Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[Sheb]

"Having elected politicians deciding the shape of their district infringe on the right of the opposition to be fairly represented".

[mainiac]

Believe it or not, but you'd need a bit more detail for the ruling actually to mean anything.

[Sheb]

Excuse me for not writing a 50-page memo in legalese. I'm not a Supreme Court Justice, I just expect that a ban on politicians managing the redistricting process would be doable.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Gerrymandering is illegal, that's why most states have committees of appointees who do the redistricting.

And they are appointed by the parties. Do you see the issue here?

[mainiac]

Excuse me for not writing a 50-page memo in legalese. I'm not a Supreme Court Justice, I just expect that a ban on politicians managing the redistricting process would be doable.

It's not the legalese I want, it's the method that somehow does away with partisan influences while still being workable.

Right now you are assuming a can opener

[Sheb]

Well, how does the UK for exemple avoid Gerrymandering?

[mainiac]

Well, how does the UK for exemple avoid Gerrymandering?

Badly.

[lue]

Redistricting is done at the state level.  How do you convince one political party to unilaterally disarm and make it certain their opposition will control the house?

"The direct count of votes says you don't deserve the House anyway (our party has the majority of House votes across the nation). If you agree with us to make districting fairer, not only will it help in the quest to repair your image, but I guarantee you that I will mention the bipartisan nature of this plan, all in the interest of fairness." I dunno, something like that?

Gerrymandering is illegal, that's why most states have committees of appointees who do the redistricting.

And they are appointed by the parties. Do you see the issue here?

Apparently not that illegal yet

And on a theoretical court ruling: I have yet to go over the Constitution to see what, if anything, it says about elections could possibly be applied to illegal-ifying gerrymandering. But I imagine the arguments against would go to various places such as "in particularly complexly drawn sections of the districting maps, voters may have a more difficult than usual time in discovering their proper district" and its effects on third parties, and so on.

[Mephansteras]

The problem with gerrymandering is that it is a decent idea taken to its corrupt conclusion.

The decent idea is that people should be grouped by population density so that rural areas can get a representative who actually cares about their votes. Otherwise you'd get situations where a bunch of people are basically ignored because no politician is going to worry about people who only make up a small percentage of their voting base. So, in theory, you'd have larger rural areas districted together (by total population) with much smaller urban districts and each district is then at least halfway reasonably represented.

This is then, of course, used as justification to have horrible district lines that make a jigsaw puzzle pieces look like they're made out of all right angles.

[werty892]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Liberalism HO! However, I agree with somethings, such as the death penalty.

[Descan]

I wonder if you seperated a state first into "Urban" and "Rural" areas, and then short-split it via algorithm? So the rural population is split into some number of districts, and each of the cities are split into some number of districts.

Might have problems with just how disparate population density is. Don't want to give rural people TOO much representation, then you have the reverse problem. If you only have 5 districts and you have 80/20 urban/rural split, then no matter how you slice the rural group if you separate them all into one group, they still only have one representative for them. Rural people are generally (?) more conservative, so we're back to the gerrymandering problem. Buggerall.

NEVERMIND.

[lue]

I personally think the issue of not being represented is outweighed by how such contestable districts would end up leading to moderation.

It's entirely possible that, in a district with even proportions of rural and urban populations, one party may never get their candidates in the House. This is suboptimal.

However, in such a case, every candidate for the seat would have to be more moderate in order to gain enough votes and/or earn the trust of the losing side, which in this district is a competitive part of your constituency. This is good.

(Keep in mind, the American political system was never explicitly created for political parties (no matter how much that's since been integrated); we don't have to make the caucus numbers balance.)

[Araph]

Nevermind, post relocated.

[freeformschooler]

You forgot some Ambivalent options.

[Frumple]

You'll probably want to peel that off into another thread, yeah. There's actually been a couple of things like that over the years, so it shouldn't be too poorly received. S'probably better than using this thread, t'boot.