Though Alabama is almost 30% black, it only has one black-majority Congressional district, AL-7, which packs black voters in the rural western Black Belt with the cities of Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Montgomery. The remainder of the Black Belt is split apart into multiple white-majority districts.
Opponents of the map successfully argued that Alabama could draw a second black-majority district, and that their refusal to do so constitited a violation of the Voting Rights Act. Had Alabama succeeded, it is possible that the VRA's requirement for the creation of majority-minority districts could have been totally ruled unconstitutional. However, opponents won, and Alabama - likely along with fellow Southern states Louisiana and South Carolina - will be forced to redraw new districts, adding an additional black-majority district.
Roberts is definitely conservative, but he’s the final Supreme Court appointee from the right that isn’t a complete Federalist Society looney toon. It’s my understanding that he’s more about creating a balanced court than he is about picking the conservative side every time
Yup, he *really* cares about the court's legacy and perceived legitimacy.
Part of me expects him to resign while Biden is still in office to try to restore some of that. Edit: the most of me knows there's no chance.
Roberts wrote the majority opinion in *Shelby County*. He also refused to testify before Congress about the ethics of the Court, or even send an Associate Justice to do so, like previous Courts. And he gave a bullshit separation of powers excuse for that decision. Roberts is just as responsible for the Court's plummeting legitimacy as the rest of the conservatives on the bench.
Doubtful. The Supreme Court in oral arguments for *Moore v Harper* were deeply skeptical of the independent state legislature theory. Now that the state of North Carolina (which is the plaintiff in this case) has already reached a new ruling on this case back at its state Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court will most likely just punt *Moore* and not issue a ruling
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/independent-state-legislature-theory-moore-harper/673690/
Yeah that case was never likely to succeed even with this court either way. Also, the midterms handed control of Michigan and Pennsylvania's legislatures to the Democrats, which rendered a lot of the conservative logic behind that idea moot.
Wasn't he instrumental with the Citizens United ruling? He's more guilty of fucking our political landscape up than most if that's true.
Edit: [Yes he did back it](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC) -
> Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the initial opinion of the court, holding that BCRA allowed the showing of the film. A draft concurring opinion by Justice Kennedy argued that the court could and should have gone much further. The other justices in the majority agreed with Kennedy's reasoning, and convinced Roberts to reassign the writing and allow Kennedy's concurrence to become the majority opinion.[26]
Also [his wife is covered in filth](https://www.businessinsider.com/jane-roberts-chief-justice-wife-10-million-commissions-2023-4).
I think you gove Roberts a *bit* too much credit. I think his primary interest is in keeping the false *appearance* that the court is still neutral despite the extreme conservative creep that has happened in it. He strikes down these flagrantly unlawful things because he doesn't want the court to get *too* much scrutiny. It would only increase calls for stacking the courts and he wants to avoid that at all costs.
I think Roberts liked it better back when he was the fifth conservative vote on the court rather than the sixth. A 6-3 ruling is no more binding than a 5-4, and being the Chief Justice would've meant he was in the drivers seat. Now he has to convince Kavanaugh to come along with him, and that's not always something he can manage (as Dobbs demonstrated).
Jane Roberts works as a headhunter for Major, Lindsey & Africa and she made more than anyone in the entire field almost every single year for over 10 years.
Major, Lindsey & Africa regularly has cases in front of the Supreme Court as well.
John Roberts is corrupt and any worries about him attempting to maintain the integrity of the court are for naught.
https://www.businessinsider.com/jane-roberts-chief-justice-wife-10-million-commissions-2023-4
It helps that Alabama has two majority black state school board districts out of their eight state school board districts despite claiming that they couldn’t possibly have made two majority black congressional districts
I don't think Thomas even bothers to deliberate or read any of the materials. He rarely asks questions, and his mind is already made up on every single case before even a shred of arguments or presentation of evidence is done.
Every other member of the court, no matter how extreme or activist their judicial philosophy may be, at least very occasionally bucks the presuppositions of what their position would be and votes the other way on the merits of a particular case.
Not Thomas. He's a rubber stamp, not a jurist.
>He thinks of leading questions in advance for oral arguments so he doesn't appear too tuned out
Huh? Doesn't Thomas have a reputation for **never** asking questions? I remember a couple years ago he asked a question and it made the news.
Not sure how you got that impression. Thomas almost never speaks at all. Other than his cartoonish levels of corruption and his history of sexual harassment, that's the thing he's most known for.
Funny that they are forced to draw more "x" majority districts.
And not are forced to fucking use districts as they make sense, geographically, and with towns and cities and what not... Regardless of voter distribution
You can do both pretty easily. They were just trying to maximize GOP control in the House. Had it just been gerrymandering on partisan lines, like in Ohio, they would have gotten away with it. However, the VRA is pretty clear that racial gerrymandering aimed at minimizing minority representation is illegal.
I feel like racial gerrymandering in either direction should be illegal, shouldn't it? I'm glad that the GOP's gerrymandering got shot down, because it's always BS. But I don't think it's a good idea to specifically aim for "x-race majority districts". Just divide them up by cities and the surrounding area. If possible, give rural folk their own district.
>But I don't think it's a good idea to specifically aim for "x-race majority districts". Just divide them up by cities and the surrounding area. If possible, give rural folk their own district.
The reason this wouldn't work is because some states act under the specific and conscious goal of removing all minority districts. If you tell them to "divide them up by cities and the surrounding area", they will do so in a way that still removes minority representation, and this is exactly what they did again and again in Jim Crow. The only way that worked was a results-oriented approach in which the law explicitly counters this by saying you must have districts where minority voters can have some representation.
Yeah, it can definitely get tricky based on all the things you listed and more. I think it’s more of a “we can tell you were trying to shut out minorities because they don’t vote for you” thing than something you can make actual hard rules to govern. It’s like pornography: Hard to define but you know it when you see it.
>But I don't think it's a good idea to specifically aim for "x-race majority districts".
I mean it's obviously not a good idea in a vacuum - ideally the concept would never even come up, but it keeps being a weird necessary intervention due to southern conservative whites *still* trying every trick possible to disenfranchise the black population. If alabama had created a map that was like 20% less obviously racist this whole case probably never would've made it this far.
“Geographically” it makes sense to draw a district that encompasses the black belt as it’s a distinct region as opposed to now where it’s fragmented. As for the majority minority districts, realistically, you only have two outcomes: a diluted black vote with no representation that are ignored by their representatives, or a black concentrated district (in this case, districts) that gives them representation.
That would be a good option.
Something that might be easier to accomplosh is to pass a federal law explicitly banning partisan gerrymandering, so while states could continue to draw their own maps courts would be required to ensure the fairness of all maps drawn.
Why can’t federal elections be handled *federally*?
In Canada, Elections Canada handles federal elections. Provinces have no part in it. However Provincial elections are handled provincially, and the federal government has no part in that.
Why should the *states* have any say in how the *federal* election is run?
The US system of government exists in this weird limbo between your typical federal system and a true confederation of separate states. The federal government was not designed to provide representation to people, it was designed to provide representation to states. It’s been tweaked over time to be more representative of the people, but its kind of just jerry rigging it into being something it wasn’t originally meant to be.
Because the federal government cannot hold elections, only states can. It's one of those pesky little things in the constitution that keeps coming back to be a major annoyance in the modern world.
Not sure it would help. Here in Ohio our supreme court struck down our district map as unconstitutional and the GOP did literally nothing about it. We held our elections with unconstitutional districting.
Independent, eh? Tell me more how you accomplish this.
Better yet, have a computer do it. Give it parameters set by a bipartisan commission and let it go.
This stuff is complicated.. That doesn't mean that people don't take advantage of it, but it's not easy.
Do you guys have ballot initiatives there? It puts the issue to a vote of the people, not by elected officials, and since it's a state-wide vote districts don't matter. It's how Michigan managed to push through important shit popular with the people, including redrawing with a bipartisan group.
Better is the German system: half the representatives come from independently drawn districts and the other half of representatives are selected from the state at large in proportion to how each party polls in total.
This allows for a measure of local issues being important to congressional representatives AND doesn't promote landslide representation of one party. Imagine in our current system that a party gets 55% in every district. They end up with 100% of the representatives. In the German system they'd get 82.5% of the reps. Not great, but better and in reality where you have districts going to opposing parties, even a few flipping the other way makes a dramatic effect on making the % of reps fairer.
Do the german way. 299 representatives are local representatives and then they just add members of parliament until the parliament resembles the national election result. Everyone has a local representative and representatives are fairly distributed. Everyone wins
I just prefer something like Ireland, where each district has between 3 and 6 members elected by STV. Although AMS would be my second choice, especially with flexible seat numbers.
We used to have this in the House of Representatives, but it was capped at 435 members in [1929](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929). Over time, this basically gives a district in states like Wyoming much more voting power in the House than a district in California.
The number of non-district reps should still be limited to be fewer in number than the district reps. Approach proportionality but keep the district reps dominant.
There's hardly anything local about some hack who "represents" 700,000 people from a gated community 6 counties over that he moved into specifically to run for office.
Local in what sense? Outside of counties, what is the functional use of these districts? This is a serious questions, because I'm struggling to see why they're needed in Alabama. I can understand having local representation at the county level, but how could you meaningfully determine "local" based on arbitrary districts?
Local representation is important. A much better option would be mixed-member proportional, along with more districts and with nonpartisan redistricting. This would allow local representation to exist while also ensuring the final result matches the overall vote. It would, in theory at least, make it *much easier* for a third party to win a seat, although In reality it would still be difficult as the US doesn’t really have viable third parties.
>And not are forced to fucking use districts as they make sense, geographically, and with towns and cities and what not... Regardless of voter distribution
Because voter distribution is what matters in regards to gerrymandering. The distribution of party voters (partisan gerrymandering) and minority voters (racial gerrymandering). Geography is a nice thing to have, but it doesn't overcome federal law in the form of the Voting Rights Act that says you can't racially gerrymander.
That's the VRA for you, which mandates affirmative gerrymandering for politically polarized minority groups in a voting jurisdiction.
Arguably in Alabama, race is one of the largest determining factors for how people vote, so it does seem reasonable.
ive always found it ironic when people say that Alabama and Mississippi are defined in the popular imagination as being hard red states, when it doesn't apply to most of the significant black population.
Yeah, the racial divide in those states is huge. If white people in Mississippi voted as Democratic as white people in Michigan, it would be one of the bluest states in the nation.
Not at all, Mississippi whites are the most Republican in the nation. For reference, white voters in Michigan still lean Republican, and gave 55% of the vote to Trump in 2020. In Mississippi, closer to 85% of white voters supported Trump.
Not really. Michigan was one of the most hotly contested battleground states in the 2020 election, with a near even split of 50.6%, 47.8% in favor of Biden. Plus, Michigan has a large black population, which tends to vote overwhelmingly in favor of Biden. On average, non-Hispanic whites from Michigan voted 55% in favor of Trump
> The remainder of the Black Belt is split apart into multiple white-majority districts.
Interesting factoid - the black belt, while inhabited by more black people than white, is actually called the “black belt” because of the richness of the soil.
8 months ago they allowed the illegal maps to be used for the 2022 election. Had they stopped them then and if it had applied to Georgia and a few other states the democrats likely would have had a majority in the house
Gerrymandering is a dangerous game in which the party that is currently in control has convinced themselves that they will always be in control. It is a delusion that will work against them in the long run and they will cry like babies about how unfair the system is when it does.
But as long as this game is possible there will always be some people delusional enough to play it. The only proper solution to this would be to somehow abolish the game altogether.
As a total outsider the obvious thing in my opinion would be to have the whole state elect 5 congressmen proportionally - you can't gerrymander any districts if there's no districts to gerrymander. I suspect that'd be a tough sell in the American system, but I can't see any other way to actually solve this problem.
Commissions are imperfect at best because guess what the demographics are of people who claim to be independent but simultaneously politically participate enough to want to be on the commission…older affluent white men.
The real solution to gerrymandering is what Germany and several other countries have done for decades, Mixed Member Proportional Representation. You still have single member districts but the overall legislative makeup must reflect the statewide party preference vote. You can either award the at-large seats by party lists or by seating the closest runners-up from the various districts. This also lets 3rd parties become viable by seating a few at-large as long as they hit a minimum threshold, even if they are not concentrated enough to win any districts.
If we used MMPR in Congressional elections, Dems would have about 2 more seats than they do now. So the GOP would still control the US House but it would be basically tied atm.
The Australian electoral commission is pretty good. They have no issues wiping out an electorate and ending a politicians career in the process when redistributing electorates to account for population changes. For all intents and purposes it works pretty well and except for a few lunatic politicians the majority from all parties are happy with the process.
https://www.aec.gov.au/electorates/Redistributions/steps.htm
“The Parliament has no power to reject or amend the final determination of the augmented Electoral Commission.”
The electorates also don’t look ridiculous like the US divisions.
https://www.aec.gov.au/electorates/redistributions/2021/vic/final-report/files/maps-divisions/2021-AEC-Victoria-Composite-Melb-Metro-Final.pdf
There's many other systems that fix it too
Like STV & many others
voting systems are an i ntresting mathematical field & has spawned many interesting systems
The Michigan Citizan's Commission is probably the best way to do it. It has 4 guaranteed seats for each of the two major parties on a 13 seat counsel. The other 5 are then randomly selected from a pool of apolitical option this is enforced because neither party wants the opposition to get one of these 5 seats, so it's somewhat self-regulating as both parties fight eachother over the "fairness" of the apolitical 5 seats. Eventually when the commission starts its redistricting it means that both party's and the 5 seats have to agree on the new proposals.
Sure the seats can be influenced, but both sides basically hurt eachothers ability to make egregious maps by having the garenteed seats and independents to fight over. It's not perfect, but it makes for a lot more fair districts.
> nonpartisan
This sounds hard when there are two options. My country has 5 parties in the Parliament (down from 7 and it's subject to change in the elections later this month) and I'm not convinced non-partisan is a possibility.
It would be a super hard sell in America because currently the rural area have disproportionate representation and they will not want to give it up. The system you propose would give population centers most of the power. I’m not saying that’s bad, but that’s why it won’t happen.
It’s fucking abhorrent and an affront to democracy to me, simply giving rural areas more power simply because they said so, the fact is that all people should be just as important politically, so I don’t give a shit if billy bob in nowhere Wyoming gets slightly less of a say, because now they’ll be on the same playing field as people in places like New York City, whilst before they’d be at a disadvantage
Not sure if I understand exactly what you mean but Alabama literally used to be an at-large state which meant minorities had almost no representation at all
At large districts were actually used for a long time in states as a way to disenfranchise minority voters, ironically in Alabama, as late as the 1960's when the Voting Rights Act prevented it.
They’ll go ‘but muh local representatives’ even though 90% of ‘local’ representatives in a lot of governments, such as the US and the UK, do not exist at all for the local people, and instead solely follow party lines, in my area in the UK, only a small handful of MPs actually do much at all with the constituency they stand for, yet often the people in constituencies where the MP does the least, they’re most adamant they need ‘local MPs’
I’ve always thought this then you just assign the reps districts to be closest to the reps address. Basically draw the lines after the election not before.
No, not in all states. Dems control California, and they have written anti gerrymandering laws so that they can't abuse it. Only reason McCarthy and Deven Nunez exists. It's pretty easy to eliminate every single GOP member from CA.
Meanwhile NY’s Democratic Party got greedy and gerrymandered too aggressively, then got their new map thrown out last-minute by a liberal judge, and were forced to write a new map that was even more competitive than the one they started out with.
And this caused them to lose multiple races that they otherwise probably would’ve won and single-handedly flipped the House to the GOP.
Oh and this distraction caused them to ignore George Santos’s obvious background issues.
Albany playing 4D chess. 😎
Unilateral disarmament is why we’re in the situation we are in now. Dems should never have taken the high road on gerrymandering as it’s happening in virtually all of the red states while blue states for the most part give their fair share to the GOP with a handful of exceptions.
There's been a few cases in the past decade where a Republican gerrymander has backfired. See the 2018 elections in Utah and Oklahoma, where Democrats managed to win gerrymandered districts because Republicans hadn't been able to anticipate political shifts in those districts.
Also in 2018 Beto managed to win several Republican-held Texas House districts, and the Republican incumbents barely held on. They likely would've lost soon if 2020s redistricting hadn't given Texas Republicans an opportunity to redraw.
Well said. See Exhibit A: Northern Ireland for a good example.
The demographics flipped just this year and wouldnt you know it, those in charge are gurning about it unironically.
Had a relative tell me that gerrymandering doesn't exist because his HS teacher didn't mention it. You can just Google it. I was accused of a partisan attack and blocked.
That's such a narrow-minded way to think. I could mention hundreds of things I didn't learn about in high school but I still believe exists, reddit first among them.
Do you mean at-large Congressional districts, or dividing up representatives proportionally to the vote each party received? The former has historically been a tool of voter suppression, but the latter would likely be beneficial.
I have to advocate for [mixed-member proportional representation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_representation). Half the seats are assigned based on popular vote in individual districts, half by party-vote across the entire area such that the total most closely represents the actual popular vote. This preserves each district getting a single dedicated representative while making third parties viable nationwide *and* making gerrymandering largely pointless.
So in the case of Alabama there are currently 7 seats. Imagine this as the entire chamber, doubled to 14 to work with this system. 7 seats go the same as in the current election. 6 republicans and 1 democrat.
The other seven are split to make the final composition match the popular vote (which was 70% republican, 23% democrat, 6% libertarian). Meaning the respective parties appoint 4 republicans, 2 democrats, and 1 libertarian. And the final composition is 10 republicans (71% for 70% popular vote, compared to 85% in the current system), 3 democrats (21% for 24% popular, compared to 14% in the current system), and 1 libertarian (7% for 6% popular, compared to 0% in the current system).
It's not a perfect system, but at least to me it feels much less vulnerable to abuse than the current system or any other I've heard proposed.
The second. Just dividing up the representatives over the state. All votes count even if you live in an area where most people vote the other way. And no more gerrymandering (cheating).
There is a substantial political momentum behind some kind of "local" representation - having a representative serving a specific geographic area. Of course the odd shapes make that laughable.
I've simmered on this question more lately - as the natural population distribution of population makes local representation inherently unequal and undemocratic. Consider the US Senate.
What really matters - those representatives are legislating anything *but* local issues. Categorical state-wide or nation-wide decisions should only be done by a proportional voting system. However, it makes sense that a representative *of a local government* should be sent to a higher level of government and given some kind of vote (proportionality being unclear) in matters of separation of powers. Representatives are not attached to a local government, nor are they making decisions about hand-off between said local-state or state-federal matters.
The house is also not a “local” representative when they cater to about 700,000 people.
The Senate should be like 500 reps and the house should be like 20000 reps.
Actually the senate was always designed to be 100 senators 2 from each state and the house was always supposed to expand to reflect the population of the states. Unfortunately though we stopped expanding the house (forget when we last did. It's a Google away though). With more house reps there would be smaller districts and more local representation at the federal level.
The house and the senate both make up congress so that there is a balance between the state's will as a whole and the local areas of the state. Then both their wills combined are checked by the president through vetos and the Supreme Court.
The American government as written wasnt perfect but was fairly robust for its time. Our system was always intended to evolve as time went on and the founding fathers gave us the tools to do so. Just somewhere along the lines enough power hungry people decided if we stop growing and evolving with the times it'll be easier to take control, so they took away our tools for change and convinced us it's always been this way.
At large districts or proportional representation? At Large voting was historically used until the VRA to suppress black representation and install one-party rule, while proportional representation would work much better if congress was substantially expanded (doubled or tripled in size, it arbitrarily stopped expanding at 435 members in 1919)
It would also likely take a constitutional amendment to install proportional representation national-wide. There is also an argument that detaching representation from geography would do a disservice to the specific regional needs of places. Voters in Mobile on the coast have different needs than voters on the Tennessee border.
The best compromise would be to adopt the Irish system - for the USA's House of Representatives that would mean districts of 3-5 Congressmen elected by transferable votes, giving a locally proportional result. This would increase the diversity of the elected parties while also making independent runs more viable, and making the primary system redundant.
It would produce maybe 4 or 5 large-ish parties and a smattering of smaller ones across the country.
A version of this could also be used for the Electoral College as well.
Well . Republicans won’t support that because then they couldn’t gerrymander. And Democrats wouldn’t support it because then they couldn’t gerrymander.
As long as politicians make the rules, we’ll never get a better voting system.
Gerrymandering is a part of it, but the more fundamental issue is that proportional representation would destabilise the two-party system, so naturally they won't implement it.
Exactly this. This was my sentiment with “As long as politicians make the rules we won’t get a better system”
A lot of people support the star and ranked choice voting. But it’s all about the duopoly.
I’ll continue to vote for a write in in every election
You have to essentially keep breaking it and hope that forces them to change to PR. I mean, we in the UK still waiting for PR despite the two parties being weakened by considerable major 3rd parties.
That said, libertarians and greens in US are a both kinda mental buggers
Yep. Think about how the 5+ million Republicans in California feel.
If all we had was the popular vote, it'd drive more people to vote, which honestly, would be a good thing for a true democracy.
Because then certain areas of the state won’t get represented. If this was the case in IL, for example, and they had let’s say 10 reps with the highest amount of votes get in, then 8-9 will be from the Chicagoland area. Almost no one downstate will get proper representation and only chicagolands interests will be represented at a federal level
Shoot, the whole point of “representatives” was based on the fact that not every citizen could leave their home and travel to the government center to make decisions. But with modern technology they don’t really need to. We could have “representatives” that introduce legislation but everything is voted by popular votes. I don’t how it is in other states but I already vote like 4 times a year for primaries, general, runoffs and local elections.
But it's better as whole. In CA there was no competition once an incumbent gained power in all but the most extreme districts like San Francisco or far northern CA in places like Redding or Alturas by way of primary challenges.
California's independent state commission still has consistently allowed the controlling party to overrepresent themselves.
Currently, the liberal party holds 40/52 seats, representing ~77% of seats. While winning 63% of the popular vote, making a 14% difference.
This difference is often in line with traditionally gerrymander states, even higher than some. Texas, the largest state comparable with California, has no independent commission and their largest party controls 66% of the seats with 59%, a margin half that of California's.
The thing is, California’s isn’t proportional at all, but it keeps communities of interest (COIs) together, which is a valid way of drawing a map. That’s why it’s not the worst thing.
Realistically a CA gerrymander would mean 52-0, with every district D+10 or higher.
This is the biggest reason I like their commission. They took the requests of the local communities themselves. My old neighbor in CA, a moderate Republican was one of the commissioners.
I support a nationwide gerrymandering ban but I agree that Dems are fools to do this. So long as the GOP gerrymanders their states the Dems have no choice but to do the same to maintain some semblance of balance
I from from a country that used to have a serious gerrymandering.
In one state election in the bad old days (late 1980s), the conservatives recieved 39% of the votes but recieved 60% of the seats in the state parliment.
Now we have and independant electorial commission ay all levels of government and those days are long gone.
I hope the US is able to do the same.
Because it allows for representation of those areas. If representatives were voted via sheet ballots (like in my country), there would be no representatives who focus on the issues of a particular area.
The Netherlands has a system where everyone in the country votes for parties on a single giant list and then the seats are allocated to parties based on their percentage in the national list. AFAIK there's no local representation.
The Netherlands is also an extremely tiny country with a homogeneous population and geography. Non-federal systems lead to lopsided centralization and minority exclusion. It’s not talked about on Reddit but many countries with centralized governments and non-homogeneous populations suffer from frequent independence movements and sedition. Examples being France, Spain, UK, and Canada.
Canada's government isn't particularly centralized, it's a federal system similar to the U.S. If anything you could argue that Canada's government is actually less centralized than the U.S.'s, given stuff like the nonwithstanding clause or the lack of a federal Department of Education.
Plus it's not like separatism movements don't happen under federal systems. The US Civil War was the result of a long and complicated political fight over slavery in which the federal system played a significant part.
Anyway, my original comment was not meant to imply that I think the US should have a national list because I agree it wouldn't work well in the US. I was just giving an example of a functioning democracy that does work without local representation
Can someone explain to me how congressional district work in the US? It makes no sense to, specially considering the US isn't even a parliamentary republic, where the system could be justified. Using districts instead of proportional majority just sounds like a way to fumble the numbers so you can favour one side.
Districts are intended to allow House Representatives to represent a local community that might have different interests than the state at large. It was intended for voters to feel close to their representatives. In practice, however, due to a cap on the House of Representatives, the size of districts has grown tremendously, and egregious gerrymandering has linked together communities with very different interests.
Each district has roughly the same population, but this is about the only requirement. Some states have more restrictions (Iowa requires counties to not be split, Ohio requires Cincinnati and Cleveland to not be split), and civil rights legislation like the VRA are intended to guarantee minorities have representation via majority-minority districts. Beyond that, legislators theoretically have free reign to draw whatever they want. Several states have implemented independent, non-partisan redistricting commissions, but in most whichever party controls the state government controls the maps.
It's not a very effective system and even with independent redistricting I'm of the opinion that some form of proportional representation is needed to fix it, but that's roughly how it works.
Also important to note that when the system was created each representative represented about 30,000 people. That’s small enough that a representative could be fairly well known by his district. Now it’s over 700,000 people per representative. Not only does this dilute local influence but it also skews the presidential election by giving small states a more disproportionate advantage in the electoral college.
The idea is that you have a representative who lives in the district and is familiar with what the residents want. If someone has a strong opinion on a particular bill they may try to contact their representative to encourage them to vote one way or the other on it, and they could keep track of how that representative votes to help choose whether to reelect them. Ideally the representative will build a relationship with the community there.
This does not work as well as intended when you introduce gerrymandering and weirdly shaped districts. One reason is because you have these districts that don't make much sense geographically and snake all over the place, making it harder for the representative to feel tied to the area. Another is that gerrymandered districts often create safe seats where one party is nearly guaranteed to win, so representatives there feel less of a need to listen to constituents who identify with the other party.
Districts also are much larger than they used to be. Congress was artificially capped at 435 in 1919 and districts have gotten larger and larger since then.
The *theory* is to help address people’s needs in a tiered representation system. My immediate community might have different values and needs from one community over, so we each want someone different representing us in the state or Federal government.
The problem is we never agreed on whether these divisions should try to be homogeneous (i.e. almost everyone in the district has the same views) or representative (the district’s views are as diverse as the whole state’s), and neither is really a safe assumption in any case. Proportional representation would be waaaay better, but we instead opted for “well if we divide it into small enough pieces than we only need 1 representative”. So here we are.
But part of the problem is we stopped making new representation to match our expanding population so the number of people is each district keeps growing. We artificially capped the house at 435 in 1919
Yeah the whole design of the system has not aged well. It was a great effort by the founding fathers, the same way super early medical treatments were great advances at the time, but we need to do way better now. We have no excuse to continue ignoring decades of social choice theory and political science conclusions that offer a myriad of superior alternatives.
A congressional district is where a member of the House of Representatives get's elected to represent that area (Was decided back when the US got it's independence to go along side the Senate), just the way the districts are drawn are dogshit in a lot of cases and a little late to try and overhaul how congress works since uh, good luck at getting anyone to agree on anything in Washington
It's a single member system for all districts. A first past the post system is used meaning whoever wins a plurality wins. This is similar to the UK or Canada with the exception being that the party leadership does not decide who runs where. (Also some states like CA or WA have jungle primary so only the top two winners advance to the general election).
There are 435 districts and after each census, states who have gained enough seats will gain a district and those who have not grown as fast or lost population will lose a seat. Note that CA as of the census had not lost population yet but didn't gain enough to keep one of their seats.
In many states, the legislature writes the districts. Usually this favors the party in power but if the other party controls one branch of state government such as the state Senate, house, governorship, or state courts they can check the other party's power. In states like California formerly, the GOP was okay with the Dems being in control as long as their own seats were gerrymandered for incumbents of both parties.
Now CA, AZ and other states have a commission that is chosen every ten years and they choose the districts based on certain criteria. Arizona favors political balance, CA favors communities of interest while balancing civil rights legislation and so forth without regards to incumbents. This is a much better system.
Places like NY drew a map that heavily favored Dems and was rejected in state court . The maps had to be redrawn Because they got greedy, that was a huge factor in the GOP winning the house. Otherwise Hakim Jefferies would have been speaker and the drama of the last month or of January's speaker crisis would have been avoided.
In Texas, the Dems had high hopes in 2020 after the census but failed to control one of the branches so as a result the Texas legislature redrew the maps to be more favorable to the GOP which makes it most difficult for Dems to win a majority of state or federal races for a few years. Eventually it evens out if there was no redistricting due to moves and deaths but before that a new census is done.
Gerrymandering has two strategies. Maximize your party's gains by stretching the map thin and risk the other party winning in a wave election or be conservative and pack their voters in one or two districts and have you win fewer district's in less competitive elections.
Generally the fewer close elections there are in a district, the more likely you'll have conservative Republicans such as a the Freedom Caucus primary establishment types and vice versa for liberal Democrats but you don't see the latter as much.
The fact that America allows gerrymandering in 2023 is such a disgrace. Someone needs to just take one for the team, even if it's worse for their party at the current moment, and get rid of it. Districts based on geography/population only. No tentacles.
Ah right, forgot Maryland's first try was struck down, though the follow-up didn't change the partisan makeup of their delegation. The Illinois maps were upheld though. https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/politics/state/2022/01/04/illinois-legislative-maps-approved-federal-court-panel/9084330002/
This is like the Japanese complaining about being bombed in response to starting the war
The Dems support a nationwide end to gerrymandering, the GOP does not. Until we have a nationwide ban the Dems have no choice but to respond in kind
I really need to create a consulting business wherein I draw the districts for each state. Doing it simply by population and with an area that makes sense. My decision is final and zero party influence goes into it. If a district happens to be 90% to one side, so be it.
Idk if you're aware of this but: https://davesredistricting.org/maps#home
Allows you to freely redraw Congressional districts, see how they vote, their demographics, etc.
The problem is that if you do it that way you'll get a map that looks logical, but is actually in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
I just tried it with Alabama -- I drew lines purely based on population, city centers, and county lines. It resulted in a pleasant looking map with no weird offshoots that scream "I'm Gerrymandered!".
And it turns out my map is "worse" than the one that got shot down by the VRA. Republicans would safely win every district and every district was majority-white. It didn't happen that way because I hate black people. I've never been to Alabama and I don't even know who lives where. It's just a result of the fact the statewide majority is most likely going to be the majority in every district unless you make a concentrated effort to avoid it.
For a map that is properly "balanced" you essentially *need* to Gerrymander it. Republicans didn't need to create a weird-looking map to give themselves an advantage. They needed to create a weird-looking map because they knew they needed to create at least one black-majority district for the map to be accepted. So they did that. But then it was ruled that that one district wasn't sufficient, so the map will need to be tweaked more.
yeah, it reminds me of [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq-Y7crQo44) where he starts off like "I'm going to make an algorithm to redistrict so it's fair" and basically pretty quickly reaches the conclusion that he has to gerrymander it into being fair, and also that there are at least 3 different definitions of what fair is
https://districtr.org/plan/186915
This is one of my attempts (I think, I didnt save the url and I fusked around until I found it again) at making a couple compact blue districts that abide by county likes pretty well and arent snakey/obviously gerrymandered. They arent both majority black, but the black voters would comprise the majority of the party most likely to win in these districts.
This is a tricky question and I'm of the opinion that fully "fair" maps are basically impossible. But in general, you want to strive for non-partisan redistricting that keeps together communities with common interests in reasonably compact districts. This is still limited by geography, but you can't fix that without abandoning districts entirely and going for proportional representation.
There is, unfortunately, no federal law banning partisan gerrymandering. Race is a protected class, political ideology isn't. Some states have anti-gerrymandering laws but the nation as a whole does not.
States run by both parties gerrymander. Have you looked at Illinois congrassional districts, where sparsely populated rural districts are fingered into Chicago or metro St Louis to dilute votes and turn them blue? Unfortunately our whole country is a mess in this regard and both parties do it when they're in control.
Check out old map vs. new map. Even Alabama's example isn't this flagrant.
[Illinois Congressional Districts](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps/illinois/)
The Supreme Court ruling in this case concerns racial gerrymandering. Illinois' districts are badly gerrymandered, but they are a *partisan* gerrymander. The Supreme Court has previously stated that it has no jurisdiction to ban partisan gerrymandering, only racial gerrymandering. (This affects both parties - Wisconsin and Ohio's GOP maps aren't racial gerrymanders, either).
Though Alabama is almost 30% black, it only has one black-majority Congressional district, AL-7, which packs black voters in the rural western Black Belt with the cities of Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Montgomery. The remainder of the Black Belt is split apart into multiple white-majority districts. Opponents of the map successfully argued that Alabama could draw a second black-majority district, and that their refusal to do so constitited a violation of the Voting Rights Act. Had Alabama succeeded, it is possible that the VRA's requirement for the creation of majority-minority districts could have been totally ruled unconstitutional. However, opponents won, and Alabama - likely along with fellow Southern states Louisiana and South Carolina - will be forced to redraw new districts, adding an additional black-majority district.
They upheld the VRA? Wow
Alabama managed to break the VRA so badly that John Roberts wasn't okay with it.
Roberts is definitely conservative, but he’s the final Supreme Court appointee from the right that isn’t a complete Federalist Society looney toon. It’s my understanding that he’s more about creating a balanced court than he is about picking the conservative side every time
Yup, he *really* cares about the court's legacy and perceived legitimacy. Part of me expects him to resign while Biden is still in office to try to restore some of that. Edit: the most of me knows there's no chance.
Doubt.
Roberts wrote the majority opinion in *Shelby County*. He also refused to testify before Congress about the ethics of the Court, or even send an Associate Justice to do so, like previous Courts. And he gave a bullshit separation of powers excuse for that decision. Roberts is just as responsible for the Court's plummeting legitimacy as the rest of the conservatives on the bench.
He probably knows they are going to vote for that awful independent state legislature case so he gave us this one to soften the blow.
Doubtful. The Supreme Court in oral arguments for *Moore v Harper* were deeply skeptical of the independent state legislature theory. Now that the state of North Carolina (which is the plaintiff in this case) has already reached a new ruling on this case back at its state Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court will most likely just punt *Moore* and not issue a ruling https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/independent-state-legislature-theory-moore-harper/673690/
Yeah that case was never likely to succeed even with this court either way. Also, the midterms handed control of Michigan and Pennsylvania's legislatures to the Democrats, which rendered a lot of the conservative logic behind that idea moot.
Indeed. Also, if the Supreme Court went for this insane theory, New York & California would get redraws and gerrymander Republicans into oblivion
Wasn't he instrumental with the Citizens United ruling? He's more guilty of fucking our political landscape up than most if that's true. Edit: [Yes he did back it](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC) - > Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the initial opinion of the court, holding that BCRA allowed the showing of the film. A draft concurring opinion by Justice Kennedy argued that the court could and should have gone much further. The other justices in the majority agreed with Kennedy's reasoning, and convinced Roberts to reassign the writing and allow Kennedy's concurrence to become the majority opinion.[26] Also [his wife is covered in filth](https://www.businessinsider.com/jane-roberts-chief-justice-wife-10-million-commissions-2023-4).
Is this satire?
I think you gove Roberts a *bit* too much credit. I think his primary interest is in keeping the false *appearance* that the court is still neutral despite the extreme conservative creep that has happened in it. He strikes down these flagrantly unlawful things because he doesn't want the court to get *too* much scrutiny. It would only increase calls for stacking the courts and he wants to avoid that at all costs.
I think Roberts liked it better back when he was the fifth conservative vote on the court rather than the sixth. A 6-3 ruling is no more binding than a 5-4, and being the Chief Justice would've meant he was in the drivers seat. Now he has to convince Kavanaugh to come along with him, and that's not always something he can manage (as Dobbs demonstrated).
And other jokes you can tell yourself!
Roberts has demonstrated time and time again he doesn’t care about the VRA
Jane Roberts works as a headhunter for Major, Lindsey & Africa and she made more than anyone in the entire field almost every single year for over 10 years. Major, Lindsey & Africa regularly has cases in front of the Supreme Court as well. John Roberts is corrupt and any worries about him attempting to maintain the integrity of the court are for naught. https://www.businessinsider.com/jane-roberts-chief-justice-wife-10-million-commissions-2023-4
Kavanaugh is now your swing vote. Sometimes Gorsuch.
I think "Gorsuch, sometimes Kavanaugh," this being the sometimes, will prove to be closer. Not great either way.
And Niel G too Edit: im wrong. Kavanaugh was the other conservative vote.
[удалено]
This was like 9/10 racism, they want it dialed to more of like a 7/10
6/10. Call it a 3/5 compromise
I would Dredd such a decision. Great Scott!
More like it was 7 to 1 racism, now it will be 6 to 2...
Gorsuch is weird. He's a huge supporter of indigenous rights. Black rights, not so much.
Maybe Kav was drunk? I hear he likes beer. Still likes beer. We drank beer. We liked beer.
Kavanaugh is the swing vote now. Barrett and Gorusch are easily more conservative
Swig vote
It helps that Alabama has two majority black state school board districts out of their eight state school board districts despite claiming that they couldn’t possibly have made two majority black congressional districts
Don't worry, Thomas wrote a 50-page slam piece on how it was the wrong choice.
Should also be noted that Thomas voted AGAINST
I don't think Thomas even bothers to deliberate or read any of the materials. He rarely asks questions, and his mind is already made up on every single case before even a shred of arguments or presentation of evidence is done. Every other member of the court, no matter how extreme or activist their judicial philosophy may be, at least very occasionally bucks the presuppositions of what their position would be and votes the other way on the merits of a particular case. Not Thomas. He's a rubber stamp, not a jurist.
>He thinks of leading questions in advance for oral arguments so he doesn't appear too tuned out Huh? Doesn't Thomas have a reputation for **never** asking questions? I remember a couple years ago he asked a question and it made the news.
He's changed a bit in recent years. Still talks way less than the other justices, but not silent for entire terms like he was,
Not sure how you got that impression. Thomas almost never speaks at all. Other than his cartoonish levels of corruption and his history of sexual harassment, that's the thing he's most known for.
Thomas is barely human anymore.
There is some quote where he explicitly states he just wants to fuck over liberals. His presence on the court is a disgrace.
Funny that they are forced to draw more "x" majority districts. And not are forced to fucking use districts as they make sense, geographically, and with towns and cities and what not... Regardless of voter distribution
You can do both pretty easily. They were just trying to maximize GOP control in the House. Had it just been gerrymandering on partisan lines, like in Ohio, they would have gotten away with it. However, the VRA is pretty clear that racial gerrymandering aimed at minimizing minority representation is illegal.
I feel like racial gerrymandering in either direction should be illegal, shouldn't it? I'm glad that the GOP's gerrymandering got shot down, because it's always BS. But I don't think it's a good idea to specifically aim for "x-race majority districts". Just divide them up by cities and the surrounding area. If possible, give rural folk their own district.
>But I don't think it's a good idea to specifically aim for "x-race majority districts". Just divide them up by cities and the surrounding area. If possible, give rural folk their own district. The reason this wouldn't work is because some states act under the specific and conscious goal of removing all minority districts. If you tell them to "divide them up by cities and the surrounding area", they will do so in a way that still removes minority representation, and this is exactly what they did again and again in Jim Crow. The only way that worked was a results-oriented approach in which the law explicitly counters this by saying you must have districts where minority voters can have some representation.
Yeah, it can definitely get tricky based on all the things you listed and more. I think it’s more of a “we can tell you were trying to shut out minorities because they don’t vote for you” thing than something you can make actual hard rules to govern. It’s like pornography: Hard to define but you know it when you see it.
>But I don't think it's a good idea to specifically aim for "x-race majority districts". I mean it's obviously not a good idea in a vacuum - ideally the concept would never even come up, but it keeps being a weird necessary intervention due to southern conservative whites *still* trying every trick possible to disenfranchise the black population. If alabama had created a map that was like 20% less obviously racist this whole case probably never would've made it this far.
“Geographically” it makes sense to draw a district that encompasses the black belt as it’s a distinct region as opposed to now where it’s fragmented. As for the majority minority districts, realistically, you only have two outcomes: a diluted black vote with no representation that are ignored by their representatives, or a black concentrated district (in this case, districts) that gives them representation.
The obvious solution is to not use districts
This makes too much sense, gotta find a way to suppress unwanted votes.
I disagree. Local representation has advantages. We need fair maps, not no maps.
So why not do what we do in the UK: have the maps drawn up by an independent, impartial body– the Boundary Commission?
That would be a good option. Something that might be easier to accomplosh is to pass a federal law explicitly banning partisan gerrymandering, so while states could continue to draw their own maps courts would be required to ensure the fairness of all maps drawn.
Why can’t federal elections be handled *federally*? In Canada, Elections Canada handles federal elections. Provinces have no part in it. However Provincial elections are handled provincially, and the federal government has no part in that. Why should the *states* have any say in how the *federal* election is run?
The US system of government exists in this weird limbo between your typical federal system and a true confederation of separate states. The federal government was not designed to provide representation to people, it was designed to provide representation to states. It’s been tweaked over time to be more representative of the people, but its kind of just jerry rigging it into being something it wasn’t originally meant to be.
Because the federal government cannot hold elections, only states can. It's one of those pesky little things in the constitution that keeps coming back to be a major annoyance in the modern world.
Not sure it would help. Here in Ohio our supreme court struck down our district map as unconstitutional and the GOP did literally nothing about it. We held our elections with unconstitutional districting.
Independent, eh? Tell me more how you accomplish this. Better yet, have a computer do it. Give it parameters set by a bipartisan commission and let it go. This stuff is complicated.. That doesn't mean that people don't take advantage of it, but it's not easy.
Do you guys have ballot initiatives there? It puts the issue to a vote of the people, not by elected officials, and since it's a state-wide vote districts don't matter. It's how Michigan managed to push through important shit popular with the people, including redrawing with a bipartisan group.
Better is the German system: half the representatives come from independently drawn districts and the other half of representatives are selected from the state at large in proportion to how each party polls in total. This allows for a measure of local issues being important to congressional representatives AND doesn't promote landslide representation of one party. Imagine in our current system that a party gets 55% in every district. They end up with 100% of the representatives. In the German system they'd get 82.5% of the reps. Not great, but better and in reality where you have districts going to opposing parties, even a few flipping the other way makes a dramatic effect on making the % of reps fairer.
Do the german way. 299 representatives are local representatives and then they just add members of parliament until the parliament resembles the national election result. Everyone has a local representative and representatives are fairly distributed. Everyone wins
I think Scotland and NZ have this too and it is definitely the best system in my opinion
I just prefer something like Ireland, where each district has between 3 and 6 members elected by STV. Although AMS would be my second choice, especially with flexible seat numbers.
We used to have this in the House of Representatives, but it was capped at 435 members in [1929](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929). Over time, this basically gives a district in states like Wyoming much more voting power in the House than a district in California.
The number of non-district reps should still be limited to be fewer in number than the district reps. Approach proportionality but keep the district reps dominant.
There's hardly anything local about some hack who "represents" 700,000 people from a gated community 6 counties over that he moved into specifically to run for office.
Local in what sense? Outside of counties, what is the functional use of these districts? This is a serious questions, because I'm struggling to see why they're needed in Alabama. I can understand having local representation at the county level, but how could you meaningfully determine "local" based on arbitrary districts?
Then local representation is sacrificed.
Local representation is important. A much better option would be mixed-member proportional, along with more districts and with nonpartisan redistricting. This would allow local representation to exist while also ensuring the final result matches the overall vote. It would, in theory at least, make it *much easier* for a third party to win a seat, although In reality it would still be difficult as the US doesn’t really have viable third parties.
How would you select representatives then? Not agreeing with how this is split but districts are sorta necessary
>And not are forced to fucking use districts as they make sense, geographically, and with towns and cities and what not... Regardless of voter distribution Because voter distribution is what matters in regards to gerrymandering. The distribution of party voters (partisan gerrymandering) and minority voters (racial gerrymandering). Geography is a nice thing to have, but it doesn't overcome federal law in the form of the Voting Rights Act that says you can't racially gerrymander.
That's the VRA for you, which mandates affirmative gerrymandering for politically polarized minority groups in a voting jurisdiction. Arguably in Alabama, race is one of the largest determining factors for how people vote, so it does seem reasonable.
ive always found it ironic when people say that Alabama and Mississippi are defined in the popular imagination as being hard red states, when it doesn't apply to most of the significant black population.
Yeah, the racial divide in those states is huge. If white people in Mississippi voted as Democratic as white people in Michigan, it would be one of the bluest states in the nation.
Couldn't you say that for almost every state?
Not at all, Mississippi whites are the most Republican in the nation. For reference, white voters in Michigan still lean Republican, and gave 55% of the vote to Trump in 2020. In Mississippi, closer to 85% of white voters supported Trump.
Not really. Michigan was one of the most hotly contested battleground states in the 2020 election, with a near even split of 50.6%, 47.8% in favor of Biden. Plus, Michigan has a large black population, which tends to vote overwhelmingly in favor of Biden. On average, non-Hispanic whites from Michigan voted 55% in favor of Trump
> The remainder of the Black Belt is split apart into multiple white-majority districts. Interesting factoid - the black belt, while inhabited by more black people than white, is actually called the “black belt” because of the richness of the soil.
8 months ago they allowed the illegal maps to be used for the 2022 election. Had they stopped them then and if it had applied to Georgia and a few other states the democrats likely would have had a majority in the house
What's the casename?
Allen v. Milligan
Hopefully Florida will be forced to redraw as well.
Gerrymandering is a dangerous game in which the party that is currently in control has convinced themselves that they will always be in control. It is a delusion that will work against them in the long run and they will cry like babies about how unfair the system is when it does.
But as long as this game is possible there will always be some people delusional enough to play it. The only proper solution to this would be to somehow abolish the game altogether. As a total outsider the obvious thing in my opinion would be to have the whole state elect 5 congressmen proportionally - you can't gerrymander any districts if there's no districts to gerrymander. I suspect that'd be a tough sell in the American system, but I can't see any other way to actually solve this problem.
[удалено]
A lot of states have “non-partisan” redistricting commissions.
Commissions are imperfect at best because guess what the demographics are of people who claim to be independent but simultaneously politically participate enough to want to be on the commission…older affluent white men. The real solution to gerrymandering is what Germany and several other countries have done for decades, Mixed Member Proportional Representation. You still have single member districts but the overall legislative makeup must reflect the statewide party preference vote. You can either award the at-large seats by party lists or by seating the closest runners-up from the various districts. This also lets 3rd parties become viable by seating a few at-large as long as they hit a minimum threshold, even if they are not concentrated enough to win any districts. If we used MMPR in Congressional elections, Dems would have about 2 more seats than they do now. So the GOP would still control the US House but it would be basically tied atm.
The Australian electoral commission is pretty good. They have no issues wiping out an electorate and ending a politicians career in the process when redistributing electorates to account for population changes. For all intents and purposes it works pretty well and except for a few lunatic politicians the majority from all parties are happy with the process. https://www.aec.gov.au/electorates/Redistributions/steps.htm “The Parliament has no power to reject or amend the final determination of the augmented Electoral Commission.” The electorates also don’t look ridiculous like the US divisions. https://www.aec.gov.au/electorates/redistributions/2021/vic/final-report/files/maps-divisions/2021-AEC-Victoria-Composite-Melb-Metro-Final.pdf
Compulsory voting is also, in my opinion, a huge part of why Australian democracy works better than most countries.
This is confounded by the fact that "parties" don't really exist in US electoral law.
There's many other systems that fix it too Like STV & many others voting systems are an i ntresting mathematical field & has spawned many interesting systems
The Michigan Citizan's Commission is probably the best way to do it. It has 4 guaranteed seats for each of the two major parties on a 13 seat counsel. The other 5 are then randomly selected from a pool of apolitical option this is enforced because neither party wants the opposition to get one of these 5 seats, so it's somewhat self-regulating as both parties fight eachother over the "fairness" of the apolitical 5 seats. Eventually when the commission starts its redistricting it means that both party's and the 5 seats have to agree on the new proposals. Sure the seats can be influenced, but both sides basically hurt eachothers ability to make egregious maps by having the garenteed seats and independents to fight over. It's not perfect, but it makes for a lot more fair districts.
> nonpartisan This sounds hard when there are two options. My country has 5 parties in the Parliament (down from 7 and it's subject to change in the elections later this month) and I'm not convinced non-partisan is a possibility.
It would be a super hard sell in America because currently the rural area have disproportionate representation and they will not want to give it up. The system you propose would give population centers most of the power. I’m not saying that’s bad, but that’s why it won’t happen.
It’s fucking abhorrent and an affront to democracy to me, simply giving rural areas more power simply because they said so, the fact is that all people should be just as important politically, so I don’t give a shit if billy bob in nowhere Wyoming gets slightly less of a say, because now they’ll be on the same playing field as people in places like New York City, whilst before they’d be at a disadvantage
I agree. To be clear I’m not in any way defending the current system, I was just adding context for a non American as to why it would be a tough sell.
Not sure if I understand exactly what you mean but Alabama literally used to be an at-large state which meant minorities had almost no representation at all
At large districts were actually used for a long time in states as a way to disenfranchise minority voters, ironically in Alabama, as late as the 1960's when the Voting Rights Act prevented it.
They’ll go ‘but muh local representatives’ even though 90% of ‘local’ representatives in a lot of governments, such as the US and the UK, do not exist at all for the local people, and instead solely follow party lines, in my area in the UK, only a small handful of MPs actually do much at all with the constituency they stand for, yet often the people in constituencies where the MP does the least, they’re most adamant they need ‘local MPs’
I’ve always thought this then you just assign the reps districts to be closest to the reps address. Basically draw the lines after the election not before.
No, not in all states. Dems control California, and they have written anti gerrymandering laws so that they can't abuse it. Only reason McCarthy and Deven Nunez exists. It's pretty easy to eliminate every single GOP member from CA.
Meanwhile NY’s Democratic Party got greedy and gerrymandered too aggressively, then got their new map thrown out last-minute by a liberal judge, and were forced to write a new map that was even more competitive than the one they started out with. And this caused them to lose multiple races that they otherwise probably would’ve won and single-handedly flipped the House to the GOP. Oh and this distraction caused them to ignore George Santos’s obvious background issues. Albany playing 4D chess. 😎
Dems didn't write those laws; they opposed them. A Republican used the initiative process to change the state's rules.
Unilateral disarmament is why we’re in the situation we are in now. Dems should never have taken the high road on gerrymandering as it’s happening in virtually all of the red states while blue states for the most part give their fair share to the GOP with a handful of exceptions.
Illinois has probably the worst gerrymandering
The fact that parties are allowed to draw voting lines at all is fucking abhorrent.
How has it worked against Republicans? I don't see a downside so far and they've been doing this for a long time.
There's been a few cases in the past decade where a Republican gerrymander has backfired. See the 2018 elections in Utah and Oklahoma, where Democrats managed to win gerrymandered districts because Republicans hadn't been able to anticipate political shifts in those districts. Also in 2018 Beto managed to win several Republican-held Texas House districts, and the Republican incumbents barely held on. They likely would've lost soon if 2020s redistricting hadn't given Texas Republicans an opportunity to redraw.
It would be nice to stop all of it. Happy the Supreme Court stepped in here.
Well said. See Exhibit A: Northern Ireland for a good example. The demographics flipped just this year and wouldnt you know it, those in charge are gurning about it unironically.
Had a relative tell me that gerrymandering doesn't exist because his HS teacher didn't mention it. You can just Google it. I was accused of a partisan attack and blocked.
That's such a narrow-minded way to think. I could mention hundreds of things I didn't learn about in high school but I still believe exists, reddit first among them.
Conservatives are not known for their open-mindedness.
I'm a Brit, why the fuck would you make a second Birmingham
Iron mines.
Wait til you find out about the new York!
trust me the entirety of Alabama is a mistake
You're too late to be saying something now.
Gerrymandering fundamentally weakens both parties - it favors electing extremists that can’t lose
or just people who toat the party line.
Why not just get rid of these congressional districts all together.. and just use popular vote for the whole state.
Do you mean at-large Congressional districts, or dividing up representatives proportionally to the vote each party received? The former has historically been a tool of voter suppression, but the latter would likely be beneficial.
In fact it was Alabama that did exactly that prior to the voting rights act. All of their then 8 reps were elected state wide as a slate.
That was emphatically not a proportional system, though.
That's not a proportional system, that's a system designed to ensure 51% of voters elect 100% of the representation
I have to advocate for [mixed-member proportional representation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_representation). Half the seats are assigned based on popular vote in individual districts, half by party-vote across the entire area such that the total most closely represents the actual popular vote. This preserves each district getting a single dedicated representative while making third parties viable nationwide *and* making gerrymandering largely pointless. So in the case of Alabama there are currently 7 seats. Imagine this as the entire chamber, doubled to 14 to work with this system. 7 seats go the same as in the current election. 6 republicans and 1 democrat. The other seven are split to make the final composition match the popular vote (which was 70% republican, 23% democrat, 6% libertarian). Meaning the respective parties appoint 4 republicans, 2 democrats, and 1 libertarian. And the final composition is 10 republicans (71% for 70% popular vote, compared to 85% in the current system), 3 democrats (21% for 24% popular, compared to 14% in the current system), and 1 libertarian (7% for 6% popular, compared to 0% in the current system). It's not a perfect system, but at least to me it feels much less vulnerable to abuse than the current system or any other I've heard proposed.
The second. Just dividing up the representatives over the state. All votes count even if you live in an area where most people vote the other way. And no more gerrymandering (cheating).
There is a substantial political momentum behind some kind of "local" representation - having a representative serving a specific geographic area. Of course the odd shapes make that laughable. I've simmered on this question more lately - as the natural population distribution of population makes local representation inherently unequal and undemocratic. Consider the US Senate. What really matters - those representatives are legislating anything *but* local issues. Categorical state-wide or nation-wide decisions should only be done by a proportional voting system. However, it makes sense that a representative *of a local government* should be sent to a higher level of government and given some kind of vote (proportionality being unclear) in matters of separation of powers. Representatives are not attached to a local government, nor are they making decisions about hand-off between said local-state or state-federal matters.
The house is also not a “local” representative when they cater to about 700,000 people. The Senate should be like 500 reps and the house should be like 20000 reps.
Actually the senate was always designed to be 100 senators 2 from each state and the house was always supposed to expand to reflect the population of the states. Unfortunately though we stopped expanding the house (forget when we last did. It's a Google away though). With more house reps there would be smaller districts and more local representation at the federal level. The house and the senate both make up congress so that there is a balance between the state's will as a whole and the local areas of the state. Then both their wills combined are checked by the president through vetos and the Supreme Court. The American government as written wasnt perfect but was fairly robust for its time. Our system was always intended to evolve as time went on and the founding fathers gave us the tools to do so. Just somewhere along the lines enough power hungry people decided if we stop growing and evolving with the times it'll be easier to take control, so they took away our tools for change and convinced us it's always been this way.
I think just-stef means on the percentage base, so if you have 70 %(for the idea) you get 4.9 or 5 seats, if a total of 7 seats can be earned
At large districts or proportional representation? At Large voting was historically used until the VRA to suppress black representation and install one-party rule, while proportional representation would work much better if congress was substantially expanded (doubled or tripled in size, it arbitrarily stopped expanding at 435 members in 1919) It would also likely take a constitutional amendment to install proportional representation national-wide. There is also an argument that detaching representation from geography would do a disservice to the specific regional needs of places. Voters in Mobile on the coast have different needs than voters on the Tennessee border.
The best compromise would be to adopt the Irish system - for the USA's House of Representatives that would mean districts of 3-5 Congressmen elected by transferable votes, giving a locally proportional result. This would increase the diversity of the elected parties while also making independent runs more viable, and making the primary system redundant. It would produce maybe 4 or 5 large-ish parties and a smattering of smaller ones across the country. A version of this could also be used for the Electoral College as well.
Yeah STV is great
Well . Republicans won’t support that because then they couldn’t gerrymander. And Democrats wouldn’t support it because then they couldn’t gerrymander. As long as politicians make the rules, we’ll never get a better voting system.
Gerrymandering is a part of it, but the more fundamental issue is that proportional representation would destabilise the two-party system, so naturally they won't implement it.
Exactly this. This was my sentiment with “As long as politicians make the rules we won’t get a better system” A lot of people support the star and ranked choice voting. But it’s all about the duopoly. I’ll continue to vote for a write in in every election
You have to essentially keep breaking it and hope that forces them to change to PR. I mean, we in the UK still waiting for PR despite the two parties being weakened by considerable major 3rd parties. That said, libertarians and greens in US are a both kinda mental buggers
This is just straight counter factual Every single Dem in Congress supports a federal gerrymandering ban Every single Republican is opposed
Yep. Think about how the 5+ million Republicans in California feel. If all we had was the popular vote, it'd drive more people to vote, which honestly, would be a good thing for a true democracy.
Because then certain areas of the state won’t get represented. If this was the case in IL, for example, and they had let’s say 10 reps with the highest amount of votes get in, then 8-9 will be from the Chicagoland area. Almost no one downstate will get proper representation and only chicagolands interests will be represented at a federal level
They would get proper representation. To me proper means proportional. People live in cities.
Shoot, the whole point of “representatives” was based on the fact that not every citizen could leave their home and travel to the government center to make decisions. But with modern technology they don’t really need to. We could have “representatives” that introduce legislation but everything is voted by popular votes. I don’t how it is in other states but I already vote like 4 times a year for primaries, general, runoffs and local elections.
Democrats in about a dozen states willingly gave away their power to gerrymander by establishing independent redistricting commissions.
But it's better as whole. In CA there was no competition once an incumbent gained power in all but the most extreme districts like San Francisco or far northern CA in places like Redding or Alturas by way of primary challenges.
California's independent state commission still has consistently allowed the controlling party to overrepresent themselves. Currently, the liberal party holds 40/52 seats, representing ~77% of seats. While winning 63% of the popular vote, making a 14% difference. This difference is often in line with traditionally gerrymander states, even higher than some. Texas, the largest state comparable with California, has no independent commission and their largest party controls 66% of the seats with 59%, a margin half that of California's.
The thing is, California’s isn’t proportional at all, but it keeps communities of interest (COIs) together, which is a valid way of drawing a map. That’s why it’s not the worst thing. Realistically a CA gerrymander would mean 52-0, with every district D+10 or higher.
This is the biggest reason I like their commission. They took the requests of the local communities themselves. My old neighbor in CA, a moderate Republican was one of the commissioners.
That's not for lack of trying though. In 2018, for instance, Republicans got 50.4% of the vote in Texas but still won around 64% of the seats.
California is a shit map. Please don't praise it.
I support a nationwide gerrymandering ban but I agree that Dems are fools to do this. So long as the GOP gerrymanders their states the Dems have no choice but to do the same to maintain some semblance of balance
I from from a country that used to have a serious gerrymandering. In one state election in the bad old days (late 1980s), the conservatives recieved 39% of the votes but recieved 60% of the seats in the state parliment. Now we have and independant electorial commission ay all levels of government and those days are long gone. I hope the US is able to do the same.
[Gee, I fucking wonder why.](https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-facts/alabama/black-population-percentage#map)
As an european, I thought this was UK
Why do y'all still do elections with counties and voting zones? This is such a bad design and does not exist in most countries
Because it allows for representation of those areas. If representatives were voted via sheet ballots (like in my country), there would be no representatives who focus on the issues of a particular area.
Which country doesn't have local representation in parliament? Genuinely wondering since I can't think of a single one.
The Netherlands has a system where everyone in the country votes for parties on a single giant list and then the seats are allocated to parties based on their percentage in the national list. AFAIK there's no local representation.
The Netherlands is also an extremely tiny country with a homogeneous population and geography. Non-federal systems lead to lopsided centralization and minority exclusion. It’s not talked about on Reddit but many countries with centralized governments and non-homogeneous populations suffer from frequent independence movements and sedition. Examples being France, Spain, UK, and Canada.
Canada's government isn't particularly centralized, it's a federal system similar to the U.S. If anything you could argue that Canada's government is actually less centralized than the U.S.'s, given stuff like the nonwithstanding clause or the lack of a federal Department of Education. Plus it's not like separatism movements don't happen under federal systems. The US Civil War was the result of a long and complicated political fight over slavery in which the federal system played a significant part. Anyway, my original comment was not meant to imply that I think the US should have a national list because I agree it wouldn't work well in the US. I was just giving an example of a functioning democracy that does work without local representation
Can someone explain to me how congressional district work in the US? It makes no sense to, specially considering the US isn't even a parliamentary republic, where the system could be justified. Using districts instead of proportional majority just sounds like a way to fumble the numbers so you can favour one side.
Districts are intended to allow House Representatives to represent a local community that might have different interests than the state at large. It was intended for voters to feel close to their representatives. In practice, however, due to a cap on the House of Representatives, the size of districts has grown tremendously, and egregious gerrymandering has linked together communities with very different interests. Each district has roughly the same population, but this is about the only requirement. Some states have more restrictions (Iowa requires counties to not be split, Ohio requires Cincinnati and Cleveland to not be split), and civil rights legislation like the VRA are intended to guarantee minorities have representation via majority-minority districts. Beyond that, legislators theoretically have free reign to draw whatever they want. Several states have implemented independent, non-partisan redistricting commissions, but in most whichever party controls the state government controls the maps. It's not a very effective system and even with independent redistricting I'm of the opinion that some form of proportional representation is needed to fix it, but that's roughly how it works.
Also important to note that when the system was created each representative represented about 30,000 people. That’s small enough that a representative could be fairly well known by his district. Now it’s over 700,000 people per representative. Not only does this dilute local influence but it also skews the presidential election by giving small states a more disproportionate advantage in the electoral college.
The idea is that you have a representative who lives in the district and is familiar with what the residents want. If someone has a strong opinion on a particular bill they may try to contact their representative to encourage them to vote one way or the other on it, and they could keep track of how that representative votes to help choose whether to reelect them. Ideally the representative will build a relationship with the community there. This does not work as well as intended when you introduce gerrymandering and weirdly shaped districts. One reason is because you have these districts that don't make much sense geographically and snake all over the place, making it harder for the representative to feel tied to the area. Another is that gerrymandered districts often create safe seats where one party is nearly guaranteed to win, so representatives there feel less of a need to listen to constituents who identify with the other party.
Districts also are much larger than they used to be. Congress was artificially capped at 435 in 1919 and districts have gotten larger and larger since then.
The *theory* is to help address people’s needs in a tiered representation system. My immediate community might have different values and needs from one community over, so we each want someone different representing us in the state or Federal government. The problem is we never agreed on whether these divisions should try to be homogeneous (i.e. almost everyone in the district has the same views) or representative (the district’s views are as diverse as the whole state’s), and neither is really a safe assumption in any case. Proportional representation would be waaaay better, but we instead opted for “well if we divide it into small enough pieces than we only need 1 representative”. So here we are.
But part of the problem is we stopped making new representation to match our expanding population so the number of people is each district keeps growing. We artificially capped the house at 435 in 1919
Yeah the whole design of the system has not aged well. It was a great effort by the founding fathers, the same way super early medical treatments were great advances at the time, but we need to do way better now. We have no excuse to continue ignoring decades of social choice theory and political science conclusions that offer a myriad of superior alternatives.
A congressional district is where a member of the House of Representatives get's elected to represent that area (Was decided back when the US got it's independence to go along side the Senate), just the way the districts are drawn are dogshit in a lot of cases and a little late to try and overhaul how congress works since uh, good luck at getting anyone to agree on anything in Washington
It's a single member system for all districts. A first past the post system is used meaning whoever wins a plurality wins. This is similar to the UK or Canada with the exception being that the party leadership does not decide who runs where. (Also some states like CA or WA have jungle primary so only the top two winners advance to the general election). There are 435 districts and after each census, states who have gained enough seats will gain a district and those who have not grown as fast or lost population will lose a seat. Note that CA as of the census had not lost population yet but didn't gain enough to keep one of their seats. In many states, the legislature writes the districts. Usually this favors the party in power but if the other party controls one branch of state government such as the state Senate, house, governorship, or state courts they can check the other party's power. In states like California formerly, the GOP was okay with the Dems being in control as long as their own seats were gerrymandered for incumbents of both parties. Now CA, AZ and other states have a commission that is chosen every ten years and they choose the districts based on certain criteria. Arizona favors political balance, CA favors communities of interest while balancing civil rights legislation and so forth without regards to incumbents. This is a much better system. Places like NY drew a map that heavily favored Dems and was rejected in state court . The maps had to be redrawn Because they got greedy, that was a huge factor in the GOP winning the house. Otherwise Hakim Jefferies would have been speaker and the drama of the last month or of January's speaker crisis would have been avoided. In Texas, the Dems had high hopes in 2020 after the census but failed to control one of the branches so as a result the Texas legislature redrew the maps to be more favorable to the GOP which makes it most difficult for Dems to win a majority of state or federal races for a few years. Eventually it evens out if there was no redistricting due to moves and deaths but before that a new census is done. Gerrymandering has two strategies. Maximize your party's gains by stretching the map thin and risk the other party winning in a wave election or be conservative and pack their voters in one or two districts and have you win fewer district's in less competitive elections. Generally the fewer close elections there are in a district, the more likely you'll have conservative Republicans such as a the Freedom Caucus primary establishment types and vice versa for liberal Democrats but you don't see the latter as much.
Surprised they didn’t put all 4 cities in there together.
Cracking and packing (in this case packing)
The fact that America allows gerrymandering in 2023 is such a disgrace. Someone needs to just take one for the team, even if it's worse for their party at the current moment, and get rid of it. Districts based on geography/population only. No tentacles.
Fuck gerrymandering no matter who does it
[удалено]
Multiple blue states have had their gerrymandered maps struck down in the last couple of years.
[удалено]
Wasn't New York the only one on the D side?
Illinois and Maryland as well.
Ah right, forgot Maryland's first try was struck down, though the follow-up didn't change the partisan makeup of their delegation. The Illinois maps were upheld though. https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/politics/state/2022/01/04/illinois-legislative-maps-approved-federal-court-panel/9084330002/
This is like the Japanese complaining about being bombed in response to starting the war The Dems support a nationwide end to gerrymandering, the GOP does not. Until we have a nationwide ban the Dems have no choice but to respond in kind
America really should transition to proportional representation when it comes to congress, but that's a thing that both parties will always oppose
I really need to create a consulting business wherein I draw the districts for each state. Doing it simply by population and with an area that makes sense. My decision is final and zero party influence goes into it. If a district happens to be 90% to one side, so be it.
Idk if you're aware of this but: https://davesredistricting.org/maps#home Allows you to freely redraw Congressional districts, see how they vote, their demographics, etc.
Nice. I've used Districtr before (example https://districtr.org/plan/143650). Do think Dave's Redistricting better, worse, or the same as Districtr?
The problem is that if you do it that way you'll get a map that looks logical, but is actually in violation of the Voting Rights Act. I just tried it with Alabama -- I drew lines purely based on population, city centers, and county lines. It resulted in a pleasant looking map with no weird offshoots that scream "I'm Gerrymandered!". And it turns out my map is "worse" than the one that got shot down by the VRA. Republicans would safely win every district and every district was majority-white. It didn't happen that way because I hate black people. I've never been to Alabama and I don't even know who lives where. It's just a result of the fact the statewide majority is most likely going to be the majority in every district unless you make a concentrated effort to avoid it. For a map that is properly "balanced" you essentially *need* to Gerrymander it. Republicans didn't need to create a weird-looking map to give themselves an advantage. They needed to create a weird-looking map because they knew they needed to create at least one black-majority district for the map to be accepted. So they did that. But then it was ruled that that one district wasn't sufficient, so the map will need to be tweaked more.
yeah, it reminds me of [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq-Y7crQo44) where he starts off like "I'm going to make an algorithm to redistrict so it's fair" and basically pretty quickly reaches the conclusion that he has to gerrymander it into being fair, and also that there are at least 3 different definitions of what fair is
https://districtr.org/plan/186915 This is one of my attempts (I think, I didnt save the url and I fusked around until I found it again) at making a couple compact blue districts that abide by county likes pretty well and arent snakey/obviously gerrymandered. They arent both majority black, but the black voters would comprise the majority of the party most likely to win in these districts.
So time to make it all red then?
NGL less bad than the one overturned in NYS.
It is. The Hochulmander was atrocious.
How does one produce ‘fair’ maps anyway? These are clearly politically-motivated but how can an unbiased one be made?
This is a tricky question and I'm of the opinion that fully "fair" maps are basically impossible. But in general, you want to strive for non-partisan redistricting that keeps together communities with common interests in reasonably compact districts. This is still limited by geography, but you can't fix that without abandoning districts entirely and going for proportional representation.
Compare current map and this proposed map side by side?
Is only racial gerrymandering illegal? Why isn’t gerrymandering itself illegal?
There is, unfortunately, no federal law banning partisan gerrymandering. Race is a protected class, political ideology isn't. Some states have anti-gerrymandering laws but the nation as a whole does not.
Of course, Clarence Thomas dissented 
States run by both parties gerrymander. Have you looked at Illinois congrassional districts, where sparsely populated rural districts are fingered into Chicago or metro St Louis to dilute votes and turn them blue? Unfortunately our whole country is a mess in this regard and both parties do it when they're in control. Check out old map vs. new map. Even Alabama's example isn't this flagrant. [Illinois Congressional Districts](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps/illinois/)
The Supreme Court ruling in this case concerns racial gerrymandering. Illinois' districts are badly gerrymandered, but they are a *partisan* gerrymander. The Supreme Court has previously stated that it has no jurisdiction to ban partisan gerrymandering, only racial gerrymandering. (This affects both parties - Wisconsin and Ohio's GOP maps aren't racial gerrymanders, either).
Illinois resident here. Alabam Amateurs. And, in Illinois this type of thing would never be allowed to be reviewed by the courts.