North Carolina Congressional Map Ruled Unconstitutionally Gerrymandered (nytimes.com) 409
An anonymous reader shares a report: A panel of federal judges struck down North Carolina's congressional map on Tuesday, condemning it as unconstitutional because Republicans had drawn the map seeking a political advantage (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source). The ruling was the first time that a federal court had blocked a congressional map because of a partisan gerrymander, and it instantly endangered Republican seats in the coming elections. Judge James A. Wynn Jr., in a biting 191-page opinion, said that Republicans in North Carolina's Legislature had been "motivated by invidious partisan intent" as they carried out their obligation in 2016 to divide the state into 13 congressional districts, 10 of which are held by Republicans. The result, Judge Wynn wrote, violated the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. The ruling and its chief demand -- that the Republican-dominated Legislature create a new landscape of congressional districts by Jan. 24 -- infused new turmoil into the political chaos that has in recent years enveloped North Carolina. President Trump carried North Carolina in 2016, but the state elected a Democrat as its governor on the same day and in 2008 supported President Barack Obama.
Wow, really? (Score:5, Interesting)
In all seriousness, I do hope that something like this will be implemented in its stead:
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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Sure. But this stuff has been going on so long that it's part of history class. Even the term gerrymander goes back to the earliest days of our republic.
That said, the fact that a state (or a voter) went for Obama and then Trump is no proof of nefarious meddling.
This idea that the system is broken because it produced a result you don't agree with is even MORE dangerous to democracy than gerrymandering.
Short of a simple geometric algorithm, any attempt to redraw districts will generate objections. Both parti
Re:Wow, really? (Score:5, Informative)
The actual evidence they used (had you RTFA) is to measure the number of registered Democrats/Republicans in a State in aggregate and then compare it with congressional seats.
It's not going to be exactly equal but you'd expect a State with 70% of the population as registered Democrats compared to 30% Republicans to roughly have a 7:3 (or 6:4, even 5:5) mix of elected Congress-people.
Instead, NC has a heavy 10:3 ratio of Republican vs Democrat Congress-people. And it moved this way after the maps were redrawn after the 2010 census.
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>
It's not going to be exactly equal but you'd expect a State with 70% of the population as registered Democrats compared to 30% Republicans to roughly have a 7:3 (or 6:4, even 5:5) mix of elected Congress-people.
No, I would not expect that at all. If political affiliation was equally distributed across the state, then with 70% democrats, you would expect every district to go democrat every time. But because we know that democrats tend to clump in cities and districts are divided by population not area, I would expect democrats to win most of the small area districts and republicans to win most of the large area districts. In some ways slight gerrymandering can actually give better representation for everyone so
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Expect... Like expecting Hillary to carry states Obama won?
Expectations have the problem of being wrong.
Re:Wow, really? (Score:5, Interesting)
And just because this stuff has been going on for a long time doesn't make it right. Just because the party that I may support is directly benefitted doesn't make it right.
This idea that the system is broken because it produced a result you don't agree with is even MORE dangerous to democracy than gerrymandering.
The results with which I don't agree is that citizens are effectively disenfranchised regardless of who wins. And when did I ever say that I didn't support the party that directly gained from the redrawn districts?
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Studies(https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/gerrymandering/) have shown the party primary system does more to cause the issues with the extremes of both parties. Gerrymandering is some of the problems. Gerrymandering plus voter suppression makes it worst. An open primary system would solve a vast majority of the problems.
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Short of a simple geometric algorithm, any attempt to redraw districts will generate objections. Both parties will seek to alter the result to benefit them.
Divide the state up into sections for as equal a percentage of population as possible, grouped along county lines. If a county holds a large city or in some other way is unbalanced relative to other counties, then that county is split to equal out the numbers. This also has the benefit of equally weighing each person's vote.
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If a county holds a large city or in some other way is unbalanced relative to other counties, then that county is split to equal out the numbers.
Umm ... this is exactly what the NC Republicans did. By splitting up the cities, thus dividing the urban vote, and then combining each urban section with rural and suburban voters more likely to vote Republican, they dilute the Democrat votes.
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Divide the state up into sections for as equal a percentage of population as possible, grouped along county lines.
There is a lot of variation in populations between counties. Counties are not a good starting point.
There are mathematical measures for the compactness of a region. I would specify that each district must be as compact as possible while containing a nearly-identical number of voters. Hand over the census data to a computer or a handful of mathematicians, then wait for the results.
Re: Wow, really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Gerrymandering is bad no matter who does it.
But let's also not use false equivalents. The GOP once again is clearly the more immoral of the two.
https://www.apnews.com/fa6478e10cda4e9cbd75380e705bd380
TLDR statistical analysis shows that Rs abuse the system 4 time as often.
Currently If you put an R next to your next to your name you are an immoral sack of shit who is willing to corrupt the most basic principles of our electoral system.
*Note "R" not conservative.
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BTW, Gerrymandering has been happening since the beginning of the Republic.
Before actually
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:By Definition (Score:5, Insightful)
Gerrymandering is, by definition, the manipulation of the Congressional districts in a way to assure an outcome beneficial to one party of another.
What makes it "insidious" or not is beyond speculation. That is is just a stupid, inflammatory adjective on the Judge's part.
BTW, Gerrymandering has been happening since the beginning of the Republic.
Well at some point it does become obscene in the extreme. Looking at these maps and reading a bit at how they are formed... ie throw as many Democrats as possible into a few districts and then spread the remaining Democrats out in all the other districts. I don't really see how this is any different than the prohibition on using race as part of drawing new districts.
The courts should make this simple and delegitimize partisan affiliation and voting history as a valid consideration. The only legitimate data that are used to draw the maps should be where people live and then the districts should be draw to closely match the existing underlying political boundaries (ie cities, towns and counties) in a geographically compact area.
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"Fair" has nothing to do with Law once it is passed.
Maybe you should review the equal protection [wikipedia.org] clause.
The right to vote is a protected right (Score:5, Informative)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Political affiliation isn't a protect class.
No but the right to vote and to have your vote count IS protected. Don't confuse the mechanism with the result. Gerrymandering doesn't just affect members of a given political party.
To insist that the redistricting somehow represents the greater population is the usurpation of redistricting task by the courts.
Not even slightly. Courts are the only (ostensibly) neutral party here and their job is to ensure that voters rights are not trod upon. I'm not a member of either the republicans or democrats but I live in a gerrymandered district and so my right to vote is de-facto disenfranchised if I happen to not like the ruling party's candidate. That is a perfect use for a court to protect people like me who otherwise would effectively lose their vote.
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Strictly speaking, the courts involvement in this at all is unconstitutional. Redistricting is a task left to the Legislature in the Constitution.
Where does the constitution restrict the judicial branch from making a ruling in any matter involving either the legislative or executive branch? If the judicial branch did not have the constitutional authority to put a check on how the legislature creates its districts then there would be no check against the legislative branch in this matter. As long as someone has the standing to raise a civil matter before the court, the court has every right to hear the case and make a ruling.
Re:By Definition (Score:5, Informative)
Where does the constitution restrict the judicial branch from making a ruling in any matter involving either the legislative or executive branch?
A specific restriction isn't necessary, because the judicial is only empowered to do the things which the constitution and the law states the judiciary is empowered to do. The Judicial branch is ONLY able to make their rulings on what is law and Orders enjoining against furthering harm from violating the law or the constitution based on the dispute before them --- the Legislative and Executive branches have their own agency (Independent judgement), and the Judicials are not superior to the Legislative or the Executive branch in their power or authority: Fundamentally the judiciary IS RESTRICTED and cannot order around other branches, And if there is a disagreement --- it's called a constitutional crisis, because they are 3 equal branches of government.
Our constitutional form of government is NOT a hierarchy with the Judiciary branch at the top, and our supreme court is not a "Ruling Committee" who can hand down any order desired to alter or delete any law at will or increase or decrease or change the enforcement of any law in whatsoever manager as the committee desires. The Judicial branch makes orders based on law, and it is up to the elected leaders and bureaucrats in other branches of government to follow lawful orders (or to ignore them, as they have in some cases)
In the same manner that the president cannot order the court to rule X on case Y, or order the court to consider case Z, and the legislature cannot pass a law that the court must never review law Y and the feds can't pass a law that state laws about X be held unconstitutional; the Judiciary has its own independent agency that cannot be taken on by other branches of government -- its rulings on cases.
In exactly the same way the Legislative and Executive branches of government have specific agency in the powers granted them by the constitution --
the judiciary does NOT have the power to override the agency of other branches of government and take actions on their behalf, And the judiciary does not have the power to Order another branch of government to do X with their agency ----- for example, the court cannot order congress to pass law Y, or create tax Z. Although the court CAN invalidate law Y or provide taxpayer relief by declaring debts under tax Z invalid.
The Judicial branch is not empowered to take over any legislative or executive duty and exercise that role on its own.
If the law doesn't say the court can draw their own map, then the court does not have the power to simply draw their own map, and that is true even if the legislature fails or refuses to draw a new map on its own that satisfies the court.
Re:By Definition (Score:5, Funny)
Admittedly this is from my mere two semesters of Business Law, but the Courts are limited to ruling on Legal issues...laws.
Which is what the court did. The judge ruled that the gerrymandering was unconstitutional.
As for your law courses ... ask for your money back.
Re: By Definition (Score:2)
"Fair" isn't the concern... The constitutional principle at stake is freedom of association... Using people's association with a political party to disenfranchise them.
Disenfranchisement (Score:5, Insightful)
No one has ever been denied the ability to associate with members of their own party.
Not sure what point you are trying to make but you certainly missed the one in the discussion. Gerrymandering utilizes the association with a political party to remove the power of their vote by rigging the system. So if Party A draws the districts to favor Party A then members of Party B are being disenfranchised as a result. Members of Party B are effectively being deprived of their vote because their vote will not matter in the outcome of the election. The fact that they actually cast a ballot does not change the fact that their vote won't have any chance to affect the outcome because the electorate has been rigged.
Re:By Definition (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny how people always resort to "Change the Constitution if you don't like it" whenever two conflicting Constitutional principles have to be weighed by the courts - and the court doesn't pick their choice.
The Supreme Court has jumped through hoops to pretend that, for example, "money is speech" is a more important American value than "government by the people" or "equal protection". And as regards gerrymandering, it has in the past come down on the side of "we can't police partisanship" over "everyone's vote should count". They've yet to rule on the issue since it became possible to mathematically show how gerrymandering causes votes to be effectively rendered useless - and there's still every possibility that the Kennedy will join with the rest of the conservatives and choose the convenient answer that happens to favor their side..
But to say the court shouldn't have a voice when there's such a conflict is to say "I like things the way they are, so fuck you - change the Constitution if you don't like it".
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While enumeration of the representative is included in the constitution, districting is not. As it is not specifically granted to the federal government, it devolves down to the state governments, see Art 6 sect 2.
You can't have the courts always stepping in because you don't think something is "fair".
Actually, one can and that is actually how the law and
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BTW, Gerrymandering has been happening since the beginning of the Republic.
That doesn't mean that we should just continue to accept it as "the way things are".
Several states have placed redistricting in the hands of non-partisan panels of citizens or retired judges. This is more common in western states which have citizens' ballot initiatives, since the politicians have no incentive to reform the process while they are on the "winning" side, and no power to do so when they are in the minority.
Even better would be to get rid of "districts" entirely, and elect representatives by in
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Ahh...but those states did it themselves, not by the order of the courts.
That is a crucial difference.
As for your suggestion, that is diametrical opposed to the entire structure of a Republic. What you suggest could leave a single area of a state with a majority of the representation. Since this is Federal Representation, needs to follow the Federal structure of a Republic. Feel free to elect your state legislatures this way.
Re:Wow, really? (Score:5, Insightful)
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In all seriousness, I do hope that something like this will be implemented in its stead:
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [www.washingtonpost.com] [washingtonpost.com]
Whenever voting comes up the inevitable solution to 'fix' the elections follow. It maybe a great idea and the best idea ever to come up in civics and elections. You would go much further in convincing me that it's a great idea by implementing in your state. Elections are controlled by state and local governments and leading by example is a better way to prove your idea is good. I don't care what other countries do, they have no political stake in our elections and organize their elections according to their
Re:Wow, really? (Score:5, Informative)
So when it comes to Gerrymandering, most of the more "liberal" or even "purple" States have long had laws against it. Many (including CA) have independent councils that must have representatives from both parties in roughly equal proportion drawing the maps.
Only a handful of States (which all happen to be battleground States for elections) have this kind of gerrymandering where the majority legislature controls the maps as well. And they almost all are Republican controlled.
Democrats gerrymander too, don't get me wrong. But they haven't abused it to the extend like the Republicans in NC did. The State has 2.7M (as of 2016) registered Democrats and 2.0M registered Republicans. Yet has 10 R congressmen vs 3 D congressmen.
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Gerrymandering has been an issue since the start of the Republic. Even California has issues with it's redistricting. Great, they have an unelected commission to decide their districts. Which has been highly unfavorable to the GOP party even though it was initially promoted by the GOP in California. They risked their political power because they thought it a good idea. My initial point.
I am not convinced the democrats have solved the issue particularly so because you now can have a democrat run against a de
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Democrats gerrymander too, don't get me wrong. But they haven't abused it to the extent like the Republicans in NC did.
Are you aware of any Democratic-majority states that were under the Consent Degree? (At least until Roberts court gutted the VRA last year).
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Democrats gerrymander too, don't get me wrong. But they haven't abused it to the extend like the Republicans in NC did.
That is because they can't. Gerrymandering works inherently better for Republicans.
Political polarization is NOT symmetrical. If you go to the reddest of the red, say a rural county in Utah, it will still have only about a 70%/30% Republican/Democratic split. But you can easily find urban districts that are 95%/5% Democrat/Republican.
So it is easier to concentrate Democratic voters into a few districts, leaving the Republicans to sweep the rest.
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I prefer multimember districts with cumulative voting [fairvote.org] like they had in Illinois up to 1982.
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I prefer multimember districts with cumulative voting [fairvote.org] like they had in Illinois up to 1982.
I agree. Something like this would be much preferred. The problem with districts is that even if you get rid of gerrymandering, if every district is an equal split 70% one party and 30% the other party then that second party never gets any representation. In some ways, slight gerrymandering is actually preferred over perfectly equal districts but something like all candidates voted for statewide and take the top N with the most votes would better represent the minority parties.
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It isn't, and the courts support it because, like in the case of NC and where I lived in Chicago for a while, the districts are minority majority in order to give us a voice. They are a good thing, and some judges think it is Constitutionally required. To do away with it harms minorities.
Re:Wow, really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Gerrymandering is one of the many reasons why I'm glad to live in a country where the establishment of electoral boundaries is done by a non-partisan organization, based on a set of rules and census data. The rules are basically:
1) The riding must be as compact as possible
2) Where reasonable, the boundaries should follow natural boundaries (rivers, bays, ravines, etc...) and/or major man-made boundaries (Major roads, highways, municipal borders, etc...)
3) in urban centres, the boundaries should try and respect neighbourhood boundaries
All in all, it actually works, and is part of the check and balances on the power of the politicians.
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The problem with using a road as a boundary is that it means someone just a few easy steps away can be in a different voting district. You want to keep people within easy access of each other in the same district, and separate the districts along actual transportational barriers. That means not roads unless it's something difficult to cross like a freeway.
Using actual transportational barriers as a boundary also means these two houses with adjoining ba [google.com]
Gerrymandering = disenfranchisement (Score:2)
The intent to disenfranchise is not even alleged in TFA, much less proven.
Gerrymandering by definition disenfranchises some group of people. If gerrymandering occurs then it is proven and the court found that it had occurred in this case so it is proven in the legal sense as well. Since gerrymandering doesn't occur by accident then it has to be intended. Whenever you make someone's vote effectively meaningless that is the very definition of disenfranchisement [wikipedia.org].
Re:Gerrymandering = disenfranchisement (Score:4, Insightful)
The original term, which you yourself quoted, was "effectively disenfranchise", not just disenfranchise. That lines up very well with the term "effectively meaningless" which you are objecting to. The adjective can't be ignored when you're quoting the definition if Disenfranchisement.
A rose by any other name (Score:3)
No, it is not. To disenfranchise is to deny the very right to vote. From your own link:
A vote rendered meaningless by gerrymandering IS denying the right to vote for all practical purposes. The fact that I technically cast a ballot in a heavily gerrymandered district effectively denies my voice from being heard - i.e. the entire point of a vote. That is disenfranchisement. If you want to call it something else fine but the effect is identical to armed thugs stopping me from casting my ballot in the first place.
My vote in New York is meaningless, for example, but I am not disenfranchised.
That depends on where in New York you live but since Democrats naturally outnumb
Re:It benefitted the wrong party (Score:5, Informative)
Supreme Court agrees to hear Maryland redistricting case [baltimoresun.com]
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Who gets to train the AI?
Re:A Perfect Application for Artificial Intelligen (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically my proposal has been:
1. Initially all districts are centered at their current representative's house. If there are fewer seats this time then last then district centers are removed randomly until the correct number is reached. If there are more seats this time then last then district centers are added randomly until the correct number is reached.
2. The district with the lowest population picks first.
3. Areas (houses, town homes, apartments, etc) are added to a district such that the closet one available to the center added first. If there are 2 equal distance then preference is given for the ones that are on the same side of the road, in the same town, then in the same county. If neither of those are better satisfied then pick one at random and add it to the district.
4. Repeat steps 2&3 until all areas have been chosen.
5. Calculate the new center of each district.
6. If the new center of any district has changed areas from where it was in step 5 of the previous run (step 1 if this is the first run) then save the new centers and clear out the districts assigned to each district and start at step 2.
7. if the new centers of all districts have not changed areas from where it was previously this is your new district map.
I am sure that there are a few more tweaks that are need to ensure that each district has the same (I believe MN law is +/- 1) number of people in it but this seems like a much more reasonable solution instead of the bickering that happens every 10 years. As an added bonus this requires writing the program once and then every 10 years drop it on a computer (really any somewhat modern desktop would be able to do this) and let it run for a bit. You no longer need to pay for the old human process and likely would get result much quicker.
Automation (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this not automated? Should just be a computer program that does "find the N points such that each point is the closest point to exactly P/N people."
That is, make a Voronoi diagram on population, not geometric distance.
No politics involved at all, but probably people wouldn't like it...
Re:Automation (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not simply add up all the votes over the entire population of interest ?
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Each district is electing its own representative.
Well, yes, but my point was to change the whole system. You give each party a certain number of representatives based on percentage of popular vote.
If you want a local representative, then have a local election to appoint one, and give this person some jurisdiction over their own district.
Re:Automation (Score:5, Informative)
I'm running to represent Maryland's 7th district. It looks like a dragon coming out of a volcano [google.com], so I'd quite like to not see it changed much at all, except maybe to include the Starbucks in Mt. Washington because it's readily-accessible by public transportation and highway.
The point is to represent these particular people in Congress. I've actually left campaign material on Elijah Cummings's door--I'm running for his seat and I used to live on his street, just a few blocks down. Andy Harris may lose his seat because Allison Galbraith is extremely popular in his own community--she lives right in the same neighborhood.
We have local elections for local legislative districts, putting Delegates and State Senators in place to change State law. Congress changes Federal law. My jurisdiction includes the Baltimore Inner Harbor, and my constituents want me to lobby for Federal money to help restore the Chesapeake Bay due to simple environmentalism and its incredible economic value (lots of fishing, tourism, and the like going on there). Representatives of other districts have less focus on the Bay.
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There are lots of other places in the world that do what ThosLives suggests. One approach is to take all the votes, then setup representation that is proportional to the votes. Suppose a state with 10 representatives that gets 60% dems and 30% repubs and 10% green. You will have 6 democrats 3 republicans and 1 green. Then you need a way to pick individual representatives out of the pool. The trade-off is you get less accurate local representation, but it is immunte from gerrymandering and increases the
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There are lots of other places in the world that do what ThosLives suggests. One approach is to take all the votes, then setup representation that is proportional to the votes. Suppose a state with 10 representatives that gets 60% dems and 30% repubs and 10% green. You will have 6 democrats 3 republicans and 1 green. Then you need a way to pick individual representatives out of the pool. The trade-off is you get less accurate local representation, but it is immunte from gerrymandering and increases the likelihood of multiple parties sharing power. That last one is real big in many European nations. (And many of those nations are similar in size to US states, so it can work on that kind of scale.)
I vote for the candidate and not the party. I'm conservative, but not affiliated with the Republican Party. Most of the time I do vote Republican, but the candidate matters more than party. For example, I wouldn't vote for someone with credible complaints of sexual harassment unless the other candidate is probably guilty of a worse offense.
Define the population (Score:2)
Why not simply add up all the votes over the entire population of interest ?
The problem is in how you define the entire population of interest. Gerrymandering is the act of politicians (or political parties) having the power to choose the population that is most likely to ensure they get elected.
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The problem is in how you define the entire population of interest
No, that's easy. The population of interest is all the people that would fall under the jurisdiction of the chosen government.
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I think the problem is how do you do it soley on population since areas are populated so differently? For the towns of 500-2000 that are a hundred miles away from two large cities, where do you put them? Here in Texas, do you combine some of San Antonio with Austin to get to your magic population number even though the demographics of each city is very different?
Because People & Politics (Score:2)
Because Technological solutions can not solve People problems. And it has no chance against political ones.
It has become a recent issue because of automation. We could have done this for more than a century. manually Just don't present the independent math guy with political affiliation as part of the data set. Automation, we could do for decades.
But what political group would want to lose that attribute as a weapon? So humans did it... along with all their biases. But when humans were doing it, they
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Lead by example. Do it and tell us how it works.
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I'd like to see a system that features some small number of competing algorithms, each of which must draw districts without using partisan voting patterns as an input, or any other trait that correlates strongly with partisan voting patterns (e.g. race). Maybe three different algorithms. During redistricting, each algorithm is applied to produce a map. Then a 50/50 bipartisan committee of human beings
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This. But it needs to be coupled with a return of Congress to the people. These three parts need to be done together, through an Article 5 convention.
Part 1: We need to return to the original ratio of 1 representative per 30,000 citizens. Yes, that is over 9000 representatives. They don't need to meet in person. Each of them can have an office in their district and a staff that also lives in the same district. They can exchange documents online, and vote online. They can deliver their fundraising sp
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Consider an area that is to be divided into 10 districts. If the population is made up of 90% horses and 10% cows, and all cows live close to each other geographically, it would be nice (and "fair") to have 1 of the 10 districts be a cow-district with a cow-representative.
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Tim S.
How is this not automated? Should just be a computer program that does "find the N points such that each point is the closest point to exactly P/N people."
That is, make a Voronoi diagram on population, not geometric distance.
No politics involved at all, but probably people wouldn't like it...
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What happens if you find that the concentration of registered citizens doesn't match the list of votes cast?
This is not relevant. A lot of registered voters don't actually go out and vote.
So what you are really arguing is Voter ID, that will verify a person to location mapping.
Most states already have this. You report to a designated polling station based on your home address. I've never lived in a state that worked differently.
If being at the right place on election day is difficult, you can submit an absentee ballot instead.
Without verifiable citizen locations, how could this automation be trusted?
Voter locations are determined based upon their legal residence. Basing it on anything more detailed is going to be both expensive and intrusive.
This is completely orthogonal to
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My understanding is that census data is used, and that's not going to change sampling frequency any time soon.
You can thank the corporate Dems for this too (Score:3, Insightful)
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they went along with the Gerrymandering because the R's carved out some safe districts for them
Indeed . . . and in blue states, the roles are reversed and Democrats directly gerrymander just as vigorously. E.g., deep blue Maryland's horribly gerrymandered map is on the Supreme Court's docket for this term [washingtonpost.com].
Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Tu quoque.
2. The Democrats are late to the party and as such the Republicans have benefited significantly more from the practice: https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
3. But yes, gerrymandering is terrible and should be banned. Redistricting should be an entirely apolitical process.
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Late to the party? How far back do you think the issue of gerrymandering goes?
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And what about the Precincts with Armed Black Panthers "Protecting" the voters. Police providing security in high crime areas is not racist.
Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too (Score:4, Insightful)
After the 2000 census, the R's went along with the D's gerrymandering in CA as is gave most the existing members safe seats...but they became a even smaller minority because of it.
Dem's only think something is unfair when the R's use there own game against them.
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Armed police outside of voting places? Sounds like a good idea to me. Feel free to have your own poll watchers with cameras to watch the cops. Police are representatives of the government entrusted with enforcing the laws, and criminal activity (you know, the black panthers with clubs roaming outside of other polling places) tends to flee in the face of the police. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I want lot's of armed police who have just attended a seminar on the laws around polling places as well as
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I know in the last two presidential elections there were armed police stationed outside predominately black precincts...
It's a lot less scary and ominous when you say what they were most likely there for, which was to direct traffic. We had "armed police" outside my polling station, and I live in a district that has $500k new construction going up.
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Could be worse. They could have been mall cops.
Automate it (Score:2)
I'm sure it more complex than x number of people per district but it seems like there could be some formula and consistency across all states or at least for each state.
That said, I can see some easy troubles with this since states have difference population structures (and vastly different geographic sizes.)
Re:Automate it (Score:5, Informative)
It's difficult to do. The gerrymandered districts will have a similar number of people in them, but that's not the problem. Imagine you have 10,000 people voting for teams A and B, with a 50:50 split. It's possible to arrange 10 districts where each one will have 500 A voters and 500 B voters, but it's also possible to have 8 districts with 600 A voters and 400 B voters and two districts with 100 A voters and 900 B voters. In the first configuration, you'll end up with some tough campaigns and probably average 5 A seats and 5 B seats. In the second, you'll always have 8 A seats and 2 B seats. That's the essence of gerrymandering: you distribute your voters to maximise the number of seats.
You can automate creating constituencies with even numbers, but that's also biased. The real solution is to move away from single-representative constituencies and closer to an electoral system where every vote counts.
Look at Wisconsin (Score:5, Informative)
From this: https://www.brennancenter.org/... [brennancenter.org]
"At a statewide level, Wisconsin is a quintessential battleground where races are often decided by only a few percentage points. Contrast that to the state assembly map the Republicans drew: In 2012, they won 60 of the 99 seats in the Wisconsin Assembly despite winning only 48.6% of the two-party state-wide vote; in 2014, they won 63 seats with only 52% of the state-wide vote."
Don't get me wrong, this is not a partisan issue as both sides have historically tried to use gerrymandering to influence elections, it is just that lately the Republicans have been particularly aggressive and good at it.
Headline (Score:2)
Plenty for nerds here (Score:5, Interesting)
But majority-minority districts are just fine?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember back when Democrats were happily using racist assumptions that blacks could only get elected from majority-black districts, which they were all too happy to gerrymander into existence?
The current Republican antics are a direct result of those racist efforts...and redrawing the districts will almost certainly dilute those majority-minority districts (again, which are racist constructs in the first place). And lots of folks will not be happy at all about districts drawn by "colorblind" algorithms that are simply trying to map equal numbers of people into right-sized districts, so the algorithms will have to be made "fair". Good luck with that.
The Atlantic (2013)
Acting under the legal strength and moral authority of the Voting Rights Act, the Democrats led the charge to draw so-called "majority-minority districts" -- ones packed so full of minority voters that they usually resulted in electing a minority representative, as intended. The number of minority representatives jumped exponentially from the 1960s through the 1980s, with the number of black House members increasing from five to 24 by 1989.
But just in time for the redistricting in 1990, some enterprising Republicans began noticing a rather curious fact: The drawing of majority-minority districts not only elected more minorities, it also had the effect of bleeding minority voters out of all the surrounding districts. Given that minority voters were the most reliably Democratic voters, that made all of the neighboring districts more Republican. The black, Latino, and Asian representatives mostly were replacing white Democrats, and the increase in minority representation was coming at the expense of electing fewer Democrats. The Democrats had been tripped up by a classic Catch-22, as had minority voters: Even as legislatures were becoming more diverse, they were ironically becoming less friendly to the agenda of racial minorities.
Newt Gingrich embraced this strategy of drawing majority-minority districts for GOP advantage, as did the Bush Administration Justice Department prior to the 1991 redistricting, even as GOP activists like now-Chief Justice John Roberts campaigned against the VRA because they opposed any race-based remedies. The tipping point was the 1994 midterm elections, when the GOP captured the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 35 years and Gingrich because speaker. Many experts on both the left and the right, from The Nation's Ari Berman and prominent GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsberg (who spearheaded the 1991 effort to maximize the number of majority-minority districts), attribute the Republican success that year to the drawing of majority-minority districts; indeed, African-American membership in the House reached its highest level ever, at 40.
VRA districts undoubtedly played a role in the GOP takeover, but they were not the only factor, since Republicans made big gains that year in lots of places outside the South. But in the hardscrabble battles of the 50-50 nation, any advantage at all was embraced, and prominent Republicans like Ginsberg and Gingrich became the loudest proponents of drawing majority-minority districts.
People live near people with similar ideas (Score:3)
Washington Post article on gerrymandering in California...
"California just proved how cracking down on gerrymandering isn’t all it’s cracked up to be"
For the fourth time in 12 years, not a single one of the state's 50-plus congressional districts switched parties. Just as in 2010, 2008 and 2004, every single seat returned to the party that previously controlled it.
And if you exclude the post-redistricting election of 2012, only two California districts have flipped parties since 2004. That's two out of 314 individual races — 0.6 percent. (And one of the two was a fluke in which the GOP briefly held a blue-leaning seat thanks to two Republicans advancing to the general election in 2012.)
So why do we bring this up now? Well, partly because it wasn't necessarily supposed to be this way again. Before the last round of redistricting, Californians voted for a redistricting commission to take the process out of lawmakers' hands.
But in the end, California might be Exhibit A in the limits of redistricting reform's impact on competition. The state's population is very segmented, and drawing competitive districts isn't easy given the self-sorting that people have done.
California's districts were actually drawn irrespective of competitiveness and partisanship. The commission decided not to even look at such data when drawing its districts, preferring to focus on what it called "communities of interest" and other demographics.
Paul Mitchell, a Democratic redistricting expert based in California, said that means the results since then are no real surprise. “When you draw lines to keep communities of interest together, you wind up creating districts that, by proxy, are partisan — as partisan as if you drew them with party labels — because you’re drawing them with values that are definitive of partisan labels themselves," Mitchell said.
And that's real the takeaway here. Gerrymandering is increasingly viewed as a political ill that must be dealt with. And there is generally considerable public support for redistricting reforms whenever they are on the ballot. But given our increasing tendency to live around people with whom we share a worldview, creating competitive districts often requires its own brand of gerrymandering that doesn't jibe with grouping people who share things in common.
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Gerrymandering has been done forever by both parties. Don't be a partisan hack.
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I don't think anyone has much faith in the strength of political ideas. People don't even vote for "their party" here, they blindly vote against the "other guy's party". They rarely vote for the actual ideals & feasibility of the candidates nor hold them accountable. If it was the other way around, there would be more parties than just the three. The fact we lump "other" into "Independent" shows how messed up it is.
I think the US has a great political system when compared to other Democracies but in
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I think the US has a great political system when compared to other Democracies but in this area, we are far behind. In many other systems, the gridlock we see would result in government disbandment and re-elections! That rarely happens because those parties figure out how to compromise and work things out.
The US is a lot more diverse than those you are comparing to. As those other countries become more diverse with ideas and people the more cracks we see. Elections are messy affairs. If there are problems, I don't think the answer should default to 're-election' as it seems so common in Europe. There is nothing stopping a state from adopting some solution for their elections (for the most part). Lead by example and risk your political power.
Re:Gerrymandering? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's how gerrymandering works. You don't create districts for your own party to win, you create single safe districts for the other party to win to "contain" the opposition votes in one district so they don't affect the others.
For example, the most common type of gerrymandering in North Carolina is to put all the black voters into one district. By sacrificing that one district, you improve your chances in the five surrounding districts. This is from the article you cited:
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The solution is the hard part. Courts are now tasked with finding some principle of law that states can use going forward to figure out what is allowed and not allowed. Up until now gerrymandering on political grounds has survived. Only race has really been made off limits by the courts.
Just doing the opposite... ie making districts that have even numbers of partisan inclined voters doesn't sound like a great solution either. You could very well have gerrymandered looking spaghetti districts as a result
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Not really. The most common proposal is using independent or non-partisan commissions for re-redistricting, which is done in several states including Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, and Washington.
You could say, "how do we know if a commission is non-partisan?" and the answer would be "by their results". If the courts see these tortured-looking districts again, they can be thrown out, just like the North Carolina ones were.
Re: Gerrymandering? (Score:2)
Unless discrimination for or against partisan affiliation is disallowed as a consideration the same way race is disallowed then we aren't really making much progress.
I don't trust an "Independent" unnaccountable whatever to be some committee of angels.
Yes, the results matter but also we shouldn't be gerrymandering simply to seek the most number of competitive races either... Some districts are going to not be competitive because people with similar political leanings choose to live near one another... The g
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That's how gerrymandering works. You don't create districts for your own party to win, you create single safe districts for the other party to win to "contain" the opposition votes in one district so they don't affect the others.
For example, the most common type of gerrymandering in North Carolina is to put all the black voters into one district. By sacrificing that one district, you improve your chances in the five surrounding districts. This is from the article you cited:
Oh dear. You accidentally left out Maryland when you quoted him.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
> For example, the most common type of gerrymandering in North Carolina is to put all the black voters into one district.
But that's called a majority-minority district and is actually encouraged by some legislation or policy. The idea was to increase the number of black and other minority representatives in Congress and that was done by combining all the voters into districts.
The alternatives would be to slice up the black vote so it i always a tiny minority in white districts. You then lose the black
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Democrats won in nine of the 10 most-gerrymandered districts. But eight out of 10 of those districts were drawn by Republicans. [washingtonpost.com] Both parties love to create districts - or agree to create districts - that guarantee safe seats. And when the fact is that "Maryland and North Carolina are essentially tied for the honor of most-gerrymandered state." but only North Carolina - a GOP State - is mentioned but Maryland - a Democrat State - is not, it's pretty clear that /. is also pretty gerrymandered...
Well Maryland is mentioned in the Wapo article you linked to so you must be complaining about the Slashdot summary which is about North Carolina's congressional map being ruled unconstitutionally gerrymandered so I'm not particularly surprised that Maryland is not mentioned since it is not a party to that lawsuit (Fun fact: The article the Slashdot summary links to actually mentions Maryland and the republican's complaints about that state's election map). Complaining that Maryland is not mentioned in the s
Packing and cracking (Score:5, Insightful)
Democrats won in nine of the 10 most-gerrymandered districts. But eight out of 10 of those districts were drawn by Republicans.
That's because of a tactic called "packing" whereby you try to concentrate the opposition into the fewest districts possible. The other major tactic is "cracking" which dilutes the voting power of the opposition across multiple districts. So it wouldn't be shocking at all to find a highly gerrymandered district drawn by the losing party. They do that so that they can win more seats elsewhere.
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Are you saying that the same federal judges also just found Maryland to be in violation, and ordered them to redistrict too? Or..
Oh, I get it. You're saying /. is biased toward reporting what the court ruled on, instead of reporting on wha
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Slashdot gerrymandered? Are you insane? It's basically reposting a news article.
The court case involved recent actions by the state of North Carolina. So yeah, Slashdot is talking specifically about North Carolina. Relax that persecution complex a bit, chief.
If you live in Maryland and believe you are affected by unjust gerrymandering, you can pursue a case against the state. In fact, this decision may have set the precedent that allows you to win.
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If you live in Maryland and believe you are affected by unjust gerrymandering, you can pursue a case against the state.
It's already been done, and is currently on the Supreme Court docket for this term [washingtonpost.com].
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That is because the federal judiciary is biased against conservatives and Republicans, and for liberals and Democrats. It's why Trump and Bush and Reagan were always challenged while Clinton and Obama got away with whatever they wanted.
They allow Ds to get away with this bullshit practice, but spank the Rs.
Just spitballing here but maybe the R's tend to try shit that is truly unconstitutional more often than the D's so get themselves slapped down more often.
This matters (Score:2)
And this doesn't.
What color is the sky on your planet where gerrymandering doesn't matter?
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Not on a technical nerd news site it doesn't.
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Since the Republicans have gotten very good at Gerrymandering through the use of Big Data and computer mapping I think maybe it does belong on a site for nerds.
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i never understood this crybaby complaint. "wahhhh but the other guys probably do it too". so fucking what. you should still be against gerrymandering if you have any tiny shred of moral decency. instead you just want to cry like a baby and hope you can get away with it next time.
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Regardless of the supposed intent, a legal precedent applies across the board. If gerrymandering is upheld as unconstitutional (I'm assuming there will be appeals), then both parties can rely on that precedent in court.
If you care about true representation of the people's will, then you very much want this decision to go to the Supreme Court and be upheld there. That way, it will be binding across the entire country.
This could be a hugely important case.
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If you're able to find a quote where someone says that, then we can eviscerate their claim. I bet you can't find one, though.
Unless.. hey, are you taking the position that gerrymandering in those states is a good idea, as some kind of Devil's advocate thing, since no one else has taken it? Like, you're volunteering to be a strawman? Dude, go for it, but I can't guarantee you'll have a fun argument. OTOH that strawman would be so hilariously unrealistic, that maybe you're looking for abuse [youtube.com].
Anyway, one nice
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It was a three-judge panel. Wynn just wrote the opinion.
Re:Unprecedented (Score:4, Insightful)
The individual right to equal representation is the primary concern. If a state attempts to suppress the political will of its people, its justification for state powers vanishes.
It's sad that the federal government needs to address this at all. There are both red and blue gerrymanders out there, and they are both morally wrong.