerrymandering just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. After all that is half of the packing and cracking needed for gerrymandering. I am sure others have linked to it in the past but 538 had an excellent multipart expose on gerrymandering and one whole podcast was dedicated to just the Voting Rights Act requirements. Listening to the experience in NM where they tried to degerrymander yet still comply with the VRA... It only helped at the margins.

To end gerrymandering you have to get rid of the VRA or at least tge requirement for minority majority districts.

I mean, you could just abolish single member districts

 

[Oerdin]

I would like to see at large members so that parties/candidates who get votes in gerrymandered districts end up getting plused up. That way every votw really would count.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I would like to see at large members so that parties/candidates who get votes in gerrymandered districts end up getting plused up. That way every votw really would count.

Aren't "at large members" effectively called "Senators"? Not disputing the idea, just pointing out that the system already involves a balancing agent along very similar lines.

FWIW I think the biggest problem with districting is not the system of laying them out, it's the raw number. Congress was designed with house members that represented about sixty thousand people. Clearly too many to really feel any great obligation to the average constituent, but...my congressman represents something upward of three quarters of a million people. The ONLY way he can campaign is through mass media. He happens to be from the city I live in and I don't know anyone other than the mayor, who I sort of know in passing, who claims to actually know the guy. I don't claim to have a solution, but pretending that a system of 'representative government' can stretch into a one size fits all monstrosity without losing contact with the basic design is absurd.

 

[Arwon]

Aren't "at large members" effectively called "Senators"? Not disputing the idea, just pointing out that the system already involves a balancing agent along very similar lines.

Nah, senatorial elections are still single member. Would need multiple "at large" people elected proportionally off the same ballot to break that.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I'm too lazy to link but the GOP is starving the census bureau of funds and passing laws to interfere with how it collects data. The intent is to purposefully under report certain populations in order to prevent more districts being shifted from red states to blue. As long as they can get away with tactics like this and gerrymandering, they can keep their electoral prospects alive in the face of unfavorable demographic shifts.

Update: And they are also adding citizenship questions to the census to under count immigrants and bolster the power of states with lower immigrant numbers in the House and the myriad of funding formulas all based on the census.

You'd vote for the party, and the party would choose the reps. That's how they do it in parliamentary systems. I get that people really don't like the idea of not having a local representative tied to your district, but I never felt like my representatives were "mine" when the districts have tens of thousands of people, so I don't care about that argument. I do recognize that the US will probably never adopt a proportional representation system.

The whole problem with gerrymandering is that the concept of the "district" becomes distorted. The idea of having localities represented by one person in Congress is good but I just don't think it really works anymore. Certainly a good idea would be to have a nonpartisan commission, rather than the elected officials who nominally represent the districts, responsible for drawing them.

Also, I mean, come on, if we're imagining such a sweeping impossible change to the system as the House going proportional representation instead of district-based, we have to also imagine that campaign finance reform took place

I mean, we're not really guaranteed to have local politicians in our system either. With the rise of the Tea Party, astroturfing politicians that don't really live in their districts seems to have taken a major upswing. The Republicans (and probably the Democrats too) send in whatever rich corporate shill they think can carry the district and have them meet the bare minimum of residency requirements to run. Or in my case in Irvine, they just pretend that the woman who has lived the last 20 years in a mansion in Laguna Beach really lives in a one bedroom slum apartment in Irvine.

Delaware gerrymandering before the Supreme Court this week in Benisek v. Lamone following Democrats redrawing map explicitly to establish a district that would be unwinnable to GOP incumbent. Should be interesting.

I'm fine with Democrats losing every court case on gerrymandering over districts they drew if it means an end to gerrymandering. I suspect this is a major difference between Democrats and Republicans.

 

[Oerdin]

Aren't "at large members" effectively called "Senators"? Not disputing the idea, just pointing out that the system already involves a balancing agent along very similar lines.

FWIW I think the biggest problem with districting is not the system of laying them out, it's the raw number. Congress was designed with house members that represented about sixty thousand people. Clearly too many to really feel any great obligation to the average constituent, but...my congressman represents something upward of three quarters of a million people. The ONLY way he can campaign is through mass media. He happens to be from the city I live in and I don't know anyone other than the mayor, who I sort of know in passing, who claims to actually know the guy. I don't claim to have a solution, but pretending that a system of 'representative government' can stretch into a one size fits all monstrosity without losing contact with the basic design is absurd.

Removing the cap on the number of hpuse members so that everyone gets one for an equal amount of people would be a good start.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Removing the cap on the number of hpuse members so that everyone gets one for an equal amount of people would be a good start.

Never going to happen as long as the Republican Party exists.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Removing the cap on the number of hpuse members so that everyone gets one for an equal amount of people would be a good start.

I was expecting that this would make for a gigantic number and be a very hard sell, but going back to the old rule makes for 559 members in the house, which is not really unwieldy. But as Hobbsyoyo said, the Republicans will never allow it. Districts with the highest population per representative are almost all heavily blue. Adding 124 members would tilt the house irrevocably to the Democrats.