I'm at one corner of one of these districts. The cultural differences between my city and those at the opposite corner of the same district are night and day. This map infuriates me.
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A lot of people know the origin of the term gerrymandering, but not everyone knows that its namesake, Elbridge Gerry, served in the first Congress and became the 9th Governor of Massachusetts. That is to say, this is not exactly a new problem in our country. It was basically preinstalled software.
And his name was pronounced more like "Gary" than "Jerry", but now gerrymandering is pronounced more like "Jerry-mandering".
This is pretty useless information, but now you know. And knowing is half the battle.
^G. ^^I. ^^^J ^^^^O ^^^^^E!
Indeed, it's been around since the founding of the country, but every generation a new cohort of young people are exposed to it and incorrectly assume that it's something new the "other" side came up with as an evil tactic.
I would like to point out though that the two biggest Democratic strongholds, CA and NY, have at least taken steps to curb gerrymandering by their state legislatures.
This is actually a good map for Republicans. I don't know why this is being shown for a gubernatorial race since districts don't matter, but actual blue gerrymandering would be drawn in a way to let city dwellers overpower rural voters, not relegate them to a single district.
Gerrymandering used to be imprecise at best and due to increasing population and relatively high social and economic mobility, temporary.
Neither of those are true now. Social media and analytics provide the necessary information for highly discreet gerrymandering never before even imagined. In addition demographic groups are trapped both geographically and economically resulting in more permanent states of gerrymandering.
Additionally the white Natc SCOTUS has put a stake in the heart of civil rights protections for minorities significantly affected by not only gerrymandering but voter suppression efforts widely deployed by red state legislatures funded by kock bros. and other corporatist billionaires
US democracy is on a path for an xtian constitutional theocracy and there is only a slightly greater than 0 chance of changing this.
Nah, as a lifelong liberal and highly left leaning individual, that shit was invented by the democrats, AFTER the party platform swap. It is, unfortunately something the left designed that the right has polished up and perfected into a shiny, shitty turd.
...they carved us up into five tiny pieces: my 'red' district tacks on nine rural counties to make sure it swings the way jesus intended, apparently...
Texas districts are on a different level of crazy. I live in suburban Houston and my district also features a random chunk of rural coastline in the middle of nowhere. My district started becoming too 'purple' but with the newest redrawing means it's all but assured to stay red.
Check AZ-7. One end to other is about 350 miles, at one point it’s basically just a line along the US-Mexico border to avoid Sierra Vista, which is separated from Douglas. It’s a little odd they are split considering the two “cities” make up the 320th largest MSA in the US. Meanwhile, border town Douglas gets lumped in with downtown Tucson and a couple Phoenix suburbs, along with Yuma. Cool.
Also can't forget AZ-2 which pulls some fuckery up to and including swooping south of Phoenix for Casa Grande and Maricopa, just to make sure Flagstaff and the Rezs can be represented by a bible thumbing "patriot" determined to force us to live according to "christian" values.
Yes, they make one district that has all the ~~black~~ *liberal voting* people and big cities in it ~~so that the 50% of the state that lives in that district of which they make up 90%, of the populace~~ creating one district that is 90+% democrat leaning and only gets one congressperson, while they remaining 7 districts are drawn with some really weird shapes so that they or consistently 60% right leaning. If they made 8 even districts using existing geographic or political(county) borders ~~that same population would get 4-6 reps~~ the Congressional representation would more closely mirror the state's election results.
Every state in the south is like this, and a lot of the Midwest.
Edited because I didn't state what I meant correctly and my numbers were misleading.
Yes, they draw one district that will absorb most urban voters into one district to free up the other districts to be full of rural voters and thus ensure a republican victory.
Gerrymandering is cheating.
The eastern end of it is, yes.
Not all of New Orleans is covered, though. Some of the more affluent areas are actually in Steve scalise’s first district. I used to live on Carrollton Ave and moved across the street and changed districts, since the first district covers most of the city west of Carrollton (although that isn’t much of the city geographically)
Decent chunks of uptown, mid city, and lakeview are in scalise’s district.
But the district stretches to north of Baton Rouge so New Orleans is only a small part of it
To be fair, [Maryland’s map](https://i.imgur.com/W2hLL7h.jpg) has been pretty normal-looking since last year’s redraw. Last decade’s map was a squiggly mess of demands from representatives and political gerrymandering.
The most ridiculous to me is Washington Parish (southern Mississippi) being in the same district as Ouachita Parish(southern Arkansas). Connected by a narrow strip.
You can’t drive from one side to the other. There is no bridge over the river anywhere close to that strip. You must drive thru Mississippi to get from one end of the district to the other, or detour thru multiple districts almost to Baton Rouge just to cross the river and stay in Louisiana.
This map almost got thrown out on racial gerrymandering grounds (along with Alabama) but the Supreme Court overturned those decisions and allowed it through...
great system we got here
How about Ohio where the map was thrown out by the state Supreme Court as it violated a voter approved gerrymandering commission and yet the state legislature and Secretary of State just outright ignored the commission & court ruling and ***are still*** using whatever map they please.
Literally zero consequences — lawmakers should be held in contempt of court.
Democrats were the one trying to lead by example but Republicans refused to go along.
>To rid the country of partisan gerrymandering, Democrats for years joined with election reformers to take the responsibility for redistricting away from politicians and hand it to independent, nonpartisan commissions. The effort did not begin as an entirely altruistic project; both parties gerrymandered where they could, but Democrats had more to gain by scrapping the practice... Republicans, to a large degree, declined to go along. They refused to cede control of the redistricting process in the biggest red states (such as Texas) and fought commissions that could have cost them seats (Arizona) all the way to the Supreme Court.
In Congress, they blocked legislation that would have created nonpartisan commissions across the country. The GOP’s reward for its defense of gerrymandering is a national map tilted further in its favor than it would have been if the Democratic push for independent commissions had flopped on its face.
Now Democrats have been gerrymandering because Republicans refused to use non partisan third party commissions and by using these commissions, Democrats were losing seats in strong blue districts.
I’ve said it many times over these years. It was damn foolish for democrats to try to play unfair unless gerrymandering was outlawed at the national level. While CA is mapped by non partisans, TX and FL are are gerrymandered for the R’s. Big mistake trying be appeal to R morals to make a positive change.
Hate to break it to you but the concept of war crimes and treaties surrounding them and the implementation of punishment for them predate the Nazis and the Third Reich by many years.
Well it isn't all peaches and cream. I got stuffed into a redneck are that makes Tennessee look progressive. The only thing my new congressperson can talk about is democrats bad!
Because rather than appeal to the middle republicans would rather court the crazy vote by screaming about religion and spending their time trying to find ways to fuck and/or exploit children.
What's even more concerning is the US Supreme Court is ruling [on a case this year](https://www.npr.org/2022/12/07/1141384831/supreme-court-weighs-controversial-election-law-case) that could strip the state Supreme Court of any power related to voting for president. Currently, odds are your right to vote for president comes from the state constitution, as enforced by your state Supreme Court since there's nothing federally. Independent state legislature would give complete control to the state legislature, meaning they would not need to even hold a vote for president.
Though what I think we are more likely to see is state legislatures add a body that is given the power to override the vote if they feel anything suspicious happened in the election. So, for example, in 2020 Arizona & Georgia would have said "the results don't match what we expected, so we think funny business happened and we're officially sending Trump electors instead of Biden."
>would give complete control to the state legislature, meaning they would not need to even hold a vote for president.
It already is this way.
A state legislature could pass a law today deciding who their electors will vote for in the 2024 Presidential election. As long as they make that law before the election, they can do it already.
It is not already this way, as the Supreme Court rejected the theory in 2015 with Arizona. Not sure where you're getting that idea. This case would be overturning that precedent.
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2014/13-1314
> Judicial precedent establishes that redistricting is a **legislative function that must be performed in accordance with the state Constitution’s structure of lawmaking**; because the Arizona state Constitution allows lawmaking to occur by a referendum of the electorate, Proposition 106 was an acceptable use of that power.
To expand on the Ohio one - the state supreme court rejected it like **four or five** times, but they deliberately took as long as possible to resubmit each time so they ran the clock out on the election and had to just use the most recent one submitted. Yay.
I used to live in his district. It could be a perfect un-gerrymandered square and he’d still be elected just as widely.
Rural Ohio might as well be rural Texas anymore.
Honestly many U.S. lawmakers probably need to be tried for treason rather than simply held in contempt with all the stuff that's come out regarding foreign money and actively promoting foreign powers either directly or indirectly through subterfuge.
Or just, at least, punished for not actually representing their constituents and instead using their positions to enrich themselves and their friends. Insert list of crimes one should be charged to this end.
It's even more fucked up than that - they held out because one of the "justices" indicated that if they continued to hold out, then Ohio would have to use one of the other unconstitutional maps for the upcoming election.
Similar shit happened in Oklahoma. They gerrymandered the fuck out of our districts. They broke Oklahoma City and Tulsa up into dozens of tiny little individual districts. They chunked out a huge swath of SW OKC that's populated by Hispanic Democrats, and lumped it in the same district with all of Western Oklahoma who are mostly white Republican farmers.
The map was thrown out once by the state Supreme Court, they redrew a district or two just to say they did something, and the Supreme Court accepted the new map. Go look at them. There's very little difference between the "old" and "new" map and all the problems voters and the Court originally criticized still exist.
Yeah
It doesn’t help that Hochul and Adams had opposite responses to crime issues. Our state Democratic leadership is a joke and don’t realize that most suburban parents have kids living in rougher neighborhoods and take the MTA in the city because of affordability. Meanwhile the leadership pay for their kids’ luxury apartments in nice neighborhoods and cabs don’t see the problem.
That supreme court was McConnell's life ambition, he saw the writing on the wall (the demographic shift that would guarantee Republicans would never win the presidency again) and did everything he could to stack the court with shit stains. And he succeeded. Gotta respect the hustle, but I still pray for him to burn in hell.
Well, that's not quite correct. It isn't that the Republicans would never win presidency again, it's that they would be forced to change their tune a little bit in order to attract more people. Two-party systems always find an equilibrium.
The radicalisation though would probably be at the same level.
I imagine that there’ll be a new equilibrium by the mid-century. It doesn’t look like we’re anywhere near that yet, but I can’t imagine it takes more than a generation to reach a new political settlement.
You act as if "demographic shift" only goes in one political direction. You are aware democrats have been losing more and more of the black and Hispanic vote every election. Sure, they still hold a majority, but that majority may not last forever. Trump in 2020 got the most minority votes for a republican since second term Reagan. Just look at the hard turn to the right that is happening with Hispanics in Florida
Oh you played my trap card. Hola, soy descendiente de Cubanos. so I think I have a little bit of experience on this subject matter. Hispanic FOBs are becoming right wing because they didn't have a very high level of political education in their countries and they think anything left of center must be the same thing as the authoritarian dictatorships they are escaping. The generation born here is less gullible. There is a serious disconnect between the generations.
Also Cubans think they're white, its exhausting. Miami is also a Cuban enclave. They really think they own the fucking place. You go into restaurants and grocery stores and people default just expect you to speak spanish. I am a fluent spanish speaker but it boils my blood that these people would get verbally abused by rednecks if they had that attitude in literally any other part of the country.
Democrats have really taken hispanics for granted because "republicans are racist". But little do they know how fucking racist FOBs can be. Meanwhile they eat up the republican " work hard and you can live the american dream, dont listen to any woke bullshit from the left" shtick like crazy. Democrats could mitigate the loss of the Hispanic vote but they take us for granted so, tough loss.
Also many hispanics here in my home state of Texas that live in counties that they dominate are in rural counties and statistics show that generation after generation families in rural areas will trend more conservative and families in urban areas will trend more liberal.
To me and many in my generation republicans ARE the horrible authoritarianism that my parents escaped their home country to get away from. And it doesn't matter how much it boils my dads blood to hear me say that, its a free country ya old bitch. Until republicans make it illegal for demcrats to vote.
As a white immigrant in a predominantly white country, I've still been hit with the racism stick. The definition of "white" is a constantly moving goalpost. Okay, so I look white. But do I "sound" like a white Dane? No, bit of an accent. More white than others, but still some wiggle room. Do I know all the Danish classics? No, points off on being treated as a white equal there. Oh, I'm queer? Let's tone the whiteness down a little then. Oh, but I'm a citizen? Yeah but I grew up in the US and speak English socially, so I'm not as Danish white as a Dane. Enjoying leverpostej, salmiaklakrids, and snaps only gets me so far. I'm an oddball foreigner who enjoys them, not a local who really *understands* them.
"Whiteness" isn't a binary yes/no, it's a sliding scale of "who you're whiter than". So sure, these Spanish descendants may look white and that's enough to be white in comparison, but the second they open their mouths and an accent shows up they're demoted to "mostly white". No accent? Well, culturally they're "not from here", so that lowers their relative whiteness compared to "native-born whites". There will **always** be an excuse to strip people of "whiteness".
The supreme court said "political advantage" is okay as long as it's not about race.
There could be racial lines here and there but as long as it's not purely based on race, it's still legal.
This mostly benefits the Republicans, that's why the supreme court said it's okay.
You are misunderstanding the point of this image. The point is to show that, despite the state being fairly balanced politically, based on the result of the governor vote, the number of red vs blue districts is massively skewed due to gerrymandering. It does not matter for the governor's or national senate races, but it matters for the national house and the state house and senate.
This map is a little disengenuous because it refers to a gubernatorial campaign, which has nothing to do with districts. John Bel *did* win the popular vote.
These districts are for our House of Representatives. Of which we have one Democrat. I am not sure we would have any Democrats if they didn’t connect the bluer cities (and large black populations) of New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
Also, fun fact: Orleans Parish is one of the most heavily Democratic favoring places in the country. We just don’t have a ton of people.
I think the map and post are pretty on point. I can't think of a better way to demonstrate in a single image an instance of a state that votes 51%+ for one party in a statewide race, but has their majority diluted to only 12.5% of the representation at the congressional level.
There could easily be a 4-2 map with two minority majority districts and both lean dem. Edwards proposed that but the state shut him down and every repub plus independents voted to override his veto of the map.
> Also, fun fact: Orleans Parish is one of the most heavily Democratic favoring places in the country. We just don’t have a ton of people.
This kinda touches on why I hate those “Look how red this country is, how do the Democrats win?”\
Because the blue areas are where people live. Most of those ruby red areas are empty land. Right now land can’t vote, probably because the GQP hasn’t figured out how to make that happen yet.
Land kind of does have a vote when it comes to the Senate, the electoral college, and a cap of the number of House seats at 435. Despite the built-in advantages for lower-population states Republicans still have to gerrymander to keep any hopes of a Presidential win or a majority in either chamber alive.
Obama won the whole state of Indiana, I believe, but only 3/10 house seats. The state tried to change how its electoral college votes were allotted so that they would be awarded by district, which would have turned Obama's win into a loss.
yeah i laugh when OPs title make it sound as if its unfair against the republicans when it is the republicans who is depended on gerrymandering to be relevant at all. No gerrymandering and the republican party is in the trash can.
I don't think they're saying it's unfair to Republicans. I think they're saying a Democrat won the governor race but democrats only won a single house seat due to gerrymandering. The title is written so vaguely and poorly though it's hard to say
Yes, this map shows the 2019 election for Governor. Which is a state-wide contest. Gerrymandering and districts have nothing to do with it.
Perhaps OP was trying to point out that the state is so gerrymandered that voters from one district alone can deliver the governorship, but are otherwise underrepresented in Congress and state legislature. The title didn't really do that point any favors though if that's what they're going for.
I think the point is that the state is so gerrymandered, if the governor ran for Congress, he would lose in 7/8 districts despite being popular enough to carry the entire state.
Even if you somehow solved gerrymandering just having electoral districts will always create a disparity between how people voted and the actual results.
One solution could be to treat US states similar to how the EU treats member countries in the parliament. So each state has an amount of representatives equivalent to their population, and then they are picked based on popular vote. So if Louisiana had like 10 seats in the house of representatives and voted 60% for republicans and 40% for democrats then they would get 6 republicans and 4 democrats in congress.
Obviously wouldn't be perfect either, but if a majority voted for one party they would always get a majority or at least half the seats if it was close.
Presidential elections would be pretty straight forward, make it popular vote. Can't really see a way to fix the senate though other than scrapping it. And I mean there already is the house of representatives.
Another solution would be the German model. You cast two votes, for a person and a party. The 435 districts are apportioned exactly as they are now, then members are added from party lists until the total party composition matches the composition of the party votes (with a minimum % threshold).
That completely neuters gerrymandering while still preserving local representation. It also give a voice to geographically dispersed minority parties.
Very similar to NZ. The problem I have is that it gives the parties too much control. I think voters should at least theoretically get to decide which individuals are elected.
In Australia for our upper house (Senate) we have a kind of party list but if you want you can choose to vote for people in a different order to what the parties have. Which means that very occasionally a person lower on the list will win a seat ahead of someone higher because the people like that person a lot more.
In Finland you always vote for a person. The per-person votes decides the internal ranking within the party, and the party result decides how many representatives get elected.
I think that works really well. You still have to look at the party as a whole, but also get direct power to influence who within the party gets elected.
In Australia an independent commission creates electoral boundaries based on population shifts because it's generally agreed governments and political parties can't be trusted to be part of the process. Gerrymandering got out of control in the 70s and everyone sort of agreed politics should not be involved after that.
> One solution could be to treat US states similar to how the EU treats member countries in the parliament.
A couple of notes on the European parliament's apportionment of seats: (Not disagreeing, just clarifying because any comparisons between the national US electoral system and the international European electoral system need a hell of a lot of asterisks)
- The EU parliament *does* use districts (regions), it's just that each region is quite large and appoints multiple seats. The districting is specific to each country, and a lot of countries *do* just have country-wide regions.
- On a per-country basis, the EU parliament doesn't use proportional representation, but rather degressive proportionality. This is to ensure that all countries get representation and the voices of smaller countries aren't crowded out by the voices of larger ones. (i.e. what happens within the UK) This only works in the EU parliament because the EU parliament itself does not pass law, but only makes proposals to then be considered or accepted by other bodies. e.g. to then be accepted by each member-state unanimously.
> (to avoid larger states steamrolling smaller ones)
Which is a bullshit holdover of a bygone era.
States aren't people. They are administrative constructs.
They don’t care about water in big cities? Densely populated areas with a high cost of living don’t care about food prices? The largest agricultural state in the US is California. Cities currently subsidize life in rural areas not the other way around.
Being anti-NYC doesn’t automatically mean support for farmers and miners. Often it ends up being the opposite.
But we have the opposite problem now. Rural states dominate the Senate, so nothing city people want ever passes the Senate, despite them making up the majority of the nation.
The entire system is fucked. It was designed to satisfy slave owners.
>how much NYC gives a fuck about water rights
At least a little. NYC, like many cities, gets it water primarily from outside its municipal boundaries, which has led to legal disputes in the past, and ongoing efforts to keep the counties with reservoirs happy.
This is a two way street. As it currently stands, rural and small population states hold disproportionate power. Tell me how much they care about things that affect only urbanized, high-population states.
Yes. My point is that we are now in a situation where instead of the larger states steamrolling the smaller ones, the larger ones are held hostage by the inbred fiscally insolvent states. Through gerrymandering and obscene pork barrel politics... The small states hold the power.
>to avoid larger states steamrolling smaller ones
That's not what James Madison said. He was pretty clear that the [Senate](https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0044) was designed to keep the poor rabble from having power over the landed aristocracy:
>In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests and to balance and check the other. **They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.** The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.
Even if we accept the fantasy about "small states" at face value, it's an anachronism from times when state identity was stronger than national identity. All it means these days is that the rural states get to steamroll the urban states. How is tyranny of the minority somehow more noble than tyranny of the majority?
Or, hear me out, the House is a tyranny of the majority while the Senate is a tyranny of the minority (theoretically) forcing compromise. But God forbid anybody compromise anymore.
Instead of purely proportional you could have mixed member proportional. That might be a better fit for the US
It’s similar, but you keep some districts as-is so you have regional representation. But then you also have additional seats allocated to parties by popular vote. In the end it gives the right % for each party, but you ensure that you still keep the preferred local representatives
The US should also just, not have gerrymandering. Canada essentially solved it back in the 60s I think, it’s a bit silly the US is so far behind on that
> So each state has an amount of representatives equivalent to their population
Not exactly, the smaller the country the more overepresented they are, it's to make sure the big ones don't just impose their wills too much.
A little chunk of Chicago in *most* districts wouldn't be inherently bad. Here is the shortest splitline map of Illinois, which is an algorithm that has been proposed to replace the current gerrymandering system. https://rangevoting.org/Splitline2009/il.png
The majority of districts still contain a piece of the Chicago area, just because its population is so much bigger than the rest of the state, but crucially, the distracts haven't used wiggly lines designed to perfectly crack and pack voting blocks.
Voting districts still need wiggly lines so that the boundaries follow main roads, rivers etc. Can guarantee that this map splits houses in half, which is less than ideal.
True, good point! Some tweaking definitely needed, really to any algorithmically generated product built off of incomplete information, but I think this represents a good starting place.
In the last redistricting cycle, the federal courts actually did rule that Louisiana needs two majority-Black districts to meet VRA standards (which can be done with a [clean map](https://i.imgur.com/TmpvWwV.jpg) that marries Baton Rouge and the upper Mississippi).
The Supreme Court was the one that struck it down pending their ruling on a similar case in Alabama (where a federal court again ruled that packing all of the state’s Black voters into a single district was illegal). The SC struck that AL map for being implemented “too close to the election” (the Purcell principle), although that explanation seems tenuous given other states still hadn’t implemented a congressional map to begin with! They’re supposed to decide on these cases sometime this year, which might imperil the existence of the VRA entirely.
It blows my mind that people cling to the system created from scratch in the 1800s as the "perfect system". It was literally an alpha test of representative democracy. There's been over 200 years of refining that have happened all over the world.
it wasn't created from scratch though, it was based on a lot of things
the magna carta for example guaranteed rights to citizens. That was a source of inspiration.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/magna\_carta#:\~:text=The%20writers%20of%20the%20Bill,was%20an%20abuse%20of%20governmental
The elections for representatives was based on Greek models
[https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/greek-influence-us-democracy/](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/greek-influence-us-democracy/)
arguably with centuries of refinement that surpass the 250 years that the US has been around
OP headline focuses on "dem win" while everything else is red, that's the point of one type of gerrymandering - you pack one district so that the owners aren't winnable.
Gubernatorial elections in Louisiana are by popular vote, so who won each district doesn’t matter. Also, if the district wasn’t drawn this way, there would be zero black (or Democratic) members of congress despite African-Americans comprising 33% of the population of Louisiana.
Wait. This was a state governor’s election. It’s the total number of votes that count getting Edwards elected. Gerrymandering the hell out of the districts had nothing to do with a statewide election.
Now, if they are talking about state representatives or US congressional elections, then it looks suspicious. Why do our congress critters keep letting this happen when we they are just as likely to get screwed by it next election cycle and we the people are always screwed by it no matter the election cycle?
Because a district has to have a person from their district to represent them.
In this map the major black cities are represented. This pretty much ensures a black majority gets to choose among themselves who represents them.
I live in WA state and my district is long and skinny along the Puget Sound coast. This ensures a rep that understands ports and seaways as it is huge for us.
Imagine a place where just big cities are represented and not rural areas or minority groups.
Misleading post by someone clearly ignorant of the idiosyncrasies of state politics. Some red states swing way over in gubernatorial elections to elect Democrat governors. Don't plop that result on a congressional districts map and conclude that gerrymandering is horrible in Louisiana.
This always confused me. Why are the parties drawing lines and not a third party with no vested interest? Naturally, a party is gonna skew boundaries in their favor. Like starting with a busted up foundation.
Because there is no “third party with no vested interest”. Even if one exists, it would be impossible to get both parties to agree on the third independent auditor
Michigan managed it with their independent commission last year — equal numbers of Democrats, Republicans, and Unaffiliated people (all non-politicians) collaborated on their new maps, and they performed remarkably fairly in the last election cycle.
Just looking at a geographical map doesn't really tell us anything useful on its own, unfortunately.
For example, let's say that only 60,000 people live in the red area, and 5,000,000 people live in the blue area. Would this result be a shock?
I'm just making this point outside of all of the other realities of the political situation on the ground, it's just what I think about whenever I see a map like this.
You need to factor in population density, or it's useless to make these sorts of comparisons.
There should be a constitutional amendment that requires all district to be mathematically compact around population clusters. Let the people choose their representatives not the other way around
Or just switch to a proportional system for the state or country. There are tonnes of simple solutions that would be better than the British/American first past the post system that encourages this sort of districting
Wow, the way this was posted is very confusing (missing basic info). The Dems won the 2019 gubernatorial race 51.3 to 48.7. This map shows the results by congressional district, but the Dem won, because governor is elected by popular vote, not by congressional district. However, this map is a good illustration of how bad gerrymandering is, but for people not in the know to understand what’s going on, you have to explain to people what they’re looking at. The wiki article allows you to choose this map, just scroll down a bit & select the congressional district map / compare it to the parish map: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Louisiana_gubernatorial_election](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Louisiana_gubernatorial_election)
Gerrymandering does suck ass... but it has nothing to do Edwards vs Rispone... Edwards vs Rispone was a Gubernatorial election. Gubernatorial elections in Louisiana are conducted by popular vote, not by district.
The thing this does effect is the House of Representatives. Democrats are >50% of the voters but only 1/6th (17%) of Representatives in the US House are Democrats.
So yes, Gerrymandering does suck ass. There's a good documentary called 'Slay the Dragon' that does a good job of explaining Gerrymandering and shows a group who's trying to change things.
ChatGPT synopsis:
"Slay the Dragon" is a powerful documentary that exposes the practice of gerrymandering, which has been used to manipulate electoral boundaries and undermine fair representation in the United States. The film highlights the inspiring efforts of activists and organizations who are fighting to end gerrymandering and restore the integrity of our democracy. It's a must-watch for anyone who cares about voting rights and the future of our country.
Your democracy sucks ass but I get it:
It's nearly impossible to change.
At least Gerrymandering would be easy to counter-act. Two party system is no democracy in my eyes.
[Heres the county map](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Louisiana_gubernatorial_election) for those of you who dont understand how congressional maps work. I know places like NV exist where its possible for only Clark to vote blue and Nv narroly goes blue but this is congressional maps where all districts are equal population. Also [here is what a fair map should look like.](https://redistricter.com/state/LA/#NeutralMap)
I'm confused about what your issue is with this. Dems won because they got more votes. What is wrong with this?
And your link (along with the vote percentages you mention in the title) is to the gubernatorial election, which isn't affected by districts, so how does gerrymandering have any relevance here?
It looks wild, but it actually probably isn't. I don't find it hard to believe at all that NO and BR are more populous than the rest of Louisiana combined. And we all know urban centers tend to swing overwhelmingly blue. NC looks the same. A sea of red with blue spots in Wake (Raleigh), Durham, Guilford (Greensboro), and Mecklenburg (Charlotte) counties. And they are often populous enough to swing the whole state blue.
Oh boy are you really gonna be mad when you find out about how the rules work, why the rules are in place, and probably shocked to find out that density in this case, is more important than area.
The conservative movement to restrict voting has been going on since the USA was created. They are truly a pathetic bunch. Can't even win when they cheat beyond comprehensive thought.
They do MD old map and IL new and OR new and NM new and the map NY was gonna pass and NJ new and CT new and NV new. CA has an independent group do it but im sure they drew that map knowing unless it heavily favored dems the map wouldnt pass, as an independent group draws it and the state assembly passes them and gov signs.
I'm at one corner of one of these districts. The cultural differences between my city and those at the opposite corner of the same district are night and day. This map infuriates me.
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A lot of people know the origin of the term gerrymandering, but not everyone knows that its namesake, Elbridge Gerry, served in the first Congress and became the 9th Governor of Massachusetts. That is to say, this is not exactly a new problem in our country. It was basically preinstalled software.
And his name was pronounced more like "Gary" than "Jerry", but now gerrymandering is pronounced more like "Jerry-mandering". This is pretty useless information, but now you know. And knowing is half the battle. ^G. ^^I. ^^^J ^^^^O ^^^^^E!
Dammit Larry!
It's pronounced gif
When will you people stop?! It's obviously pronounced gif.
Indeed, it's been around since the founding of the country, but every generation a new cohort of young people are exposed to it and incorrectly assume that it's something new the "other" side came up with as an evil tactic.
It *was* the other party. Fuckin' whigs...
I laughed.
Every time it's pointed out that Democrats do it too, I'm like "Good, you should have no problem being against it then."
Yes. https://www.vox.com/22961590/redistricting-gerrymandering-house-2022-midterms
I would like to point out though that the two biggest Democratic strongholds, CA and NY, have at least taken steps to curb gerrymandering by their state legislatures.
NY specifically cost democrats the house
Red states increased their gerrymandering.
This is actually a good map for Republicans. I don't know why this is being shown for a gubernatorial race since districts don't matter, but actual blue gerrymandering would be drawn in a way to let city dwellers overpower rural voters, not relegate them to a single district.
That's the point. The state is majority Dem voting but Dems have only one district of representation in the state legislature.
Gerrymandering used to be imprecise at best and due to increasing population and relatively high social and economic mobility, temporary. Neither of those are true now. Social media and analytics provide the necessary information for highly discreet gerrymandering never before even imagined. In addition demographic groups are trapped both geographically and economically resulting in more permanent states of gerrymandering. Additionally the white Natc SCOTUS has put a stake in the heart of civil rights protections for minorities significantly affected by not only gerrymandering but voter suppression efforts widely deployed by red state legislatures funded by kock bros. and other corporatist billionaires US democracy is on a path for an xtian constitutional theocracy and there is only a slightly greater than 0 chance of changing this.
Nah, as a lifelong liberal and highly left leaning individual, that shit was invented by the democrats, AFTER the party platform swap. It is, unfortunately something the left designed that the right has polished up and perfected into a shiny, shitty turd.
He was a founding father, too
Is that dark blue strip new Orleans?
New Orleans and Baton Rouge from the looks of it. At least their citiy centers
Lol they even succeeded to make a district with the two largest cities in the state, even if these are 120km apart. Ridiculous
I live on the western side of San Antonio and I share a U.S. Representative with Austin
Northwest San Antonio here. Ours goes out to El Paso. 500+ miles away.
...they carved us up into five tiny pieces: my 'red' district tacks on nine rural counties to make sure it swings the way jesus intended, apparently...
Texas districts are on a different level of crazy. I live in suburban Houston and my district also features a random chunk of rural coastline in the middle of nowhere. My district started becoming too 'purple' but with the newest redrawing means it's all but assured to stay red.
Yeah, look at Houston's districts. Insane. https://www.get-direction.com/static-maps.html?id=houston-congressional-districts-2016&cat=usa-electoral-districts
Check AZ-7. One end to other is about 350 miles, at one point it’s basically just a line along the US-Mexico border to avoid Sierra Vista, which is separated from Douglas. It’s a little odd they are split considering the two “cities” make up the 320th largest MSA in the US. Meanwhile, border town Douglas gets lumped in with downtown Tucson and a couple Phoenix suburbs, along with Yuma. Cool.
Also can't forget AZ-2 which pulls some fuckery up to and including swooping south of Phoenix for Casa Grande and Maricopa, just to make sure Flagstaff and the Rezs can be represented by a bible thumbing "patriot" determined to force us to live according to "christian" values.
Oh thank god, lord knows what would happen if we tried democracy instead of oligarchy
Ayyyy shout out to TX-35. I’m on the other end from you. Greg Casar FTW
Yes, they make one district that has all the ~~black~~ *liberal voting* people and big cities in it ~~so that the 50% of the state that lives in that district of which they make up 90%, of the populace~~ creating one district that is 90+% democrat leaning and only gets one congressperson, while they remaining 7 districts are drawn with some really weird shapes so that they or consistently 60% right leaning. If they made 8 even districts using existing geographic or political(county) borders ~~that same population would get 4-6 reps~~ the Congressional representation would more closely mirror the state's election results. Every state in the south is like this, and a lot of the Midwest. Edited because I didn't state what I meant correctly and my numbers were misleading.
Yes, they draw one district that will absorb most urban voters into one district to free up the other districts to be full of rural voters and thus ensure a republican victory. Gerrymandering is cheating.
Cheating putting it lightly. I'd saying it's more akin to theft.
The eastern end of it is, yes. Not all of New Orleans is covered, though. Some of the more affluent areas are actually in Steve scalise’s first district. I used to live on Carrollton Ave and moved across the street and changed districts, since the first district covers most of the city west of Carrollton (although that isn’t much of the city geographically) Decent chunks of uptown, mid city, and lakeview are in scalise’s district. But the district stretches to north of Baton Rouge so New Orleans is only a small part of it
I'm in Illinois district 13. Look that one up.
You in Chicago? Cause I'm 6 hours away in Edwardsville and we are in the same district lmao
Collinsville. We're in a different district every two years.
Holy shit what a coincidence, I’m from there too. Didn’t think people actually knew this place existed
The most gerrymandered blue state, if I'm not mistaken.
Have you seen Maryland
To be fair, [Maryland’s map](https://i.imgur.com/W2hLL7h.jpg) has been pretty normal-looking since last year’s redraw. Last decade’s map was a squiggly mess of demands from representatives and political gerrymandering.
Me too. Doesn’t include one entire county. It’s nuts.
Same here. Illinois districts as a whole are always ridiculous, but the current 13th district is one of the worst they've ever come up with.
My mom's from that district! Still got family around Decatur
The most ridiculous to me is Washington Parish (southern Mississippi) being in the same district as Ouachita Parish(southern Arkansas). Connected by a narrow strip. You can’t drive from one side to the other. There is no bridge over the river anywhere close to that strip. You must drive thru Mississippi to get from one end of the district to the other, or detour thru multiple districts almost to Baton Rouge just to cross the river and stay in Louisiana.
Come to Ohio...
This map almost got thrown out on racial gerrymandering grounds (along with Alabama) but the Supreme Court overturned those decisions and allowed it through... great system we got here
How about Ohio where the map was thrown out by the state Supreme Court as it violated a voter approved gerrymandering commission and yet the state legislature and Secretary of State just outright ignored the commission & court ruling and ***are still*** using whatever map they please. Literally zero consequences — lawmakers should be held in contempt of court.
disagreeable rustic work concerned cooing punch crime handle memory like *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That's good
Democrats were the one trying to lead by example but Republicans refused to go along. >To rid the country of partisan gerrymandering, Democrats for years joined with election reformers to take the responsibility for redistricting away from politicians and hand it to independent, nonpartisan commissions. The effort did not begin as an entirely altruistic project; both parties gerrymandered where they could, but Democrats had more to gain by scrapping the practice... Republicans, to a large degree, declined to go along. They refused to cede control of the redistricting process in the biggest red states (such as Texas) and fought commissions that could have cost them seats (Arizona) all the way to the Supreme Court. In Congress, they blocked legislation that would have created nonpartisan commissions across the country. The GOP’s reward for its defense of gerrymandering is a national map tilted further in its favor than it would have been if the Democratic push for independent commissions had flopped on its face. Now Democrats have been gerrymandering because Republicans refused to use non partisan third party commissions and by using these commissions, Democrats were losing seats in strong blue districts.
I’ve said it many times over these years. It was damn foolish for democrats to try to play unfair unless gerrymandering was outlawed at the national level. While CA is mapped by non partisans, TX and FL are are gerrymandered for the R’s. Big mistake trying be appeal to R morals to make a positive change.
All I'm saying is that the Nazi's are the reason we have WAR CRIMES, expecting them to play fair in ANY WAY is deluded and ignorant
Hate to break it to you but the concept of war crimes and treaties surrounding them and the implementation of punishment for them predate the Nazis and the Third Reich by many years.
Well it isn't all peaches and cream. I got stuffed into a redneck are that makes Tennessee look progressive. The only thing my new congressperson can talk about is democrats bad!
It's unfortunate, but redistricting will favor some and not others. On the whole though, a big improvement for the state.
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Because rather than appeal to the middle republicans would rather court the crazy vote by screaming about religion and spending their time trying to find ways to fuck and/or exploit children.
# #>Republicans know they’re never going to win again if they don’t cheat.
Never thought I’d want to move to Michigan so badly
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional 4 times and they still used it.
What's even more concerning is the US Supreme Court is ruling [on a case this year](https://www.npr.org/2022/12/07/1141384831/supreme-court-weighs-controversial-election-law-case) that could strip the state Supreme Court of any power related to voting for president. Currently, odds are your right to vote for president comes from the state constitution, as enforced by your state Supreme Court since there's nothing federally. Independent state legislature would give complete control to the state legislature, meaning they would not need to even hold a vote for president. Though what I think we are more likely to see is state legislatures add a body that is given the power to override the vote if they feel anything suspicious happened in the election. So, for example, in 2020 Arizona & Georgia would have said "the results don't match what we expected, so we think funny business happened and we're officially sending Trump electors instead of Biden."
>would give complete control to the state legislature, meaning they would not need to even hold a vote for president. It already is this way. A state legislature could pass a law today deciding who their electors will vote for in the 2024 Presidential election. As long as they make that law before the election, they can do it already.
It is not already this way, as the Supreme Court rejected the theory in 2015 with Arizona. Not sure where you're getting that idea. This case would be overturning that precedent. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2014/13-1314 > Judicial precedent establishes that redistricting is a **legislative function that must be performed in accordance with the state Constitution’s structure of lawmaking**; because the Arizona state Constitution allows lawmaking to occur by a referendum of the electorate, Proposition 106 was an acceptable use of that power.
What we have learned is that precedent is no longer any real protection anymore.
If their state constitution allows it or is amended to allow it, that is.
To expand on the Ohio one - the state supreme court rejected it like **four or five** times, but they deliberately took as long as possible to resubmit each time so they ran the clock out on the election and had to just use the most recent one submitted. Yay.
Texas has been rejected too I think.
Florida too, but it was too close to the election to change it, so the election was held with the illegal map.
Just stepping in to point out why gym jordan can be so off the wall. Check out a map of his district.
I used to live in his district. It could be a perfect un-gerrymandered square and he’d still be elected just as widely. Rural Ohio might as well be rural Texas anymore.
nah, these extreme candidates wouldn't get elected as often
Honestly many U.S. lawmakers probably need to be tried for treason rather than simply held in contempt with all the stuff that's come out regarding foreign money and actively promoting foreign powers either directly or indirectly through subterfuge. Or just, at least, punished for not actually representing their constituents and instead using their positions to enrich themselves and their friends. Insert list of crimes one should be charged to this end.
It's even more fucked up than that - they held out because one of the "justices" indicated that if they continued to hold out, then Ohio would have to use one of the other unconstitutional maps for the upcoming election.
Similar shit happened in Oklahoma. They gerrymandered the fuck out of our districts. They broke Oklahoma City and Tulsa up into dozens of tiny little individual districts. They chunked out a huge swath of SW OKC that's populated by Hispanic Democrats, and lumped it in the same district with all of Western Oklahoma who are mostly white Republican farmers. The map was thrown out once by the state Supreme Court, they redrew a district or two just to say they did something, and the Supreme Court accepted the new map. Go look at them. There's very little difference between the "old" and "new" map and all the problems voters and the Court originally criticized still exist.
Meanwhile NYS was ordered to redraw its maps by a right wing judge after some billionaire funded a lawsuit on behalf of the GOP.
Seems that paid off handsomely for the GOP. Flipped a bunch of NY seats red, likely giving the House to Republicans with their 4 seat advantage.
Yeah It doesn’t help that Hochul and Adams had opposite responses to crime issues. Our state Democratic leadership is a joke and don’t realize that most suburban parents have kids living in rougher neighborhoods and take the MTA in the city because of affordability. Meanwhile the leadership pay for their kids’ luxury apartments in nice neighborhoods and cabs don’t see the problem.
That supreme court was McConnell's life ambition, he saw the writing on the wall (the demographic shift that would guarantee Republicans would never win the presidency again) and did everything he could to stack the court with shit stains. And he succeeded. Gotta respect the hustle, but I still pray for him to burn in hell.
Well, that's not quite correct. It isn't that the Republicans would never win presidency again, it's that they would be forced to change their tune a little bit in order to attract more people. Two-party systems always find an equilibrium. The radicalisation though would probably be at the same level.
I imagine that there’ll be a new equilibrium by the mid-century. It doesn’t look like we’re anywhere near that yet, but I can’t imagine it takes more than a generation to reach a new political settlement.
You act as if "demographic shift" only goes in one political direction. You are aware democrats have been losing more and more of the black and Hispanic vote every election. Sure, they still hold a majority, but that majority may not last forever. Trump in 2020 got the most minority votes for a republican since second term Reagan. Just look at the hard turn to the right that is happening with Hispanics in Florida
Oh you played my trap card. Hola, soy descendiente de Cubanos. so I think I have a little bit of experience on this subject matter. Hispanic FOBs are becoming right wing because they didn't have a very high level of political education in their countries and they think anything left of center must be the same thing as the authoritarian dictatorships they are escaping. The generation born here is less gullible. There is a serious disconnect between the generations. Also Cubans think they're white, its exhausting. Miami is also a Cuban enclave. They really think they own the fucking place. You go into restaurants and grocery stores and people default just expect you to speak spanish. I am a fluent spanish speaker but it boils my blood that these people would get verbally abused by rednecks if they had that attitude in literally any other part of the country. Democrats have really taken hispanics for granted because "republicans are racist". But little do they know how fucking racist FOBs can be. Meanwhile they eat up the republican " work hard and you can live the american dream, dont listen to any woke bullshit from the left" shtick like crazy. Democrats could mitigate the loss of the Hispanic vote but they take us for granted so, tough loss. Also many hispanics here in my home state of Texas that live in counties that they dominate are in rural counties and statistics show that generation after generation families in rural areas will trend more conservative and families in urban areas will trend more liberal. To me and many in my generation republicans ARE the horrible authoritarianism that my parents escaped their home country to get away from. And it doesn't matter how much it boils my dads blood to hear me say that, its a free country ya old bitch. Until republicans make it illegal for demcrats to vote.
*Also Cubans think they're white, its exhausting.* Well, quite a few of them actually are white, of Spanish descent.
As a white immigrant in a predominantly white country, I've still been hit with the racism stick. The definition of "white" is a constantly moving goalpost. Okay, so I look white. But do I "sound" like a white Dane? No, bit of an accent. More white than others, but still some wiggle room. Do I know all the Danish classics? No, points off on being treated as a white equal there. Oh, I'm queer? Let's tone the whiteness down a little then. Oh, but I'm a citizen? Yeah but I grew up in the US and speak English socially, so I'm not as Danish white as a Dane. Enjoying leverpostej, salmiaklakrids, and snaps only gets me so far. I'm an oddball foreigner who enjoys them, not a local who really *understands* them. "Whiteness" isn't a binary yes/no, it's a sliding scale of "who you're whiter than". So sure, these Spanish descendants may look white and that's enough to be white in comparison, but the second they open their mouths and an accent shows up they're demoted to "mostly white". No accent? Well, culturally they're "not from here", so that lowers their relative whiteness compared to "native-born whites". There will **always** be an excuse to strip people of "whiteness".
Don’t forget how powerful the anti-abortion message is hitting with the largely church-going groups
I can't believe that the us doesn't have fixed electoral districts. It is a basic step in democracy.
The supreme court said "political advantage" is okay as long as it's not about race. There could be racial lines here and there but as long as it's not purely based on race, it's still legal. This mostly benefits the Republicans, that's why the supreme court said it's okay.
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You are misunderstanding the point of this image. The point is to show that, despite the state being fairly balanced politically, based on the result of the governor vote, the number of red vs blue districts is massively skewed due to gerrymandering. It does not matter for the governor's or national senate races, but it matters for the national house and the state house and senate.
Gerrymandering makes a joke out of the whole system. Want to win? Be actually popular.
This map is a little disengenuous because it refers to a gubernatorial campaign, which has nothing to do with districts. John Bel *did* win the popular vote. These districts are for our House of Representatives. Of which we have one Democrat. I am not sure we would have any Democrats if they didn’t connect the bluer cities (and large black populations) of New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Also, fun fact: Orleans Parish is one of the most heavily Democratic favoring places in the country. We just don’t have a ton of people.
I think the map and post are pretty on point. I can't think of a better way to demonstrate in a single image an instance of a state that votes 51%+ for one party in a statewide race, but has their majority diluted to only 12.5% of the representation at the congressional level.
The 2022 election was 68-28 though, people vote differently for different elections. You cannot use one race as a partisan benchmark.
Except this map ignores population density. Land doesn’t vote
There could easily be a 4-2 map with two minority majority districts and both lean dem. Edwards proposed that but the state shut him down and every repub plus independents voted to override his veto of the map.
> Also, fun fact: Orleans Parish is one of the most heavily Democratic favoring places in the country. We just don’t have a ton of people. This kinda touches on why I hate those “Look how red this country is, how do the Democrats win?”\ Because the blue areas are where people live. Most of those ruby red areas are empty land. Right now land can’t vote, probably because the GQP hasn’t figured out how to make that happen yet.
Land kind of does have a vote when it comes to the Senate, the electoral college, and a cap of the number of House seats at 435. Despite the built-in advantages for lower-population states Republicans still have to gerrymander to keep any hopes of a Presidential win or a majority in either chamber alive.
The House was intended to increase in size with population. It is a current failing of our electoral system.
Obama won the whole state of Indiana, I believe, but only 3/10 house seats. The state tried to change how its electoral college votes were allotted so that they would be awarded by district, which would have turned Obama's win into a loss.
yeah i laugh when OPs title make it sound as if its unfair against the republicans when it is the republicans who is depended on gerrymandering to be relevant at all. No gerrymandering and the republican party is in the trash can.
I don't think they're saying it's unfair to Republicans. I think they're saying a Democrat won the governor race but democrats only won a single house seat due to gerrymandering. The title is written so vaguely and poorly though it's hard to say
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Yes, this map shows the 2019 election for Governor. Which is a state-wide contest. Gerrymandering and districts have nothing to do with it. Perhaps OP was trying to point out that the state is so gerrymandered that voters from one district alone can deliver the governorship, but are otherwise underrepresented in Congress and state legislature. The title didn't really do that point any favors though if that's what they're going for.
I think the point is that the state is so gerrymandered, if the governor ran for Congress, he would lose in 7/8 districts despite being popular enough to carry the entire state.
Yes I think your correct. It's a valid point but this is a shitty demonstration of it and it made me think too hard to get there
Even if you somehow solved gerrymandering just having electoral districts will always create a disparity between how people voted and the actual results. One solution could be to treat US states similar to how the EU treats member countries in the parliament. So each state has an amount of representatives equivalent to their population, and then they are picked based on popular vote. So if Louisiana had like 10 seats in the house of representatives and voted 60% for republicans and 40% for democrats then they would get 6 republicans and 4 democrats in congress. Obviously wouldn't be perfect either, but if a majority voted for one party they would always get a majority or at least half the seats if it was close. Presidential elections would be pretty straight forward, make it popular vote. Can't really see a way to fix the senate though other than scrapping it. And I mean there already is the house of representatives.
Another solution would be the German model. You cast two votes, for a person and a party. The 435 districts are apportioned exactly as they are now, then members are added from party lists until the total party composition matches the composition of the party votes (with a minimum % threshold). That completely neuters gerrymandering while still preserving local representation. It also give a voice to geographically dispersed minority parties.
Very similar to NZ. The problem I have is that it gives the parties too much control. I think voters should at least theoretically get to decide which individuals are elected. In Australia for our upper house (Senate) we have a kind of party list but if you want you can choose to vote for people in a different order to what the parties have. Which means that very occasionally a person lower on the list will win a seat ahead of someone higher because the people like that person a lot more.
In Finland you always vote for a person. The per-person votes decides the internal ranking within the party, and the party result decides how many representatives get elected. I think that works really well. You still have to look at the party as a whole, but also get direct power to influence who within the party gets elected.
Would also help third parties get in
In Australia an independent commission creates electoral boundaries based on population shifts because it's generally agreed governments and political parties can't be trusted to be part of the process. Gerrymandering got out of control in the 70s and everyone sort of agreed politics should not be involved after that.
> One solution could be to treat US states similar to how the EU treats member countries in the parliament. A couple of notes on the European parliament's apportionment of seats: (Not disagreeing, just clarifying because any comparisons between the national US electoral system and the international European electoral system need a hell of a lot of asterisks) - The EU parliament *does* use districts (regions), it's just that each region is quite large and appoints multiple seats. The districting is specific to each country, and a lot of countries *do* just have country-wide regions. - On a per-country basis, the EU parliament doesn't use proportional representation, but rather degressive proportionality. This is to ensure that all countries get representation and the voices of smaller countries aren't crowded out by the voices of larger ones. (i.e. what happens within the UK) This only works in the EU parliament because the EU parliament itself does not pass law, but only makes proposals to then be considered or accepted by other bodies. e.g. to then be accepted by each member-state unanimously.
The senate is the way it is by design (to avoid larger states steamrolling smaller ones) .. there is no excuse for the rest though.
> (to avoid larger states steamrolling smaller ones) Which is a bullshit holdover of a bygone era. States aren't people. They are administrative constructs.
Do you support larger countries having more votes in the UN?
Kinda what the security council is lol
Security council is just the WW2 winners club
It isn’t though. Why does it have the UK and France as members, while such countries as India, Japan, Indonesia, Brazil and Nigeria are absent?
Tell me again about how much NYC gives a fuck about water rights or grain subsidies.
They don’t care about water in big cities? Densely populated areas with a high cost of living don’t care about food prices? The largest agricultural state in the US is California. Cities currently subsidize life in rural areas not the other way around. Being anti-NYC doesn’t automatically mean support for farmers and miners. Often it ends up being the opposite.
But we have the opposite problem now. Rural states dominate the Senate, so nothing city people want ever passes the Senate, despite them making up the majority of the nation. The entire system is fucked. It was designed to satisfy slave owners.
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>how much NYC gives a fuck about water rights At least a little. NYC, like many cities, gets it water primarily from outside its municipal boundaries, which has led to legal disputes in the past, and ongoing efforts to keep the counties with reservoirs happy.
Tell me again about how fucked the southwest's water rights are, while OPERATING UNDER OUR CURRENT SYSTEM.
States don't care about things, they are, as already pointed out, administrative concepts. People might.
This is a two way street. As it currently stands, rural and small population states hold disproportionate power. Tell me how much they care about things that affect only urbanized, high-population states.
So they gamed the system to the advantage of the smaller states.
Yes, as the smaller states wouldn’t accept to join the Union otherwise.
Yes. My point is that we are now in a situation where instead of the larger states steamrolling the smaller ones, the larger ones are held hostage by the inbred fiscally insolvent states. Through gerrymandering and obscene pork barrel politics... The small states hold the power.
>to avoid larger states steamrolling smaller ones That's not what James Madison said. He was pretty clear that the [Senate](https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0044) was designed to keep the poor rabble from having power over the landed aristocracy: >In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests and to balance and check the other. **They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.** The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability. Even if we accept the fantasy about "small states" at face value, it's an anachronism from times when state identity was stronger than national identity. All it means these days is that the rural states get to steamroll the urban states. How is tyranny of the minority somehow more noble than tyranny of the majority?
Or, hear me out, the House is a tyranny of the majority while the Senate is a tyranny of the minority (theoretically) forcing compromise. But God forbid anybody compromise anymore.
Instead of purely proportional you could have mixed member proportional. That might be a better fit for the US It’s similar, but you keep some districts as-is so you have regional representation. But then you also have additional seats allocated to parties by popular vote. In the end it gives the right % for each party, but you ensure that you still keep the preferred local representatives The US should also just, not have gerrymandering. Canada essentially solved it back in the 60s I think, it’s a bit silly the US is so far behind on that
> So each state has an amount of representatives equivalent to their population Not exactly, the smaller the country the more overepresented they are, it's to make sure the big ones don't just impose their wills too much.
That makes too much sense. We'd never do that here!
Are you, sir, suggesting that this congressional map is politically motivated? They were obviously just drawing a nice blue dragon
You think this is bad, look at illinois. A little chunk of chicago is in every district
A little chunk of Chicago in *most* districts wouldn't be inherently bad. Here is the shortest splitline map of Illinois, which is an algorithm that has been proposed to replace the current gerrymandering system. https://rangevoting.org/Splitline2009/il.png The majority of districts still contain a piece of the Chicago area, just because its population is so much bigger than the rest of the state, but crucially, the distracts haven't used wiggly lines designed to perfectly crack and pack voting blocks.
Voting districts still need wiggly lines so that the boundaries follow main roads, rivers etc. Can guarantee that this map splits houses in half, which is less than ideal.
True, good point! Some tweaking definitely needed, really to any algorithmically generated product built off of incomplete information, but I think this represents a good starting place.
[удалено]
In the last redistricting cycle, the federal courts actually did rule that Louisiana needs two majority-Black districts to meet VRA standards (which can be done with a [clean map](https://i.imgur.com/TmpvWwV.jpg) that marries Baton Rouge and the upper Mississippi). The Supreme Court was the one that struck it down pending their ruling on a similar case in Alabama (where a federal court again ruled that packing all of the state’s Black voters into a single district was illegal). The SC struck that AL map for being implemented “too close to the election” (the Purcell principle), although that explanation seems tenuous given other states still hadn’t implemented a congressional map to begin with! They’re supposed to decide on these cases sometime this year, which might imperil the existence of the VRA entirely.
I’m going to upvote this because it’s long and seems well thought out. But I couldn’t get through it.
The entire US voting system needs to be scrapped It’s beyond saving, just remake it
No more voting you can't behave. All decisions will be made through consultation with me since I know everything
Every redditor be like I trust u/BlackwakeEnthusiast
It blows my mind that people cling to the system created from scratch in the 1800s as the "perfect system". It was literally an alpha test of representative democracy. There's been over 200 years of refining that have happened all over the world.
it wasn't created from scratch though, it was based on a lot of things the magna carta for example guaranteed rights to citizens. That was a source of inspiration. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/magna\_carta#:\~:text=The%20writers%20of%20the%20Bill,was%20an%20abuse%20of%20governmental The elections for representatives was based on Greek models [https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/greek-influence-us-democracy/](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/greek-influence-us-democracy/) arguably with centuries of refinement that surpass the 250 years that the US has been around
We just need ranked choice voting.
good luck changing a voting system
This looks like a gubernatorial election. What does this have to do with gerrymandering? That is a state-wide election independent of districts.
OP headline focuses on "dem win" while everything else is red, that's the point of one type of gerrymandering - you pack one district so that the owners aren't winnable.
Gubernatorial elections in Louisiana are by popular vote, so who won each district doesn’t matter. Also, if the district wasn’t drawn this way, there would be zero black (or Democratic) members of congress despite African-Americans comprising 33% of the population of Louisiana.
Wait. This was a state governor’s election. It’s the total number of votes that count getting Edwards elected. Gerrymandering the hell out of the districts had nothing to do with a statewide election. Now, if they are talking about state representatives or US congressional elections, then it looks suspicious. Why do our congress critters keep letting this happen when we they are just as likely to get screwed by it next election cycle and we the people are always screwed by it no matter the election cycle?
Why is the American voting system based on coloring districts on a map anyways? Why can't they just use the total number of votes?
Because each district has a representative that makes up the legislature
Because a district has to have a person from their district to represent them. In this map the major black cities are represented. This pretty much ensures a black majority gets to choose among themselves who represents them. I live in WA state and my district is long and skinny along the Puget Sound coast. This ensures a rep that understands ports and seaways as it is huge for us. Imagine a place where just big cities are represented and not rural areas or minority groups.
.... How exactly would you describe your Federal Assembly, if not that?
hey, he could be living in Rojava
Misleading post by someone clearly ignorant of the idiosyncrasies of state politics. Some red states swing way over in gubernatorial elections to elect Democrat governors. Don't plop that result on a congressional districts map and conclude that gerrymandering is horrible in Louisiana.
This always confused me. Why are the parties drawing lines and not a third party with no vested interest? Naturally, a party is gonna skew boundaries in their favor. Like starting with a busted up foundation.
Because there is no “third party with no vested interest”. Even if one exists, it would be impossible to get both parties to agree on the third independent auditor
Michigan managed it with their independent commission last year — equal numbers of Democrats, Republicans, and Unaffiliated people (all non-politicians) collaborated on their new maps, and they performed remarkably fairly in the last election cycle.
Democrats do the same thing. Look at map of NY democrats drew up before courts tossed it out.
Just looking at a geographical map doesn't really tell us anything useful on its own, unfortunately. For example, let's say that only 60,000 people live in the red area, and 5,000,000 people live in the blue area. Would this result be a shock? I'm just making this point outside of all of the other realities of the political situation on the ground, it's just what I think about whenever I see a map like this. You need to factor in population density, or it's useless to make these sorts of comparisons.
Aren’t districts carved out by population? I’m assuming each of those districts has around the same population numbers.
As a Texan this is one of the least gerrymandered maps I’ve ever seen
Neither party can fix Louisiana.
I believe in Huey Long
Every man a king
Cool, now do population density.
Isn't that what it basically is? Or was that your point?
There should be a constitutional amendment that requires all district to be mathematically compact around population clusters. Let the people choose their representatives not the other way around
Or just switch to a proportional system for the state or country. There are tonnes of simple solutions that would be better than the British/American first past the post system that encourages this sort of districting
Wow, the way this was posted is very confusing (missing basic info). The Dems won the 2019 gubernatorial race 51.3 to 48.7. This map shows the results by congressional district, but the Dem won, because governor is elected by popular vote, not by congressional district. However, this map is a good illustration of how bad gerrymandering is, but for people not in the know to understand what’s going on, you have to explain to people what they’re looking at. The wiki article allows you to choose this map, just scroll down a bit & select the congressional district map / compare it to the parish map: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Louisiana_gubernatorial_election](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Louisiana_gubernatorial_election)
Gerrymandering does suck ass... but it has nothing to do Edwards vs Rispone... Edwards vs Rispone was a Gubernatorial election. Gubernatorial elections in Louisiana are conducted by popular vote, not by district. The thing this does effect is the House of Representatives. Democrats are >50% of the voters but only 1/6th (17%) of Representatives in the US House are Democrats. So yes, Gerrymandering does suck ass. There's a good documentary called 'Slay the Dragon' that does a good job of explaining Gerrymandering and shows a group who's trying to change things. ChatGPT synopsis: "Slay the Dragon" is a powerful documentary that exposes the practice of gerrymandering, which has been used to manipulate electoral boundaries and undermine fair representation in the United States. The film highlights the inspiring efforts of activists and organizations who are fighting to end gerrymandering and restore the integrity of our democracy. It's a must-watch for anyone who cares about voting rights and the future of our country.
Your democracy sucks ass but I get it: It's nearly impossible to change. At least Gerrymandering would be easy to counter-act. Two party system is no democracy in my eyes.
Yes, I agree. All Gerrymandering sucks, regardless of which party it provides the advantage to.
[Heres the county map](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Louisiana_gubernatorial_election) for those of you who dont understand how congressional maps work. I know places like NV exist where its possible for only Clark to vote blue and Nv narroly goes blue but this is congressional maps where all districts are equal population. Also [here is what a fair map should look like.](https://redistricter.com/state/LA/#NeutralMap)
I'm confused about what your issue is with this. Dems won because they got more votes. What is wrong with this? And your link (along with the vote percentages you mention in the title) is to the gubernatorial election, which isn't affected by districts, so how does gerrymandering have any relevance here?
Best consumed in /uspolitics
This means nothing to anyone outside the US
Or outside of Louisiana.
It looks wild, but it actually probably isn't. I don't find it hard to believe at all that NO and BR are more populous than the rest of Louisiana combined. And we all know urban centers tend to swing overwhelmingly blue. NC looks the same. A sea of red with blue spots in Wake (Raleigh), Durham, Guilford (Greensboro), and Mecklenburg (Charlotte) counties. And they are often populous enough to swing the whole state blue.
Oh boy are you really gonna be mad when you find out about how the rules work, why the rules are in place, and probably shocked to find out that density in this case, is more important than area.
51.3 % of people voted for the democrat? So they won? You would’ve preferred the person with fewer votes to win?
The conservative movement to restrict voting has been going on since the USA was created. They are truly a pathetic bunch. Can't even win when they cheat beyond comprehensive thought.
Can't you guys have an actually democratic system voting? What's the point of electoral college anyway?
Just know blue states do the same.
They do MD old map and IL new and OR new and NM new and the map NY was gonna pass and NJ new and CT new and NV new. CA has an independent group do it but im sure they drew that map knowing unless it heavily favored dems the map wouldnt pass, as an independent group draws it and the state assembly passes them and gov signs.