Arguably, that’s what you want. An 80-20 district alienates fewer people than a 51-49 one.
It comes with some other problems, like voter apathy, but maybe that would be worth it.
Many democracies (especially ours honestly) have little loopholes to do underhanded things, and gerrymandering is an admittedly capricious example. But people do this underhanded stuff throughout history in many many ways. It doesn’t need to mean the death of democratic institutions. Democratic institutions have many other threats, like the populace losing faith in government to meet their needs.
Nobody advocates for combatting gerrymandering by insisting on some kind of hypothetical balance of policy outcomes because it is an impossible tautology, and isn’t really sensible in terms of ostensible party lines anyway because the overall policy of the party may not reflect on specific concerns of some demographic within the party. A well-balanced electoral district map isn’t just drawn to have some proportionate balance of political parties but is also drawn to collect together particular community, business, and sociopolitical interests that may cross political lines such that there is (in theory, at least) a strong voice for their particular concerns. This makes defining what is a fair map and what is excessively gerrymandered somewhat subjective, although in the case of hyper partisan gerrymandering it is pretty clear because of the really tortured shapes of the districts and how obviously they cut across demographic lines to crack particular interests or create enclaves to pack more broad interests into a handful of districts.
Fivethirtyeight.com did a series and podcast called The Gerrymandering Project which is a deep dive into partisan gerrymandering and why it is so difficult to create an objective standard for drawing a completely fair district map. But arguing to gerrymander to exclude political voices–even ones you disagree with–is the essence of maintaining the trappings of democracy while undermining the basic intent of it. In fact, that is what modern autocracies like Hungary, Türkiye, and Russia do; they hold elections, there are ostensible opposition parties, and even debates and a pageant of dissent but in the end the outcome of any election is foretold.
Once a party comes to the conclusion that it is much easier to manipulate the voting process by controlling districting rather than campaigning and building consensus, there is no longer any motivation to uphold democratic institutions except for show (as the Democratic Party did in it’s “Machine Era’“ between the ‘Thirties and early ‘Seventies). It isn’t about ‘fighting fair’; it is about actually upholding the principles that they supposedly hold dear. This is why Lincoln insisted on holding an election in 1864 even though he was almost convinced at one point that he would lose. Every time I see people advocate that Democrats need their own Fox News, Joe Rogan Experience, InfoWars, et cetera, or that they should gerrymander the holy fuck out of every state they can and engage in the same kind of election denial and voter suppression as an in-kind response, I shudder and imagine what the country would look like being split between two autocratically-inclined polities, neither of which really cares about anything beyond winning elections and has no clue as to what to do once they are actually in power.
Stranger
Lincoln was fine with rushing states into the union that Republicans viewed as beneficial in that election. There’s a lot of daylight in between being completely on the level with all elecoral politics and straight up canceling elections, and many people throughout history have made positive impacts by playing dirty without going too far in an authoritarian direction.
Let me revise my remarks. While 43-9 may be “as good as the Dems should hope for”, there were 7 of the 43 seats that are not securely Democratic. I think it should be possible to gerrymander and make most of those 7 seats more secure. Should the D’s “cheat” and do that? ABSOLUTELY. The Rs are openly bragging that they are gerrymandering in every way possible. Texas is redistricting to increase its gerrymandered advantage even more than it already is. The Rs are fighting as dirty as they possibly can. Now is not the time to be squeamish.
On another matter: It is NOT the case that with a 55-45 split in vote statewide that the distribution of seats should have the same 55-45 ratio. It should be MORE skewed than that. (I’ll let the mathematicians state this more precisely.)
(Third matter: Why did the Preview window disappear on me?)
New York Governor Kathy Hochul says New York will gerrymander its districts to flip Republican seats.
Gerrymandering is an abomination. However, it’s not as much of an abomination as fascism.
Goddamn but you people have fucked up your country to be faced with a choice like this. I blame Rupert Murdoch.
The Maryland legislature is now formulating a plan to redistrict in pursuit of an 8-0 clean sweep, wiping out the district currently held by hard core righty Andy Harris.
Maryland Republicans are understandably up in arms about this yet still won’t voice support for anti-gerrymandering legislation in Congress. What is it about the widespread apathy - or even downright hostility - towards basic fair representation?
To quote the great Jerry Stiller, I have a lot of problems with you people.
One thing that I’ll note is that for as much as Newsom might have an argument that gerrymandering in return is just acting to try and counter an evil done elsewhere, and that feels very appealing, I can’t help but also notice that there was no anti-gerrymandering amendment proposed. Not mentioned, not considered, not advertised, not even argued against.
If your neighbor poisons your dog and your response is to poison their kids then, sure, you can point to what they did and make an argument that fair’s fair and that they’re the ones that decided to start down that path.
But we live in a world with police and courts; we live in a land with a Constitution and amendments.
If you’re not even going to pretend to try doing it the right way, I’m a bit skeptical of your underlying intentions. It’s not like we don’t know what the path to virtuousness looks like.
California already has an anti-gerrymandering amendment (Voters FIRST Act of 2010), which was voted 61% in favor. Newsom wants to override the commission that it established.
I presume of course that you’re talking about a US Constitutional amendment. Whether something like that could have any legs I don’t know. But right out of the gate, Newsom is trying to override the system that the voters explicitly asked for already. Unlike Texas.
So far as I’m aware, surveys have said that the American People are almost universally in favor of outlawing gerrymandering.
You wouldnt need a constitutional amendment, which is why dems under biden proposed legislation on gerrymandering instead. They’re the minority in both chambers of congress so the current dilemma is unilaterally disarm or not.
The public may support it, but it’s the legislatures that have to approve it. And they’re the ones that benefit from gerrymandering. Even if it was basically neutral, party-wise, lots of individual legislators will lose out. And the threat of losing the public’s vote doesn’t do much when the alternative is losing office because the votes were redistributed.
The CA Proposition system is a strict popular vote, though, so it can get around this problem.
I know I bring this up every time but states should be allowed to have proportional representation in the House and not election by district. And the more gerrymandering we see, the more I think proportional representation should be required.
You could come close to a proportional system. After every vote, mandate a redistricting that would have achieved proportionality if the districts had been that way already. Furthermore, mandate that the districts distribute the voting margin in a way that, if the vote does change, the number of winning districts also changes in a proportional way. That is, some districts will be at +2, some at +4, some at +6, etc. so that if a party achieves that vote, they’ll win the correct number of additional districts.
It wouldn’t be perfect but it would be closer than what we have. It would require some unusual districting. You might have to throw out the contiguity requirements.
In this day and and age, why do we need districts anymore?
I sorta agree, and would like to see something like “virtual” districts, but they’re mandated by law at the moment.
So today, before the proposal reached any kind of formalized state, I got a flyer in the mail urging me to vote no on Newsom’s redistricting scheme. Holy smokes those guys are fast!
Which is why we have to be skeptical, when we’re met with omerta.
You can think of politics as “Democrats vs Republicans”, and choose a side to support, and see that things go wrong but that it’s somehow always the other side’s fault and other side’s blame.
The reality is, though, you’re not a politician. You’ve maybe “aligned” yourself with the Democrats, but the people in office are the actual Democrats. You’re just some chump who sends checks that they can turn around and cash.
A far more productive way to view it is that there’s the Democrats and Republicans, yes, but there’s also us the People. We outnumber them and they only get their job if we give it to them. And the only way they are and the accomplish that is by convincing us to take the first view rather than the second.
A politician’s literal job - like a fireman’s job is to fight fires - is to work for the good of everyone - whether they align with his team or not, whether they send him checks or not. A politician that gerrymanders is like a fireman that sets fires. It’s an act of maliciousness that precisely and absolutely identifies an individual as a person who is not fit for their office - no matter what their position list is. I guarantee, you can find someone else with the same position list of you go out and check a few dozen people.
We all get nothing when we let the parties act maliciously to drum up support, fundraise, and blame the other team for shooting down that single payer system you wanted (gee shucks).
As you say yourself, solving those problems goes against the very incentive system that career politicians rely on. So again, you get nothing - not a single item that’s been promised to you - from your party so long as we continue with politics as usual.
Changing that isn’t “easy” but it really is just as easy as siding with the People and against the Politicians. You don’t have to put a single one back in office. We could swap out 2/3rds of Congress with all new people in just one election if we decided that we were done with this particular batch.
The day that we’re all willing to step outside of the game is the day that we win it and we get our system running properly again.
States should be required to have proportional representation, not “allowed.” The Fair Representation Act is out there, ready for congressional approval.
Democrats have indeed been a little soft on this matter and Newsom could do the country a world of good if he would openly support a concrete plan while he has our attention. You can’t drag a semblance of a plan out of a MAGA. They are congenitally unable to propose solutions.