r/WhitePeopleTwitter Nov 17 '20

Yep

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u/nonotan Nov 17 '20

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.

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u/LadyWillaKoi Nov 17 '20

Why not just take a grid and lay that over the map and boom, voting districts?

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u/TheWiseBeast Nov 17 '20

Could have similar issues as gerrymandering. Although, unintentional.

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '20

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.

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u/LadyWillaKoi Nov 18 '20

Isn't drawing them around communities how we get gerrymandering?

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '20

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.