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would you like to see your state outlaw gerrymandering?

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bongsaway

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Some of the districts look like they belong in a rorschach test.

I think all gerrymandering should be outlawed and judges draw up the districts.

Your thoughts.
 
bongsaway said:
Some of the districts look like they belong in a rorschach test.

I think all gerrymandering should be outlawed and judges draw up the districts.

Your thoughts.
Click to expand...
Nope, not unless it's banned nationwide. No such thing as unilateral disarmament on this one.
 
To beneficial to be eliminated.
 
I'd like to see gerrymandering go.

The difficulty is that it's hard to get people to agree on what gerrymandering actually is. Yes, it's drawing district lines with the purpose of ensuring political outcomes, but some people think there ought to be exceptions.

For instance, there is a case in Georgia (if I recall correctly) in which the legislature got rid of an extremely bizarre district layout because it was clearly illogical. However, there were lawsuits against the change because the shape of the district more or less guaranteed a black representative, so some folks saw it as a grave injustice to get rid of it.

Now I don't necessarily think that the intentions of the Georgia legislature were pristine in trying to change the district lines. But I also think it's highly questionable to have tortured district lines for the purpose of making sure that the representative is of one race or another.

I agree with the suggestion above that redistricting should be taken out of the hands of politicians. Have it done by judges, perhaps, or by bipartisan citizen committees. I also think that there should be some federal rules and standards that require clear justification if district lines are not simply drawn to achieve districts of roughly equal population and sensible shapes. (Strange as it may sound, there could be rules about the ratio of the total border lengths and the surface area of the district).
 
bongsaway said:
Some of the districts look like they belong in a rorschach test.

I think all gerrymandering should be outlawed and judges draw up the districts.

Your thoughts.
Click to expand...

I would like Texas to reduce gerrymandering, but more folks would like to see other states do so. I don’t favor having judges do the redistricting, but would favor a law that prohibits a congressional district from having parts of more then one county in it. Naturally, a district could contain more than one entire county.

My district (TX 35) contains parts of 5 counties, but no entire county, and parts of two cities about 80 miles apart.

en.wikipedia.org

Texas's 35th congressional district - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Yes. I want to see it outlawed in every state.
 
Yes, although a more effective fix would be multi member districts, and getting rid of a FPTP electoral system.
 
The problem with outlawing gerrymandering is the same with many laws: define gerrymandering, and then put up a better plan than the current "voter maps drawn by humans."
 
No. My state DID outlaw Gerrymandering, but we should keep it until the other side also has to get rid of it. I'm in favor of getting rid of it for everyone but not for just one side.
 
Metric Mouse said:
The problem with outlawing gerrymandering is the same with many laws: define gerrymandering, and then put up a better plan than the current "voter maps drawn by humans."
Click to expand...
Ok here's the definition in an example. The state of Denial (our fifty first state) has fifty six votes for the dems and forty four for the gop, with normal voting that gives the dems six districts to the gop's four. Move the borders around and with the same amount of votes meaning the gop still only gets the same number of votes, less than the dems, but because of gerrymandering the gop now gets six districts and the dems get four even though the democrats got way more votes than the gop.
 
bongsaway said:
Ok here's the definition in an example. The state of Denial (our fifty first state) has fifty six votes for the dems and forty four for the gop, with normal voting that gives the dems six districts to the gop's four. Move the borders around and with the same amount of votes meaning the gop still only gets the same number of votes, less than the dems, but because of gerrymandering the gop now gets six districts and the dems get four even though the democrats got way more votes than the gop.
Click to expand...
So you are for eliminating borders, and using total votes for a... state? to decide which representatives are elected and then assigning representatives based on... what?

The problem with the plan is that people are not equally distributed in nice square chunks across areas. And if voters of one group congregate tightly into small geographic locations and voters of another group disperse themselves widely, the first group risks losing total number of representatives at a state level. And on some level that makes sense, as people in different geographic locations very likely have different concerns.
 
Metric Mouse said:
So you are for eliminating borders, and using total votes for a... state? to decide which representatives are elected and then assigning representatives based on... what?

The problem with the plan is that people are not equally distributed in nice square chunks across areas. And if voters of one group congregate tightly into small geographic locations and voters of another group disperse themselves widely, the first group risks losing total number of representatives at a state level. And on some level that makes sense, as people in different geographic locations very likely have different concerns.
Click to expand...
WTF is it with folks who try to put words into my mouth I didn't say? Point out where I said I am for eliminating borders. I also said in another post, winner takes all states negate the votes of many people and what's worse, give them to a person they did not vote for.

My problem with presidential voting, there are too many twists and turns where your vote can be canceled and be given to the person you did not vote for. Our presidential elections should be like all our others, one person, one vote.
 
bongsaway said:
Ok here's the definition in an example. The state of Denial (our fifty first state) has fifty six votes for the dems and forty four for the gop, with normal voting that gives the dems six districts to the gop's four. Move the borders around and with the same amount of votes meaning the gop still only gets the same number of votes, less than the dems, but because of gerrymandering the gop now gets six districts and the dems get four even though the democrats got way more votes than the gop.
Click to expand...

Nope, because that assumes an even geographic distribution of demorat and republicant voters and totally ignores the (often) larger group of independent voters. What happens in reality is that densely populated urban areas vote extremely heavily democrat and thus win their districts by larger margins than republicants win their more suburban and rural districts. Using our first past the post system, there is no difference between winning a district by 1% or by 99% - the single legislative seat still goes to the candidate with the most votes.
 
bongsaway said:
WTF is it with folks who try to put words into my mouth I didn't say? Point out where I said I am for eliminating borders. I also said in another post, winner takes all states negate the votes of many people and what's worse, give them to a person they did not vote for.

My problem with presidential voting, there are too many twists and turns where your vote can be canceled and be given to the person you did not vote for. Our presidential elections should be like all our others, one person, one vote.
Click to expand...

The EC has nothing to do with gerrymandering. You are simply upset because ‘excess’ votes in big (more populous) blue states (like CA) do not cancel out votes in smaller (less populous) red states (like WY). BTW, that is advocating for getting rid of state borders (the basis for the EC system) and allowing ‘excess’ votes in one state to impact the votes in (potentially multiple) other states.
 
bongsaway said:
WTF is it with folks who try to put words into my mouth I didn't say? Point out where I said I am for eliminating borders. I also said in another post, winner takes all states negate the votes of many people and what's worse, give them to a person they did not vote for.

My problem with presidential voting, there are too many twists and turns where your vote can be canceled and be given to the person you did not vote for. Our presidential elections should be like all our others, one person, one vote.
Click to expand...
We're not talking about presidential voting, which can't be gerrymandered, we're talking about gerrymandering. Like, you literally said that moving borders results in gerrymandering, so the only option is to eliminate them. You don't even keep up with your own argument.

Presidential elections are already one person, one vote.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
The EC has nothing to do with gerrymandering. You are simply upset because ‘excess’ votes in big (more populous) blue states (like CA) do not cancel out votes in smaller (less populous) red states (like WY). BTW, that is advocating for getting rid of state borders (the basis for the EC system) and allowing ‘excess’ votes in one state to impact the votes in (potentially multiple) other states.
Click to expand...
That is total horsecrap and the EC does indeed affect gerrymandering. I'm not upset at all thank you and what about populous states like florida and texas? Do their red votes cancel out the smaller less populated blue states. I posted in another thread how by moving around the borders of a district you can turn a loss in the popular vote into a win as far as electors. What was once a six to four advantage can just by moving the borders of a district turn that around completely giving the red voters a six to four advantage even though they lost the popular vote in that district.
 
Metric Mouse said:
We're not talking about presidential voting, which can't be gerrymandered, we're talking about gerrymandering. Like, you literally said that moving borders results in gerrymandering, so the only option is to eliminate them. You don't even keep up with your own argument.

Presidential elections are already one person, one vote.
Click to expand...
The question was would you like to see your state outlaw gerrymandering? The presidential comment was a different thought.

The electoral college decides who wins, not the popular vote. If you vote for a red candidate and the blue candidate wins with a fifty one to forty nine vote, that forty nine percent of red voters just lost their vote and again to make matters worse, in losing your vote, it went to the opponent.
 
bongsaway said:
The question was would you like to see your state outlaw gerrymandering? The presidential comment was a different thought.

The electoral college decides who wins, not the popular vote. If you vote for a red candidate and the blue candidate wins with a fifty one to forty nine vote, that forty nine percent of red voters just lost their vote and again to make matters worse, in losing your vote, it went to the opponent.
Click to expand...
I'm all for proportional representation. Would be great. But that's separate from the question of how to stop gerrymandering in states, since districts must have borders and therefore they will be gerrymandered.
 
Yes. And not just at the state level. Gerrymandering should be illegal nationwide.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
I would like Texas to reduce gerrymandering, but more folks would like to see other states do so. I don’t favor having judges do the redistricting, but would favor a law that prohibits a congressional district from having parts of more then one county in it. Naturally, a district could contain more than one entire county.

My district (TX 35) contains parts of 5 counties, but no entire county, and parts of two cities about 80 miles apart.

en.wikipedia.org

Texas's 35th congressional district - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
Click to expand...
My district - TX 11 is in the hands of a traitor
 
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