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North Carolina Congressional Map Ruled Unconstitutionally Gerrymandered (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: A panel of federal judges struck down North Carolina's congressional map on Tuesday, condemning it as unconstitutional because Republicans had drawn the map seeking a political advantage (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source). The ruling was the first time that a federal court had blocked a congressional map because of a partisan gerrymander, and it instantly endangered Republican seats in the coming elections. Judge James A. Wynn Jr., in a biting 191-page opinion, said that Republicans in North Carolina's Legislature had been "motivated by invidious partisan intent" as they carried out their obligation in 2016 to divide the state into 13 congressional districts, 10 of which are held by Republicans. The result, Judge Wynn wrote, violated the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. The ruling and its chief demand -- that the Republican-dominated Legislature create a new landscape of congressional districts by Jan. 24 -- infused new turmoil into the political chaos that has in recent years enveloped North Carolina. President Trump carried North Carolina in 2016, but the state elected a Democrat as its governor on the same day and in 2008 supported President Barack Obama.
Purposely changing election maps in order to effectively disenfranchise citizens is unconstitutional? You've got to be kidding me.
...however, I'm not holding my breath.
In all seriousness, I do hope that something like this will be implemented in its stead:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
"It's a tarp!" -- Dyslexic Admiral Ackbar
Racists gonna racist.
How is this not automated? Should just be a computer program that does "find the N points such that each point is the closest point to exactly P/N people."
That is, make a Voronoi diagram on population, not geometric distance.
No politics involved at all, but probably people wouldn't like it...
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
I understand that some political stories have a technology angle, but this has fuck all to do with technology and doesn't even make the barest effort to dress it up in such a way as to make it belong. At least throw in something about someone calling for districts to be drawn up by computers or using some algorithm that ensures fairness so we can argue about that.
they went along with the Gerrymandering because the R's carved out some safe districts for them. If this keeps up (and if we don't let voter suppression happen) it'll change the political landscape drastically. The part that worries me is the Rs just got out from under that court order that lets them send poll watchers. I some how doubt the reason for that order (voter intimidation) really went away. I know in the last two presidential elections there were armed police stationed outside predominately black precincts... OTOH there's been motions to force paper trails nationwide.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I'm sure it more complex than x number of people per district but it seems like there could be some formula and consistency across all states or at least for each state.
That said, I can see some easy troubles with this since states have difference population structures (and vastly different geographic sizes.)
Are we to accept that this is a one way street?
And this doesn't.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Gerrymandering has been done forever by both parties. Don't be a partisan hack.
Because once this completely neutral algorithm starts favoring one group over another via standard distribution, people will freak out and start gerrymandering again.
Or just go by counties or towns?
So what's Constitutional Gerrymandering?
What happens if you find that the concentration of registered citizens doesn't match the list of votes cast? So what you are really arguing is Voter ID, that will verify a person to location mapping.
You have district to vote totals today, but the premise is that the district geo-boundary was manipulated in a way that the vote total could be manipulated to result in certain outcomes. Without verifiable citizen locations, how could this automation be trusted?
Because Technological solutions can not solve People problems. And it has no chance against political ones.
It has become a recent issue because of automation. We could have done this for more than a century. manually Just don't present the independent math guy with political affiliation as part of the data set. Automation, we could do for decades.
But what political group would want to lose that attribute as a weapon? So humans did it... along with all their biases. But when humans were doing it, they messed up enough that the results didn't follow intent. Not a big deal. Now with big data and computers, the intent has been programmed in on top of the population constraint. Its automated to give the current party the benefit.
Stuff that Matters to Media and Hardly Anyone Else
Contrary to one popular misconception about the practice, the point of gerrymandering isn't to draw yourself a collection of overwhelmingly safe seats. Rather, it's to give your opponents a small number of safe seats, while drawing yourself a larger number of seats that are not quite as safe, but that you can expect to win comfortably.
They can't win unless they change the rules. Fuck off.
I don't think anyone has much faith in the strength of political ideas. People don't even vote for "their party" here, they blindly vote against the "other guy's party". They rarely vote for the actual ideals & feasibility of the candidates nor hold them accountable. If it was the other way around, there would be more parties than just the three. The fact we lump "other" into "Independent" shows how messed up it is.
I think the US has a great political system when compared to other Democracies but in this area, we are far behind. In many other systems, the gridlock we see would result in government disbandment and re-elections! That rarely happens because those parties figure out how to compromise and work things out.
Get about a 10-15% bump in election performance due to illegal actions like this.
As a Canadian who regularly reads Slashdot that sounds about right. Some of the things the Republican party does are cause for disenfranchisement. Ugly politics down south there.
From about 1998 to 2005-- it was great. The state seemed to be becoming increasingly progressive and very proud of it's environmental resources and preserving them. Since I've moved away, the vibe seems that everything positive was rolled back and the environment takes a back seat to hog farmers using the rivers as a toilet.
That's how gerrymandering works. You don't create districts for your own party to win, you create single safe districts for the other party to win to "contain" the opposition votes in one district so they don't affect the others.
For example, the most common type of gerrymandering in North Carolina is to put all the black voters into one district. By sacrificing that one district, you improve your chances in the five surrounding districts. This is from the article you cited:
You are welcome on my lawn.
Or it could be that this court ruling had nothing to do with Maryland?
Either way I hope both parties get burned.
This may be the first time a federal court has intervened, but such cases do happen all the time — one just reached Supreme Court in Texas last September — and a federal court may get involved there as well.
That the federal judges intervened in a matter of how a State decides on voting should be troubling to anyone, who claims to support States' Rights...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
For example, check out the work of Moon Duchin and the Matrix Geometry and Gerrymandering Group at Tufts: http://sites.tufts.edu/gerryma... Chronicle of Higher Ed profile: https://www.chronicle.com/arti... And other mathematicians also: http://www.ams.org/publication...
whataboutism at it's finest.
I think the US has a great political system when compared to other Democracies but in this area, we are far behind. In many other systems, the gridlock we see would result in government disbandment and re-elections! That rarely happens because those parties figure out how to compromise and work things out.
The US is a lot more diverse than those you are comparing to. As those other countries become more diverse with ideas and people the more cracks we see. Elections are messy affairs. If there are problems, I don't think the answer should default to 're-election' as it seems so common in Europe. There is nothing stopping a state from adopting some solution for their elections (for the most part). Lead by example and risk your political power.
Well, I happen to hate when both Republicans and Democrats gerrymander. Thus I support this particular suit. When the Republicans find themselves regularly winning the popular vote, yet consistently losing big by seat count, I will listen to them, too.
The intent to disenfranchise is not even alleged in TFA, much less proven.
Gerrymandering by definition disenfranchises some group of people. If gerrymandering occurs then it is proven and the court found that it had occurred in this case so it is proven in the legal sense as well. Since gerrymandering doesn't occur by accident then it has to be intended. Whenever you make someone's vote effectively meaningless that is the very definition of disenfranchisement.
What happens if you find that the concentration of registered citizens doesn't match the list of votes cast?
This is not relevant. A lot of registered voters don't actually go out and vote.
So what you are really arguing is Voter ID, that will verify a person to location mapping.
Most states already have this. You report to a designated polling station based on your home address. I've never lived in a state that worked differently.
If being at the right place on election day is difficult, you can submit an absentee ballot instead.
Without verifiable citizen locations, how could this automation be trusted?
Voter locations are determined based upon their legal residence. Basing it on anything more detailed is going to be both expensive and intrusive.
This is completely orthogonal to the question of gerrymandering anyway.
So what you are really arguing is Voter ID
Once your factual errors are corrected, you have no rational support for Voter ID.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Maryland does the same thing, but since it benefits Democrats, it's OK.
Why not simply add up all the votes over the entire population of interest ?
The problem is in how you define the entire population of interest. Gerrymandering is the act of politicians (or political parties) having the power to choose the population that is most likely to ensure they get elected.
Gerrymandering is bad for democracy, as is unlimited money. Reform both and you'll get better outcomes.
Beware of those who say it "cannot" or "should not" be done. They have ulterior motives.
Mapping congressional districts is a perfect application for artificial intelligence.
Of course, some politicians might lose their jobs.
No politician should lose his job because of artificial intelligence, because intelligence has no place in politics.
It is not Republicans, who want illegal immigrants counted when allotting Congress seats and other benefits.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This is honestly a necessary evil in personal politics. If you are going to have individual seats where voters elect their specific representative (as opposed to a parliamentary system, where voters only get to vote for party and then party politics selects the representatives), then you have to define the districts, and the districts must each contain X number of people, where population densities vary along with regional political leanings.
This asinine court ruling will probably be overturned since gerrymandering is just a reality and the only question is who does it.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
The intent to disenfranchise is not even alleged in TFA, much less proven.
So what? The article is just what some journalist wrote. The actual pleading, the evidence before the court, and the order itself would reflect that.
Not that is intent is required in this case, but happily for you, the North Carolina legislature's own records were subpoened and referenced in the final order.
Who gets to train the AI?
And this doesn't.
What color is the sky on your planet where gerrymandering doesn't matter?
Democrats won in nine of the 10 most-gerrymandered districts. But eight out of 10 of those districts were drawn by Republicans. Both parties love to create districts - or agree to create districts - that guarantee safe seats. And when the fact is that "Maryland and North Carolina are essentially tied for the honor of most-gerrymandered state." but only North Carolina - a GOP State - is mentioned but Maryland - a Democrat State - is not, it's pretty clear that /. is also pretty gerrymandered...
Well Maryland is mentioned in the Wapo article you linked to so you must be complaining about the Slashdot summary which is about North Carolina's congressional map being ruled unconstitutionally gerrymandered so I'm not particularly surprised that Maryland is not mentioned since it is not a party to that lawsuit (Fun fact: The article the Slashdot summary links to actually mentions Maryland and the republican's complaints about that state's election map). Complaining that Maryland is not mentioned in the summary of an article whose primary topic of discussion is gerrymandering in North Carolina is like complaining that the summary of an article about rotten apples does not spend half of it's column space talking about rotten oranges .... (hint: it's because the article was about rotten apples).
BTW, Gerrymandering has been happening since the beginning of the Republic.
Before actually
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
i never understood this crybaby complaint. "wahhhh but the other guys probably do it too". so fucking what. you should still be against gerrymandering if you have any tiny shred of moral decency. instead you just want to cry like a baby and hope you can get away with it next time.
i could live a little longer in this prison
Democrats won in nine of the 10 most-gerrymandered districts. But eight out of 10 of those districts were drawn by Republicans.
That's because of a tactic called "packing" whereby you try to concentrate the opposition into the fewest districts possible. The other major tactic is "cracking" which dilutes the voting power of the opposition across multiple districts. So it wouldn't be shocking at all to find a highly gerrymandered district drawn by the losing party. They do that so that they can win more seats elsewhere.
Gerrymandering is, by definition, the manipulation of the Congressional districts in a way to assure an outcome beneficial to one party of another.
What makes it "insidious" or not is beyond speculation. That is is just a stupid, inflammatory adjective on the Judge's part.
BTW, Gerrymandering has been happening since the beginning of the Republic.
Well at some point it does become obscene in the extreme. Looking at these maps and reading a bit at how they are formed... ie throw as many Democrats as possible into a few districts and then spread the remaining Democrats out in all the other districts. I don't really see how this is any different than the prohibition on using race as part of drawing new districts.
The courts should make this simple and delegitimize partisan affiliation and voting history as a valid consideration. The only legitimate data that are used to draw the maps should be where people live and then the districts should be draw to closely match the existing underlying political boundaries (ie cities, towns and counties) in a geographically compact area.
You are too stupid to be allowed to vote. You can't even read your own article which directly contradicts what you are claiming. Your knee jerk reactions and shallow understanding of the problem is exactly what is wrong with this country. People like you take superficial facts as gospel without true knowledge or understanding of the subject and spout off as if you are an expert... effectively letting other people use you as a mouthpiece. Congratulations comrade, you are now part of President Putin's media team.
The solution is the hard part. Courts are now tasked with finding some principle of law that states can use going forward to figure out what is allowed and not allowed. Up until now gerrymandering on political grounds has survived. Only race has really been made off limits by the courts.
Just doing the opposite... ie making districts that have even numbers of partisan inclined voters doesn't sound like a great solution either. You could very well have gerrymandered looking spaghetti districts as a result of that mapmaking.
Partisan affiliation should just be put out of bounds as a consideration just as race has been. And then as long as the districts don't look gerrymandered (meaning they don't have long thin parts sticking into other districts.) then whatever the results are should be acceptable.
That's how gerrymandering works. You don't create districts for your own party to win, you create single safe districts for the other party to win to "contain" the opposition votes in one district so they don't affect the others.
For example, the most common type of gerrymandering in North Carolina is to put all the black voters into one district. By sacrificing that one district, you improve your chances in the five surrounding districts. This is from the article you cited:
Oh dear. You accidentally left out Maryland when you quoted him.
It was a three-judge panel. Wynn just wrote the opinion.
When this is done in California, it isn't news.
Are you saying that the same federal judges also just found Maryland to be in violation, and ordered them to redistrict too? Or..
Oh, I get it. You're saying /. is biased toward reporting what the court ruled on, instead of reporting on what should have been in court. Is that the bias, that ./ doesn't engage in enough fantasy or subjunctive news reporting?
That's .. an idea for a website. One of today's headlines could be that cold fusion was finally invented and your new $99 car can run on it. But I think at some point it would get boring and people would switch to doing humor stories all the time, and you'd just end up with The Onion. Perhaps /.'s unintentional bias toward telling us about facts and reality, instead of aspirations and dreams, is what keeps people here.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
"Fair" has nothing to do with Law once it is passed.
Maybe you should review the equal protection clause.
Slashdot gerrymandered? Are you insane? It's basically reposting a news article.
The court case involved recent actions by the state of North Carolina. So yeah, Slashdot is talking specifically about North Carolina. Relax that persecution complex a bit, chief.
If you live in Maryland and believe you are affected by unjust gerrymandering, you can pursue a case against the state. In fact, this decision may have set the precedent that allows you to win.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Strictly speaking, the courts involvement in this at all is unconstitutional. Redistricting is a task left to the Legislature in the Constitution.
Where does the constitution restrict the judicial branch from making a ruling in any matter involving either the legislative or executive branch? If the judicial branch did not have the constitutional authority to put a check on how the legislature creates its districts then there would be no check against the legislative branch in this matter. As long as someone has the standing to raise a civil matter before the court, the court has every right to hear the case and make a ruling.
Regardless of the supposed intent, a legal precedent applies across the board. If gerrymandering is upheld as unconstitutional (I'm assuming there will be appeals), then both parties can rely on that precedent in court.
If you care about true representation of the people's will, then you very much want this decision to go to the Supreme Court and be upheld there. That way, it will be binding across the entire country.
This could be a hugely important case.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
BTW, Gerrymandering has been happening since the beginning of the Republic.
That doesn't mean that we should just continue to accept it as "the way things are".
Several states have placed redistricting in the hands of non-partisan panels of citizens or retired judges. This is more common in western states which have citizens' ballot initiatives, since the politicians have no incentive to reform the process while they are on the "winning" side, and no power to do so when they are in the minority.
Even better would be to get rid of "districts" entirely, and elect representatives by interests rather than geography. So anyone could vote for any representative, and the top 435 get elected. Each rep's voting power would be proportional to how many voters backed him or her. There should also be a website where voters can switch their preference to a different rep at any time, as an "instant recall" to ensure they keep their promises.
How are judges going to impartially determine a party gerrymandered (as opposed to "redistricted to make it fair again")?
How can we be sure judges are not the new mechanisms of corruption here?
When the districts were political football at least we knew both parties could work it to their advantage when they get into office.
Now it just looks like the judges give into the party that whines or threatens or annoys the most.
Not really. The most common proposal is using independent or non-partisan commissions for re-redistricting, which is done in several states including Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, and Washington.
You could say, "how do we know if a commission is non-partisan?" and the answer would be "by their results". If the courts see these tortured-looking districts again, they can be thrown out, just like the North Carolina ones were.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Fair" isn't the concern... The constitutional principle at stake is freedom of association... Using people's association with a political party to disenfranchise them.
As a foreigner this sounds exactly like the republican party as I understand it.
Admittedly this is from my mere two semesters of Business Law, but the Courts are limited to ruling on Legal issues...laws.
Redistricting is an administrative thing. The process is not a law, but simply rules of the legislative body...similar to rules on filibuster for instance.
But that is only two semesters of business law.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
So, you DONT know what your talking about, and are referring to your understanding of two classes you took what 10, 15, 20 years ago?
Unless discrimination for or against partisan affiliation is disallowed as a consideration the same way race is disallowed then we aren't really making much progress.
I don't trust an "Independent" unnaccountable whatever to be some committee of angels.
Yes, the results matter but also we shouldn't be gerrymandering simply to seek the most number of competitive races either... Some districts are going to not be competitive because people with similar political leanings choose to live near one another... The gerrymandering of geographically disperse areas together using partisan affiliation or demographic tendencies to vote one way or another is the issue.
Legislatures can follow the rules the courts come up with as well as any "Independent" committee could.
If the legislature wants to make a city and immediately surrounding areas it's own district then it should be allowed to do so.
Ahh...but those states did it themselves, not by the order of the courts.
That is a crucial difference.
As for your suggestion, that is diametrical opposed to the entire structure of a Republic. What you suggest could leave a single area of a state with a majority of the representation. Since this is Federal Representation, needs to follow the Federal structure of a Republic. Feel free to elect your state legislatures this way.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'm seeing it more as in response to the "moral outrage" that the Democrats are putting on about it, rather than gerrymandering itself.
No one has ever been denied the ability to associate with members of their own party. And they are not disenfranchised:
Definition of disenfranchise
transitive verb
: to deprive of a franchise, of a legal right, or of some privilege or immunity; especially : to deprive of the right to vote
disenfranchising the poor and elderly
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
United States. Think about those words for a minute.
> For example, the most common type of gerrymandering in North Carolina is to put all the black voters into one district.
But that's called a majority-minority district and is actually encouraged by some legislation or policy. The idea was to increase the number of black and other minority representatives in Congress and that was done by combining all the voters into districts.
The alternatives would be to slice up the black vote so it i always a tiny minority in white districts. You then lose the black representative.
Here they were having a nice conversation and the asshole AC chimes in.
Go Fuck yourself.
From this: https://www.brennancenter.org/...
"At a statewide level, Wisconsin is a quintessential battleground where races are often decided by only a few percentage points. Contrast that to the state assembly map the Republicans drew: In 2012, they won 60 of the 99 seats in the Wisconsin Assembly despite winning only 48.6% of the two-party state-wide vote; in 2014, they won 63 seats with only 52% of the state-wide vote."
Don't get me wrong, this is not a partisan issue as both sides have historically tried to use gerrymandering to influence elections, it is just that lately the Republicans have been particularly aggressive and good at it.
If you live in Maryland and believe you are affected by unjust gerrymandering, you can pursue a case against the state.
It's already been done, and is currently on the Supreme Court docket for this term.
That is because the federal judiciary is biased against conservatives and Republicans, and for liberals and Democrats. It's why Trump and Bush and Reagan were always challenged while Clinton and Obama got away with whatever they wanted.
They allow Ds to get away with this bullshit practice, but spank the Rs.
Just spitballing here but maybe the R's tend to try shit that is truly unconstitutional more often than the D's so get themselves slapped down more often.
Oh dear. You accidentally left out Maryland when you quoted him.
I'm sure it was very intentional, since this article is about North Carolina.
Here, I'll save you the trouble of starting your rebuttal: "But Antifa..."
You're welcome.
Dude, it's not "gerrymandered for Democrats." It's gerrymandered to give Dems as little representation in state government as possible, by shunting them off into a single district. It's the exact opposite of what you're saying.
That may be the dumbest thing I have ever read. If we voted for our elected representatives on an entirely at-large basis and the 435 highest vote tallys were selected all of our elected officials would come from major metro areas most would come from NYC, LA, Atlanta, DFW, Chicago, San Francisco, Denver and Houston based on city size and regional political flavor. How would anyone from any smaller area have a chance in hell of winning?
This is fucking stupid. Court have, and should have, all the power to make things un-stupid
The Judge in question opposed Trump's travel ban -- later mostly upheld by the Supreme Court -- on the account of Trump's campaign comments:
"Several judges expressed skepticism about the idea that the court would blind itself to Trump’s comments about Muslims. “Don’t we get to consider what was actually said here and said very explicitly?” asked Judge James A. Wynn Jr., who was appointed by President Barack Obama." (http://www.news-herald.com/article/HR/20170508/NEWS/170509400)
In 1999 an LA Times article described the Judge as a "well-regarded moderate".
My speculation is that indeed he was, but that he really can't stand Trump and that may influence and to some degree motivate his work today. Fact is, very few people are able to stay detached when it comes to being pro or against Trump. I haven't met anyone such yet.
That is extremely poor understanding of how courts and constitutions works.
The constitution is a framework for the courts to use to keep the executive and legislative branches in order. The executive branches and legislative branches can kind of do what they want, but the courts can then review it and throw it out if it violates the constitions.
To put it more bluntly, without courts, theres no constitutions, thus the court is *always* a party to questions of constitutionality, as no other body really has the power to enforce it (Even the DOJ etc, they can only refer stuff to the courts)
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
No one has ever been denied the ability to associate with members of their own party.
Not sure what point you are trying to make but you certainly missed the one in the discussion. Gerrymandering utilizes the association with a political party to remove the power of their vote by rigging the system. So if Party A draws the districts to favor Party A then members of Party B are being disenfranchised as a result. Members of Party B are effectively being deprived of their vote because their vote will not matter in the outcome of the election. The fact that they actually cast a ballot does not change the fact that their vote won't have any chance to affect the outcome because the electorate has been rigged.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Political affiliation isn't a protect class.
You're wrong. Go read Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims.
To insist that the redistricting somehow represents the greater population is the usurpation of redistricting task by the courts.
Yes, that is what the administration of justice requires. They also have to take children from their parents, seize private property and order people imprisoned.
I admit this is a fairly fundamentalists interpretation, but what objective measurement are the courts using to discern Good O'l Gerrymandering from "Insidious"?
This mystery is revealed in the court order.
Funny how people always resort to "Change the Constitution if you don't like it" whenever two conflicting Constitutional principles have to be weighed by the courts - and the court doesn't pick their choice.
The Supreme Court has jumped through hoops to pretend that, for example, "money is speech" is a more important American value than "government by the people" or "equal protection". And as regards gerrymandering, it has in the past come down on the side of "we can't police partisanship" over "everyone's vote should count". They've yet to rule on the issue since it became possible to mathematically show how gerrymandering causes votes to be effectively rendered useless - and there's still every possibility that the Kennedy will join with the rest of the conservatives and choose the convenient answer that happens to favor their side..
But to say the court shouldn't have a voice when there's such a conflict is to say "I like things the way they are, so fuck you - change the Constitution if you don't like it".
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Political affiliation isn't a protect class.
No but the right to vote and to have your vote count IS protected. Don't confuse the mechanism with the result. Gerrymandering doesn't just affect members of a given political party.
To insist that the redistricting somehow represents the greater population is the usurpation of redistricting task by the courts.
Not even slightly. Courts are the only (ostensibly) neutral party here and their job is to ensure that voters rights are not trod upon. I'm not a member of either the republicans or democrats but I live in a gerrymandered district and so my right to vote is de-facto disenfranchised if I happen to not like the ruling party's candidate. That is a perfect use for a court to protect people like me who otherwise would effectively lose their vote.
Just to argue?
If you have an idea, spell it out.
So you want those often responsible for gerrymandering districts to solve the problem of gerrymandered districts. And I suppose you think if district boundaries are so broken, voters can just vote in their gerrymandered district to put new representatives in to fix the problem?
Fair has everything to do with the law once it's passed.
We live in a country where laws can be completely changed, including the Constitution itself. Framers of the Constitution understood that a society needs to be able to change the way it's governed when and how it chooses to do so if 'law' doesn't fit anymore. If we want to turn into a dictatorship, we can do so. The law is not eternal and is always subject to change.
Gerrymandering has been an issue since the start of the Republic.
True but it's only been relatively recently that the parties have tried to basically weaponize it to an extreme degree. The Republicans in particular have been quite effective at utilizing it to their benefit. I don't doubt the Democrats would do so too but I think they just got beaten to the punch. Gerrymandering to my mind is one of the greatest threats to our democracy and plays a very large role in the shifts of both parties (particularly the republicans) to extreme candidates.
And just because it's always been an issue doesn't mean it should not be dealt with. Gerrymandering cannot go away fast enough.
Which has been highly unfavorable to the GOP party even though it was initially promoted by the GOP in California.
That has a lot to do with the fact that Democrats outnumber Republicans rather heavily in California. You'd have a hard time drawing a set of districts which would result in a Republican majority in that state. The California system might not be perfect but it's a lot better than the one in my state.
Remember back when Democrats were happily using racist assumptions that blacks could only get elected from majority-black districts, which they were all too happy to gerrymander into existence?
The current Republican antics are a direct result of those racist efforts...and redrawing the districts will almost certainly dilute those majority-minority districts (again, which are racist constructs in the first place). And lots of folks will not be happy at all about districts drawn by "colorblind" algorithms that are simply trying to map equal numbers of people into right-sized districts, so the algorithms will have to be made "fair". Good luck with that.
The Atlantic (2013)
Acting under the legal strength and moral authority of the Voting Rights Act, the Democrats led the charge to draw so-called "majority-minority districts" -- ones packed so full of minority voters that they usually resulted in electing a minority representative, as intended. The number of minority representatives jumped exponentially from the 1960s through the 1980s, with the number of black House members increasing from five to 24 by 1989.
But just in time for the redistricting in 1990, some enterprising Republicans began noticing a rather curious fact: The drawing of majority-minority districts not only elected more minorities, it also had the effect of bleeding minority voters out of all the surrounding districts. Given that minority voters were the most reliably Democratic voters, that made all of the neighboring districts more Republican. The black, Latino, and Asian representatives mostly were replacing white Democrats, and the increase in minority representation was coming at the expense of electing fewer Democrats. The Democrats had been tripped up by a classic Catch-22, as had minority voters: Even as legislatures were becoming more diverse, they were ironically becoming less friendly to the agenda of racial minorities.
Newt Gingrich embraced this strategy of drawing majority-minority districts for GOP advantage, as did the Bush Administration Justice Department prior to the 1991 redistricting, even as GOP activists like now-Chief Justice John Roberts campaigned against the VRA because they opposed any race-based remedies. The tipping point was the 1994 midterm elections, when the GOP captured the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 35 years and Gingrich because speaker. Many experts on both the left and the right, from The Nation's Ari Berman and prominent GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsberg (who spearheaded the 1991 effort to maximize the number of majority-minority districts), attribute the Republican success that year to the drawing of majority-minority districts; indeed, African-American membership in the House reached its highest level ever, at 40.
VRA districts undoubtedly played a role in the GOP takeover, but they were not the only factor, since Republicans made big gains that year in lots of places outside the South. But in the hardscrabble battles of the 50-50 nation, any advantage at all was embraced, and prominent Republicans like Ginsberg and Gingrich became the loudest proponents of drawing majority-minority districts.
I would say it would be best done as unsupervised clustering tied into a GIS system. I have written my local reps at my state house and state senate about it several times but they never want to hear it because it takes away their power to help ensure they have a safe seat.
Basically my proposal has been:
1. Initially all districts are centered at their current representative's house. If there are fewer seats this time then last then district centers are removed randomly until the correct number is reached. If there are more seats this time then last then district centers are added randomly until the correct number is reached.
2. The district with the lowest population picks first.
3. Areas (houses, town homes, apartments, etc) are added to a district such that the closet one available to the center added first. If there are 2 equal distance then preference is given for the ones that are on the same side of the road, in the same town, then in the same county. If neither of those are better satisfied then pick one at random and add it to the district.
4. Repeat steps 2&3 until all areas have been chosen.
5. Calculate the new center of each district.
6. If the new center of any district has changed areas from where it was in step 5 of the previous run (step 1 if this is the first run) then save the new centers and clear out the districts assigned to each district and start at step 2.
7. if the new centers of all districts have not changed areas from where it was previously this is your new district map.
I am sure that there are a few more tweaks that are need to ensure that each district has the same (I believe MN law is +/- 1) number of people in it but this seems like a much more reasonable solution instead of the bickering that happens every 10 years. As an added bonus this requires writing the program once and then every 10 years drop it on a computer (really any somewhat modern desktop would be able to do this) and let it run for a bit. You no longer need to pay for the old human process and likely would get result much quicker.
Time to offend someone
That's how gerrymandering works. You don't create districts for your own party to win, you create single safe districts for the other party to win to "contain" the opposition votes in one district so they don't affect the others.
Actually it's both, and they kind of work together. To make it simple, let's say you have a 100 voters that you need to break into 5 equal-sized "districts" of 20 people. Your party has 40 voters on your side, and your opposing party has 60. Let's assume for the sake of simplicity that everyone always votes for their own party. So how do you want to divide things up?
If you pick people at random, you'll tend toward getting districts that are representative of your entire population, i.e. a 60/40 split. If each district is divided approximately 60/40 (12 people vs 8 people), then your opponents will control all of the districts. Another option is to pack all of your opponents into districts together, and then they'll have 100% control over 3 districts and you'll have 100% control over 2 districts. You still lose.
Another option is to divide it so that you divide things so that, as much as possible, you have a very slim lead. Put 11 of your people in the first district, and 9 of your opponents. You control the district-- just barely, but you control it. That leaves you with 39 people, and your opponents with 51. Do that 2 more times, and you control 3 districts. You're left with 7 people, and your opponent has 33. It doesn't matter much what you do with the last two districts. You're going to lose them both, overwhelmingly. But... you'll notice that the result of this strategy is that you control 60% of the districts even though you only control 40% of the population.
It gets more complicated in real life, but that's the general strategy being employed. You try to divide things so that your opponents have a large minority in as many districts as possible, but in cases where your opponent has more people, it's only possible by packing your opponents votes into overwhelming majorities in a small number of districts.
I'm guessing it's a particularly useful strategy for Republicans, since Democrats tend to be city-folk who are already packing themselves into dense areas with overwhelmingly liberal populations.
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/...
No, it is not. To disenfranchise is to deny the very right to vote. From your own link:
A vote rendered meaningless by gerrymandering IS denying the right to vote for all practical purposes. The fact that I technically cast a ballot in a heavily gerrymandered district effectively denies my voice from being heard - i.e. the entire point of a vote. That is disenfranchisement. If you want to call it something else fine but the effect is identical to armed thugs stopping me from casting my ballot in the first place.
My vote in New York is meaningless, for example, but I am not disenfranchised.
That depends on where in New York you live but since Democrats naturally outnumber Republicans in the state you are correct for statewide offices. But if you live in a gerrymandered district then you possibly are disenfranchised for purposes of congressional election. My congressional district is gerrymandered and I definitely have been disenfranchised for purposes of that vote. You cannot gerrymander for state wide office if the votes are cast by popular vote but for any district with boundaries drawn by partisan hacks you easily can disenfranchise people. The fact that they actually cast a ballot doesn't make any difference in whether or not they have been disenfranchised because the effect is identical to preventing them from casting a ballot.
You are arguing semantics — incorrectly.
You have that backwards and even if it were just semantics, semantics matter. Gerrymandering renders votes meaningless that otherwise would not be meaningless. If you want to call that something other than disenfranchisement I don't care but the effect is identical. It makes the election rigged which is wrong.
Ummm, to get to do the gerrymandering, you pretty much have to control the Statehouse which implies you've already won. Gerrymandering makes it easier to win next time.
The irony that burns is that Republicans were able to put forth "We're happy to create majority-minority districts to help our state comply with the Voting Rights Act..." knowing full well that the side effect strengthened any Republican hold on the remaining districts.
Not on a technical nerd news site it doesn't.
You've been here long enough to know that this has never been just a technical nerd news site. And if you cannot find the reasons why this is news that matters they you are simply just not using your brain.
Again, to get to do the gerrymandering, you pretty much have to control the Statehouse which implies you've already won.
Losers don't get to gerrymander. Winners get to gerrymander once a decade, which does make it easier to win the next time.
Republicans gerrymander for Republicans AFTER winning the various Statehouses. Just like Democrats gerrymander for Democrats AFTER winning Statehouses (or do you not think that the California districts were gerrymandered by Democrats???).
Where does the constitution restrict the judicial branch from making a ruling in any matter involving either the legislative or executive branch?
A specific restriction isn't necessary, because the judicial is only empowered to do the things which the constitution and the law states the judiciary is empowered to do. The Judicial branch is ONLY able to make their rulings on what is law and Orders enjoining against furthering harm from violating the law or the constitution based on the dispute before them --- the Legislative and Executive branches have their own agency (Independent judgement), and the Judicials are not superior to the Legislative or the Executive branch in their power or authority: Fundamentally the judiciary IS RESTRICTED and cannot order around other branches, And if there is a disagreement --- it's called a constitutional crisis, because they are 3 equal branches of government.
Our constitutional form of government is NOT a hierarchy with the Judiciary branch at the top, and our supreme court is not a "Ruling Committee" who can hand down any order desired to alter or delete any law at will or increase or decrease or change the enforcement of any law in whatsoever manager as the committee desires. The Judicial branch makes orders based on law, and it is up to the elected leaders and bureaucrats in other branches of government to follow lawful orders (or to ignore them, as they have in some cases)
In the same manner that the president cannot order the court to rule X on case Y, or order the court to consider case Z, and the legislature cannot pass a law that the court must never review law Y and the feds can't pass a law that state laws about X be held unconstitutional; the Judiciary has its own independent agency that cannot be taken on by other branches of government -- its rulings on cases.
In exactly the same way the Legislative and Executive branches of government have specific agency in the powers granted them by the constitution --
the judiciary does NOT have the power to override the agency of other branches of government and take actions on their behalf, And the judiciary does not have the power to Order another branch of government to do X with their agency ----- for example, the court cannot order congress to pass law Y, or create tax Z. Although the court CAN invalidate law Y or provide taxpayer relief by declaring debts under tax Z invalid.
The Judicial branch is not empowered to take over any legislative or executive duty and exercise that role on its own.
If the law doesn't say the court can draw their own map, then the court does not have the power to simply draw their own map, and that is true even if the legislature fails or refuses to draw a new map on its own that satisfies the court.
you're not thinking it through. Minorities fear the police, often with good reason. The point is to make them too scared to vote. It's a Jim Crow law. And unless you're very wealthy (or going to be after inheritance) you want these people voting. They, like you, are members of the working class. And their interests align with yours.
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to direct traffic; which many of the ones in black neighborhoods had. They were there to threaten and scare minority voters, who have a long history of oppression by police.
Don't kid yourself. If you actually believe that you're being hopelessly naive. If you don't believe that then you have an ulterior motive for saying it, and it can't be a good one. If that's the case, stop it. I don't know what you think you're doing, but it's not helping you or anyone you know and love...
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Why are informative posts with a long list of citations from a spectrum of sources downmodded on slashdot and speculation or petty arguments upmodded?
At least argue against claims you don't believe or dislike. Simply clicking -1 does nothing but worsen the discourse here.
Is this another editor abusing unlimited mod points again?
What is the point, what is the motivation of ignoring and functionally censoring facts?
Washington Post article on gerrymandering in California...
"California just proved how cracking down on gerrymandering isn’t all it’s cracked up to be"
For the fourth time in 12 years, not a single one of the state's 50-plus congressional districts switched parties. Just as in 2010, 2008 and 2004, every single seat returned to the party that previously controlled it.
And if you exclude the post-redistricting election of 2012, only two California districts have flipped parties since 2004. That's two out of 314 individual races — 0.6 percent. (And one of the two was a fluke in which the GOP briefly held a blue-leaning seat thanks to two Republicans advancing to the general election in 2012.)
So why do we bring this up now? Well, partly because it wasn't necessarily supposed to be this way again. Before the last round of redistricting, Californians voted for a redistricting commission to take the process out of lawmakers' hands.
But in the end, California might be Exhibit A in the limits of redistricting reform's impact on competition. The state's population is very segmented, and drawing competitive districts isn't easy given the self-sorting that people have done.
California's districts were actually drawn irrespective of competitiveness and partisanship. The commission decided not to even look at such data when drawing its districts, preferring to focus on what it called "communities of interest" and other demographics.
Paul Mitchell, a Democratic redistricting expert based in California, said that means the results since then are no real surprise. “When you draw lines to keep communities of interest together, you wind up creating districts that, by proxy, are partisan — as partisan as if you drew them with party labels — because you’re drawing them with values that are definitive of partisan labels themselves," Mitchell said.
And that's real the takeaway here. Gerrymandering is increasingly viewed as a political ill that must be dealt with. And there is generally considerable public support for redistricting reforms whenever they are on the ballot. But given our increasing tendency to live around people with whom we share a worldview, creating competitive districts often requires its own brand of gerrymandering that doesn't jibe with grouping people who share things in common.
Dindo's gonna do what dindo do!
Admittedly this is from my mere two semesters of Business Law, but the Courts are limited to ruling on Legal issues...laws.
Which is what the court did. The judge ruled that the gerrymandering was unconstitutional.
As for your law courses ... ask for your money back.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Die in a fire apeshit retard, AC is absolutely correct here
You asked to be corrected if you were wrong. You were on both counts. You should thank your betters for doing so, not expound more on your lack of knowledge. Everyone has already seen your ignorance, no need for the show.
Did you seriously just suggest that the people responsible for and who benefit from gerrymandering should be the only ones allowed to fix gerrymandering??? Regardless of whether you think that's how the constitution is supposed to work or not, that's the dumbest thing I've heard in a very long time.
Ahh...but those states did it themselves, not by the order of the courts.
Actually, the Supreme Court ordered the Arizona Legislature to obey the laws that the people of the state demanded.
As for your suggestion...
You didn't understand it either. It's OK, you probably don't know that apportionment isn't constitutionally defined either.
While enumeration of the representative is included in the constitution, districting is not. As it is not specifically granted to the federal government, it devolves down to the state governments, see Art 6 sect 2.
You can't have the courts always stepping in because you don't think something is "fair".
Actually, one can and that is actually how the law and courts work. If one believes a law is unfair, one can go to the courts and the courts will determine if it is fair and legal. This is how the Miranda rights came about. Someone claimed it was unfair for the police to not inform a suspect of his rights. This is also how the "fruit of the poisoned tree" principal concerning illegally obtained evidence came about.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Is it the duty within the law for the legislature to draw district boundaries?
Yes.
Is the court empowered to create new law?
No.
The courts can overturn a law as unconstitutional, but they canâ(TM)t legitimately modify the law to change its purpose. They can impose restrictions on its application based solely on constitutional requirements.
So did the court modify an otherwise constitutionally conforming law?
In my opinion yes. Gerrymandering to extremes has long precedence.
That wasn't so much gerrymandering as simply not redrawing districts to reflect population changes. It was actually worse, with ridings (districts) becoming depopulated to the point where there were only a few voters and new population centres with no representation.
This is why modern democracies have regular censuses and redraw the lines to try to balance the size of the districts, ideally by an independent non-partisan committee. Works well here in Canada where gerrymandering is mostly unheard off. Our number of legislature members also increases as population increases to help ensure equal representation. Currently we have about 3/5ths the number of Federal legislature members as America with about 1/10th the population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
The Supreme Court enforces constitutionality. And the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land. So courts can only modify legislated behavior, no matter how stupid, by judging it violates the constitution. That is the law violates the constitution, not the actions taken under color of that law.
You haven't been following the interesting mathematical work going on in defining gerrymandering and how mathematicians have taken this up as a political cause. You, sir, are a poor excuse for a nerd. Probably don't even know the first thing about metric geometry.
The court was explicitly designated by Congress to do this for a handful of southern states following the civil rights movements to ensure no racial disenfranchisement. The court didnt just poke their nose in for fun. At this point, it is outdated and does not respect the states rights.
Its a great plan for the Democrats to advance. They already want popular vote rather than the electoral college to determine the president, thus doing as you indicate, disenfranchising the whole of middle America. âoeSo the cities need reviving, weâ(TM)ll just legislate a new frontage tax on any road plus a private road tax. That way weâ(TM)ll easily fund it.â So dwellers of 30 story apartments are effectively uneffected, farmers with huge amounts of frontage and networks of private roads are effectively the ones paying for the hypothetical city revival funding. Suburban homeowners and large corporate campuses fill in even more funding. So concentration of power to the liberal held urban areas is a bad thing ripe for abuse.
The UK has bipartisan line drawing too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Does it work? Well not so well
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/2...
The abortive 6th boundary view was largely justified on the need to address some bias in the electoral system. You will notice this fairly quickly if you have a quick play about with the swingometer - if you leave the Liberal Democrat share of the vote unchanged then the Conservatives need a lead of 11 percentage points over Labour to win an overall majority, while the Labour party can achieve an overall majority with a lead of about 3 percentage points. Equally illustrative are the last two general election results - in 2005 Labour had a lead of 3 points over the Conservatives, and got a majority of over 60 seats; in 2010 the Conservatives had a lead of 7 points over Labour, but did not have an overall majority at all. Prima facie this appears unfair.
This is a different issue from proportionality. The currently electoral system, "First Past the Post", is not supposed to be a proportional system. The proportion of total votes received does not necessarily resemble the shares of votes case, and smaller parties in particular tend to struggle to get representation unless their vote is geographically concentrated. The fact that FPTP favours larger parties and punishes small ones is very much a feature, rather than a bug - its defenders would argue that the system is supposed to lead to a strong two-party system, with the winning party having a majority of seats, while its detractors would say that we would be better having a proportional system, such as STV. First Past the Post is intrinsically "unfair" towards smaller parties, and intrinsically favours the winning party - that's a different issue. This page looks only at the reasons why, even if both parties have the same level of support, the system apparently favours Labour more than the Conservatives.
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The intent was to create a permanent majority of one party. That's about as antidemocratic as you can get.
Good points. I don't think we need a "committee of angels" to make sure congressional districts are created fairly, though. Another solution would be proportional representation, where you break down the number of votes for each party and seats are assigned based on proportion. That's far superior to a situation where the majority of the voters in a state vote for one party, but the other party gets to send the most legislators. Many democratic legislatures in the world use this approach and it works fine.
Right now we have a situation where both houses of congress and the presidency are all controlled by the party that got fewer votes.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Republicans cheat because they no they are a shrinking minority that can't win without cheating.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
In Canada, politicians don't get to decide on the ridings (what you call districts in the US); that's done by a non-partisan agency called Elections Canada. The US and US states need to set up independent bodies to draw electoral districts, possibly with equal numbers of representatives from the two main parties and then make these bodies immune from being sanctioned by politicians.
If the law doesn't say the court can draw their own map, then the court does not have the power to simply draw their own map,
And they did not.
Labour seats have high density low income groups living in rented units (high rise tower blocks, terraced housing). Conservative seats have low density wealthy high income groups in privately owned homes (semi-detached/detached units), country estates and farms. The MP's wanted it this way. Labour didn't want to lose their core voters and have their influence "diluted" by being moved out into Conservative areas. The Conservative voters didn't want them because of the increase in crime.
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Interesting. It is hard to actually be fair even when striving for fairness. Do the people consider it is fair enough? One thing about America is a lot of bitching about gerrymandering which doesn't happen in Canada.
As for the first past the post system, it is a matter of opinion. I like minority governments as the parties have to work together compared to a majority where the winning party can push through their agenda.
There seems to be a lot of support here for getting rid of the first past the post system. The winners of the last Federal election won partially on the promise of no more FPTP elections (which they reneged on) and my last Provincial election was similar with a 44-43-3 result leading to a very good chance that things will change as the Greens with their 3 seats have agreed to support the government on the condition of moving to some form of proportional representation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Well it depends. Most people don't know the system has an inbuilt bias. Of the people who do Labour supporters think it's fine and Conservative supporters do don't.
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In the particular instance in North Carolina it is, but other places around the country it is the exact opposite, which is precisely what I was pointing out. . What about what I said above is not true? Are you telling me those "snake-like" legislative districts do NOT exist? You can't ignore one and not the other. You can call the big elephant in the room "flamebait" if you want, but that is what gerrymandering is--drawing legislative lines to favor one constituency over another. And it is not confined to the GOP.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
In the recent Virginia house of delegates race, Democrats as a whole had a 9 point lead over Republicans, and the Republicans still maintained their majority.
That seems screwed up to me.
and neither is this guy. He's done his research and it's pretty well backed up. You can read about it on his site and in his book (you could probably pirate it if you can't bear to give money to him). The theory is that Hilary was too shocked at losing to challenge the results.
One thing I _am_ sure of is this: Dems need to win by large margins. At least 1.5-3% (yes, in a 2 party system that's 'large', such is the nature of statistics). Dems need to win by enough that shenanigans are too obvious. Either that or you need to do what Obama did: Send lawyers. Lots and lots of Lawyers. In the run up to his first win nobody could figure out what the hell he was doing sitting on all his campaign funds. Then two weeks before election 2000+ lawyers descended on Florida. Obama took Florida. Hilary did not.
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Yes, you and I know that. But the lynnwood liar was hoping to frame it in a way that both parties were equally to blame, or if you were gullible enough, even blame Democrats more.
Everyone but you saw through his not so cunning plan and now you are both at -1.
(or do you not think that the California districts were gerrymandered by Democrats???).
Well, since the people of California voted in their ballot measures to take control over the process from the legislature, as well as the top two nonpartisan blanket primary, I find it rather dubious as a premise.
Of course since the partisan proportional turnout in California is nearly congruent with the partisan representation in the legislatures, you are going to have to recognize the difference from North Carolina.
You ought to look for better examples mpercy. We know you scream your rage over California, so you aren't credible.
Bill Maher once described gerrymandering as "when politicians choose the voters."
Probably not original to Maher, but bullseye nevertheless.
There should be an active contest (non controlled by Congress) to promote ideas like yours. I would gladly contribute prize money to the winner if it was done in a completely open arena and the detailed results made public.
It shouldn't take many years to find a replacement for the current system.
Political affiliation is a protected right. As in the right to associate with a party.
Using knowledge of people's individual political affiliations to harm those people is definitely unconstitutional. In this case, and more broadly, the gerrymandering clearly makes it less likely that a party's candidate will be elected to office and less likely the interests of those people will be represented.
It is a simple remedy... Don't allow party affiliation or any demographic that could be taken as a proxy for party affiliation to be overtly part of the decision making.
I like the way things are -- fuck you in your vagina
That there is any serious defence of gerrymandering is just one of the reasons the USA electoral system is a shining beacon to the rest of the world, of what not to do.
And what is the clause of the Constitution that mentions it? Seems unlikely, as the word was invented later...
I would argue the judge understands gerrymandering laws better than you.
Currently we have about 3/5ths the number of Federal legislature members as America with about 1/10th the population.
That quantity of politicians isn't something to be proud of. Quality is what matters.
Dude, he said invidious, not insidious. Invidious is a word meaning "unjustly discriminating"
Which is what the gerrymandering was
Strange, I thought districts had to be at least geographically contiguous where possible.
Virginia doesn't even pretend to be anything other than a partisan divide and conquer carving up of the state.
Oh you're right it was a 3 judge panel. 2 out of 3 Democrats go figure, Obama and Carter Appointees.
Tell me did you bother to check before you made your comment ? Or were you acting on blind faith ?
Democrat voters tend to concentrate in high density areas. So, unless one wants the districts in a state to look like a bunch of ISBN numbers with the districts narrow and stretching wayyyyyyyy out into rural and suburban areas you're not going to be able to achieve a balance through district design. A truly neutral geometric setup would have much the same effect as the current setup except for the areas with black majority districts directly next to them. As for the majority black districts, the reason they look so fucking weird is because it is racial gerrymandering mandated by the Voting Rights Act in order to guarantee a certain amount of black politicians in the south and there have been a bunch of SCOTUS cases explicitly affirming its legality to assist in that endeavor.
Given that the same judge recently got slapped around like a bitch by SCOTUS 9-0 in an expedient opinion the probability this survives challenge is minuscule.
How could you possibly do that though. Draw any random map and I can find you an overt political or sociological affiliation.
Black people, Muslims, poor people, rich people, farmers, they all tend to live together in the same area.
What's more surprising is that gerrymandering didn't prevent either Obama or Trump from becoming president even though nobody in the established political climate really wanted them there.
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Make all districts consist of a square with four 90* corners. Deviation from this is allowed on any one corner subject to it occupying only area within that traced squared, i.e. You can cut a corner but not reach past it.
Exceptions are otherwise prohibited unless similarly trimmed by a navigable waterway (aka ocean, river, not a season puddle).
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BTW, Gerrymandering has been happening since the beginning of the Republic.
Oh, then it's OK. Like slavery.</sarcasm>
Not to mention English... invidious != insidious .
Take a look at whether the republican agrees... If you dare!
Admittedly this is from my mere two semesters of Business Law, but the Courts are limited to ruling on Legal issues...laws.
Redistricting is an administrative thing. The process is not a law, but simply rules of the legislative body...similar to rules on filibuster for instance.
But that is only two semesters of business law.
Historically the supreme court has refused to deal with gerrymandering because it is a "political" problem and not a legal one. However, if one considers that gerrymandering could be used to prevent people from voting, there are avenues that the courts can use to curtail its use. In fact, the supreme court has made rulings on more than one occasion in recent history (last 30-40 years). It all depends on how they are setting up these districts.
A specific restriction isn't necessary, because the judicial is only empowered to do the things which the constitution and the law states the judiciary is empowered to do. The Judicial branch is ONLY able to make their rulings on what is law and Orders enjoining against furthering harm from violating the law or the constitution based on the dispute before them --- the Legislative and Executive branches have their own agency (Independent judgement), and the Judicials are not superior to the Legislative or the Executive branch in their power or authority: Fundamentally the judiciary IS RESTRICTED and cannot order around other branches, A
Except I said that the court can only rule if someone has standing to bring the issue before the court. And gerrymandering could be brought before the court if someone can show that the legislature intentionally created a district to impair their constitutional right to vote, for instance. So I stand by what I said. There is nothing preventing the court from making a ruling on this matter if the matter can be brought before the court.
Good there were 3 judges making this decision instead of just one, right?
First of all, thank you for admitting, no actual disenfranchisement has taken place — and sjbe, with his appeals to "definitions", is wrong.
Now, about "effectively disenfranchising"... Everyone living in a State where one party has an overwhelming majority is already "effectively disenfranchised". Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, your vote in NY, for example, does not matter — you are effectively disenfranchised.
Same is true about polities lesser than States. As long as our voting is based on geography, the only way to give the minority-supporters any voice at all is with the district-carving like this. Yes, I'm sure, it could get ridiculous at times. But there is nothing automatically wrong about it either — and it certainly is not about "disenfranchising".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
What's magical about 435? The House should be doubled in size. Each rep is responsible for "representing" too many people already, and the population is growing.
One district runs about 80 or 90 miles, and for a lot of it, is less than 10 mi wide, connecting several "liberal" areas as one.
And, of course, we're talking about NC, that when a Democrat won the governor's race last year, the Republican supermajority in the state house started trying to take away powers that had belonged to the governor for a long time.
"It was actually worse, with ridings (districts) becoming depopulated to the point where there were only a few voters and new population centres with no representation."
This is the textbook explanation of 18th century "rotten boroughs"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The fact that FPTP favours larger parties and punishes small ones is very much a feature, rather than a bug - its defenders would argue that the system is supposed to lead to a strong two-party system, "
Yes, but it ONLY works as intended where there _are_ two parties.
As soon as you introduce a strongish 3rd or several smaller parties the representation model intended in FPTP falls apart - which is why the UK has had several sitting governments in a row which only achieved 33% of the total votes cast.
The reason for this is that FPTP originated in an era _without_ political parties.
The UK attempted to palm off a slight tweak on FPTP about a decade back as "proportional representation" (it was the least proportional and most opaque of the 12 competing PR models but specifically did not disadvantage the 2 main parties) in a referendum on change, when the actual referendum questions should have been:
1: "Should we change away from FPTP?"
2: "If we do change away from FPTP, what model should we move to?"
Moving to a Mixed Member Proportional system as used in New Zealand or Germany would still provide stable government and encourage moving away from "Combat Politics" towards getting things done by concensus and the good of the country rather than vested interests.
Gerrymandering would become irrelevant if you used some form of Proportional Representation system, instead of a First-Past-The-Post One-Winner-Per-Riding system which inherently buries and "rounds" the true aggregate intent of the voters, multiple times, as results are tallied.
Here's the 2010 UK general election under different systems
https://i.imgur.com/YFhke.gif
The interesting thing is that under anything with a lower Gallagher Index than FPTP, the third largest party can form a coalition with either of the first two parties.
This leads to a situation where the third largest party can choose who is Prime Minister!
It's the objection to AV that David Deutsch raises here - that it grants too much power to the third largest party. And that power isn't even good for the third largest party
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It's very hard to do anything about this for the voters. Most of them don't vote for the third largest party anyway. In fact only the rise of the fourth largest party can evict the third largest party from a permanent place in government - something that Deutsch points out in the comments happened in Germany.
And if you work out the terms for the Gallagher Index you notice something strange about the above results
You get these results
FPTP
CON: 306
LAB: 258
LIB: 57
Other : 28
AV
CON: 281
LAB: 262
LIB: 79
Other : 28
AV+
CON: 275
LAB: 234
LIB: 110
Other : 31
STV
CON: 246
LAB: 207
LIB: 162
Other : 35
Notice the way the seats for 'Other' and the Gallagher index term for 'Other' doesn't change as much as the 'Lib' figure. I.e. the proposals are designed to be more proportional for the third largest party but not for the others - they are designed to entrench the third largest party as permanent part of government! Needless to say the Liberal Democrats are very, very keen on 'electoral reform'. Still if you look closely at what they say, they often say that electoral reform 'would keep extremist parties out of government' - e.g. by having a high threshold for STV. Of course an extremist party means 'any party with less support than us'.
I would consider electoral reform so long as it didn't have this misfeature though - it needs to be more proportional for all parties - 1,2,3,4,5. Not just more proportional for 1,2,3.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Looks like the court ruling is a step in the right direction. Gerrymandering has been out of control for a long, long, time. I'd also go so far as to blame it for the reason why we haven't broken out of the two party system we're stuck in now where it's almost impossible for other parties to get any seats in office.
When politicians lose the ability to choose their voters, they'll have to start listening to the people for a change.
Which, again, would result in Dem heavy districts and more balanced Republican districts. The entire brouhaha is the Dems whining that they ignored the ground game in the states for at least a decade and arguably a bit longer and so lost all their previous gerrymandering advantage to the Republicans.
There is a LARGE difference between passing laws agaisnt gerrymandering and some asshole attempting to declare it unconstitutional.
There were three judges making that decision too.
While interesting, your above analysis is missing the fact that voters are likely to vote differently under systems besides first past the post. Less strategic voting, voters that currently vote for the opposition party due to wanting to remove the government instead of their first choice (or visa versa) and possibly more or at least different turnout as the voters who don't currently bother voting due to living in a safe seat or such actually voting as now they feel their vote counts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Deutsch's point is that under AV or any low Gallagher Index systems there's no way for voters to vote to remove the third party from government.
And he's right. You can see here that the winning party hardly ever gets more than 50% of the vote
https://researchbriefings.parl...
See PDF
http://researchbriefings.files...
On page 7 you can see in only two elections did the winning party get more than 50% of the vote - the Conservatives in 1931 and 1935 though Labour came close in 1951 and 1966
So you'd end up with 1st/3rd party coalitions almost all the time.
And - as he points out in the comments - that's what has happened in Israel and Germany.
In Israel religious parties typically hold the balance of power and extract subsidies unpopular with the great majority. In Germany for 49 years the FDP with
Saying 'well people might vote differently' doesn't affect his argument. People vote differently from the UK in Germany and Israel and differently between Israel and Germany. However both Israel and Germany have the same problem where smaller parties can extract unpopular concessions from the larger ones as a price for entering a governing coalition.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Strictly speaking, the courts involvement in this at all is unconstitutional
It seems the people in charge of applying the Constitution disagree with you. Perhaps you are a blowhard?
You can't have the courts always stepping in because you don't think something is "fair".
Given your claim quoted above, it is apparent that you do not understand the role of the courts. You should consider sitting on the sidelines more often.
Or does it make more sense to eliminate the antiquated framework of representative democracy, which AIUI is a holdover from the days when communication and travel were spotty at best. When there are no representatives, there can be no gerrymandering. And no gaming of the system like the cheeto did in 2016.
If you looked at enough Congressional district maps, you'd understand that Gerrymandering is RAMPANT on BOTH sides. This isn't surprising in the LEAST that it happens, because it's been going on but NOBODY is saying anything about it.
Perhaps it is the governing coalition idea that creates problems? Personally I like it when the government can not do whatever it wants and some important legislation (single payer healthcare) has been passed due to the need to keep the 3rd party happy. Currently, due to the need for a supply and confidence agreement between my Provinces government and the Greens, we'll probably get some form of proportional representation, something the people seem to want based on the last referendum, which saw the pro side lose with 59% support (60% threshold).
Supply and confidence agreements allow the passing of laws that the government does not agree with whereas coalitions mean the parties always voting as a block and needing more concessions.
At least in Canada, the voters also have a habit of punishing parties that abuse the minority government, forcing too early of an election. Knowing this, the parties try harder to work together.
Personally, I like government by consensus, though the major parties don't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
you mean like responding with but but hillary or but but obama!! Hmm.. I wonder who keeps doing that?
More representatives means fewer people each rep has to represent, meaning you have more of a chance of ever being able to talk to your rep, or get him to hear you.
"Deutsch's point is that under AV or any low Gallagher Index systems there's no way for voters to vote to remove the third party from government."
And yet in New Zealand - a country which moved from FPTP to MMP - this _did_ happen. Voters _DO_ change the way they vote in a proportional system, even in a Westminster Democracy.
Even more illustrative of Deutsch's claim being entirely out to lunch is the fact that under MMP the New Zealand voting public managed to vote in such a manner that one party received an absolute majority (greater than 50% of the party votes cast) for several elections in a row.
FPTP elections are decided in a small number of marginal seats. People living in those have wildly disproproprotionate power over who governs a country and as a result one of the ways to throw elections is to encourage people sympathetic to your cause to move into such areas (This has been done - a kind of reverse Gerrymandering)
MMP is a mixture of two voting systems. The first is a seat-level "local" representation (FPTP) which selects about half the seats in parliament and the second a proportional vote to decide the "national" makeup of the government, where each party's proportion is topped up from the seats they won directly to the proportion of the votes received with seats allocated from a list. In prcatice, it is extremely rare for any politician who ends up in parliament to not have been competing for a seat somewhere even if they didn't win the seat in question (In practice, it's even rarer for them not to have been the second place in the seat they ran in and for the margin between 1 and 2 to have been close.)
MMP provides proportionality down to the "threshold" level (usually 2-5% of votes) and the threshold is usually chosen to provide stability - if set too low (below 2%) then you end up with a large number of single representatives from the whacky fringe and instability of the government (this is why the Italian government is unstable) due to changing alliegances.
The argument against 3rd parties is constantly bought up by people who think that there should only be 2 parties in parliament. The reality is that in the UK, the 2 "main" parties only account for 1/3 of the total vote each and the differences between them being in power are 1-2% (ie, 32 vs 34%) - meaning that whoever's in power, 2/3 of the electorate voted AGAINST them.
This decrease in seating from ~ 1/2 to ~1/3 of the total in the chamber is why the main two parties are traditionally deadset against MMP or other systems which provide good proportionality. It would mean the end of being able to drive through ideological extreme policies without needing the broad agreement of most of the chamber.
In practice, MMP and other proportional representation systems prevent governmental policies lurching between elections, due to the need for broad support on the more contentious policies.
You know when people are losing the argument on this because they bring up the issue of "Voting for the prime minister" - which is something that ONLY the members of parliament do.
Under all systems, voters vote for a _party_. The party selects its prime minister and is free to change that selection at any time. Some countries have a separate election for president, but that still has no bearing on who selects the Prime Minister (who is the parliamentary chosen delegate to report to the president or monarch).
In the UK (or any westminster democracy), as a technical matter parliament or voters do NOT select its prime minister anyway. The monarch/president does.
The monarch selects an individual parliamentarian, requests that he/she be the prime minister and asks him/her to form a government. The fact that parliament has already decided who will go and see the monarch to receive the question is a matter of expedience as the monarch is not going to ask anyone who doesn't have enough support in the first place.
I forgot one to mention one other advantage of MMP.
Because of the low threshold to entry, it is inevitable that some of the "less whacky" of the whacky fringe get elected into parliament, which means they're now in the spotlight without having any political power to speak of.
This has usually resulted in the policies of these parties and the antics of their politicians being closely inspected - which has usually resulted in the removal of those politicians and in some cases the subsequent self-destruction of the parties.
In particular, many of these radical fringe parties with "moralistic" electoral platforms have been shown to be extremely hypocritical and exposure of these activities has been beneficial for the country as a whole, allowing national discussion of previously "taboo" subjects.
New Zealand's Christian Democrats rather famously "erased" all mentions of a couple of disgraced politicians (after they were found to have been involved in dodgy sexual activities with minors), resulting in the party effectively ceasing to exist in the following elections as their voters realised they'd been scammed and selected other, less extreme parties.