- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
You must log in or register to comment.
Illegality is slowly being erased in america
Most sane countries leave electoral boundaries to an independent commission
deleted by creator
I will never understand how the highest number of votes isn’t winning. Bucha cheatin ass bitches
Number 2 is the actual ideal, not number 1. Number 1 represents, “good,” gerrymandering that politicians argue for, but it really only serves them. They get to keep highly partisan electorate that will reelect them no matter what, which means they can be less responsive to the will of their voters. They only have to worry about primary challengers, which aren’t very common, and can mostly ignore their electorate without issue.
It’s also important to note that this diagram is an oversimplification that can’t express the nuances of an actual electorate. While a red and blue binary might be helpful for this example, a plurality of voters identify as independents, and while most of them have preferences towards the right or left, they are movable. The point is that actual voters are more nuanced and less static than this representation.
Number 2 is how distracting would work in an ideal world; it doesn’t take into account political alignment at all, but instead just groups people together by proximity. A red victory is unlikely, but still possible if the blue candidate doesn’t deliver for his constituents and winds up with low voter turnout. It also steers politicians away from partisan extremism, as they may need to appeal to a non-partisan plurality. That being said, when literal fascists are attempting number 3, we’ll have to respond in kind if we want any chance of maintaining our democracy, but in the long term, the solution is no gerrymandering, not, “perfect representation,” gerrymandering.
It’s almost like the idea that representation based on land instead of based on people is flawed to begin with.
Not sure what you mean, get rid of districts? If you break up the population into groups then you get a geographic area.
y u no direct democracy?
Yes. Representation should be proportional. In other systems of democracy, you vote a party and if that party wins 25% of the vote, then they win 25% of the representatives. Gerrymandering works because it’s based on land being more important to representation than people.
I think you could move somewhat towards having both. Let them gerrymander as much as they want, but at the end you also appoint additional districtless seats nominated by the winners, proportional to the number of votes they won by.
We were never going to do representation by population. We barely got the southern colonies to agree to apportionment with land. (This was the 3/5ths compromise.)
Where do we draw the line?
The United States is not a nation anymore. It’s a corporation. It’s also 100% corrupt. When will people come to terms with this? As long as most people are in denial of this, it will always be so.
Fun fact, the term for running a nation like a corporation is fascism.
Well it’s already been this way for like 20 years almost. It’s been forming for many decades, but it’s a done deal.
You guys are entering the late decadence phase as already experienced in the Roman Empire
Not exactly, but similar. The dynamics of the haves and have-nots are different because of the sheer numbers. But we are at a point where if just a certain amount more of the wealth is shifted to the oligarchs, then the entire system will collapse.
I’ve already gotten a three day ban on Reddit for making certain statements, so I’ll just state my opinion that the only way to stop this is to mortify a few billionaires. But aside from that, the problem is apathy, complacency, and lack of unity. This is why they came up with all the petty divisive “issues” which are really not issues. This is why the Orange Feces-Man did that whole mask thing. Because if people were united and everyone felt they were on the same side, there would be rebellion - nay, revolution. It’s happened in the past many, many, many times around the world through history. But I don’t think they ever had the sheer magnitude of distractions that we have today. Bread and Circuses vs Streaming, social media, entertainment more than all the humans of the earth could collectively consume. THAT, the Romans did not have at their disposal to weaponize.
Anything to undermine democracy
That’s what happens when a convicted felon and an unregistered sex offender is made President
I’ve said it many times, the US is a model example of what not to do in so so many different ways.
k
l
m
n
o
pea (protein)
This is kinda if topic, but why does the US have term limits for the presidency, but not all the other major positions?
They focussed more on term length
- House: two years for frequent turnover, voice of the people
- Senate: 6 years for stability, maturity
- judges: lifetime, for independence from who appointed them and from politics of the day
While these don’t seem to be working right, anyone proposing changes needs to understand what they were trying to do and not make it worse trying to fix another aspect
In the original Constitution, there are no limits for any of them. George Washington made it a tradition not to seek a third term, but it wasn’t actually enshrined into law until ~150 years later.
It was invented because FDR was so popular that without that rule, his bones would probably still be president to this day.
Fun fact: the bones of any president would be a better leader than our current president.
It was added for the president with Roosevelt. Likely because the president has much more power than a single congressman.
Some of these are absolutely insane
Ah, the minority locator.
That first one is no longer like that, but according to Wikipedia was done by the Democrats.
It’s a complex issue as well, because it’s not always done for nefarious reasons. If say 20% of a city is black, they might bundle them up so that they end up with one black guy and four white guys running the city, rather than the 5 white guys that would come from a “fairer” distribution.
But it’s all just window dressing on the fact that first past the post systems aren’t fit for purpose. If I vote for something, I want that counted at all levels up to the national level, not just thrown away because my particular group of streets doesn’t like it.
They are so insane they inspired art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU8H-Ts_rfA
I request all districts are now Penrose tiled using the Einstein hat!
🎵how insane can you go?🎶
While I do agree, the difficulty is plausible deniability. If you want people with something in common to have a voice, perhaps a suburban ring around an urban core is a fair choice that looks like one of these.
I’m sure it’s not, but that could happen and whatever rule should allow that possibility. This is why it’s not easy to set a clear rule or a clear determination. Now it’s case by case and up to the judicial branch.
Perhaps setting a speed limit would go a long way - you can only redistrict on certain large changes such as the census every ten years and it can’t go into effect without judicial review, without all the appeals being exhausted. In this case Texas doesnt seem to have a legitimate reason to redistrict, and was it Georgia last year trying to argue that they had to use the new map for an election despite it being likely illegal
We need more 1 and 3, and less 2 4 5.
If the enemy has nukes, don’t unilaterally disarm. Same here.
What the fuck does this even mean
It means if democrats don’t gerrymander more, the house permanently in favor of republicans. Wont matter if you win like 60%, you still get a minority if seats.
Idk why people are downvoting, but I guess liberals love “playing by the rules”. Lol “when they go low, you go high” is why traitors have control of the country right now. But anyways, libs being libs 🤷♂️
Good example of why the US is so gerrymandered. People aren’t against gerrymandering, just against the other side doing it
As an outsider that seems to be the gist of what’s going on in the US, no one’s really against the bad things (corruption, guns, intolerance, etc), they just want to win at it.
Biggest egos in the world!
People are downvoting because your solution to oppressing democracy is doubling down on it.
And your take is that “libs love playing by the rules” when someone says that this rule should be abolished? Lol
How do you even get in power to make gerrymandering illegal if this is what happens if you try “playing by the rules”.
This is a state legislature, but imagine, for the national legislature, if every republican state does gerrymandering to the maximum, while every democratic state draws fair borders, what do you think happens if the democrats win 55% of the popular vote nation wide? They will get less than 40% of the seats, just like with the Wisconsin’s state legislature. How the fuck do you abolish gerrymandering if you keep playing by these rules? Because you will never win a majority in government.
You have to use dirty tactics yourself, in order to even win enough seats to then pass the law that will outlaw gerrymandering.
Did you think nazis went away because we were nice to them? No, the allies shot and killed the nazis.
Yes. There should be no gerrymandering. However, you can’t have one party unilaterally disarm while the other one keeps doing it.
“But we are using gerrymandering for good, we will abolish it once we get power, honest!”
lol
playing by the rules only makes sense when the other side does too… a level playing field is more important than some unspoken rules
yes, everyone agrees it should be impossible to gerrymander… but given that it’s not, for an election to be anywhere near “fair” (and to be clear it can’t when you’re gerrymandering) then both sides must do it otherwise it’s the most unfair thing possible
(disclaimer: aussie; this ain’t my country, and our electoral system doesn’t allow this… but for absolute fucks sake yall your vote effects the entire world and we get no say at all, so all we can do is talk some sense into this crazy bullshit)
We can still hope the playing field will tilt back to level. Four years from now there will be no evil orange overlord to pardon all his minions and groupies. They’ll have to face justice with no way to cheat it.
That hope is what keeps me going. If the Trump kids are fine profiting off their fathers position and to the detriment of the country, I hope to see the day where it all comes crashing down when they’re no longer above the law
We can still hope the playing field will tilt back to level.
they’ve been doing this for years… it ain’t gonna happen. it’s not a symptom of trump: texas used to be a muuuuch more purple state, but these days it’s only ever thought of as a republican stronghold not because of their vote, but because of gerrymandering… that’s how long it’s been going on. most people can’t even remember a time when it was any different
Hmm? All of these look pretty fucked up to me
what?
This one is better because turnout matters and gives representative elections.
Why even have the system with districts? Just calculate all the votes and see who wins? If you live in a place where most people vote x, why even bother to vote y. Your vote will go straight in the bin.
just one of the many reasons you see such consistent low turnouts in american elections
The idea was that you get direct representation - your representative should be focused on your issues and the issues plaguing people in your district. But it breaks down today because politicians in the US just vote with their party.
The American political system was designed for weak parties, and geographical representation above all, in a political climate where there were significant cultural differences between regions.
The last time we updated the core rules around districting (435 seats divided as closely to proportionally as possible among the states, with all states being guaranteed at least one seat, in single member districts) was in 1929, when we had a relatively weak federal government, very weak political parties, before the rise of broadcasting (much less national broadcasting, or national television, or cable TV networks, or universal phone service, or internet, or social media). We had 48 states. The population was about 120 million, and a substantial number of citizens didn’t actually speak English at home.
And so it was the vote for the person that was the norm. Plenty of people could and did “switch parties” to vote for the candidate they liked most. Parties couldn’t expel politicians they didn’t like, so most political issues weren’t actually staked out by party line.
But now, we have national parties where even local school governance issues look to the national parties for guidance. And now the parties are strong, where an elected representative is basically powerless to resist even their own party’s agenda. And a bunch of subjects that weren’t partisan have become partisan. All while affiliations with other categories have weakened: fewer ethnic or religious enclaves, less self identity with place of birth, more cultural homogenization between regions, etc.
So it makes sense to switch to a party-based system, with multi member districts and multiple parties. But that isn’t what we have now, and neither side wants to give up the resources and infrastructure they’ve set up to give themselves an advantage in the current system.
Another thing was that in the past it wasn’t actually possible to properly coordinate parties. Communications technology just wasn’t there. I’m sure every congressman had a high-tech “telephone” in their house, but they weren’t always home, and there certainly weren’t answering machines.
More importantly, mass media wasn’t there either. People knew their reps from local town halls and canvassing. They weren’t bombarded with mass media featuring the president or the party leader. Sure, they’d show up in newspapers, but not audio/video. So, that meant that congressional reps had a lot more “fame” in their districts, and the leaders had a lot less. So, that gave the reps more independence.
Money also was less of a factor. It’s always been a problem with US democracy, but national parties didn’t have a stranglehold over their members because of money like they do today.
Mainly because these jerryrigged districts are counting on you not voting in order for them to work.
Ideally, your Reps are supposed to be local, so states are supposed to be divided up into relatively equal populations where the citizens have similar economic and social demographics so they get equitable representation of their local issues at a federal level.
Personally, I think we need a law where voting districts are limited by complexity. Create a law that establishes a maximum perimeter-to-area ratio for congressional districts, and also mandates that the most and least populous districts must be within 10% of eachother’s population.
Mandelbrot has entered the chat
i did a big ol post here about this
generally what you’re talking about is proportional representation… systems like this tend to lead to a government comprised of a lot of minor parties, which sounds great!
but it has its down sides (and i’m not saying 2 party is much better, but it’s useful to be aware of the situations it creates): when there are a lot of minor parties with no clear “above 50%” majority, they have to form a coalition government and that can be extremely fragile
you can’t hold parties to election promises, because you just don’t know what they’re going to have to give up to form a coalition, and even if they do end up forming a coalition you really don’t know how stable that coalition is going to be!
i guess in the US there’s gridlock anyway, so what the hell right? may as well at least have gridlock with parties blocking legislation based on things you believe in… buuuuuuut that’s probably a bad example: first past the post is far more to blame in that case than proportional vs representative democracy
(fptp leads to extremism, ranked choice etc leads to moderation because people’s 2nd, 3rd, etc choice matters: you want to be likeable not just to your “base” but to everyone, because everyone’s vote has a chance of flowing through to you even if you’re not their first choice… if people hate you, you’re not going to get those preference votes when candidates get eliminated)
i guess in the US there’s gridlock anyway, so what the hell right?
Historically there were many compromises where representatives worked with the other party to find a solution they could all agree to. We like to think that’s how politics work.
However over the last few years it’s gotten much more divisive. Currently it seems like everything is a party line vote. It seems like one party especially elevated party loyalty above serving constituents, above doing the right thing. There is no more voice of the people, only the party and the evil orange overlord.
Filibusters have always been a thing, where you can hold the floor as long as you can talk about something, delaying everything. That was both a challenge for someone to do and had a huge impact when Congress had the motivation to do what they saw as right for their constituents. Now it’s automatic. You simply need to declare it. A majority vote is no longer enough for most choices because you always need the supermajority sufficient to overcome the filibuster, to “silence the representative “. Now you can’t get anything done.
For most of our history, Congress understood their highest priority was to pass a budget, and they did. Now that is no longer important. Brinksmanship means there is no longer a downside to hold the whole country hostage over whatever issue so they do. “Shutting down the government” by not passing a budget has become the new norm. Meaning we not only can’t get anything done but disrupt everything else.
For most of our history, Congress understood their highest priority was to pass a budget, and they did. Now that is no longer important.
yeah it’s pretty fucked… in australia, this is a sure way to trigger a dissolved parliament and an early election: there are only 3 things that can happen (and the government shutting down isn’t 1 of them)
- the government resigns and the governor general (technically “the crowns representative in australia”, but in actuality they do very little unless there’s a crisis) appoints (probably) the leader of the opposition
- of budget bills fail 3 times the government may request a double dissolution - early, full federal elections
- the governor general unilaterally dismisses the PM, because if they government can’t even maintain supply then they don’t have the power to do anything at all (this has only ever happened once and was australia’s largest ever constitutional crisis, but i do like that it’s a valid fall-back)
you can’t hold parties to election promises
You can’t do that today either. In fact, it’s worse today. What are you going to do if your party doesn’t fulfill its electoral promises? Vote for the “bad party”?
yup, so it’s different with RCV and representative: in australia we have this, where we still have a mostly 2 party system that’s representative but we have RCV, so you can preference other parties first, and still have your vote eventually flow to the major party of your choice
in this case, perhaps enough votes are lost that they loose a seat (we’ve had at least 1 green rep in parliament for a few elections in a row)
also we track “primary vote” - the number of people who ranked you #1 - as an important election metric with real consequences… there are limits to private donations for elections, and a significant portion of funding for elections comes from the government itself. any party that gets over 4% of the primary vote is eligible to claim a proportional amount of financing for next election… so you can punish them in a way that really matters without actually putting anything real on the line
that’s different to proportional representation, because it’s a property of the system that there are many minor parties which inherently means parties have to make more deals
That sounds good in theory, but I’ve heard a lot of Australians complain about politics there. Maybe that’s just because people complain about politics everywhere. But, it also seems like Australia has a lot of problems that aren’t getting solved (like housing cost).
It definitely doesn’t seem like a place that has things all figured out.
Switzerland is the only country where people seem pretty proud of their system. It has its issues, but that’s mainly because they have some pretty awful voters and a direct democracy system that has caused some real headaches. For example, voters voted for some laws that were incompatible with the treaties the country had signed as part of the EU, and had they gone into effect it would have meant cancellation of their work with France on CERN, for example. I can’t remember how that was eventually resolved, but it was a real mess.
I’ve heard a lot of Australians complain about politics there. Maybe that’s just because people complain about politics everywhere.
i think this is true no matter what: nz and germany are both more proportional systems and similarly people dislike politics
it also seems like Australia has a lot of problems that aren’t getting solved (like housing cost).
absolutely… some problems are incredibly tricky: getting people to vote against their interests (eg with housing, any effort to reduce house prices directly decreases the value of peoples assets - perhaps not investments, but their primary home even)
how to achieve some societal good things is really tricky in any democracy i think
You need districts because not every race is national. Sure it allocates electoral votes but also Congress-critters. When a state has multiple Representatives, who elects each?
Districts are good so that people with something in common are better represented. We do NOT want a “tyranny of the majority” where minorities have no voice.
Some amount of gerrymandering is good to create districts where people have something in common. But that’s the real problem: how to allow “good” complex shapes while prohibiting “bad” gerrymandering? How do you even define that?
Personally I thought there was some law connecting it to the census so that any changes are based on data, not political whims. However clearly not
this is proportional vs representative democracy
it’s a choice between which you value more: your ideals (proportional - lots of minor parties get elected who better represent your morals and what you want accomplished) or someone to represent the area you live in (representative - inevitably leads to, actually, MINORITY rule because the majority across most districts votes for the party that they hate least - partly because first past the post, but also because in individual districts parties need to get above 50% to win, and that’s just a hard ask for minor parties no matter the area you live)
The idea is to have state-wide races where parties, not individuals, compete. Let’s take Washington State, as an example, because it has a nice and even 10 representatives. Instead of having district campaigns, you would have one big statewide election where each party puts up their best campaign, the people vote, and then the votes are counted on a statewide basis and tallied up. Let’s say the results are in and are as follows:
- Democratic Party: 40%
- Republican Party: 28%
- Libertarian Party: 11%
- Green Party: 8%
- Working Families Party: 6%
- Constitution Party: 4%
- Independents: 3%
For each 10% of the vote, that party gets allocated one seat. So Democrats get 4, Republicans get 2, and Libertarians get 1. The remaining 3 seats are doled out to whichever party has the largest remainder. So the Republicans and Greens with 8% get one more each, and the Working Families Party with 6% gets one. The Constitution Party and the independents will go home with zero seats.
The final distribution:
- Democrats: 4
- Republicans: 3
- Libertarians: 1
- Greens: 1
- Working Families: 1
There are two ways of determining which exact people get to actually go and sit in Congress: open list or closed list. A closed list system means that the party publishes a list of candidates prior to the election, and the top N people on that list are elected, where N is the number of seats won by the party. A simple open list system would be that everyone on that party’s list has their name actually appear on the ballot and a vote for them also counts as a vote for their party, then the top N people of that party with the most votes are elected, where N is the number of seats won by a party. In a closed list system, the party determines the order before the election (they can hold a primary). In an open list system, the voters determine the order on election day.
The main drawback of this system is that with a closed list system, the voters can’t really “vote out” an unpopular politician who has the backing of their party since that party will always put them at the top of the list, and open list systems tend to have extremely long ballot papers (if each party here stood the minimum of 10 candidates and 10 independents also stood, that would be 70 candidates on the ballot). It also forces the election to be statewide which means smaller parties can’t gain regional footholds by concentrating all their efforts on a small number of constituencies. Small parties in the US don’t tend to do this anyway, but it is a fairly successful strategy in other countries, like the Bloc Québécois in Canada or the Scottish National Party in the UK. That being said, a proportional system would still increase the chance that smaller parties have of obtaining representation. Small parties in the US have almost invisible campaigns but if they took it seriously, they’d only need to get 10% of the vote to guarantee a seat, and even with 6-7% they’d still have a good shot at getting one, which on some years they almost do anyway even without a campaign.
The other drawback is that it eliminates the concept of a “local” representative (oddly-shaped and extremely large constituencies notwithstanding), so if a representative votes for a policy that is extremely unpopular in their constituency, it is less effective to “punish” them for it within that constituency as long as the candidate or their party is still popular statewide.
Integrity is most common in other countries, but not in the united states.
Pay more attention to home friend, Europe is sliding into corruption hand in hand with us. But that would get in the way of nationalism wouldn’t it?
Fragile Europeans: Americans are children who need a babysitter
Also fragile Europeans: a couple brown people arrive welp, back to the 1930s
At least in the UK, Germany and France, certainly. Although, tbf, Americans are their own kind of unreasonable, fearful and violent. Western Europe is America-lite.
Congrats, you have written the dumbest take I’ve read today
The US is failing more rapidly than other countries. But, it should be seen as an opportunity to look at your own country and think “ok, how would a morally bankrupt party exploit this thing that just used to be a tradition or a norm, and exploit it because there’s no actual rule?”
Good take!!
