“North Dakota and South Dakota have four Senators. California has two. There are more people in California named “Dakota” than there are people in North and South Dakota”
Bill Maher
8 Likes
As it SHOULD be everywhere.
In Utah, where I live, a ballot initiative was approved by a wide margin that tried to do away with partisan gerrymandering, but our right wing dominated legislature just threw that out and went right on with blatant gerrymandering.
6 Likes
When the only way a party can stay in power is through gerrymandering that is an admission that their populace does not agree with them. Rather than pivot their party platform they look at ways to disenfranchise voters. That is also happening in Texas. The district map is a cluster frack. Worse, they are actually considering an electoral college style framework for the election of governor and a few other key state officials.
5 Likes
Yes, it should.
However, until there is an agreement with ALL states to have apolitical gerrymandering, then states like CA and NY are idiots to do it.
Everyone should play by the same rules…
1 Like
Yes, but as has been revealed to the public consciousness recently, The Constitution gives the apparatus of elections to the States with few if any other rules. They cannot be made to change without changing The Const’ and that would be a Gordion knot. I’m not sure any relevant laws could even be passed at the Federal level especially as the S’ Court is stacked (for exactly these kinds of reasons) and will simply declare them a no-go
1 Like
When offices that are state-wide, like Gov, reflect the vote within districts, does the gerrymandering really matter? If the Gov and Senators are A, and the state legislature majority is A, it doesn’t seem the gerrymandering makes a difference, as the majority in the state want A. In a state like Michigan, where the state-wide office holders are often of a different party than the group that held a lock on the legislature for nearly 40 years, gerrymandering does matter.
Interesting thing happened in Michigan. For the first time, redistricting was handled by an independent board. The board said it’s objective was to create more competitive districts. The resulting districts are more or less rectangular, rather than the winding snakes the legislature had been creating. But the people in Detroit complained that their votes were not concentrated enough. What happened this year? For the first time, since 1984. control of both houses of the legislature flipped, to the same party as the Gov, Secretary of State, AG, who all won by large margins, but, for the first time in decades, Detroit is not represented by an African American.
Steve
3 Likes
In Missouri, voters passed an anti-gerrymandering law, but courts refused to enforce it. It’s still up to politicians to draw the lines. Gerrymandering is one of the perks of control in the state legislature.
A law that required boundaries to follow established boundaries like county or precinct boundaries is a plus. Laws that require that districts be square when practical is a plus. But differences in population density and voter politics are factors that make simple formulas not so easy. No matter how done, there has to be considerable latitude to allow for various factors. Ultimately politicians decide which map to accept.
Depending on the specific example, the majority in the legislature may or may not correspond to the majority in the state, but even when they are the same, the percentage can be quite different and that can have quite an impact on what one can do … the most extreme case being a veto-proof majority.