Wisconsin is a very good example of how gerrymandering hurts out democracy!

[veritas1]

What does gerrymandering have to do with a governor's election?

Nothing. I didn't say it did. I was commenting on the rarity of any Republican winning that office here. We do have 7 Democrats out of 8 House Representatives. The GOP would probably have at least one more without gerrymandering, maybe two.

 

[JasperL]

There are computer generated/drawn districts that would work better their could also be state-wide at-large seats so that there are no districts to gerrymander.

Just wanted to mention that state-wide seats pose their own problem. Our GOP-controlled county commission did that a while back - converted two seats to county-wide seats because county-wide we are solid red. The problem with that is they eliminated two safely Democratic seats, including one seat that represents the largely black area of the county, and redrew the lines to incorporate the rural and red areas outside those districts.

 

[Fruityfact]

The issue is not who does it, but that it is done, and what can be done about it. Historically, and recently, both parties have engaged in gerrymandering. Pointing fingers gets us nowhere, and just causes the kind of tribalism that will prevent anything from actually being done to combat it. You will get people who will point out "dems do it too" and avoid actually discussing the actual issue. If we want to get rid of gerrymandering(and I know it is an important issue to me), then we need to court conservatives and republicans to our side on the issue, not insult them.

Courting conservatives has not and will not work: their party is quite literally reliant on Gerrymandering(GM) to have power in congress. That's why given the choice they will never get rid of it. Think NC where they were order to change the districts and then did not. The only way to get rid of GM is unforunately to GM the hell out of Republicans in 2020, then bipartisianly remove it. You're naive to think they would ever remove it if there is no benefit for their party.

 

[Lutherf]

Wisconsin is a small state In the election of 2018 the Democratic candidates got about 190,000 more votes than the GOP candidates for the state Assembly. The Dems got 55% of the vote total and yet they got only 37% of the Assembly seats or 36 out of the 99 seats. This is due to the gerrymandering done by the GOP after the 2010 census. It shows why the idea of one man one vote is a joke. In a gerrymandered state the party in power votes count much more than the party out of power. This is anti-democracy and I am sure there are states now or in the past where the Dems have done the same thing. People in both parties should insure that this does not happen again in any state at any time. We should insure that it is easy for every citizen to register and vote and have their vote count as much as the next person in both national and state elections. The idea of suppressing voters so your party can win an election should horrify every real American. You can not make an argument that says that kind of voter suppression is good for our country and our democracy.

Let me ask you a question.
Let's say you have 5 legislative districts each representing 100,000 citizens and each district is split 50/50 between Democrats and Republicans. In one district party A gets 75% turnout while party B only gets 55%. In all other districts the vote is split closely between parties but leans slightly to party B. The result is that in the highly divided district party A wins by a large margin while in all the other districts party B pulls out a close win and, ultimately, wins the election. Does that, to your thinking, indicate gerrymandering?

 

[BrainNebula]

Wisconsin is a small state In the election of 2018 the Democratic candidates got about 190,000 more votes than the GOP candidates for the state Assembly. The Dems got 55% of the vote total and yet they got only 37% of the Assembly seats or 36 out of the 99 seats. This is due to the gerrymandering done by the GOP after the 2010 census. It shows why the idea of one man one vote is a joke. In a gerrymandered state the party in power votes count much more than the party out of power. This is anti-democracy and I am sure there are states now or in the past where the Dems have done the same thing. People in both parties should insure that this does not happen again in any state at any time. We should insure that it is easy for every citizen to register and vote and have their vote count as much as the next person in both national and state elections. The idea of suppressing voters so your party can win an election should horrify every real American. You can not make an argument that says that kind of voter suppression is good for our country and our democracy.

1) Wisconsin is not a small state. It is 18th in terms of Electoral Votes.

2) The discrepancy is not due to gerrymandering, it mostly has to do with whether candidates are opposed or not. By my count, there were something like 26 Democrats who ran unopposed compared to 6 Republicans. That has a huge impact on the final vote. If Republicans had challenged Democrats in these areas, they probably wouldn't have won, but they would have massively increased their total vote.

Please stop with this nonsense.