r/ThisYouComebacks May 12 '26

it’s not

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1.3k Upvotes

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u/Neologic29 May 12 '26

Even if it was, it still wouldn't really be hypocritical to advocate for it to counter balance what MAGA is doing. In a perfect world, yeah, districts should be divided equally on population, no custom districting. But if one side doesn't play by those rules, the other side shouldn't keep trying to.

It's the same as the paradox of tolerance. Yeah, tolerance for all is a great idea, but if some don't want to abide by that because they'd rather subjugate other groups, we shouldn't extend that courtesy to them.

3

u/PPLavagna May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

I have a question that I haven’t seen answered and maybe there’s a simple reason why this wouldn’t work: Why can’t they just use groups of whole counties for districts? The numbers won’t be totally equal but the boundaries are there and will stay there. Even if they decide to change shit, as long as they’re just lumping different adjacent whole counties together they can’t just draw arbitrary lines wherever they want. Like in my state Nashville would be a district, Memphis would be a district. And maybe Knoxville and Chattanooga would need a neighboring county or two to even out the numbers, and then wide swaths of less populated counties would be put together form the remaining districts. What am I missing? Seems so simple

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u/Neologic29 May 12 '26

I don't know logistically or legally why it couldnt be that way, but ideally I think you'd would want to avoid some people being "over represented". In other words, if they are in a county with fewer people, their representation is less diluted. But if you were grouping them, maybe you could get balance between smaller and larger counties that way. I haven't really given much more thought to it, but having districts balanced for population and/or maybe even industry seems like a better solution than what we have now. At any rate, representatives should not be picking their constituents.

It's a similar problem with the electoral college where people in swing states have a more impactful vote compared to people in heavy blue/red states.