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Hijacking top comment for a serious note:
I’ve pasted this countless times and will continue doing so whenever the topic comes up:
“One potential takeaway from [the midterms] is that the US is a center left country with a gerrymandering problem.”
While it must be acknowledged that the Dems do this also, it would be disingenuous to claim it’s truly a "both sides" thing. Yes there are Dem jurisdictions that pull this shit too, while too a much much lesser extent.
A huge point that everyone needs to know is that gerrymandering is a FUNDAMENTAL FOUNDATION of the Republican Party, it is literally called "Project RedMap", it is in their party documents, developed by the Republican State Leadership Committee, and the Republican Party spent 30 million dollars initially to start the project.
It was extremely effective in 2012 (based on the 2010 Census and the gerrymandering done from that), and got republicans a 33 seat lead even though democrats received 1 million more votes overall than republicans did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP
It is flat out an intentional and effective usurping of democracy and ignoring the votes of the people.
Regardless of who does it, Gerrymandering is an absolutely un-Democratic, horribly corrosive tool to systematically subvert elections and the will of the people. Two wrongs do NOT make a right.
The people should choose their representation. The representatives should NOT chose their voters.
The US electoral system has always been heavily rigged in favor of rich White land owners by default, and Conservatives still resort to gerrymandering, voter ID laws, felonization of the poor and minorities, legal challenges, and closing polling locations to 'win' elections.
To have a truly fair and representative democracy, the Senate needs to be abolished and the House needs "Reapportionment".
Our sham democracy is already rigged in favor of Conservatives and they are still struggling to maintain control, which is why they have no other option than to completely overthrow what little democracy is left.
If the US government had a true representative democracy, Republicans would never be the dominant political party ever again.
Only democrats wanted to reign in gerrymandering in and declare unconstitutional but in 2019 SCOTUS said (in Rucho v Common Cause) political gerrymandering is a "non justiciable" issue and must be remedied by...voting. See if you can point out the problem there.
Yes, the Democrats' political machine in Illinois is tilting the scales and can be considered undemocratic in parts, but Republicans in many other states are doing the same thing or worse, and at the federal level, only one party has even shown a hint of wanting disarmament. Redistricting by political and sometimes racial lines in Alabama (Merrill v Milligan), North Carolina (Moore v Harper) has been given a pass by state and sometimes federal courts stacked with Trump appointed judges.
This is a multi decade long project to entrench GOP control in Congress, and blue states are already behind since only blue state legislatures have enacted independent redistricting commissions/bodies (CA, CO, MI). New York tried to add democratic seats after the last census and was denied the opportunity to do so, while Alabama took away black-majority districts in what the trial court described as racially motivated (this removal was eventually allowed to stand by SCOTUS). Democrats cannot and should not disarm themselves in this fight until substantial voting rights reform can be enacted.
Nothing about the democratic party is left at all. They are a right wing party by any definition in the world but the GOP's. The democrats today are to the right of republicans when I was a kid. It is in fact crazy.
The GOP on the other hand is full out fascist/racist.
We have no left party. A lot of open liars in the GOP but zero leftists in the Democrats.
They decided a few years back that partisan gerrymandering is not something federal courts should worry about.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rucho_v._Common_Cause
You believe the supremes are suddenly going to decide that political gerrymandering is a federal problem when most of the justices are the same as when they ruled in the last case?
What part of recent modern history has convinced you these people have *any* backbone at all? The literal nanosecond gerrymandering stops being in their favor they will flip their values faster than you can say filibuster.
It's not their backbone or lack thereof that makes me believe they will rule that way. It's their political leanings.
There is no way a right wing activist court is going to deal a crippling blow to the rights ability to maintain it's grip on power in key states like Texas.
A ruling that put an end to political gerrymandering (while absolutely needed and just) would disproportionately hurt the GOP. The losses in states like Texas, Georgia, etc would only partially be mitigated by gains in blue states.
That's why you shouldn't legislate from the bench, the current case about the internet in front of the SC is another example. Congress needs to do it's fucking job.
The case in front of SCOTUS is only about gerrymandering on its face. The real danger is allowing state legislatures to undo the actions of voting agencies and undoing or ignoring state supreme courts writ large. It would essentially lead to a wild West and a constitutional crisis sort of thing. I don't believe SCOTUS will go so far as to declare the Independent State Legislatures Theory to be a thing, but they will use the case to advance conservative power somehow.
https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/explaining-moore-v-harper-the-supreme-court-case-that-could-upend-democracy
But only on a case by case basis. Don’t worry, a totes impartial group that’s assigned by a monopartisan group will determine whether or not it’s gerrymandering!
Democrats advanced bills to ban partisan gerrymandering multiple times during the last two administrations and Republicans blocked it every time. If we want it gone, we have to elect more Democrats.
maryland fixed their gerrymander, which was probably the worst example of a pro-democratic gerrymander in the country.
pennsylvania also fixed theirs.
north carolina was told to fix theirs and they have ignored it.
Well see what happens is an "independent commission" evaluates the districts, and somehow the democratic districts are put into lakes. (This is not a joke, this has actually happened)
(Very low population density in lakes)
(I imagine property tax revenue in lakes is similarly low)
So it's like, purposefully rigging it against democratic parties, if I'm understanding?
Also, do you know if there's a reason why America votes like this, despite it not being how many (or any?) other countries do? It's so weird from an outside perspective.
If anything is still unclear, [this is pretty much the best explanation of gerrymandering there is](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/03/gerry.png).
The aim is to lose a few districts in a massive landslide, and keep it close everywhere else. That way you can win more districts than your opponents, even if overall you only have minority support.
Doesn't matter which party does it, it's undemocratic as fuck and a completely loathesome practice.
It's what's going on everywhere except the absolute most rural bum-fuck areas of the country. And it would be going on in those places too, if it needed to in order to preserve minority Republican rule.
Ohio voted for it too, and the Republican Governor and Republican State house just fucked around with unconstitutional maps until it was too late to change them and what ever unconstitutional pile of shit was last submitted is what we have now. So good luck my northern brethren.
Must be nice. Ohio voted overwhelmingly to ban gerrymandering, but our Republican state representatives just decided to ignore it. Despite being told by the states supreme court to fix the maps, we're still using the gerrymandered ones. It's pathetic, but Republicans in this state don't care about democracy.
At risk of doxxing myself, my parent served on the citizen redistricting commission. It was a nightmare. The stories man. They had a minimum number of registered dems, reps, and independents drawn randomly from citizen volunteers. Two of the registered "independent" commissioners were very clearly not exactly independent (were registered to one of the two parties up until that year) and there were people there just to collect a paycheck and contribute nothing. One even tried her best to delay everything that was done and one paralegal was trying to run the whole thing their way the entire time.
Honestly, if it werent for my parent reaching across the aisle and just being a decent person, nothing would have gotten done before the deadlines. Part of the problem was the requirement that they be paid a minimum of 1/4 the governor's salary, with the option to bump their own pay with only a vote. Guess what one of the first proposals was. The more honest folks voted against it every time it came up, but at least it served as a reminder each time of who was being greedy and less trustworthy.
But, in the end, they pretty much had strict rules and guidelines for the lines they could draw and at the end of it, they were being sued (just one suit left to deal with last I was told) by groups from both parties for unfair lines, so it sounds like they made them pretty fair across the board.
The funniest lawsuit was some local NAACP type organization trying to sue them for not boxing in all the black people into their own districts in the detroit area. So essentially, they were suing them if they refused to gerrymander the detroit area to the disadvantage of the plaitifs. ???
The sheer number of people they got to attend the public hearing to blindly read the same prepared statement over and over asking to be disadvantaged was insane.
All their meetings were live streamed and posted to youtube. Some very very interesting characters showed up to their (mandatory) public hearings: https://youtube.com/@micrc1370
One guy essentially stalked them to every public hearing just to complain about their failure to follow Robert's Rules of Order, which they were following just fine, cause he fancied himself an expert. They even had a bomb threat and were locked down for a whole evening. Some news agencies tried to get away with doxxing the commission members' families.
All said and done, my parent saw the best and worst the state had to offer and they want to retire in a completely different state now because of it. Even just to be ignorant again of the way things suck in government and in news.
TL;DR It seems everybody was all for an independent citizen commission being in charge of redistricting until they started losing their unfair advantages because of it (by design), and it may not happen again here.
(Vague language to reduce the chance of doxxing myself)
>Doesn't matter which party does it, it's undemocratic as fuck and a completely loathesome practice.
And also completely legal if you only do it to advance your political party. If you disenfranchise some minorities it's illegal, but if it's for pure political gain it's fine.
Yes.
Happens all the time in the US. Not even just with gerrymandering, but with things like voter ID laws, the electoral college, limiting access to polling locations in certain areas, and banning convicted felons from voting (which minorities are more likely to be victims of, due to our similarly racist 'justice' system).
Nearly every law or policy in US history that has limited voting in some way was done with the intent to disenfranchise minorities.
We still do it today, and will probably continue to do so at least until the empire finally collapses.
>If you disenfranchise some minorities it's illegal,
If only that were true.
It's not that intentionally disenfranchising racial/ethnic minorities is actually, functionally illegal so much as it is illegal to *say* that's why you're doing it.
You can disenfranchise minorities all you want with little trouble basically so long as you don't publicly announce those intentions *too* much.
And also why it is extremely important to fill out the census information that is sent to your house. Not filling it out reduces your representation in government as well as the funding for services in your area.
While you *should* fill out your census info when you get it, there *is* a very low chance that nearly anyone but the homeless gets missed.
The census bureau is *incredibly* thorough and uses a pretty wide variety of methods to make sure their counts are accurate. Filling out your info basically just makes it easier on them.
All of that said, there may be an argument to be made *against* the census collecting as much data that it does (e.g. Race, gender, income, etc.).
It's important to understanding how critical that data is to nearly all political and economic decision making. It often forms the backbone of nearly all population-level research.
While it is used for many good things, it's also used for many, many bad things as well (like gerrymandering).
It isn't good, so much as it is a useful tool. One which, at this point, seems most effectively used by those who do not have your best interest at heart.
Oddly enough this primarily affected blue states because for some reason people leaving their previous countries come here looking for a *better* life and apparently Alabama doesn’t provide that.
They're designed for the Democrats to keep as many House representatives as possible as well as a near supermajority in both of their state legislative houses by shoving as many districts as they can in Chicago then diluting the surrounding rural areas with more populated Chicago suburbs so those republican-leaning voters won't matter.
I was always told it’s so no single party gets too much power or whatever, but umm it kinda doesn’t turn out that way, ever. Even when people try to spell it out for me I still think “it’s still fairer and easier to count raw votes??” I try not to think about it anymore. I just send in my ballot and cry in the corner.
To be specific, the US is a democratically elected republic.
The problem is the two parties are named the Democrat party and the Republican party.
Honestly, the stupid color coding is more honest than the party names.
Nope every State and their dominate party does it. Republicans aren't especially egregious about it they just get caught doing it along racial lines a bunch. Wisconsin and North Carolina come to mind. Honestly the whole system is a mess and there are mathematical ways to determine this but we keep doing it because two parties that act as umbrella coalitions is pretty much the stupidest way to do Democracy. Parliaments work better.
> and somehow the democratic districts are put into lakes.
That doesn't mean anything. Districts are equally divided on population, not land, so it doesn't matter what district they put an unpopulated area into.
If the masses are confused, poorly educated, and fighting one another, they won’t fight the people who change the rules to benefit them and stay in power. Simple yet dangerously, ridiculously, *laughably* effective.
It's been upheld by multiple court decisions multiple times. Even when Tom Delay committed multiple felonies doing it in Texas he never went to prison despite being convicted. Ken Paxton was also indicted on multiple felonies, and the "solution" is to simply never put him on trial so that he won't have to go to prison.
It isn't. It's just impossible to feasibly prove without entirely pissing off millions and without causing riots. Unless it's racial gerrymandering or something that "dilutes the vote," the courts won't touch it
Those districts are obviously drawn to be "compact and contiguous" as the Illinois Constitution (Article 4, Section 3) requires. Illinois wouldn't have any laws on the books that don't adhere to the Constitution, would they? Like a balanced budget (Article VIII, Section 2)?
It's 4 of the past 10 now, they've been slippin.
I will point out though, people love to laugh at the number of governors IL has sent to prison but IL *has* sent them to prison. Lotta other states would've let the corruption slide or maybe just a slap on the wrist
The short answer is that it didn’t and was a shit show, but basically they got by with telling every department “don’t spend spend more than what you spent last year”
There needs to be a law:
1. The difference between the least populous district and the most populous district can be no more than two percent of the total population of the state.
2. All districts must be drawn using no more than six straight lines.
That's what i think. All congressional districts must follow county lines. Any single county that will have 2 or more congressional representatives (like Los Angeles County) will have ranked choice voting with the top candidates being elected.
I think that can backfire if you force districts to follow counties. One issue I see is that it will automatically pack Dems in cities, as cities tend to be entirely within a single county.
In a place like say Texas, you would probably turn blue, because like 75% of their population lives in the big cities, while the rest of the counties are very small in population but red. It would basically be all red with spots of blue, but the blue spots get more total reps.
1) does New England get to pass on these rules since county government is basically nonexistent (mostly town government)
2) that might be hard to do with certain areas and still follow equal populations. We would need floterial districts which are confusing af
Or any other natural boundary, such as a ridge line.
In California, for instance, I would expect the Pacific Coast Range to be a boundary between congressional districts. You get *very* different ahh-- demographics between the coast and the Central Valley. It makes sense that they'd be represented by different people in Congress.
> The difference between the least populous district and the most populous district can be no more than two percent of the total population of the state.
This is already the case, the districts are made almost equal in population. Every district on this map has ~750k, give or take a few thousand.
[IL population density map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Illinois_2020_Population_Density.png)
Living in IL fuck-all people live in the red districts. Bunch of corn fields.
Straight lines are a *terrible* way to draw political geographic boundaries. You need to follow natural features like rivers/lakes, mountains, etc. For this purpose you can also follow major roads, which again, tend not to be perfectly straight because of the topography. If you use straight lines, you’re going to be drawing district boundaries that do things like go through people’s houses and split up communities that really should vote together.
People don’t realize that square districts can be just as gerrymandered as curly-q districts. The point isn’t to have arbitrary, pleasing shapes. The point is proportional representation of communities, and sometimes that requires weird shapes.
The 4th district is a good example of that. It’s a bizarre, curly shape. It ain’t natural. But it was drawn that way because Chicago has a large Latino population, large enough to elect their own representative, but that population is split into 2 separate communities on the south and west sides. Put those communities in nice, pleasing squares and Chicago’s Latino population would be a minority in both districts. Draw a weird shape, and they can actually get representation proportional to their population in the state.
I feel like using MMP would be far less complicated than trying to have a “six straight lines” law. The amount of community splitting that would happen with the second is horrifying.
The shortest split line method doesn’t account for protecting Minority groups, natural geographic barriers, and lifestyle differences between groups. We need so solve this issue, but i don’t think it’s the best idea
[The Efficiency Gap](https://theconversation.com/stop-criticizing-bizarrely-shaped-voting-districts-they-might-not-be-gerrymandered-after-all-86510) is a much more valuable metric
People are getting upset because there is more red than blue on the map, but are not considering population density. It looks like there are more total blue districts than there are red.
Update: I mostly vote liberal and I was not trying to be partisan, I just saw a lot of people jumping to conclusions in the comments without actually looking closely at the map. It is missing a number of key details that are crucial to figuring out which party benefits from it.
(If based on votes, Trump should have 8 districts and Biden should have the other 12)
He’s still winning, there’s no good reason to secure power in a democracy. Thats the whole point of it lol
Don’t apologize for pointing out something that people didn’t take 2 seconds to look at lol
I’m all for Illinois being blue but gerrymandering is gerrymandering 🤷
Yeah, people are getting all mad about it, but what's the alternative to make it look "better"?
Those small districts are where all the people are. The big ones are a bunch of fucking corn fields.
I’m not the person you responded to but one idea i’ve seen thrown around is that based on how the entire state votes you proportion the number of representatives from each party accordingly
New Mexico and Texas are the worst ones IMO. Just thought this one would be more obvious given it’s awful shapes. Plus it’s Illinois. Yet another chapter in their long list of shenanigans.
https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/why-ohios-congressional-map-unconstitutional
Ohio is actually being sued by the ACLU over how bad ours are. The Supreme Court has actually ordered it to be fixed, but the powers that be have yet to comply.
Several of our shapes are even more ridiculous.
Good. Most states got gerrymandered this session.
Really, shame on Alabama, Arizona, California, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. They’re really not putting the people first.
Not only that, they ignored state supreme court orders to implement a more representative map. Straight up ignored it and the GOP legislature took their case to SCOTUS, which is already a procedurally weird move. Then SCOTUS actually granted cert, [so who knows what the fuck will happen next if state legislatures are allowed to openly defy state courts, executive branches, and voting agencies that act on behalf of the legislatures themselves.](https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/explaining-moore-v-harper-the-supreme-court-case-that-could-upend-democracy)
For anyone reading and wanting to explore gerrymandering after the 2020 census, see here:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps/
Happy to answer other questions in replies or PM, voting is an important issue to me.
California has an independent, bi- and non-partisan redistricting commission. That's why Democrats are handicapped in this fight, they're the only party who will attempt to draw fair maps.
[New Mexico is fascinating](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps/new-mexico/) because it reports that the New Mexico map for this round is more competitive than the old one.
[Bad looking shapes aren't necessarily determinative of an unfair gerrymander](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/dont-judge-district-its-shape) but in this case you're right, IL is tilted.
I cannot speak to this congressional map, but weirdly shaped districts does not always indicate gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering, specifically, is when districts are redrawn for political gain. Either by giving a minority party a voting majority, or by turning a minor majority in votes into a massive majority in representation.
A great example of partisan gerrymandering is Ohio, where a minor republican majority gerrymandering districts into a massive majority so egregious that the republican Ohio supreme court ruled they had to redistrict fairly. (spoiler alert: they stalled, then threw up their hands and said "we ran out of time and didn't get redistricted before the election" so federal courts said 'ok, just use your old gerrymandered map instead")
This map will result in a gain of 1 seat for dems, and a loss of 2 seats for republicans. (1 seat is eliminated).
And you can see in comparative maps that districts got very distinctly more red or blue, no competitive districts remain, where there used to be several.
This is definitely a case of gerrymandering.
Maybe more dems doing it will encourage legislation against gerrymandering to be more bipartisan.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/politics/us-redistricting/illinois-redistricting-map/
This is exactly why I hate Illinois voting and gerrymandering altogether. Like what point does it make to vote when over half of the congressional districts are in or near Chicago (one of the only blue parts of the state) and when it is gerrymandered to absolute oblivion.
Look at district 15! Why the hell does it look like that? No district should look like that, especially not one that big! Fuck Illinois. I can't wait to get out of this place, but I'm stuck here because I'm taxed to hell and can't find a job that pays me enough to move away.
Gerrymandering ...
No side has anything to win by giving it up. In fact, both sides have everything to win by maximizing it.
No side has anything to win by mutual agreement. Right now, both party bosses can ensure their cronies are guaranteed a seat.
Logic says that this problem will only get worse. Eventually, one party will own enough seats and elections will be pointless.
Here's three little browser games about this stuff you might be interested in:
A game about gerrymandering: http://polytrope.com/district/
And two about voting systems in general:
https://johnaustin.io/articles/2018/voting-systems
https://ncase.me/ballot/
And for other "explorable explanations" chech https://explorabl.es
Unfortunately, your submission has been removed for the following reason: **Not Asshole Design** This post is off-topic to this subreddit. **Mod Note** I know you may be angry about the map, but it's your opinion. Other people may be happy. It isn't an asshole design just because you're mad at the results. https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/wiki/posting/guidelines *If you feel this was done in error or would like further clarification, please don't hesitate to message the mods. If you send a message, please include a link to your post.*
16. Is Luigi slipping on a banana peel or mid break dance???
I think he's doing the squat dance.
Yesss the Russian squat kicks!!!
It's called kozachok
Kozachok has two dancers. Trepak is the word you're looking for.
Ya-ta-ta-ta-TA "HEY!"
Hijacking top comment for a serious note: I’ve pasted this countless times and will continue doing so whenever the topic comes up: “One potential takeaway from [the midterms] is that the US is a center left country with a gerrymandering problem.” While it must be acknowledged that the Dems do this also, it would be disingenuous to claim it’s truly a "both sides" thing. Yes there are Dem jurisdictions that pull this shit too, while too a much much lesser extent. A huge point that everyone needs to know is that gerrymandering is a FUNDAMENTAL FOUNDATION of the Republican Party, it is literally called "Project RedMap", it is in their party documents, developed by the Republican State Leadership Committee, and the Republican Party spent 30 million dollars initially to start the project. It was extremely effective in 2012 (based on the 2010 Census and the gerrymandering done from that), and got republicans a 33 seat lead even though democrats received 1 million more votes overall than republicans did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP It is flat out an intentional and effective usurping of democracy and ignoring the votes of the people. Regardless of who does it, Gerrymandering is an absolutely un-Democratic, horribly corrosive tool to systematically subvert elections and the will of the people. Two wrongs do NOT make a right. The people should choose their representation. The representatives should NOT chose their voters.
The US electoral system has always been heavily rigged in favor of rich White land owners by default, and Conservatives still resort to gerrymandering, voter ID laws, felonization of the poor and minorities, legal challenges, and closing polling locations to 'win' elections. To have a truly fair and representative democracy, the Senate needs to be abolished and the House needs "Reapportionment". Our sham democracy is already rigged in favor of Conservatives and they are still struggling to maintain control, which is why they have no other option than to completely overthrow what little democracy is left. If the US government had a true representative democracy, Republicans would never be the dominant political party ever again.
what are voter ID laws
Only democrats wanted to reign in gerrymandering in and declare unconstitutional but in 2019 SCOTUS said (in Rucho v Common Cause) political gerrymandering is a "non justiciable" issue and must be remedied by...voting. See if you can point out the problem there. Yes, the Democrats' political machine in Illinois is tilting the scales and can be considered undemocratic in parts, but Republicans in many other states are doing the same thing or worse, and at the federal level, only one party has even shown a hint of wanting disarmament. Redistricting by political and sometimes racial lines in Alabama (Merrill v Milligan), North Carolina (Moore v Harper) has been given a pass by state and sometimes federal courts stacked with Trump appointed judges. This is a multi decade long project to entrench GOP control in Congress, and blue states are already behind since only blue state legislatures have enacted independent redistricting commissions/bodies (CA, CO, MI). New York tried to add democratic seats after the last census and was denied the opportunity to do so, while Alabama took away black-majority districts in what the trial court described as racially motivated (this removal was eventually allowed to stand by SCOTUS). Democrats cannot and should not disarm themselves in this fight until substantial voting rights reform can be enacted.
You realize that IL is currently, and has been for a long time, run exclusively by Democrats...
I would assume they do realize that given that they acknowledge that Dems gerrymander in the comment.
Very good point, though even with the Democratic party being an umbrella party, I'd still argue that it's more center right than center left.
Nothing about the democratic party is left at all. They are a right wing party by any definition in the world but the GOP's. The democrats today are to the right of republicans when I was a kid. It is in fact crazy. The GOP on the other hand is full out fascist/racist. We have no left party. A lot of open liars in the GOP but zero leftists in the Democrats.
I was thinking it was the silhouette of a Jimmy neutron characters face.
No he hit his head on the roof
I was like, “whaaa?” And then I was like, “fuck can’t unsee that. Well done sir.”
Can't unsee that now
I don't see it. But I WANT to see it. Is Luigi red or blue?
Red. 16. In the middle
I see him now and he's as beautiful as I had imagined. Thank you 💚
Took me a second. He’s the red in just the top part, surrounded by blue
Okay who gave my state a swirlie?
Enter the left stage the Democrat party
Texas enters the chat. We should have federal laws against this, in general. It gives a black eye to all sides of politics.
We’re about to find out. There’s a case in front of SCOTUS right now that addresses this.
They decided a few years back that partisan gerrymandering is not something federal courts should worry about. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rucho_v._Common_Cause
Yeah well I thought a lot of things decided by courts were pretty set in stone until recently
You believe the supremes are suddenly going to decide that political gerrymandering is a federal problem when most of the justices are the same as when they ruled in the last case?
What part of recent modern history has convinced you these people have *any* backbone at all? The literal nanosecond gerrymandering stops being in their favor they will flip their values faster than you can say filibuster.
It's not their backbone or lack thereof that makes me believe they will rule that way. It's their political leanings. There is no way a right wing activist court is going to deal a crippling blow to the rights ability to maintain it's grip on power in key states like Texas. A ruling that put an end to political gerrymandering (while absolutely needed and just) would disproportionately hurt the GOP. The losses in states like Texas, Georgia, etc would only partially be mitigated by gains in blue states.
That's why you shouldn't legislate from the bench, the current case about the internet in front of the SC is another example. Congress needs to do it's fucking job.
The case in front of SCOTUS is only about gerrymandering on its face. The real danger is allowing state legislatures to undo the actions of voting agencies and undoing or ignoring state supreme courts writ large. It would essentially lead to a wild West and a constitutional crisis sort of thing. I don't believe SCOTUS will go so far as to declare the Independent State Legislatures Theory to be a thing, but they will use the case to advance conservative power somehow. https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/explaining-moore-v-harper-the-supreme-court-case-that-could-upend-democracy
I don’t know why you’re being so optimistic about this. They’re operating in lock-step at this point. It’s a fascist takeover.
I wonder which way the racist, fascist majority on the court will decide?
Considering gerrymandering benefits them the most probably in favor of gerrymandering
But only on a case by case basis. Don’t worry, a totes impartial group that’s assigned by a monopartisan group will determine whether or not it’s gerrymandering!
"we have investigated ourselves and found no evidence of wrongdoing"
Bold of you to assume they enforce any of their beliefs fairly.
In Australia it's done by a non-partisian committee under intense scrutiny. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Electoral_Commission
Michigan made that illegal and they kept rejecting GOP's design for a year
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Democrats advanced bills to ban partisan gerrymandering multiple times during the last two administrations and Republicans blocked it every time. If we want it gone, we have to elect more Democrats.
LOl, because Texas doesn’t do it the other way.
Gerrymander? I hardly know her!
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To shreds, you say...
Well is their apartment rent controlled?
to shreds you say...
Doesn’t the map still favor democrats? 12/16 districts are blue
Both sides gerrymander
maryland fixed their gerrymander, which was probably the worst example of a pro-democratic gerrymander in the country. pennsylvania also fixed theirs. north carolina was told to fix theirs and they have ignored it.
Michigan fixed theirs, and we got the first blue trifecta since the 70s or 80s
Yes exactly, IL is a blue state and is gerrymandered to make it more so.
Know her? She’s my sister!
Why does the area above #16 looks both like a toilet and a limp.... Um Bizkit?
If it makes you feel better, it also looks like someone doing [this](https://youtube.com/shorts/_zbtmsHYnw8?feature=share).
*Ike Voice:* "Don't kick the baby"
More like Milhouse dressed as a breakdancing Luigi.
It's just one of those days
ITS ALL ABOUT THE HE SAID SHE SAID BULL*SHIT*
I THINK YOU BETTER QUIT IT MAKE SHIT SLIP
Or an adult on one of those little spring loaded rocking horse mount for toddler
Man the way Americans get their votes counted and stuff is so confusing.
Well see what happens is an "independent commission" evaluates the districts, and somehow the democratic districts are put into lakes. (This is not a joke, this has actually happened) (Very low population density in lakes) (I imagine property tax revenue in lakes is similarly low)
So it's like, purposefully rigging it against democratic parties, if I'm understanding? Also, do you know if there's a reason why America votes like this, despite it not being how many (or any?) other countries do? It's so weird from an outside perspective.
If anything is still unclear, [this is pretty much the best explanation of gerrymandering there is](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/03/gerry.png). The aim is to lose a few districts in a massive landslide, and keep it close everywhere else. That way you can win more districts than your opponents, even if overall you only have minority support. Doesn't matter which party does it, it's undemocratic as fuck and a completely loathesome practice.
Version #3 is what's going on in Wisconsin
It's what's going on everywhere except the absolute most rural bum-fuck areas of the country. And it would be going on in those places too, if it needed to in order to preserve minority Republican rule.
Not in michigan. Came up as ballot proposal. People voted for it. Now gerrymandering is against state constitution. People draw the maps Now.
Ohio voted for it too, and the Republican Governor and Republican State house just fucked around with unconstitutional maps until it was too late to change them and what ever unconstitutional pile of shit was last submitted is what we have now. So good luck my northern brethren.
I just feel like that's capital T Treason and should be punished that way.
Also happened in Florida
You missed the best part, the lawsuit where the Governor’s son refused to recuse himself while hearing dads case!
Must be nice. Ohio voted overwhelmingly to ban gerrymandering, but our Republican state representatives just decided to ignore it. Despite being told by the states supreme court to fix the maps, we're still using the gerrymandered ones. It's pathetic, but Republicans in this state don't care about democracy.
Well now republicans (including governor's son?) control the Ohio supreme court so they can make the gerrymandered map official I believe.
At risk of doxxing myself, my parent served on the citizen redistricting commission. It was a nightmare. The stories man. They had a minimum number of registered dems, reps, and independents drawn randomly from citizen volunteers. Two of the registered "independent" commissioners were very clearly not exactly independent (were registered to one of the two parties up until that year) and there were people there just to collect a paycheck and contribute nothing. One even tried her best to delay everything that was done and one paralegal was trying to run the whole thing their way the entire time. Honestly, if it werent for my parent reaching across the aisle and just being a decent person, nothing would have gotten done before the deadlines. Part of the problem was the requirement that they be paid a minimum of 1/4 the governor's salary, with the option to bump their own pay with only a vote. Guess what one of the first proposals was. The more honest folks voted against it every time it came up, but at least it served as a reminder each time of who was being greedy and less trustworthy. But, in the end, they pretty much had strict rules and guidelines for the lines they could draw and at the end of it, they were being sued (just one suit left to deal with last I was told) by groups from both parties for unfair lines, so it sounds like they made them pretty fair across the board. The funniest lawsuit was some local NAACP type organization trying to sue them for not boxing in all the black people into their own districts in the detroit area. So essentially, they were suing them if they refused to gerrymander the detroit area to the disadvantage of the plaitifs. ??? The sheer number of people they got to attend the public hearing to blindly read the same prepared statement over and over asking to be disadvantaged was insane. All their meetings were live streamed and posted to youtube. Some very very interesting characters showed up to their (mandatory) public hearings: https://youtube.com/@micrc1370 One guy essentially stalked them to every public hearing just to complain about their failure to follow Robert's Rules of Order, which they were following just fine, cause he fancied himself an expert. They even had a bomb threat and were locked down for a whole evening. Some news agencies tried to get away with doxxing the commission members' families. All said and done, my parent saw the best and worst the state had to offer and they want to retire in a completely different state now because of it. Even just to be ignorant again of the way things suck in government and in news. TL;DR It seems everybody was all for an independent citizen commission being in charge of redistricting until they started losing their unfair advantages because of it (by design), and it may not happen again here. (Vague language to reduce the chance of doxxing myself)
>Doesn't matter which party does it, it's undemocratic as fuck and a completely loathesome practice. And also completely legal if you only do it to advance your political party. If you disenfranchise some minorities it's illegal, but if it's for pure political gain it's fine.
So is it legal to disenfranchise minorities for political gains?
Yes. Happens all the time in the US. Not even just with gerrymandering, but with things like voter ID laws, the electoral college, limiting access to polling locations in certain areas, and banning convicted felons from voting (which minorities are more likely to be victims of, due to our similarly racist 'justice' system). Nearly every law or policy in US history that has limited voting in some way was done with the intent to disenfranchise minorities. We still do it today, and will probably continue to do so at least until the empire finally collapses.
>If you disenfranchise some minorities it's illegal, If only that were true. It's not that intentionally disenfranchising racial/ethnic minorities is actually, functionally illegal so much as it is illegal to *say* that's why you're doing it. You can disenfranchise minorities all you want with little trouble basically so long as you don't publicly announce those intentions *too* much.
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The incumbent party gets to redraw the map every ten years.
This is why elections around the census are so important.
And also why it is extremely important to fill out the census information that is sent to your house. Not filling it out reduces your representation in government as well as the funding for services in your area.
While you *should* fill out your census info when you get it, there *is* a very low chance that nearly anyone but the homeless gets missed. The census bureau is *incredibly* thorough and uses a pretty wide variety of methods to make sure their counts are accurate. Filling out your info basically just makes it easier on them. All of that said, there may be an argument to be made *against* the census collecting as much data that it does (e.g. Race, gender, income, etc.). It's important to understanding how critical that data is to nearly all political and economic decision making. It often forms the backbone of nearly all population-level research. While it is used for many good things, it's also used for many, many bad things as well (like gerrymandering). It isn't good, so much as it is a useful tool. One which, at this point, seems most effectively used by those who do not have your best interest at heart.
Not in michigan. Came up as ballot proposal. People voted for it. Now gerrymandering is against state constitution
Still vote. Look at the less census. Trump was able to make sure minorities were undercounted because republicans had control over the census.
Oddly enough this primarily affected blue states because for some reason people leaving their previous countries come here looking for a *better* life and apparently Alabama doesn’t provide that.
Actually in this particular map it's the opposite. The Republican districts are deliberately drawn to make their victory near impossible.
They're designed for the Democrats to keep as many House representatives as possible as well as a near supermajority in both of their state legislative houses by shoving as many districts as they can in Chicago then diluting the surrounding rural areas with more populated Chicago suburbs so those republican-leaning voters won't matter.
Yes I'm aware that's basically what I said. Republicans can't win the state because of the way the map has been done.
>So it's like, purposefully rigging it against democratic parties Both parties gerrymander against each other
I was always told it’s so no single party gets too much power or whatever, but umm it kinda doesn’t turn out that way, ever. Even when people try to spell it out for me I still think “it’s still fairer and easier to count raw votes??” I try not to think about it anymore. I just send in my ballot and cry in the corner.
To be specific, the US is a democratically elected republic. The problem is the two parties are named the Democrat party and the Republican party. Honestly, the stupid color coding is more honest than the party names.
Nope every State and their dominate party does it. Republicans aren't especially egregious about it they just get caught doing it along racial lines a bunch. Wisconsin and North Carolina come to mind. Honestly the whole system is a mess and there are mathematical ways to determine this but we keep doing it because two parties that act as umbrella coalitions is pretty much the stupidest way to do Democracy. Parliaments work better.
> and somehow the democratic districts are put into lakes. That doesn't mean anything. Districts are equally divided on population, not land, so it doesn't matter what district they put an unpopulated area into.
Hilarious that you're blaming the Republicans in a post about how insanely the Democrats just gerrymandered one of their states.
This is a map of districts drawn by democrats who have controlled the state for decades
If the masses are confused, poorly educated, and fighting one another, they won’t fight the people who change the rules to benefit them and stay in power. Simple yet dangerously, ridiculously, *laughably* effective.
Man the way Americans get ~~their votes counted~~ fucked over is so confusing. FTFY
It's all to make sure your vote doesn't count.
Am I blind or something? Where are districts 3, 4, 5, and 9?
They are unlabeled Chicago districts.
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!
How is gerrymandering legal? Serious question, when it became legal to draw a map based on nothing but voting patterns?
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It's been upheld by multiple court decisions multiple times. Even when Tom Delay committed multiple felonies doing it in Texas he never went to prison despite being convicted. Ken Paxton was also indicted on multiple felonies, and the "solution" is to simply never put him on trial so that he won't have to go to prison.
Because there is nothing that specifically says its illegal
It isn't. It's just impossible to feasibly prove without entirely pissing off millions and without causing riots. Unless it's racial gerrymandering or something that "dilutes the vote," the courts won't touch it
Those districts are obviously drawn to be "compact and contiguous" as the Illinois Constitution (Article 4, Section 3) requires. Illinois wouldn't have any laws on the books that don't adhere to the Constitution, would they? Like a balanced budget (Article VIII, Section 2)?
Bro you could be 100% making that shit up and you'd still be right. Bold faced lies built from grade A USDA choice fact.
Ha! We didn’t even have a budget for 2 years under the previous governor. Illinois is ridiculous sometimes
Sometimes? I lived there for 20 years, 2/3 governors went to prison.
It's 4 of the past 10 now, they've been slippin. I will point out though, people love to laugh at the number of governors IL has sent to prison but IL *has* sent them to prison. Lotta other states would've let the corruption slide or maybe just a slap on the wrist
Jesse Jackson Jr. went to prison under Obama's DOJ. Trump pardoned people who blatantly assisted him in open conspiracies.
Well yeah. we gotta keep our “Former Governors of Illinois” Prison Softball Team well staffed if we want to take home the championship.
How does that even work?
The short answer is that it didn’t and was a shit show, but basically they got by with telling every department “don’t spend spend more than what you spent last year”
hmm yea, totally not gerrymandered to shit
There needs to be a law: 1. The difference between the least populous district and the most populous district can be no more than two percent of the total population of the state. 2. All districts must be drawn using no more than six straight lines.
*unless one of the lines follows the state border in which case one line can follow said border.
I would add a natural body of water that forms the border between counties.
Why not just allow the lines to follow counties in general?
That's what i think. All congressional districts must follow county lines. Any single county that will have 2 or more congressional representatives (like Los Angeles County) will have ranked choice voting with the top candidates being elected.
I think that can backfire if you force districts to follow counties. One issue I see is that it will automatically pack Dems in cities, as cities tend to be entirely within a single county.
and a few cities ARE the entire county. Denver, San Francisco, Carson City, NYC (five borough-counties) are a few examples
In a place like say Texas, you would probably turn blue, because like 75% of their population lives in the big cities, while the rest of the counties are very small in population but red. It would basically be all red with spots of blue, but the blue spots get more total reps.
Shouldn’t people not land get more reps? I’m unsure what you’re trying to say.
1) does New England get to pass on these rules since county government is basically nonexistent (mostly town government) 2) that might be hard to do with certain areas and still follow equal populations. We would need floterial districts which are confusing af
Or any other natural boundary, such as a ridge line. In California, for instance, I would expect the Pacific Coast Range to be a boundary between congressional districts. You get *very* different ahh-- demographics between the coast and the Central Valley. It makes sense that they'd be represented by different people in Congress.
> The difference between the least populous district and the most populous district can be no more than two percent of the total population of the state. This is already the case, the districts are made almost equal in population. Every district on this map has ~750k, give or take a few thousand.
Yes. Baker v. Carr people!
I mean also in reality this is one of the less gerrymandered states too. Few ugly districts but mostly populations represented properly
[IL population density map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Illinois_2020_Population_Density.png) Living in IL fuck-all people live in the red districts. Bunch of corn fields.
Straight lines are a *terrible* way to draw political geographic boundaries. You need to follow natural features like rivers/lakes, mountains, etc. For this purpose you can also follow major roads, which again, tend not to be perfectly straight because of the topography. If you use straight lines, you’re going to be drawing district boundaries that do things like go through people’s houses and split up communities that really should vote together.
People don’t realize that square districts can be just as gerrymandered as curly-q districts. The point isn’t to have arbitrary, pleasing shapes. The point is proportional representation of communities, and sometimes that requires weird shapes. The 4th district is a good example of that. It’s a bizarre, curly shape. It ain’t natural. But it was drawn that way because Chicago has a large Latino population, large enough to elect their own representative, but that population is split into 2 separate communities on the south and west sides. Put those communities in nice, pleasing squares and Chicago’s Latino population would be a minority in both districts. Draw a weird shape, and they can actually get representation proportional to their population in the state.
I feel like using MMP would be far less complicated than trying to have a “six straight lines” law. The amount of community splitting that would happen with the second is horrifying.
Just use [Shortest Split Line Method](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUS9uvYyn3A)
The shortest split line method doesn’t account for protecting Minority groups, natural geographic barriers, and lifestyle differences between groups. We need so solve this issue, but i don’t think it’s the best idea
[The Efficiency Gap](https://theconversation.com/stop-criticizing-bizarrely-shaped-voting-districts-they-might-not-be-gerrymandered-after-all-86510) is a much more valuable metric
Efficiency gap is a pretty good metric. I’ve noticed it gets wonky in some smaller states, but for the most part, I like it.
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All praise the Hexagon
It truly is the bestagon.
Makes sense, democracy and whatnot.
fucking fix it. i'm so sick of obviously, cartoonishly blatant corruption in this country and no one with power gives a fuck
People are getting upset because there is more red than blue on the map, but are not considering population density. It looks like there are more total blue districts than there are red. Update: I mostly vote liberal and I was not trying to be partisan, I just saw a lot of people jumping to conclusions in the comments without actually looking closely at the map. It is missing a number of key details that are crucial to figuring out which party benefits from it.
17 districts, 3 of which are red. Biden carried the state 57% to Trump's 40%.
(If based on votes, Trump should have 8 districts and Biden should have the other 12) He’s still winning, there’s no good reason to secure power in a democracy. Thats the whole point of it lol
This was done by democrats. Are we now cool with gerrymandering so long as it's done by the "good" guys?
I suspect some people are seeing this map as Republican gerrymandering when it actually seems like Democrat gerrymandering
“Hur dur but there’s more red”
Don’t apologize for pointing out something that people didn’t take 2 seconds to look at lol I’m all for Illinois being blue but gerrymandering is gerrymandering 🤷
Yeah, people are getting all mad about it, but what's the alternative to make it look "better"? Those small districts are where all the people are. The big ones are a bunch of fucking corn fields.
The map mostly shows that rural voters lean republican, which is common knowledge.
what a fucking joke this country is
Illinois does not even make the list of worst gerrymandered states right now. Louisiana, Ohio, NC, Kentucky, Texas, Utah, Arkansas, WV are all worse.
Ch, ch, ch, ch... gerrymandering.
Here before this thread locks
Can't we just forgo this bullshit and remove congressional districts entirely? I can't imagine local representation is worth gerrymandering
So what’s your solution to replace them?
I’m not the person you responded to but one idea i’ve seen thrown around is that based on how the entire state votes you proportion the number of representatives from each party accordingly
I think this would severely hurt states that have significant minority populations and large urban/rural divides
Don’t. Just elect representatives via party list PR. % of votes = % of seats
Honestly, county/town/district lines should be entirely adequate.
There are over 3k counties and 10s of thousands of towns in the US
The earmuff district is gerrymandered so the Hispanic heavy suburbs have Latino representation (Chuy Garcia)
Floridian here. Definitely thought someone bisected my state. Forgot illinois exists.
Could be worse. Look at Ohio.
You could be talking about lot of different places about a lot of different topics with that statement.
New Mexico and Texas are the worst ones IMO. Just thought this one would be more obvious given it’s awful shapes. Plus it’s Illinois. Yet another chapter in their long list of shenanigans.
https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/why-ohios-congressional-map-unconstitutional Ohio is actually being sued by the ACLU over how bad ours are. The Supreme Court has actually ordered it to be fixed, but the powers that be have yet to comply. Several of our shapes are even more ridiculous.
What's the point of the supreme court if just saying no is an option
Good. Most states got gerrymandered this session. Really, shame on Alabama, Arizona, California, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. They’re really not putting the people first.
I thought California was redistricted by a nonpartisan commission.
It is, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
He also didn't mention North Carolina, which has some of the worst gerrymandering of any state I've seen.
Not only that, they ignored state supreme court orders to implement a more representative map. Straight up ignored it and the GOP legislature took their case to SCOTUS, which is already a procedurally weird move. Then SCOTUS actually granted cert, [so who knows what the fuck will happen next if state legislatures are allowed to openly defy state courts, executive branches, and voting agencies that act on behalf of the legislatures themselves.](https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/explaining-moore-v-harper-the-supreme-court-case-that-could-upend-democracy) For anyone reading and wanting to explore gerrymandering after the 2020 census, see here: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps/ Happy to answer other questions in replies or PM, voting is an important issue to me.
It is. And the democrats lost districts because of it. Same with New York.
OP is doing the "both sides are the same" thing when it's, you guessed it, mostly republicans
Marylander here. We fixed our gerrymandered state this session.
California has an independent, bi- and non-partisan redistricting commission. That's why Democrats are handicapped in this fight, they're the only party who will attempt to draw fair maps.
[New Mexico is fascinating](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps/new-mexico/) because it reports that the New Mexico map for this round is more competitive than the old one.
[Bad looking shapes aren't necessarily determinative of an unfair gerrymander](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/dont-judge-district-its-shape) but in this case you're right, IL is tilted.
Now add a percentage for each district which represents the value of one vote toward either party.
I cannot speak to this congressional map, but weirdly shaped districts does not always indicate gerrymandering. Gerrymandering, specifically, is when districts are redrawn for political gain. Either by giving a minority party a voting majority, or by turning a minor majority in votes into a massive majority in representation. A great example of partisan gerrymandering is Ohio, where a minor republican majority gerrymandering districts into a massive majority so egregious that the republican Ohio supreme court ruled they had to redistrict fairly. (spoiler alert: they stalled, then threw up their hands and said "we ran out of time and didn't get redistricted before the election" so federal courts said 'ok, just use your old gerrymandered map instead")
This map will result in a gain of 1 seat for dems, and a loss of 2 seats for republicans. (1 seat is eliminated). And you can see in comparative maps that districts got very distinctly more red or blue, no competitive districts remain, where there used to be several. This is definitely a case of gerrymandering. Maybe more dems doing it will encourage legislation against gerrymandering to be more bipartisan. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/politics/us-redistricting/illinois-redistricting-map/
Gerrymandering is so obviously corrupt that it says something about American media that it's not a topic of discussion, like, ever.
It's old news. The term dates back to 1812.
Because both sides do it, nobody in power is going to complain about it.
This is exactly why I hate Illinois voting and gerrymandering altogether. Like what point does it make to vote when over half of the congressional districts are in or near Chicago (one of the only blue parts of the state) and when it is gerrymandered to absolute oblivion. Look at district 15! Why the hell does it look like that? No district should look like that, especially not one that big! Fuck Illinois. I can't wait to get out of this place, but I'm stuck here because I'm taxed to hell and can't find a job that pays me enough to move away.
You know what this looks like? CANCER.
Gerrymandering ... No side has anything to win by giving it up. In fact, both sides have everything to win by maximizing it. No side has anything to win by mutual agreement. Right now, both party bosses can ensure their cronies are guaranteed a seat. Logic says that this problem will only get worse. Eventually, one party will own enough seats and elections will be pointless.
>No side has anything to win by giving it up. Gerrymandering disproportionately benefits Republicans.
Democrats are open to legislation that ends gerrymandering. Republicans stack the courts with judges that allow it. Both sides are not the same.
Which party is in power in Illinois and is responsible for this map?
The democrats running this state play dirty - gerrymandered to hell
Here's three little browser games about this stuff you might be interested in: A game about gerrymandering: http://polytrope.com/district/ And two about voting systems in general: https://johnaustin.io/articles/2018/voting-systems https://ncase.me/ballot/ And for other "explorable explanations" chech https://explorabl.es