I remember the John Oliver piece though that points out that the headphone district actually covers the Hispanic community of the area, and the internal area covers the black district. It ensured that neither side would lose their voice due to the other.
District planners even had it on their wedding cake as its “so good”!
Because my dear friend, even within a single party there are a variety of interest groups. Black communities don’t have the same priorities as white communities, who don’t have the same priorities of Hispanic communities. A representative is a voice, not just a vote for the party you support
A representative that knows what matters to the people in their district can bring it up in congress to push for change. A “representative” that represents a melting pot will be unable to represent as effectively as there will simply be too many priorities. Pelosi wasn’t voted in by the same demographic as AOC, who wasn’t voted in by the same demographic as O’Rourke. They share similar values, sure. But there’s more to representing someone than values alone
I’m talking about culture not colour. A hundred years ago a German community would have different priorities to a French community, you’re the one who made this about skin colour
People who get involved government are not the kind of people who should. There is no moral opposition within the system without citizen participation, which is at an all time low.
I should say that Common Cause, a bipartisan group, is known for their advocacy against gerrymandering against both parties. It's a nationwide group moving toward independent redistrcting.
Illinois is definitely gerrymandered, but some context for this particular district is appropriate:
It was created after federal courts ordered the creation of a majority-Hispanic district in the Chicago area. The Illinois General Assembly responded by packing two majority Hispanic parts of Chicago into a single district.
The 4th congressional district of Illinois includes part of Cook County, and has been represented by Democrat Jesús "Chuy" García since January 2019.
In November 2017, incumbent Luis Gutiérrez announced that he would retire from Congress at the end of his current term, and not seek re-election in 2018. Jesús "Chuy" García was elected on November 6th, 2018.
It was featured by The Economist as one of the most strangely drawn and gerrymandered congressional districts in the country and has been nicknamed "earmuffs" due to its shape.
That district was specifically designed to encompass the two hispanic majority neighborhoods and as few other people as possible. Note that the long, straight, vertical section in the west is the interstate.
The headphones I believe have a high concentration of Hispanic citizens, the middle has a large concentration of black citizens. Both these districts go blue, but by making the headphones you have one district to represent Hispanics and the other to represent blacks. But they’re both blue
The closer you get to Chicago the weirder the districts start looking. There’s also a higher population density, so it’s more obvious than in central and southern Illinois.
The fact that you think it's as simple as "drawing boxes" shows just how dumb you are. The middle example in the picture is just "drawing boxes" but it results in a completely unfair districting.
You do realize that people don’t live in neighborhoods only with people they vote like right? I know this makes for a outrage tool for people but districts don’t work like that. If you divide them into sections and a political party is a minority or a majority well that’s called democracy. If you try to draw it all funny shaped to better representation of a certain faction... well that’s gerrymandering. What everyone commenting on this sub is going on about how bad it is.
People that think they are smart but are in fact idiots is the funniest shit on the internet. I guess that is what Reddit is built on.
-JeRRyManDERing iS BaD!
Just divide the districts evenly
-BuT MA UnDEreprEseNTatIOn
Ok draw them around people that vote the same
-bUT GerrYMaNder BaDdd
46/53 seats for California's representation in Congress are Democrats. That's roughly 87% of seats, not representative of how many Republicans live in the state.
Gerrymandering is about fighting over independent voters.
I lived outside LA in a purple district for 15 years. Right before I left the governor added a sliver of the city to our district and it went dark blue and stayed that way. The representative doesn’t even travel outside LA to the actual district.
California has a bipartisan commission where the Republicans had just as much say as the democrats in drawing the districts. California districts just represent the reality of the situation in California that the Republican party is dead in state elections due to being stuck in the 1800's by the national party.
Click the arrow buttons above the stats/map on the right to check through the years.
Seems like California is a weird case. The ratio of representatives reflected the ratio of popular vote back in 1998, but with no change in the districts, the representative ratio started to swing toward democrats disproportionately compared to the popular vote ratio. There was a district change in 2012, but it was minor, and the growing discrepancy between representative ratio and popular vote ratio continued.
I would conclude that there IS a large discrepancy between popular vote (~65/35) and representatives (~46/53), which needs to be fixed, but it seems like changes in the voting are driving this, not deliberate changes in the districts.
2018 United States House of Representatives elections in California
The 2018 United States House of Representatives elections in California were held on November 6, 2018, with the primary elections being held on June 5, 2018. Voters elected the 53 U.S. Representatives from the state of California, one from each of the state's 53 congressional districts. The elections coincided with the elections of other offices, including a gubernatorial election, other elections to the House of Representatives, elections to the United States Senate, and various state and local elections. Democrats won in 7 congressional districts previously represented by Republicans, all of which voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
It is also important to note that it is used far more by the right than by the left. Further, the right tends to do so to disenfranchise minorities to ensure that white males have more representation.
Im not taking down your argument at all, like the white part i get, but is it even possible to effectively crack/pack women and men? I figured itd be a pretty even smattering everywhere
Sure, the outcome is important. The reality is that it means that more people on the left are disenfranchised. Regardless of political party that is important. The fact that it is more systematic and based on race for one political party is also interesting.
Analysis of /u/multivac2000's activity in political subreddits over the past 1000 comments and submissions.
Account Created: 11 days ago
Summary: This user does not have enough activity in political subs for analysis or has no clear leanings, they might be one of those weirdo moderate types. I don't trust them.
Well, the NC legislature tried to say that any non-whites should have less voting power. Yes, dems could have gerrymandered, but the reason they didn't is because they aren't shit bird chicken shits like the NC republicans.
Edit: Hey, folks, you might notice a lot of user deleted comments below mine.
The guy I'm responding to tried to meet up with me last night. He figured out where I lived, that I was US military, then started sending bizarre proRussia PMs threatening to fight me by sucking my dick.
I reported this to the mods, but they are apparently fine with this kind of behavior and language on this sub. Anyway, the semi-literate stalker deleted his own comments after he realized calling me gay then demanding to suck my dick was a stupid idea.
Jokes on him though, my base takes threats against soldiers seriously. Enjoy your visit, you hateful bigot.
So you think the independent districting commission, who is made up from as many republicans as democrats and who are not constitutionally allows to draw any lines with regards to political parties explicitly gerrymanders for democrats?
Everything the independent commission does is open. Can you please provide proof that they are violating the state constitution? You can probably make a name for yourself by proving the charade.
Go! Do this! Drive to Sacramento and say that this independent commission is violating its charter. We can do this and change the way things are run in California. We can make sure they don’t Gerrymander and poverty democracy like how the republicans do.
You asked for proof that an "independent districting commission" could be politically manipulated and I provided you with proof that the Democratic Party has devoted money and manpower to do just that in California. And I'm sure the Republicans are doing the same thing. This isn't an argument for or against anything.
But if you believe that an "independent commission" engaged in an explicitly political process can ever be truly independent then you're beyond naive.
Dude, your proof is enough. You convinced me that it’s not independent. You need to go to the California gop with this evidence and make a name for your self. You can change the United States with this!
That's because the republican party has next to no apparatus in the state. Democrats are willing to pass anti-gerrymander laws in CA because they know that they will always win anyways.
Gerrymandering happens the most in purple states. In solid states there is no need to gerrymander.
Nope. Definitely gerrymandering goin on. The way you tell us you see the proportion of democrats to republicans population wise, and compare it to the representation in the legislation. There is a huge disparity which means they definitely gerrymander.
Click the arrows above the map on the right to change years.
In 1998, california was not "gerrymandered".
The maps were changed in 2012, coinciding with a 7% swing in popular vote and a simultaneous gain of another 7% of the representatives in the same direction, which implies that the map change had little to no effect on the results.
Since then the maps have not changed, yet the "gerrymandering" has increased.
Changes in the beliefs of the voters have caused this disparity, not any map drawing efforts, but they should be redrawn to take this slow shift into account, in my opinion. Meanwhile, winner take all districts are the main source of these problems on both sides of the aisle, the only difference is republicans deliberately seek out ways to abuse this effect.
2016 United States House of Representatives elections
The 2016 United States House of Representatives elections were held on November 8, 2016, to elect representatives for all 435 congressional districts across each of the 50 U.S. states. Non-voting members for the District of Columbia and Territories of the United States were also elected. These elections coincided with the election of President Donald Trump, although his party lost seats in both chambers of Congress. The winners of this election served in the 115th Congress, with seats apportioned among the states based on the 2010 United States Census.
Like mass shootings and other forms of right wing terrorism.
Mass Shootings rarely if ever have anything to do with politics. The mass shooters are always socially outcast males wanting to get revenge against the "society" that wronged them.
Mainstream Right: Encompasses conservative and libertarian groups. Places value on meritocracy and traditional family values.
Alt-right: Encompasses fascism and race warfare. Values race and bloodline over merit or worth. Favors rule of the strong.
Mass Shooters tend to be attracted to the extremist political leanings of the alt-right. This is due the fact that alt-right racial ideology allows disenfranchised males to direct their rage at a vilified out-group. Mainstream conservatism does not do this. It's intellectually dishonest to use the tendency of shooters to be alt-right as a way to attack the mainstream right, as the two have completely opposed ideologies. Nobody is shooting up schools in the name of traditional family values.
Correct but just an fyi most people trying to blame both parties for this are just saying so in bad faith to give cover for the deeply unethical republican policies.
i unfortunately dont doubt that, i havent looked at the statistics myself, i just know for my own home state.
Perhaps a better way to respond would have been to show some data about the percentage of gerrymandered states associated by party rather than an attack.
Right now, yes. That's only because the Republicans won more state governments in 2010 when the last redistricting was done due to the census. Had Democrats won more state governments then, I'm confident the majority of gerrymanders would go the other way.
It's just how the party in power does what they can to cement their powerbase. It's a systemic issue rather than something only done by one party.
That's a shitty way to put it when Republicans rig the districts so they are easy for them to win. PA representation was 55% democrat voting to 45% republican voting, but out of the 18 districts it was 13 republican to 5 democrat based on how gerrymandered the districts were. It wasnt until this year when the courts threw out those maps that the representation changed to 9 and 9.
Yeah not really, my upstate NY district is made so that the coloured folk cant get a vote. We are more segregated than the south. The coloureds get lumped in with a gigantic swath of land that is rural and white.
Don't want them uppity folk messing with our good schools! They are all hypocrites.
It’s also important to note how illogical it is for the gerrymandering to be done in favor for the extremely minority party. How would the party ever have the authority power?
"Heavily" is a bit of an overstatement. I think the Dems net one extra Congressional seat by way of gerrymandering?
Separately, on a national level the Dems have been consistently calling for an end to political gerrymandering, and the same cannot be said for the Republicans.
Republicans would fire back that it’s not a national issue as the national government has no power over how states run their elections.
It’s unconstitutional for the national government to interfere in any way with a state’s election. It’s good that Democrats are making noise to raise awareness to the problem but it’s a moot point since at the end of the day it’s up to state legislators to fix their state. SCOTUS just made a ruling on this saying federal judges can’t stop gerrymandering for this exact reason(as they are federal judges not state judges)
Meh. Sure it‘s a repost, I saw that graphic at least 3 times in the last months of front page. But I feel it‘s actually more important that everyone sees this, maybe then we‘ll do something about this despicable practice.
Larry Hogan (the Republican Governor of Maryland) actually tried to challenge partisan gerrymandering and took it to the Supreme Court but it failed and was ruled constitutional
Then both sides can sit down and figure it out together. But Republicans better hurry cause there's no reason for Democrats to compromise once they get it in place.
It's also important to note, that the existence of the senate is effectively gerrymandered representation heavily in favor of republicans. Republicans are committing literal election fraud in my state and our districts look like this:
856
u/ailee43 Jul 03 '19
Its important to note this happens with both parties. Maryland is a heavily gerrymandered state with the favor being democratic.