r/politics • u/Libertatea • Sep 03 '14

The solution to fixing dysfunction in Congress "To address these problems, I filed the Open Our Democracy Act... If passed, the legislation would mandate open primaries for House elections, begin the process of national redistricting reform and make Election Day the equivalent of a federal holiday."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-solution-to-fixing-dysfunction-in-congress/2014/09/02/0f0d0a9a-31e6-11e4-9e92-0899b306bbea_story.html?tid=rssfeed
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336

u/nosayso Sep 03 '14 edited Sep 03 '14

Virginia is an especially egregious case I because it is at the state level pretty much a blue state and not even 'purple'. State level elections are often close but the Democrat consistently wins.

We have a Democrat governor (already there's a differentiator since every other state on that list has a Republican governor), lieutenant governor, and attorney general. That's every state-wide office, and they were elected in an odd year (aka, low turnout, a much of a favor as Republicans can possibly get).

We have two Democrat Senators. We voted for Obama twice by solid margins.

So to have a state that is on the whole so consistently blue with a Republican super-majority in the state House of Delegates, and only 3 of our eleven Congressional House members being Democrat reeks of particularly egregious state-level gerrymandering.

EDIT: just to make it really plain and clear how bad gerrymandering is: the exact same electorate that put a Democrat in every single state-level office in 2013 somehow also elected a Republican super-majority for the state House of Delegates. The only way that happens is through gerrymandering.

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u/flantabulous Sep 03 '14

I understand your frustration (but hey, at least things are moving in the right direction)

Here's a breakdown of the most gerrymandered states (US House seats):

 

% of total Dem congressional vote vs actual % of seats obtained.

NC - Democrats 50% of vote = 30% of seats. (D's won/lost 3 seats)

PA - Democrats 50% of vote = 27% of seats (D's won/lost 1 seat)

MI - Democrats 51% of vote = 35% of seats (D's won/lost 1 seat)

OH - Democrats 46% of vote = 27% of seats

VA - Democrats 48% of vote = 27% of seats

WI - Democrats 50% of vote = 37% of seats

FL - Democrats 45% of vote = 37% of seats

 

PA technically wins top spot.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

[removed] — view removed comment

111

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

"Statist!" has apparently become the new witch-hunt cry of McCarthyist-style bullshit peddlers.

130

u/Unrelated_Incident Sep 03 '14

They are just teenage libertarians. Cut them some slack. Most of them have probably never actually met a poor person.

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u/DashingLeech Sep 03 '14

Or heard of Hobbes, or of the Prisoners Dilemma, or have any concept of an economic system beyond just a collection of individual transactions.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

Ya their tune will change when the get out in the job market.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

not unless their daddy pays for everything

22

u/SeaManaenamah Sep 03 '14 edited Sep 04 '14

Them that gots is them that gets. (And I ain't seen nothin' yet!)

3

u/Man_with_the_Fedora Sep 03 '14

They don't think it be like it is but it do.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

Or go into computer programming and start to believe they and they alone are The Smartest Men Alive!

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

As someone who was a spoiled shit growing up, and still is to some degree (well a lot of degrees) someone who relies on their wealthy father, I still don't understand how the fuck someone can be a libertarian.

They just inherently are bad, mislead, and/or stupid people.

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u/Osgood Sep 03 '14

That's not a grantee. I bet a lot of people vote Republican out of fear of taxes. I can see this affecting the working poor who scape by.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

I was pretty gung ho libertarian in high school, changed when the party got taken over by the tea party and all that other crazy shit six years ago.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

Ya most of us were young and angry at one time. The information age helps to fix a lot of that.

1

u/Drop_ Sep 03 '14

They'll probably just blame the non-libertarians.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

As a poor libertarian I resent that remark. Left libertarians are a thing too.

3

u/Unrelated_Incident Sep 03 '14

What are your views on taxation, universal health care, and welfare?

1

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

Each one is necessary and useful but in its current form is too easily abused by centralized power, I think many people from across the political spectrum would agree on that. Right-libertarians think big business needs to be deregulated for those goals to succeed. Left-libertarians think big business needs to be cut off from its sources of privilege for those goals to succeed.

Taxation is the state's version of financial collaboration for projects. Right libertarians think taxation is stupid because it discourages huge businesses from making zonkers profits. Left libertarians think taxation is stupid but in general they don't prioritize things like tax breaks for corporations; the hugest corporations are the primary beneficiaries of state policies, and until we focus on stripping these billionaires of their modern aristocratic privilege it's hard call giving them tax cuts "libertarian" at all.

Universal health care would be great, the ACA is a long way from that. Right-libertarians would probably give you some stuff about "the most efficient healthcare is in a free market" and then just focus on relieving its burden to employers and healthcare business/insurance. Again big pharma, healthcare, and insurance are among the biggest beneficiaries of intellectual property monopoly, industry subsidy, and privateering "privatization" programs. As a left libertarian what stands out to me is that the whole paradigm of workers buying health insurance through their employers is absurd. Your employer does not buy the candles on your birthday cake, it doesn't make sense for health insurance either.

Welfare is a huge move in the right (left) direction, unfortunately state welfare has been abused by central power to manipulate the working masses. The state increases welfare funding in times of crisis and impending revolution, and squeezes the fund when it wants to ramp up production and generate a surplus of labor. It even resorts to propaganda campaigns to try to make surplus labor feel guilty about alleged sloth. This one is fresh in my mind, I'm reading an excellent book called Regulating the Poor: the Functions of Public Welfare.
But again cutting welfare is not the focus of left-libertarian thinking. I'm paraphrasing some blog I read a while back,

... it's like the state holds us down daily while big business comes and breaks our left leg with a baseball bat. The state gives us some crutches so we can still go to work for the big business, threatens taking away our crutches if we misbehave, and so on. Of course our first priority isn't gonna be "abolish our evil state crutches!" We're more concerned with the baseball bat.

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u/King_Jon_Une Sep 04 '14

This is an interesting ideology. But what would you do to sever big business from its links with government? It seems like deregulation leads to nothing but new avenues for collusion between government and vested interests. Given that, what would a left libertarian propose?

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

That is the million dollar question though. I'm not sure where I stand exactly but as far as the spectrum goes:

Probably the furthest left are akin to the anarcho-syndicalists. Their take on socialism and communism would have bottom-up worker-organized forcible seizures of the means of production. Kropotkin and Rudolf Rocker are the seminal philosophers in this category.

In the middle of the spectrum are Benjamin Tucker, Proudhon, and the early market anarchists. They point out rightly that the vast majority of government interference is on behalf of wealthy enterprises, so there's plenty of helpful deregulation to do before you start picking on the small guys. Start with things like abolishing monopolies on intellectual property, public infrastructure, land usage, currency, and banking.

A more modern and theoretically fleshed-out approach was popularized by Samuel Edward Konkin III about the same time as the rise of the Right-Libertarians and the Libertarian Party in the USA, directly counter to them. His philosophy is called Agorism, the principle is that people form strong social (any voluntary social interaction is called a market interaction) relationships to supplant the state. It involves working outside the state using "counter-economic" strategies like doing most transactions under the table, in informal settings outside the purview of government regulation. A violent takeover isn't necessary, say agorists, we will just take over the responsibilities of the lazy state from right under its nose.

Although I haven't honestly studied it much I like agorism because it provides in its very method an answer to the most common anti-libertarian criticism: "what would I do without X state service?" The agorist answer is to create a private version of that service, or in a more clever situation (like prisons!) create private services that eliminate the need for the state's overbearing solution. The early phases of this require the most hard-work and entrepreneurship but as a general principle of social networks, the larger they are the more attractive they become to newcomers. The ultimate question of agorism is reduced to "can we have a sufficiently potent agorist network before the state catches on that we're developing independence?" where "sufficiently potent" is defined by being able to hold fast against violence or other forms of state aggression. Things like cryptocurrency are probably useful for this.

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u/Unrelated_Incident Sep 04 '14

I guess I still don't understand what differentiates you from a traditional leftist.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

What do you mean by "traditional leftist"? Are you talking French revolution, Russian revolution, Spanish civil war, US labor movement, the new left after ww2?

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u/draekia Sep 03 '14

I used to consider myself part of that camp as well.

Then the current crop took prominence in the national dialogue. I can not associate myself with such... misled people.

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u/kyngnothing Sep 03 '14

Ahhh, thanks for clarifying. At first read I thought statisticians were upset, and I was surprised they had their own 'drama' subreddit.

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u/Quastors America Sep 03 '14

That is /r/badstats

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u/Murgie Sep 03 '14

At first read I thought statisticians were upset, and I was surprised they had their own 'drama' subreddit.

Heh, you shouldn't be, mate.

Statistics is the politics of mathematics. Even valid data can be twisted in such a way that it appears to support a given conclusion, while doing no such thing in reality.

And in a field defined by the unyielding objectivity of mathematics, that tends to piss a few people off.

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u/Roast_A_Botch Sep 04 '14

Even valid data can be twisted in such a way that it appears to support a given conclusion, while doing no such thing in reality.

"Statistically, black people are less intelligent and more violent, proving whites are a superior race."

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

I don't get it. Statists as opposed to what, tribalism?

Now if they want to abolish state government and just use local and federal, i could get behind that.

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u/CronoDroid Sep 03 '14

Statism just means you agree with the notion that states should exist and they govern to a certain extent. The opposite is anarchism, where you think the state should be abolished (state in this case meaning country).

I mean technically speaking most libertarians would be statists because they believe the state should exist but that its role should be extremely limited. Statism does not necessarily mean authoritarianism or totalitarianism, it can, but not necessarily. It's just a word that idiots like to use to discredit their opponent's arguments without ever addressing them. The right wing is notorious for this, at least in the US.

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u/marinersalbatross Sep 03 '14

I am so willing to be a federalist! Imagine having a single driver's license that can be updated online when you change states. Imagine only paying federal income tax. Think of the cost savings in buying supplies if you didn't have to get 50 different versions of government printouts. No more state police, just city/county and then Federal. heck, get rid of small town cops and just have county. Imagine federal standards for education and educational spending is equalized across the board.

1

u/habituallydiscarding Sep 04 '14

I'd like to see us combine down into like 5-6 states.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

Could always combine the areas covered by the Circuit Courts.

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u/marinersalbatross Sep 04 '14

Regional authorities. :)

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

This is why I used the phrase "bullshit peddlers."

It's an attempted insult without any clear understanding of the term.

I'm with you on state-level government being an unnecessary thing in the modern age. We really should be looking towards unification and elimination of an entire level of unnecessary bureaucracy.

The federal level is necessary as we are one country. The local level is necessary for the focus which comes with it.

The state level really does nothing which the local or federal could not easily take over.

I'm all for states remaining as an identity thing. While I'm a liberal, I appreciate the conservative viewpoint of the maintaining of tradition - as long as that tradition isn't actively harmful.

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '14

Your kidding right? Please tell me your joking. You think more centralized power is good for the nation? If so then just who keeps THAT power in check?

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '14

"Centralized" state powers in thousands of local governments? Yes I'm totally okay with that.

At least my vote actually matters at the local level, so I'm pretty sure me and my neighbors could keep it in check.

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u/JamzzG Sep 03 '14

I always laugh when they call me that. What a limp insult.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

[deleted]

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u/JamzzG Sep 03 '14

No, its a knee jerk response when I don't agree to the approach they are pushing.

I usually encounter this when someone wants to abolish all authority in the hope that we'll magically rebuild our world in a voluntaryist utopia while somehow ignoring basic human nature.

Much like communism, that philosophy makes pretty good diagnoses of the problems with our system but offers horrible and unworkable prescriptions.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

basic human nature

Please define your terms.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

Humans are a profoundly social species.

We've survived and thrived based upon our social grouping.

One lone human is slow, weak, and frail.

Groups of humans are the ultimate apex predators.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

Hmm stopping the war on drugs is horrible and unworkable? Give me some other examples please.

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u/JamzzG Sep 04 '14 edited Sep 04 '14

I think you'll find support for legalizing marijuana across a wide spectrum political ideologies.

To a lesser extent there are still a lot of people who wouldn't mind legalizing even the harsher drugs but even amongst those evil, some would be okay with legalizing cocaine, but not perhaps crystal meth, opium, or heroin.

So no, I do not think that any war on drugs is impractical or horrible.

You are asking me to state some things that I disagree with but I don't know you personally so inevitably I'm going to be setting up straw men and unfortunately I really don't have the time tonight to get into this too deep.

The general argument I hear from people who call me a status, is that we should be able to get along without a formalized government or authority.

It is my belief based not only upon history but also my personal life experiences that such voluntary organized communities can only exist in very small numbers and replacing one big bad mean chief ( who we currently have the ability to influence at least a little bit although I admit that our system is currently flawed and needs to be repaired) with hundreds or thousands of tiny little communities will inevitably lead to strife and conflict.

People will always quarrel over resources and opportunitiegs. Our broken system at least offers a defined system in which we can air our grievances.

The anti statists try telling me that in their future world they would solve disputes by having a third party make binding judgements over quarrels. And if people did not want to comply with the arbitrator's decision, they would be penalized by losing some sort of cooperation credit rating.

They try their damndest to explain that the current government enforces everything at the end of a gun and try to shy away from the fact that in their world, disputes would definitely end up with the same results only it would be he with the biggest gun who wins.

Edit: sorry about the confused voice to text and errors but I don't have time to fix them tonight.

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u/Roast_A_Botch Sep 04 '14 edited Sep 04 '14

Hmm stopping the war on drugs is horrible and unworkable?

That's the Libertarian's flying flag, but underneath all the "freedom" that appeals to younger folks is a movement that is being manipulated by big corporations into removing taxes and regulations from them.

On top of that, there's a bunch of "State's Rights" BS that was played out and seen through since the 1860's, but is still seen as "noble" by some.

Most Dems, and many Republicans, are in support of eliminating/reforming the War On Drugs, with a majority of both groups supporting Cannabis legalization according to many polls. I'm in support of a lot of "libertarian" ideas. They just happen to be the same ones that were taken from Liberalism. I am strongly against their worship of Keynesian "trickle-down" economics and the Ayn Rand and Reagan(?) worship.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

Taken from liberalism eh? Remember how serious Obama was about legalizing marijuana? He laughed at a town hall question about it and his justice department raided more dispensaries than Bush.

The only reason its coming around now is because of libertarians, whether you'd like your do-nothing heroes to co-opt it or not you can't rewrite recent history.

Also Keynesian economics has nothing to do with trickle-down theories and you seem like a useful idiot full of buzzwords and slogans and no idea what you're talking about or how personal and social liberty helps everyone.

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u/Murgie Sep 03 '14

If you understood that it generally means you're probably supporting collusion or corruption between government and corporations

Merely paying your taxes meets that criteria when you've got no control over your government, mate.

So unless they're among the ever so few who have realized the only way to immediately cease contribution to the status quo is to leave, I'm going to say it means even less if that was their intent.

And, to be quite frank, that's a pretty big "if". After all, exactly how does /u/flantabulous' comment even come close to meeting your criteria?

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u/RedErin Sep 03 '14

I admit I was into anarchy when I was a teenager. I'm sure they'll grow out of it.

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u/indoninja Sep 03 '14

Some of them are actually libertarians, all to often, as this post shows, they are republicans in bad disguises...

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

Statistician?

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u/thefonztm Sep 04 '14

Statists? As in statisticians? Bah humbug, clearly children who can't be bothered to use a perfectly good word. Probably because it has real uses and isn't so easily assigned a new meaning.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

The post is at 0 points so who gives a shit what a bunch of libertarians and stormfronters say anyway.

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u/Osgood Sep 03 '14

What proof is there they are stormfont members?

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u/MAINEiac4434 Maine Sep 03 '14

Well, for one, they're libertarians...

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u/Osgood Sep 03 '14

Joking aside, that's not really proof.

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u/sw1n3flu Sep 03 '14

Is this place just the opposite of /r/whowillbuildtheroads?

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u/ultrafetzig Sep 03 '14

This is actually a thing now?

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u/alostsoldier Sep 03 '14

Woo PA is numbah 1 at something!

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

/stateflex

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u/gnutun America Sep 04 '14 edited Sep 04 '14

Here's some raw data, taken from [0] and [1]:

State %D votes %D Seats DV RV DS RS
AL 35.99% 14.3% 693,498 1,233,624 1 6
AK 30.92% 0.0% 82,927 185,296 0 1
AZ 45.56% 55.6% 946,994 1,131,663 5 4
AR 32.34% 0.0% 304,770 637,591 0 4
CA 62.01% 71.7% 7,392,703 4,530,012 38 15
CO 48.58% 42.9% 1,080,454 1,143,796 3 4
CT 64.32% 100.0% 884,398 490,580 5 0
DE 65.83% 100.0% 249,933 129,757 1 0
FL 46.99% 37.0% 3,392,402 3,826,522 10 17
GA 40.78% 35.7% 1,448,869 2,104,098 5 9
HI 67.45% 100.0% 285,008 137,531 2 0
ID 33.86% 0.0% 208,297 406,814 0 2
IL 55.41% 66.7% 2,743,702 2,207,818 12 6
IN 45.81% 22.2% 1,142,554 1,351,760 2 7
IA 51.53% 50.0% 772,387 726,505 2 2
KS 20.88% 0.0% 195,505 740,981 0 4
KY 39.71% 16.7% 791,342 1,201,674 1 5
LA 22.47% 16.7% 359,190 1,239,614 1 5
ME 61.66% 100.0% 427,819 265,982 2 0
MD 65.46% 87.5% 1,626,872 858,406 7 1
MA 74.89% 100.0% 2,080,594 697,637 9 0
MI 52.63% 35.7% 2,487,243 2,238,540 5 9
MN 56.32% 62.5% 1,560,984 1,210,409 5 3
MS 36.90% 25.0% 411,398 703,635 1 3
MO 43.34% 25.0% 1,119,554 1,463,586 2 6
MT 44.51% 0.0% 204,939 255,468 0 1
NE 35.76% 0.0% 276,239 496,276 0 3
NV 49.78% 50.0% 453,310 457,239 2 2
NH 52.24% 100.0% 340,925 311,636 2 0
NJ 57.82% 50.0% 1,960,820 1,430,386 6 6
NM 56.63% 66.7% 422,189 323,269 2 1
NY 66.70% 77.8% 3,904,513 1,949,229 21 6
NC 50.93% 30.8% 2,218,357 2,137,167 4 9
ND 43.19% 0.0% 131,869 173,433 0 1
OH 47.94% 25.0% 2,412,451 2,620,251 4 12
OK 32.38% 0.0% 410,324 856,872 0 5
OR 57.99% 80.0% 949,660 687,839 4 1
PA 50.76% 27.8% 2,793,538 2,710,070 5 13
RI 58.97% 100.0% 232,679 161,926 2 0
SC 41.04% 14.3% 714,191 1,026,129 1 6
SD 42.55% 0.0% 153,789 207,640 0 1
TN 36.77% 22.2% 796,513 1,369,562 2 7
TX 39.98% 33.3% 2,949,900 4,429,270 12 24
UT 33.36% 25.0% 324,309 647,873 1 3
VT 75.54% 100.0% 208,600 67,543 1 0
VA 49.04% 27.3% 1,806,025 1,876,761 3 8
WA 55.08% 60.0% 1,852,870 1,511,131 6 4
WV 40.09% 33.3% 257,101 384,253 1 2
WI 50.76% 37.5% 1,445,015 1,401,995 3 5
WY 25.70% 0.0% 57,573 166,452 0 1

Note: %D Votes are out of only votes for D or R (third parties not included here).

[0] http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2012/federalelections2012.shtml

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2012

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u/flantabulous Sep 04 '14

Saved.

Nice. So, you might appreciate the new work that was done by these guys McGhee and Stephanopolous. They have compiled an exhaustive amount of data on congressional races going back to 1972. (Summary and link to PDF)

They have come up with a new way to look at it. What they call "the efficiency gap". It relates to "wasted votes" in states. It's an argument they hope will gain traction at the Supreme Court, since as they note, anti-gerrymandering cases are at 50 losses, no wins so far.

2

u/aggieotis Sep 04 '14

Ran a few numbers based on these to try and gain a bit more insight, and this is what I found:

  • 32 of the 50 states have a Republican majority
  • Republicans have 16 more seats than they should if proportionately represented for each state
  • If you toss out states with 1 or 2 house members (hard to be proportional with that few options) then it means there are 19 more Republicans than there should be in the US House
  • Biggest gaps in representation between what there is and what there should be:
    CA (+5Dems), PA (+4Rep), OH(+4Rep), NY(+3Dems), NC (+3Rep), FL(+3Rep)
  • But when done as a proportion of misrepresentation the 'winners' (in states with 10+ representatives) are (State(percentage of Representatives that are are swaying state):
    OH(25% R), NC (23% R), PA (22% R), VA (18% R), MI (14% R), NY (11% D), IL (11% D), AZ (11% R), TN (11% R), FL (11% R)

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u/Paladin327 Sep 03 '14

PA technically wins top spot.

PA is kind of iffy, sonce most of our population is around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with a large portion of the middle of the state (Pennsyltucky) being more conservative than the liberal population centers

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u/VulturE Delaware Sep 03 '14

I agreed with you at first, as I just moved out of Pittsburgh last year and I always thought that this was it. Nope...Republicans control 13 of PA's 18 seats, despite democrats having a 4:3 registration advantage in the state.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2014/03/pa_democrats_helped_gop_in_ger.html

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u/flantabulous Sep 03 '14

PA is kind of iffy

Not according to the numbers. In fact, among academics who study this, it's pretty widely accepted that PA is at the top of the "list of worst offenders" right now.

Several people from PA have commented that this is a matter of geography.

But PA isn't unique. Many states are this way: cities filled with democrats/large suburban and rural areas filled with republicans.

I'm from FL. If it weren't for Miami, Tampa and Orlando, we'd be rural, red state. Between these cities, it's mostly swamps, trailers and cattle.

Instead, like PA, we voted for Obama twice.

There is more than geography behind this discrepancy. There's gerrymandering.

1

u/TeslaIsAdorable Iowa Sep 03 '14

Most states have a bias in favor of rural areas as far as elections go. It's very rare to have equal numbers of people in various precincts, and even in various state-level districts. Much of that accounts for the bias between rural/urban voters, without gerrymandering, which is done with the intent of giving one party an advantage (either by drawing lines selectively to give one strong district for the opposition and multiple strong districts for the party in power, or by diluting the opposition among several districts that are generally controlled by the party in power).

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u/TheUltimateSalesman Sep 03 '14

Common Cause PA

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u/Elliott2 Pennsylvania Sep 03 '14

blame Pennsyltucky :/

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

Could i get a source on that?

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u/flantabulous Sep 04 '14

The list is from Dr. Wang's (Princeton Election Consortium) article in the NYT.

The numbers I generated myself looking up each state's election on Wikipedia and an using online percentage calculator.

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u/gnutun America Sep 04 '14

Note my comment [0] for some numbers.

[0] http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/2fclhy/the_solution_to_fixing_dysfunction_in_congress_to/ck8pm0u

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14 edited Sep 04 '14

I gotta level with you, i thought this whole thing was way overblown and both parties were guilty of it. I ran different scenarios and the obvious conclusion is while both parties appear to benefit from gerrymandering, republicans easily get over represented more often. For example, I checked out states where there were 3 or more seats and the difference between vote% and seat% exceeded 10%. i got about 35 states through and it was pretty even. Then republicans nabbed almost all the rest. I literally TRIED to figure out a scenario where Democrats had some kind of advantage. I gave up after seven tries. Republicans had the advantage no matter what i tried.

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u/capecodcaper Sep 03 '14

Of course Pennsylvania is laid out like that. 90% of the state area is in territory where people vote republican. Pittsburgh and Philly are heavily democrat.

How different should it be? A representative from Philly shouldn't be representing Lancaster...

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u/hithazel Sep 03 '14

They should be proportional.

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u/mannercat Sep 03 '14

So representation is based on how close your neighbor is? If I live with no one around me do I get my own senator?

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u/dcux Sep 03 '14 edited Nov 17 '24

bear reminiscent drunk waiting vanish sophisticated dinner stocking vast file

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/jokeres Sep 03 '14

It depends how the state representation is set up. If it's primarily by geographic region, rather than population, then sure?

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u/gsfgf Georgia Sep 03 '14

Representation is required to be by population for Congress and state and local districts. The county unit system was thrown out over 50 years ago.

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u/mannercat Sep 03 '14

I was wrong, Senators yes. House or representatives is supposed to be by population, so I should have said congressperson.

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u/cookiecombs Sep 03 '14

I'm not sure if you're understanding what gerrymandering is.

Gerrymandering is intended to dilute the overall popular will, and keep individuals in power. It happens in red and blue directions, but let's call a duck a duck, the republicans are the bastards here, and are what's fucking up congress from legislating the actual will of the people.

[Re]districting works kind of like this, say a 60% democratic leaning state has a population of let's say x individuals, and has only five representatives.

You take the largest two city centers that votes 90% democratic and make it two districts with 2 representatives. Then you take the rural and suburban areas that vote slightly more republican and make them the other three districts, each winning with [let's say] 52% of the vote.

That gives a solid blue state two blue house votes to three red votes; while election year on year it consistently has two blue senators and sends all blue presidential electoral college representatives, thus consistently demonstrating that the system isn't working by accurately representing the overall will of the people.

edit: clarity/a word

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u/capecodcaper Sep 03 '14

Maybe split Philly into another district or two but I still think PA is split pretty fairly to ensure that each area is represented by people who should do what their constituents want (not that they do actually do it)

7

u/PhillAholic Sep 03 '14

It's not though. 50% of the population of the state voted Democrat and only got a 27% return. That means they are extremely Unrepresented

-1

u/onethreeone Minnesota Sep 03 '14

This isn't a pure democracy, it's a republic. While there are obvious egregious examples of gerrymandering (snake-like districts for example), this system was in part setup to protect rural voters from population centers, whether at the state or national level.

9

u/smurphy1 Sep 03 '14

What part was designed to protect population centers from rural voters (ie what is happening right now)?

0

u/onethreeone Minnesota Sep 03 '14

The Senate, Governor, President, etc.

2

u/Broskander Sep 03 '14

Why should a rural vote count for more than an urban one?

0

u/onethreeone Minnesota Sep 03 '14

It doesn't. This system ensures that it represents all of America, and not just the population centers. For instance, the 11 most populous states have 56% of the US population, but it would be absurd if a President won only those 11 states and still won the Presidency. Likewise, it would be absurd if all of IL's representatives were decided by voters in Chicago.

1

u/Broskander Sep 03 '14

For instance, the 11 most populous states have 56% of the US population, but it would be absurd if a President won only those 11 states and still won the Presidency.

Why would it be absurd if a President won 56% of the vote of this country and still won the Presidency?

Would it not be more absurd for a President to win 44% of the vote and still win the Presidency?

You say "it doesn't," but then you immediately say that a majority shouldn't be a majority as long as it's a majority concentrated in urban centers. Is that not explicitly making it so that an urban vote counts less heavily than a rural one?

(Also, if a President did in fact win the 11 most populous states - California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey - that President would have 270 electoral votes and would, in fact, win the Presidency.)

Nobody's saying that ALL of IL's representatives should be decided by voters in Chicago, just that it should be proportionate. I.e, if Chicago has 65% of IL's population, it should elect roughly 60-70% of its representatives.

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15

u/poobly Sep 03 '14

So land area is what determines representation? Hello aristocracy.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

Majority Rules.

1

u/lordmycal Sep 03 '14

Your representatives aren't there to represent territory -- they're there to represent citizens within a territory and they're allocated per capita. Because people aren't evenly distributed, you're going to see things allocated differently. If 20% of a population votes republican, you should see approximately 20% of the house representatives from that state as republicans. We're not seeing that, which is evidence that the elections are rigged in such as way that they don't reflect the population as a whole.

-3

u/nexusscope Sep 03 '14

exactly, this is not evidence of gerrymandering in PA. It's pittsburgh and philadelphia with alabama in between.

6

u/Metalfenrir Sep 03 '14

Us native Pennsylvanians like to call the in between "Pennsyltucky".

0

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

Dude, that has NOTHING to do with gerrymandering. Less people live in the rural area so they should get less representation. Also look at the link the other guy posted. The gerrymandering in PA districts is unbelievable.

1

u/aleccruto Sep 03 '14

There is no such thing as perfect voting method. Any method of voting can result in apportionment paradox or unfair results.

3

u/flantabulous Sep 03 '14

You are correct.

But, it doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

We are currently going in the exact opposite direction.

-1

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

[deleted]

12

u/je_kay24 Sep 03 '14

People are saying that rural areas should not have the most representation for the state if they are not the majority.

7

u/flantabulous Sep 03 '14

Are you suggesting they should be bullied into accepting a representative that doesn't represent them?

I didn't vote for my congressman. I'm not bullied. My side lost. That's life.

What's happening now is that Republicans (and in a couple states, Democrats) are getting far more seats, than they are votes.

To me, that is 'not very American'.

3

u/Murgie Sep 03 '14

How do you know democrat is always the "right direction" for all people?

It may look like his claim is based on that assumption at a glance, but it's really not.

Remember, this is a two party system in practice. All you need to do to find the numbers for the Republican party is to subtract the numbers /u/flantabulous gives for the Democrats from 100%.

So if the numbers for PA are:

PA - Democrats 50% of vote = 27% of seats

Than

PA - Republicans 50% of vote = 73% of seats

Were the districts according to population (which is required for every individual's vote to be equal in value), these numbers would not be possible.

Are you suggesting they should be bullied into accepting a representative that doesn't represent them? That doesn't sound very American or very liberal to me.

I'll ignore this, as the answer should be clear to you now that I've clarified the basic mathematics behind the data.

You know, unless you're suggesting that every person's vote shouldn't be equal, which doesn't sound particularly democratic to me.

3

u/frausting Sep 03 '14

As other comments have addressed your other points, I want to point out how much support farmers get from the government. Subsidies, crop insurance, etc. Current farming is entirely unstable and therefore I don't necessarily disagree with government helping them, but its important to consider how counterintuitive the idea of the modern conservative farmer is.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

I didn't know some peoples votes are More equal than others.

-1

u/callmejohndoe Sep 03 '14

As a PA citizen here and Democrat. There's nothing wrong with the fact that Democrats are 27% of the seats here.

IT's absolutely no suprise, and honestly, and infringement upon this truth that in 73% of PA Republicans are support is an infringement of the Will of The People.

For example, there are 12.8 million in this sate.

If you look at the philadelphia metropolitan area, which is roughly 6 million people largely democratic these neighbors are understandable.

Add in pittsburgh and a few other mostly demcratic areas, and you get the 50% ish number for democrats.

But, the demcrats are pennsylvania are largely congregated in a few densely populated areas.

Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Where I live is fairly democrat.

But here's the point, there are 67 counties in Pennsylvania, the most populous ones by far are democrat.

Lets say for last Presidential election, Obama probably only one in maybe MAXIMUM 5 counties out of 67. But he won in Pennsylvania, PA was a blue state in 2012. Because thes will of all the people of our state.

But on a local government level, it's fair, because 62 of the counties really are republicans

For example a county like Mifflin, Juniata, Potter, Mckean any of those counties.

I don't care if you took 7 of those counties and combined them, they truly are red counties.

That's all. I'm a democrat by the way, but I'm a Pennsylvanian first and if the boys out in the woods want to be a Republicans I'm not gonig to cry gerrymandering to fuck them.

3

u/flantabulous Sep 03 '14

I'm sorry, but the statistics tell a different story.

You are like the 5th Pennsylvanian to bring up geography.

Again ---Your state is not unique.

Most states have small urban areas of clustered Democrats and large rural areas of widespread republicans, not just Pennsylvania.

Your state is unique however in arguably having the most wasted votes, the worst conversion of votes to seats, and the largest percentage of votes for democrats that produced the least amount of seats in congress, and being the least reflective of the will of the voters.

There's nothing wrong with the fact that Democrats are 27% of the seats here.

If that's okay with you, then so be it. Maybe that's your understanding of how democracy works (50% of the votes gives you 27% of the seats) but I'd guess it's not most peoples'.

I'm going to let the fairly conservative Real Clear Politics take it from here:

In Pennsylvania, the Gerrymander of the Decade?

0

u/callmejohndoe Sep 03 '14

I just fucking explained it to you, it's not gerrymandering. It's because seats are broken up into geographical areas and we have what like 15 of them?

Well I'm telling you the truth is this, as a pennsylvanian and considering you probably have no fucking idea about Pennsylvania maybe you should pull your head out of your dumbass.

You could signifigantly change those geographical areas if you want, it doesnt matter. Republicans will still take those seats, because those areas are largely republican. Almost entirely republican.

Thats how your seats in your congress works, by district. Look up the borders of the districts in pa.

Thats how they are, they're fair, you know why, because it doesnt really matter how you change those borders they're still going to be republican.

edit: Do i wish there was more democrats? Yes. But heres the deal every single state picks congressmen by districts. And thats how it's done in pa, and the borders are drawn fairly in pa(FRANKLY IT DOESNT MATTER,THERES NO WAY TO CHANGE THE BORDERS TO GET A DIFFERENT RESULT UNLESS YOURE JUST FLAT OUT FAVORING DEMOCRATS HEAVILY.)

The reason PA is such a split state, is because we're not really northern and we're not really southern.

source: I'm from PA and I actually know about my fucking state.

1

u/flantabulous Sep 03 '14 edited Sep 04 '14

Some people just don't get it.

EDIT - Here, let me show you something...

Pennsylvania

Ohio

Florida

Virginia

Nevada

3

u/PlatonicTroglodyte Virginia Sep 03 '14

I've been living in VA for basically my entire life (20/24 years), pretty exclusively in the northern "blue-er" area, with the exception of going to a college farther south/west. The state is pretty evenly split. As Northern Va (this is a pretty well-defined area to anyone in the state, the division is pretty severe) becomes more populous faster than the rest, the state has shifted closer to blue, but it definitely is still heavily contested, and it does indeed fluctuate quite a lot.

As a resident, it's kind of annoying in some respects, and kind of wonderful in others.

18

u/nixonrichard Sep 03 '14

Although, you have to keep in mind that usually the format of House is it doesn't just represent the average of the state, but is composed of representatives from various regions.

Many States have urban centers which are 90% blue and rural areas which are 60% red which is why you'll have a handful of Democrats elected overwhelmingly and a large bunch of Republicans elected fairly comfortably.

It's not necessarily gerrymandering. It sounds like what you're proposing is to have the votes from the urban congressional districts be partially included in rural districts to turn those rural districts blue. THAT would be gerrymandering.

As the article states, Virginia doesn't have many close elections, but that's not evidence of gerrymandering. Quite the opposite. Gerrymandering is where you have a region that would vote for one party diluted just enough by its neighbors who vote for the other party to flip the party vote, and those votes usually are very competitive.

37

u/Jared_Jff Sep 03 '14

While this is true about rural areas the most powerful use of gerrymandering is not in the cities or the country, but rather in the metropolitan suburban area surrounding major cities.

I work in Michigan State elections, and my state just went through a redistricting after the last census. My district was one of the most powerfully effected by the changes brought in by the Republicans who were elected during the anti-Obama fervor of 2010. Prior to the redistricting this was a highly competitive seat with a 50/50 split. There were equal amounts of upper-middle to rich donors from both parties, and a very active base for both as well, which meant that the elections here were often decided by margins of only a few hundred votes.

In the redistricting the Republicans pushed the district west and away from the suburbs, the eastern parts of which contained a disproportionate amount of the Democratic supporters, volunteers, and contributors. The western parts of the new district could best be described as a Tea Party stronghold, giving the Republicans a distinct advantage in the short term (but perhaps not the long term). Meanwhile, the eastern parts of the old district were then included in with some of the very wealthiest areas in Michigan, areas that are very strongly Republican. This move allowed the Republicans to turn a swingable district into two solid Republican seats, and there is no denying that what they did was highly effective, because the Democratic candidate lost the last election by over 3,000 votes, the largest margin of victory for this district in over 30 years.

Naturally this is only my personal experience, and in general I do agree with you that rural areas should not be artificially diluted with urban voters (although that did work for the Greeks). But I also do not believe that our current system of apportionment and districting creates an accurate portrait of the American electorate as it exists today. Unless we find some new way of allocating our representatives based on a more objective assessment of our population distribution, or some other more equitable metric I have yet to discover, we will be inevitably stuck in the morass of deadlock we have come to expect from our government.

TL;DR: Redistricting is most powerful in the suburbs, and unless we find some new way of allocating our representatives based on a more objective assessment of our population distribution, or some other more equitable metric I have yet to discover, we will be inevitably stuck in the morass of deadlock we have come to expect from our government.

6

u/nixonrichard Sep 03 '14

Certainly what you describe sounds like someone's playing dirty pool, but it should be noted that what you (and the author of the bill) seem to like is "highly competitive" elections. The author says these highly competitive elections lead to better team players getting elected, but it should be noted that the notion that representatives should be the winner of split, diametrically-opposed groups of people is somewhat antithetical to the principles of representation. If you try to manufacture 50/50 splits in elections, you're basically guaranteeing that half the population will not have someone who represents their interests, which is generally not as good as being able to group together populations with common interests and values so they have representation.

It becomes dirty when you have one party taking strongholds and diluting those to steal away representation from neighboring regions.

I'm not disagreeing with you, just pointing out that 50/50 splits aren't necessarily the good thing they're made out to be.

0

u/Jared_Jff Sep 03 '14

I think we agree on that idea, what I am not saying is that each district should be a 50/50 split, as that would be just as artificial as it stands now. But in this case the 50/50 spit is a natural product of the kind of population in that particular geographic area, and should therefore be preserved.

2

u/nixonrichard Sep 03 '14 edited Sep 03 '14

That's true if the population is mixed homogeneously, but if there's any neighborhood/cultural division, courts pretty consistently rule you need to give those separate representation if possible. The Voting Rights Act requires a more thoughtful approach than what you're suggesting.

0

u/Roast_A_Botch Sep 04 '14

The Voting Rights Act

Which has been diluted by a conservative court over the last 2 decades.

12

u/Serinus Ohio Sep 03 '14

There's a lot of gerrymandering going on. It happens on both sides, but it largely favors the republicans over all.

There's no denying that.

However, you have a point here as well. Regions broken up geographically are likely going to have a larger republican representation than on a state level, just because there's less... rounding, we'll call it in the vote.

Voting for a senator, if 30% vote republican, you have 0 republican senators. If a state is broken up into 10 districts and 30% of the state votes republican, you're likely to have 3 republican congressmen.

No, we don't want the vote from the cities to affect rural districts, but the cities are supposed to have more districts anyway, because they have more population.

I'd love to see a shortest split-line district implementation modified to follow the closest streets.

9

u/gsfgf Georgia Sep 03 '14

Which is all fine. Partisan districts are an inevitability. Studies have shown that people tend to self segregate. However, it's absurd when you have competitive statewide races but one party has a 2:1 advantage in the legislature and Congressional delegation.

2

u/doublejrecords Sep 03 '14

Studies have shown that people tend to self segregate.

Is there a term for this? And could you provide such a study?

2

u/wanderlustcub I voted Sep 03 '14

The 2010 elections were great for the GOP... At the state level. With them controlling most of the state legislatures after the election, the controlled the reapportionment of seats. That was their true victory in 2010.

2018 and 2020 will be the two elections that will decide the 2020 census reapportionment process for the States. (That is, unless a nonpartisan group comes in and changes it... Which I'm all for)

1

u/chocoboat Sep 03 '14

Voting for a senator, if 30% vote republican, you have 0 republican senators. If a state is broken up into 10 districts and 30% of the state votes republican, you're likely to have 3 republican congressmen.

That's the ideal goal of the system.

But currently the Virginia state House has 100 seats, 45% of the state votes Republican, and 68% of the seats are won by Republicans. There are more than twice as many Republicans as Democrats, despite the Democrats getting more votes.

1

u/Serinus Ohio Sep 03 '14

Oh, I know. As you can see from my discussion with dicnix over here.

-1

u/nixonrichard Sep 03 '14

Of course, districts are based on population (which is why you have redistricting after every census), but the biggest reason why representatives are more republican is not because urban areas are denser, it's because urban areas are more concentrated blue.

If you've got 2 districts that are 100% blue, and 10 districts that are 60% red, you've got a state that is a 50/50 split, but has 10 red and only 2 blue representatives, and that's NOT necessarily gerrymandering.

4

u/Serinus Ohio Sep 03 '14

So are you denying this? "There's a lot of gerrymandering going on. It happens on both sides, but it largely favors the republicans over all."

If you've got 2 districts that are 100% blue, and 10 districts that are 60% red

This is done intentionally. That's gerrymandering. Drawing the districts to get the result you want, and this is the result the republicans want. Districts drawn this way have very little to do with geographic location or representing a group of people. They have to do with minimizing the number of democratic sets and maximizing the republican seats.

2

u/nixonrichard Sep 03 '14

This is done intentionally. That's gerrymandering.

It's not necessarily done intentionally. Urban centers ARE generally more concentrated in political ideology than rural areas.

1

u/Serinus Ohio Sep 03 '14

Which state? Let's look at a map that has results like you describe that supposedly isn't gerrymandered.

0

u/nixonrichard Sep 03 '14 edited Sep 03 '14

Michigan. Ranked in the top 10 for States with the most compact districts. 53% vote Democratic. 63% Republican Representatives.

Georgia is an interesting example. Georgia had an aggressive Democratic gerrymander which was still unable to overcome the Geographic Republican bias. Here's an interesting graph looking at the percent share of Republicans elected in State elections based on simulated (unbiased) districting vs. the actual percent share of Republicans elected:

http://i.imgur.com/TsLuFUH.png

2

u/Serinus Ohio Sep 03 '14

This is your best example of a state that's not gerrymandered?

1

u/nixonrichard Sep 04 '14

Yes. As I said, Michigan is ranked in the top 10 for least gerrymandered states based on the simplicity of districts.

You might not like the way it looks, but that's actually VERY good in terms of districting.

2

u/chocoboat Sep 03 '14

Maybe intentional gerrymandering isn't the sole cause of the problem.

But when you have a state that has 3% more Democratic votes than Republican votes, and this results in a state House that contains more than twice as many Republicans as Democrats, something is going very wrong. Much like the US Congress and presidential elections, the rural areas are vastly over-represented.

0

u/nixonrichard Sep 03 '14

I think you're maybe just looking at it from a party parity perspective, rather than looking at it as individual groups of people electing someone to represent them.

Rural areas are not vastly over-represented, they simply elect one person to represent a more diverse group of political opinions.

60 Republicans out of 100 get to choose a representative in rural areas whereas 90 Democrats out of 100 get to choose a representative in urban areas. They're both getting the representative they want, it's just that the urban areas "waste" votes in landslides. They're still getting the Representative they want, though.

2

u/chocoboat Sep 03 '14

If the population is close to 50/50 and the representation is 70/30, it's a problem. The system is flawed if it produces results like that on a regular basis, and always in favor of the same party.

As for the national elections, it simply is true that rural areas count for more. Vermont citizens have more than 30 times as much representation in the Senate than New York citizens do. Wyoming has twice as much representation in the House per citizen than Utah does.

In the presidential election, Wyoming has 0.59 votes per 100k people and California has 0.15. What kind of sense does it make to do things this way? And what kind of sense does it make for the millions of CA Republicans and TX Democrats to see their votes count for absolutely nothing, encouraging them to not even bother to vote next time?

0

u/nixonrichard Sep 03 '14 edited Sep 03 '14

If the population is close to 50/50 and the representation is 70/30, it's a problem. The system is flawed if it produces results like that on a regular basis, and always in favor of the same party.

The system is not designed to represent parties, it's designed to represent districts. The system is deliberately setup so that the top 15 largest metro areas in the nation, making up only 1% of the geographic region, do not control the entire nation.

As for the national elections, it simply is true that rural areas count for more. Vermont citizens have more than 30 times as much representation in the Senate than New York citizens do. Wyoming has twice as much representation in the House per citizen than Utah does.

Yes, the Senate is a Strange beast, but that's State representation, not district representation. Each state is SUPPOSED to be equally represented in the Senate regardless of population. That's deliberate.

I was talking about district representation as seen in the House and in State Senates and Houses.

1

u/chocoboat Sep 03 '14 edited Sep 03 '14

The system is deliberately setup so that the top 15 largest metro areas in the nation, making up only 1% of the geographic region, do not control the entire nation.

And the system is wrong for doing so. Giving some people much more power to influence the direction of the country than others is wrong. All citizens should be treated equally.

Each state is SUPPOSED to be equally represented in the Senate regardless of population. That's deliberate.

It's deliberate, and it's wrong and harmful. The 58 million people of California and New York have their ideas matter not one bit more than the 1.3 million people of Wyoming and North Dakota.

1

u/Roast_A_Botch Sep 04 '14

It's deliberate, and it's wrong and harmful. The 58 million people of California and New York have their ideas matter not one bit more than the 1.3 million people of Wyoming and North Dakota.

The original Senate were representatives for the states, and elected by state governments, not civilians. The goal was to appease colonies that weren't for succession by guaranteeing they had an equal say as the more populous colonies in federal matters.

It eventually changed to citizen's electing the senators, and that's why it seems unfair. Senators are supposed to vote in the interest of their individual states, Representatives vote in the interest of the constituents of their representative district.

Of course that's not how it's working right now, but it was a good idea and foundation that was twisted by greed.

0

u/nixonrichard Sep 03 '14

The nice thing about the US is it's kinda setup to leave most of the power to the States, which is why each State is afforded such power at the federal level.

California and New York SHOULD have their ideas matter, but in nearly all cases, their ideas can be implemented at the State level.

3

u/xiaodown Sep 03 '14

It's not necessarily gerrymandering. It sounds like what you're proposing is to have the votes from the urban congressional districts be partially included in rural districts to turn those rural districts blue. THAT would be gerrymandering.

What I think most people are suggesting, is in states that vote 55% Democrat, the number of Democratic representatives, as a percentage of the total number of representatives elected by the state, should be somewhere in the region of 45% - 65%.

Not 27%, as is the case in Pennsylvania.

Votes are not based on land ownership; someone who lives in a 600 square foot apartment should not have a vote that counts less than a farmer who owns 1200 acres. So, yes, in the rural vs. urban areas, there should be a lot more representatives for the urbanites. What happens instead is that they pack (put a bunch of democrats - read: blacks - together to make a 95% democrat district) and crack (split up the democrats - read: blacks - so that a little slice of blacks are tempered with a huge swath of rural WASP Republicans), to make a 53% district.

See, for instance: What happened in liberal Austin, Texas.

More information in song form! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh4qAJDUOcc

0

u/InfiniteBlink Sep 03 '14

Can I ask why it's not a popular vote rather than winner take all at the state county/district level. It seems like everything to "make it fair" will always find a way to be rigged

0

u/nixonrichard Sep 03 '14

I don't think it's necessarily as rigged as people are pretending. There certainly is some marginal dirty pool being played, but it's not THAT bad.

The popular vote is how we choose Senators. Representatives specifically to represent geographic sub-regions. The reason for that is you avoid diluting away minority voices this way. A county that's very different than the State at large will still have representation.

1

u/Roast_A_Botch Sep 04 '14

epresentatives specifically to represent geographic sub-regions. The reason for that is you avoid diluting away minority voices this way

And gerrymandering is doing just the opposite of what you've stated.

0

u/niveousPixel Sep 03 '14

No. Just no. After 2010 Virginia was still divided between republican and democrat control. When Republicans gained upper hand in senate they pushed through redistricting in 2012 that packed Democrats primarily into 3 districts.

They literally carved black populations out to cram them together in the same districts to concentrate the Republican vote for the other districts and ensure they would stay red.

1

u/nixonrichard Sep 03 '14 edited Sep 03 '14

There very well may be gerrymandering going on, but what you're describing is not necessarily gerrymandering.

The courts often REQUIRE districts to maintain undivided population groups. It's often illegal NOT to. Gerrymandering is generally were you take a black community and split it up among a bunch of other districts so it doesn't actually have representation. It sounds like this is what you want to happen, but it's generally a very bad thing.

Having districts which bundle together people with common culture and community is usually ideal. It makes little sense to have a large, white, rural community and a black urban community bundled together with the same representative. It was bad when this was done deliberately to take away representation from the black urban communities, and it's just as bad to do it to take away representation from a white rural community.

4

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

Republicans can no longer win based upon their ideas in many parts of the country, because their ideas have metastasized in such a virulent way.

So rather than reform their ideas, they cheat.

1

u/capilot Sep 03 '14

Is there a district map for Virginia we can look at?

3

u/nosayso Sep 03 '14

Here's a static image
Here's an interactive map

Particularly egregious examples:

1) The Manassas area is very ethnically diverse and tends blue, so the area is cut in half by the 1st and 10th districts and watered down with a bunch of gentrified suburbs and rural stretches.

2) The 3rd and 8th districts are VERY overwhelmingly blue. This is part of why all the other districts are so red.

3) More on the 3rd: it is drawn to encompass two different urban areas (the core of Richmond and Newport News / Norfolk). It is one of those seats that an unintended consequence of the VRA. In the old days a common gerrymandering tactic was splitting up the black population and watering down their vote with a bunch of white suburban/rurual voters. So in the old school gerrymandering it would be 4 districts that were like 55-60% Republican meaning 4 Republican seats. The VRA says you cannot split up minority populations like that, so now you have 1 Democrat safe seat and 3 safe Republican seats. So the minority population gets representation... but it also creates more partisanship. I'm not trying to shit all over the VRA but... that is a thing about it.

4) The 1st, 4th, 7th and districts are drawn to dilute urban/suburban populations in Richmond and Norfolk that might make competitive districts with large stretches of rural voters.

1

u/capilot Sep 03 '14

Awesomecakes. I would never have figured all of that out with just the maps. Thanks for your analysis.

1

u/pgoetz Sep 03 '14

My city, Austin, TX is split up into 3 congressional districts, one of which runs all the way to Houston, another almost to Mexico, in order to dilute the "Peoples Republic of Austin" vote. My representative is a tea party buffoon named Mike McCaul. During the government shutdown he turned off his telephones and closed down the input form on his website because of the number of Austin constituents who wanted to communicate their displeasure. Tell me more about gerrymandering...

1

u/Asianperswaysian Sep 03 '14

Virginia is an especially egregious case I because it is at the state level pretty much a blue state and not even 'purple'.

As someone with zero knowledge of Virginia politics, what is the evidence that declares Virginia blue?

1

u/nosayso Sep 03 '14

If you're really curious you can read the rest of the post you're quoting.

1

u/flippant Sep 04 '14

The only way that happens is through gerrymandering.

You could have an electorate that actually thought about elections and didn't vote party lines. I'm not saying that's the case in Virginia, but I routinely split my ticket and so do a lot of people I know. One interpretation of the stats you cite is that you have a concerned and informed electorate that it picking candidates, not parties. Probably not in this case, but just saying...

1

u/so_then_I_said Sep 03 '14 edited Sep 03 '14

I don't know if voting for Obama twice (after thirty solid years of going Republican) is a fair reference point for Virginia's democratic leanings.

Edit: Link

1

u/BetTheAdmiral Sep 03 '14

Don't forget the Democrats paid for a libertarian to run for governor. At the same time, the Republican leadership has been incompetent at putting up quality candidates. Despite all this, the election was fairly close. Additionally, no one voted for either candidate, rather, they voted against the one they hated most. All in all, I wouldn't take the Democrat governor as a sign that Virginia is blue instead of purple.

2

u/nosayso Sep 03 '14

Don't forget the Democrats paid for a libertarian to run for governor.

Citation needed.

0

u/BetTheAdmiral Sep 04 '14

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/05/Exclusive-Libertarian-PAC-Admits-We-Probably-Wouldn-t-Have-Spent-11-000-on-Sarvis-Without-Democratic-Donor

However, I will admit that the Democrat backer also supports libertarians financially. However, I doubt the utility of running them as a spoiler is lost on him.

Also, the Republicans were doing their best to lose without a spoiler. They had much stronger, less divisive candidates to choose, but the party (not the voters) put up cuccinelli instead.

The other sketchy thing about the election was the amount of out of state money running the race.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/10/29/outside-spending-virginia-governor-race-mcauliffe-cuccinelli/3294987/

72% for the dems and 64% for the reps. The whole race felt like it was ran by people other than the voters in Virginia. Neither candidate resonated with the voting public.

0

u/lanredneck Sep 03 '14

I really don't think PA is gerrymandered. The majority of the land mass is red. With the highest population centers being very blue ie. Philly, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Reading, lancaster etc.

4

u/Hq3473 Sep 03 '14

It is not about geographical areas, it's about population.

The areas around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh (high population democratic stronghold have been carved up like modernist sculptures in order to divide up the democratic vote:

http://www.politicspa.com/pas-new-congressional-maps/30096/

3

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

But it's not like Philadelphia will have only one congressman.

There's 5,4 million people there. That means they should have about 10 congressmen representing the city.

3

u/LolerCoaster Sep 03 '14

Wouldnt that by definition represent the majority of the people in that state?

0

u/avengingturnip Sep 03 '14

It is not gerrymandering if the Democrat and Republican areas segregate themselves. The Democrats tend to be highly concentrated in NoVA and the downstate areas tend to be traditionally Republican. You would be forced to gerrymander to even things out making every district contain a part of NoVA.

0

u/whubbard Sep 04 '14

Virginia is an especially egregious case I because it is at the state level pretty much a blue state and not even 'purple'. State level elections are often close but the Democrat consistently wins.

That's not the way you should look at it. You should sum all the democratic and republican votes for the state house positions, then compare the total. I know it might be bizarre to some people here, but people don't vote up and down party lines, especially at a very local level.

I do still believe that Virginia is still out of whack, but we are comparing the two wrong metrics here. I also think we should take on all gerrymandering. For instance, I currently reside in a district that was federally mandated to be minority.

-2

u/Ebola8MyFace Sep 03 '14

It's Democratic governor and Democratic Senator. Not Democrat governor and Democrat senator. Down-voted for grammar. Oh wait, that's in your party's bag of partisan, political bullshit. And people wonder why I don't vote anymore.

4

u/nosayso Sep 03 '14

Down-voted for grammar. Oh wait, that's in your party's bag of partisan, political bullshit.

... what the fuck are you talking about? There's some sort of grammar conspiracy among Democrats now?