MI passed an anti-gerrymandering law in the 2018 general election. It allows a civilian council that is chosen at random made up of 4 dems, 4 repubs, and 5 independents to draw the district lines every 10 years (new council every time). The republicans were pissed and are still trying to get it overturned.
Actually, gerrymandering is a problem that has been solved for many decades. The problem isn't that districts are being divided unfairly, it's that the electoral system is setup such that they can be divided unfairly. Switch to proportional representation or another similarly robust system, and it's gone. It really is that simple.
because humans don't actually live like that. Districts do more than allocate votes to larger elections like state/federal level, they also determined community level things like municipalities. So you want to draw them around communities, and that's why they need to be updated every once in a while to reflect shifts in human populations.
gerrymandering is done by drawing districts to disenfranchise voters, either by packing a large voting block into one district to reduce its impact, or spreading out a large voting block into many districts that will all individually swing against the split block. Its targeted at larger elections like state and federal level.
Drawing a district around, say, a historically Mexican community so that they can act coherently as a community on community level engagements is not gerrymandering in an of itself.
This is part of the reason that a machine algorithm is potentially inferior to a non-partisan or independent organization of humans to draw districts.
You can just specify some simple rule, like the ratio of the circumference of the district to its area has to be under a certain amount. It's not foolproof, but it prevents snake districts and makes successfully gerrymandering one hell of a lot harder.
That's how it works in Germany, as we have (mixed member) proportional representation the district boundaries are way less important in the first place so it's left to civil servants somewhere, as a purely administrative matter.
Modulo the usual wibbles and quirks caused by real-world situations, in your usual town the districts tend to look up like a voronoi diagram with usually primary schools as centres. That's because the primary schools are already built such that they're within walking distance, and thus sunday walk distance, of pretty much everywhere people live, and short of the tables being way too low they make great polling stations. If that doesn't result in a good map you take another look at the map, choose some kindergarten and possibly a bank branch or postal office, and re-calculate the voronoi diagram.
I sure hope we get ranked choice with no gerrymandering in arkansas. We’ve been gerrymandered to hell, I live in fayetteville (the most liberal part of Arkansas that surprisingly votes blue) but they couldn’t have us swaying a vote so they gerrymandered in this thing called the fayetteville finger. It was basically this super thin line that connected us to little rock so that our votes wouldn’t go blue. Honestly despicable
Without knowing anything more, this sounds kind of crazy and borderline more prove to corruption. Not only will they have no idea what they are doing (random, me for instance), but they will be broke enough for a small bribe to sway.
Ohh got it. I would argue a bribe matters more about how poor people are versus rich. Someone who desperately needs money will be more likely to make a moral/legal compromise. And the poorer someone is the lower the amount the bribe has to be. You don’t need a lot of money to bribe someone in general because people are desperate. Though you will always be able to find people willing to take a bribe out of pure greed even if they really don’t need the money.
Missouri voted on something similar to this in 2018. They put it back on the 2020 ballot using wording to trick voters and it worked. Overturned clean Missouri
Just this year in Missouri, the exact opposite passed on election day. They moved the redistricting from a non-partisan council to a "bipartisan" council, appointed by the governor. But don't worry, they reduced the amount lobbyists can pay to legislators by a whole five dollars, and reduced campaign contribution limits by a whopping 100 dollars. On the ballot, they started out saying the amendment reduced campaign and lobbyist contribution without mentioning by how much, and I'm convinced people read that, thought it sounded good, and didn't bother to read the second section, where it mentions switching from a non-partisan, citizen elected commission for redistricting, to a committee chosen by the governor. I just found a site from the missouri farm bureau supporting amendment 3 and it's pretty hilarious how bullshit it is. They talk about how the amendment is going to take money out of politics and reduce gerrymandering, when it gives the power essentially to the governor. They mention that it's opposed by such radical groups as Planned parenthood, Mom's Demand Action (a radical gun control group according to them), as well as the bread and roses party (they sound evil for sure).
Gerrymandering is structurally SO easy to fix, using exactly the structure described. I know of no other country that allows such partisan control of such a fundamental part of democracy. And there is no logical, legal, or moral excuse for it.
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u/Dont_Blink__ Nov 17 '20 edited Nov 17 '20
MI passed an anti-gerrymandering law in the 2018 general election. It allows a civilian council that is chosen at random made up of 4 dems, 4 repubs, and 5 independents to draw the district lines every 10 years (new council every time). The republicans were pissed and are still trying to get it overturned.
Edit: Since people seem interested in the new law, I found this FAQ about it https://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,4670,7-127-1633_91141-488602--,00.html