So in other words: you don’t have Facts to back up that Democrats didn’t care about the System as Long as they were winning, you just assert what you believe.
The candidate has leverage over the party if he has a following. Lindsey Graham is not as conservative as the South Carolina state party, but he’s very popular in SC and the party’s ability to punish or remove him is limited. Lindsey Graham would never make a candidate slate in a proportional system.
It relates to how using compact districts still disadvantages Democrats, which is why some Democrats on this board don’t like compact districts except as a less bad alternative to what we have now.
Democrats enjoyed gerrymandering during that period. A lot. Democrats did not concern themselves with voter turnout. Every election, the media would lament how low voter participation was, but since it didn’t disadvantage Democrats in any way, it just wasn’t a partisan issue. There were no efforts to make voting easy. Democrats did want voting to be fair and opposed very real voter suppression in the South, but they did not need to come up with schemes like mail in ballots. Voter ID was broadly supported by everyone and Democrats didn’t expend any effort to oppose voter ID laws. Granted, Republicans didn’t expend any effort to pass them, because there was no partisan advantage in voter ID back then. But where there were voter ID laws, they just weren’t a partisan issue.
That’s why I said “for shits and giggles.” Was curious what a map like that would look like. And of course to actually get this off the ground, it would require Constitutional action to make a change like this. But instead of allocating districts to states based on their population, just cut the country into 435 districts. And instead of having state legislatures (or other state bodies) do the districting, have one national bi-partisan body do it.
The big obstacle there is the concept of shared sovereignty. The states are sovereign entities united into a federal government. Once you create a truly national electoral system like that then the states have surrendered the most important part of their sovereignty.
And you know this how, exactly? Magic Crystal ball?
With the 2010 census and the Republican surge in state legislatures, they fixed that. They fixed it good and hard! But you knew that.
Voter turnout is different from gerrymandering.
“Did not Need to come up with?” What do you mean - that the Republicans introduced it first?
Still no evidence that Democrats “didn’t care”, just vague assertions. Also, you can’t honestly cover 1930 to 1970 as one continous period without taking the flip due to the civil rights issue / Southern racists into account.
For the House of Representatives. The Senate would still do that. And the electoral college. And state governments.
That being said, I concede it would never happen. I’m just more curious what a map in a system like this would look like.
Which is interesting but of no relevance to the post you responded to or anything else I said (and you were responding to me).
The best metric of “fairness”, you have agreed, would be proportional representation. This does not necessarily mean that any proposed method of achieving that does so, or does so without resulting in other possibly worse problems, but it is the best metric.
Should efforts that are clearly intended to create greater unfairness be allowed? The answer to that question really is the same whether or not at any specific period of time those efforts are very effective, or completely ineffective, or which direction they push the result to.
The end may not be a completely fair result as some unfairness may be unavoidable. I believe it is. But minimizing unfairness and disallowing acted on intent to introduce greater unfairness are still worthwhile goals.
It’s an interesting idea, to be sure, and one that I think has merit. There are a lot of people of similar culture who live across state boundaries and have little relation to the rest of their state. Kansas residents of KC, New Jersey residents of the NY metro area, DC metro residents… You know, one totally constitutional thing you could do is land trades between states. Border adjustments require simple statutes. You could put all of Kansas City in Missouri and all of the NY metro area in New York.
Toss in at least one “congressman at large” (or elector at large) in every state, given to whichever party was the most disadvantaged due to the distributions of votes and you both reduce (but don’t eliminate) the effects of gerrymandering, and incentivize voting even in currently uncompetitive districts/state.
Sure, the at large congressman isn’t then beholden to a particular district, but congressmen appear to be mostly beholden to their campaign donors and lobbyists anyway.
As I said, the process should be fair and blind to outcomes. When you design any process to produce a certain outcome, it will almost never be fair. That’s why I can’t support trying to create party parity through gerrymandering. The outcome might be the fairest result, but the process involved would be unfair and quite a bit silly.
Interestingly enough, the 2020 census appears to once again be beneficial to red states. California for the first time is predicted to not even gain a seat or EV.
What’s crazy about our system is that Montana is going to double their House representation while Rhode Island’s will be cut in half, from two to an at large seat. Texas, as usual, will gain big, 3 or 4 seats.
What’s funny about that idea is that at large elections were how they used to make sure no minorities got elected. One effect would certainly be a lower proportion of minority legislators, since you’d be adding 50 or more at large legislators to the House.
As in, states that are now red, if barely. Consider that the imbalances in population increase are attributable to internal migration from the free states, and to immigration by people who just may not be inclined to vote for an anti-immigrant party, and give it another shot.
In the short term though that benefits Republicans. If Texas is 60% GOP, and you add enough Democrats to make it 55% GOP, Texas still is red, quite red in fact. And with more EVs and Congressmen. At the same time, illinois and New York lose representation.
Maybe eventually Texas will turn, but that time is a long way off and a lot will have changed by then. For one thing, Texas will have a much lower proportion of immigrants by then.
Easier than trying to persuade people you have the right policies, isn’t it?
I think the GOP is doing a better job of that than Democrats, who would prefer to change the system so they don’t have to persuade people who actually vote and live outside city centers to support them.
But will that eliminate Democrat gerrymandering?