Gerrymandering... it just is now.

[Jimmy Higgins]

You know, we used to have courts, we used to have legislative bodies, and executive bodies that were elected somewhat fairly. It seems that is a thing of the past. Courts are as partisan as ever. And now Gerrymandering is more of a competitive sport than illegal and unethical behavior.

Texas is making a very public go for it after the partisan Trump DoJ said to get rid of minority majority districts. Newsom in response said he was going to look at redistricting California. Now NY is looking into getting into it and Gov. Hochul is considering getting rid of the independent redistricting commission.

The GOP in Ohio really tried to squeeze things tight last 3 years ago, so badly the GOP held State Supreme Court ruled against the maps, like plural. It was THAT BAD, attempting a 12-3 or 13-2 super majority. They did manage to get a not as badly gerrymandered map in, but that backfired and the GOP managed to actually lose two seats in the House (one due to population loss and one due to the Dems gaining to tightly cut a district). But at least Ohio was redistricting when it was required due to the Census. CA, TX, NY are all looking at doing this after the fact for exclusively partisan reasons. Ohio law allows a redraw before the 2026 election, and with a tighter grasp on the State Supreme Court, they might try to reenact the first map from last time.

This is turning democracy into a bit of a joke. While a thumb on the scale was always a risk for districting, there appears to be little care about the influential of partisan matters now, and instead of a thumb, they've just rigged the scale altogether. Our democracy has a cancer at it appears malignant.

 

[bilby]

This is turning democracy into a bit of a joke.

That ship already sailed, long ago.

 

[Gospel]

Look, clearly what's happening here is just another bimodal distribution. On one side, you have maps that just happen to concentrate power in white, rural districts. On the other, districts that just happen to fracture and dilute minority votes. It’s not racism, it’s just two peaks on a graph that always result in the same people winning and the same people losing.

Totally neutral. Totally rational. Just a happy little coincidence that every redistricting “mistake” somehow lands on Black and brown communities. Nothing to see here. It’s democracy, just with creative cartography and a few statistical artifacts.

 

[southernhybrid]

Well Trump started this extreme version of redistricting to rig elections, so what choice do the blue states have but to fight fire with fire? Trump tells Abbott to redraw the districts and he obeys his master. At least the Dems in the Texas Congress have left the state so the Republithugs won't have a quorum. Now Abott is threatening to remove the Dems from office. Who's the villain here? I think it's pretty obvious.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

What the GOP and Texas are doing is clearly wrong.

But this is leading the Democrats to fight fire with fire... where the fire is eliminating our right to vote. What good is voting when the outcomes have already been set? Imagine King George came to the conclusion of creating an elective body in the Colonies... just that King George knew how to draw the districts to dilute separatist voters with Tories loyal to the Crown?

 

[Bomb#20]

Governments do this because "pack and crack" works. That's an easy problem to fix: instead of representatives getting one vote each in the governing body, they should get N votes each, where N is the number of voters who voted for them. No point in packing all opposition voters into one district if that no longer shrinks their control of the government.

(And yeah, the scoundrels are infinitely creative and there's probably some way to game that system too, But at least all the gerrymandering software would be made useless overnight and governments would have to learn how to do it all over again from scratch...)

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Governments do this because "pack and crack" works. That's an easy problem to fix: instead of representatives getting one vote each in the governing body, they should get N votes each, where N is the number of voters who voted for them.

That seems less of an alternative for a plan than the underwear gnomes plan for profit. Was there something else for that you didn't add? What is the population pool of N votes coming from?

 

[ZiprHead]

How Trumpian...

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Governments do this because "pack and crack" works. That's an easy problem to fix: instead of representatives getting one vote each in the governing body, they should get N votes each, where N is the number of voters who voted for them. No point in packing all opposition voters into one district if that no longer shrinks their control of the government.

(And yeah, the scoundrels are infinitely creative and there's probably some way to game that system too, But at least all the gerrymandering software would be made useless overnight and governments would have to learn how to do it all over again from scratch...)

Yeah. I've proposed basically the same thing but from a different angle:

Get rid of most elections, they are a relic of the past that is no longer needed. Instead, "elections" are done by proxy voting.

For each office you indicate someone or something you want to serve in that office. For each office the computer makes a list of who/what got votes, sort by number of votes. Entities must be removed, their votes are forwarded to whoever they voted for--but this forwarding is retained as they may get more votes as it proceeds. Anyone who does not want to serve is treated likewise. Then the bottom vote-getter is removed, votes distributed the same as entities. Repeat until the list has been reduced to however many representatives you want in the body. Each person has a number of votes equal to however many votes the got in the most recent "election". Elections are done on a randomly determined basis (say, last two digits of the DJIA equals 00), the computer runs through the vote distribution again. If that ends up changing who serves there is say a 60 day delay before the switch. Voters are free to switch their proxy say on the first of every month.

Political parties would certainly be represented by entities, but since the bar is so much lower you would see advocacy groups and the like also.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Governments do this because "pack and crack" works. That's an easy problem to fix: instead of representatives getting one vote each in the governing body, they should get N votes each, where N is the number of voters who voted for them.

That seems less of an alternative for a plan than the underwear gnomes plan for profit. Was there something else for that you didn't add? What is the population pool of N votes coming from?

The election. Look at my response to his post, I'm proposing a different means to a similar end.

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

So long as USA has imitation of democracy instead of actual democracy the Dems have no choice but to take such actions. If the Rethugs genuinely wanted reform then they would support independent electoral commissions who are the ones to set electoral boundaries and run the elections, and elimination of first past the post voting.

 

[barbos]

What a country!

 

[barbos]

This is turning democracy into a bit of a joke.

That ship already sailed, long ago.

Agreed.

 

[Tigers!]

I wonder if Illinois with have to redo its districts?

 

[Bomb#20]

Governments do this because "pack and crack" works. That's an easy problem to fix: instead of representatives getting one vote each in the governing body, they should get N votes each, where N is the number of voters who voted for them.

That seems less of an alternative for a plan than the underwear gnomes plan for profit. Was there something else for that you didn't add? What is the population pool of N votes coming from?

Same place the votes come from now -- the people living in each voting district. There's no change to the election procedure; we just stop throwing away the information of how much the winner won by. If you and I are legislators and you won your district by a landslide while in my district I squeaked in with 51% of the vote, then your vote counts more than mine when we're enacting legislation. If my party controls the redistricting process we can still gerrymander to our hearts' content if we want, but your higher-weight vote will neutralize most of the political payoff we'll get out of it, so our incentive to do it at all would go way down.

 

[Bomb#20]

Yeah. I've proposed basically the same thing but from a different angle:

Get rid of most elections, they are a relic of the past that is no longer needed. Instead, "elections" are done by proxy voting.

For each office you indicate someone or something you want to serve in that office. For each office the computer makes a list of who/what got votes, sort by number of votes. Entities must be removed, their votes are forwarded to whoever they voted for--but this forwarding is retained as they may get more votes as it proceeds. Anyone who does not want to serve is treated likewise. Then the bottom vote-getter is removed, votes distributed the same as entities. Repeat until the list has been reduced to however many representatives you want in the body. Each person has a number of votes equal to however many votes the got in the most recent "election". Elections are done on a randomly determined basis (say, last two digits of the DJIA equals 00), the computer runs through the vote distribution again. If that ends up changing who serves there is say a 60 day delay before the switch. Voters are free to switch their proxy say on the first of every month.

Political parties would certainly be represented by entities, but since the bar is so much lower you would see advocacy groups and the like also.

Good concept; there are a couple of issues I see though. It suffers from much the same problem as Condorcet voting -- it's complicated and voters who don't understand it won't believe the announced results are legitimate. Also, it looks like it relies on the computers keeping track of who voted for whom, not just total vote counts. So security and transparency conflict with each other. If the computer contents are visible then the secret ballot is gone and you have vote-buying and vote-coercion; but if the computer contents are invisible then there's no public way to verify that the computers' counts are honest. There's probably a way to patch it up but I'm not sure how.

 

[Gospel]

Governments do this because "pack and crack" works. That's an easy problem to fix: instead of representatives getting one vote each in the governing body, they should get N votes each, where N is the number of voters who voted for them. No point in packing all opposition voters into one district if that no longer shrinks their control of the government.

(And yeah, the scoundrels are infinitely creative and there's probably some way to game that system too, But at least all the gerrymandering software would be made useless overnight and governments would have to learn how to do it all over again from scratch...)

That's a creative way to tell me to move to Switzerland.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Governments do this because "pack and crack" works. That's an easy problem to fix: instead of representatives getting one vote each in the governing body, they should get N votes each, where N is the number of voters who voted for them.

That seems less of an alternative for a plan than the underwear gnomes plan for profit. Was there something else for that you didn't add? What is the population pool of N votes coming from?

Same place the votes come from now -- the people living in each voting district. There's no change to the election procedure; we just stop throwing away the information of how much the winner won by. If you and I are legislators and you won your district by a landslide while in my district I squeaked in with 51% of the vote, then your vote counts more than mine when we're enacting legislation. If my party controls the redistricting process we can still gerrymander to our hearts' content if we want, but your higher-weight vote will neutralize most of the political payoff we'll get out of it, so our incentive to do it at all would go way down.

Aren't we needing a few constitutional amendments there? And it can be gamed. Gerrymander districts in your favor and spread out the opponents districts for 50/50s.

The issue isn't districting can't be done effectively and reasonably, it is that there is more to gain at this point by fixing the election results. The GOP knows NY is trouble for the next election and CA has a couple seats up for grabs. So in order to keep the majority in the House, they are gerrymandering mid-Census, which is pretty rare. If the motive of the political party doesn't change, and there are no legal restrictions, it doesn't matter how you game districting. They'll get a computer to fix it for them.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I wonder if Illinois with have to redo its districts?

Funny, North Carolina and Pennsylvania were forced by courts to undo their gerrymandered maps. Florida, Texas, and Ohio are gerrymandered heavily but the GOP control all of the courts. Texas is also gerrymandering on top of the gerrymandering from 2003.

But we get to hear about Illinois... again and again and again. Why not Maryland too? They gerrymandered one or two seats.

 

[Gospel]

The main reason we even have the secret ballot is to stop vote buying, and vote buying thrives because we’ve allowed high-poverty, low-trust environments to fester. The other big reason is intimidation, which secrecy also blocks. If people were economically secure, trusted the system, and didn’t feel pressured by bosses, neighbors, or party operatives, we could ditch the secret ballot entirely and move to more complex, transparent voting systems. But we’re dealing with humans here, so that’s not on the table.

When it comes to gerrymandering, the Constitution ultimately puts the power in the people’s hands. In states where citizens can pass ballot measures, truly independent redistricting commissions have been created and gerrymandering has been reduced. Where that hasn’t happened, it’s because voters either supported it, tolerated it, or didn’t mobilize to change it. And in states without that process, it’s because we’ve allowed political systems to remain in place that keep the power out of our hands.

Like it or not, the maps we have today, and the politicians who benefit from them, exist because “we the people” either chose them, accepted them, or allowed the rules to be written so we couldn’t change them. And “we the people” are not monolithic, we’re an ever-shifting mix of competing interests, values, and priorities, which means this experiment will keep evolving right up until it collapses like every empire before it.