858
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
858 points (98.5% liked)
politics
19198 readers
2462 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Exactly the wrong way to look at it. The way to overcome gerrymandering is to push higher turnout.
Short version is that in order to do that kind of extreme gerrymandering successfully, they have to make assumptions about what the vote will look like. One of those assumptions is that Dem turnout is lower than GOP turnout, because it is - GOP treat voting like a civic duty, Dems generally don't. This is why putting even mild roadblocks in front of voting (like having ID, or waiting in line, or w/e) favor the GOP - GOP voters will jump through whatever hoops are necessary to do their civic duty, Dems get dissuaded from voting with much less effort.
What this means is that if Dems turnout in force, they win. In most places they outnumber GOP, even in gerrymandered maps - they just have to actually vote en masse.
deleted by creator
It's literally impossible to draw districts in such a way that a minority party is the majority of voters in every district. You have to either pack the opposition into seats you are basically giving them to secure yours or you are doing some math on expected turnout and thinking how to promote turnout for your party and depress it for the opposition and aiming to win by a smallish but predictable margin.
It sounds an awful lot like you are in a very red state, and there isn't a blue majority that can hypothetically vote.
Or they've packed enough Dem voters into a single district (depending on the state not doing this can be considered illegal racial gerrymandering, depending on how majority-minority districts fit in - in some cases not having them is racist, in others packing minorities into them is racist). But that requires a small number of total districts, or surrendering more than one to the opposition (the more districts you have, the less impact surrendering one district gives you).
Really, we just need to switch to some fixed, abstract mathematical process that cares not about how people will vote and use that to draw district lines. Something like least split line. But that's a hard sell, because the people who would need to pass it are the people who benefit from it not existing.
deleted by creator