It would be unpopular with those that think voting alone would not give them the power they feel they deserve through birthright and/or opinion.
And how will the people find in favor of any anti-gerrymandering plan if their votes are nullified by republican gerrymandering?
If you only took data from how states do it - unpopular. California was anomalous in actually requiring independent state commissions - some states have softer and typically ineffective rules to mitigate gerrymandering but California and only one or two other states cut the state legislature out entirely. So apparently there isn’t enough popular push to implement it in most states. Of course every state has the same dillemma as California - do you choose to be the one state that bans gerrymandering while everyone else does it.
When dems controlled congress Joe Manchin and Amy Klobuchar proposed legislation to require independent commissions nationwide in addition tosome other voting reforms (early voting requirements, automatic voter registration, additional voter id requirements) but weren’t able to get a majority on board with eliminating the filibuster for it, and republicans didn’t support it. Apparently republicans weren’t punished by voters much if at all for their opposition. Or democrats didn’t get credit for proposing a reform when they weren’t willing to change the senate rules to enact it.
Or that one issue didn’t decide enough votes. And/or that issue wasn’t emphasized or even mentioned on the sources from which many people got their news.
And they can’t see in the dark, either?
Should we make decisions based on what the people in our own personal, pretend “Stereotype Land” would do, and studiously avoid actually testing reality in case it proves us wrong?
Or is that the wrong way to live life?
You can’t draw a conclusion from such limited evidence. And the popularity of such a proposal does not speak to its right- or wrongness. Fair voting practices are right even if some people, even if the majority of people, don’t like them.
I remember since I was in grade school hearing about opinion polls, where people would opine about a proposition in the Bill of Rights, only hearing the words without being told what it is, and the appalling number of people who thought that due process of law or freedom of speech were not good ideas. If you establish this country’s laws based on direct popularity contests, you will get the hell that you deserve. That’s why there are so many layers between the people and the law.
Gerrymandering is a little like pornography. We know it when we see it but, a precise logical and legal definition is next to impossible. Arnold Schwarzenegger made doing something about it a pet project. He came up with a reasonable solution with an independent commission that draws the map. Prop 50 has him upset because it undoes his project. He is one of those rare anti-MAGA republicans and I can see his point.
You can count me as another reluctant yes.
Basically neither. Amazingly, I got several pieces in the mail opposing this proposition before it even was approved for the ballot. The opposition is completely ignoring anything happening outside California. It’s saying, essentially, “California had a good idea all those years ago. Californians should not change it just because California politicians want to.”
All of that is true. But it doesn’t address the point at all.
Like, let’s imagine a hypothetical world where lizard people have taken over. They’ve realized that we love sports and can’t help ourselves but form teams and fight in parking lots against each other over which team is better.
Now, one of the lizards realizes that he can troll the other team - make a full heel turn - and get wild attention and even more power. And his compatriot lizards, playing as the leaders of the other team, start seeing big bucks coming in from their own team followers.
This is just beautiful.
The lizard people have one upped themselves from the power of sports fanaticism to the power of professional wrestling fanaticism. They can get these people to do anything, and they’ll just pump money to the lizards.
So now, in our hypothetical lizard world, someone like the Nancy Pelosi lizard or Newsom lizard looks at Donald Trump and just sees a golden goose who lays golden eggs. They can pass any and all legislation that even more strongly empowers the lizard people over the rest of us, and we’ll donate more money as thanks.
But let’s pretend that the above is not reality. Instead we have an actual good team and an actual bad team. What does that world look like? How do we detect which reality we live in, if we assume that “lizard” is a personality trait, not a plot device from a B movie. What evidence can we look to, to ensure that our leaders are above board?
Can we live in a world with manipulative, dishonest people who will use anything and everything to empower themselves? I’d certainly say that’s possible.
Are politicians generally held as being honest and trustworthy people, even outside of current times? No, is generally no problem finding conflicts of interest, broken promises, clear lies and obfuscation among their number.
But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say, even the worst person, at the end of the day is still an American. Despite all their other flaws, they must still have a little bit of a heart and would never consciously nor unconsciously align themselves with the enemy, against their followers.
So how can we detect that? What things can we watch for that would let us know, these lizards aren’t just using us? They actually do have our best interests at heart and will work to ensure that we’re protected from any true villainy that comes our way?
I’d put it to you that they’d work to actually fix the problem.
Like, if someone truly wants to lose weight, they’ll start controlling their calories and increase their physical activity.
If we don’t see that, and they keep proposing crazy nonsense like only eating liver and eggnog, and coffee enemas, we just have to remain skeptical that the person is really being honest. At the best, we might say that they’re not consciously being dishonest, they just have a mental block that won’t allow them to truly commit to actual weight loss. They’ll do anything and everything else, no matter how ridiculous and obviously destined to failure before they’ll ever just eat a little bit less and work out a little bit more.
A trustworthy person, mission 1, would first push to ensure that all Americans get their fair weight at the voting both - and especially if that’s exactly what’s needed to end most of the harms that were seeing today.
If that’s not even on the table and is something so horrible and unmentionable as to never even once get a single mention, I just don’t see how you can safely trust that politicians went from being dishonest liars and used car salesmen to saints, somehow, in the last few years.
Knocking down Trump doesn’t save you. If you get a majority in the House and Senate and are able to kick Trump out of office, that doesn’t change anything. Right now, we live in the world where the cat is out of the bag. You don’t live in the world of Donald Trump, you live in the world where every lizard in the land knows that you can call a single guy selling Tic Tacs on a street corner a terrorist - because sugar kills - and declare martial law. And they all know that, as a result of doing so, that the news will advertise for them - adherents and opponents alike - and political support will grow, money will flow in, and any legal repercussions can be slow walked and dismissed through further illegality, further slow-walked ad nauseum.
The knowledge doesn’t go away.
We all know how to do it. And the only solution is to pass laws that would correct and remove the holes in our system that our current leaders are walking through.
Where is the person who wants to close those holes? Why is there silence? Why is that the one thing that no one shall say, no one shall propose, no one will imagine? Why are all, 100% of solutions, to maintain and keep and instead to try and win those holes for party A and not party B?
I told everyone that I knew, decades ago, that watching Fox News was a bad idea. There isn’t a path where you commit yourself to a world view where one side is always good and the other side is always bad and somehow that turns out good.
And so likewise, I tell you, there isn’t a path where you put your trust in someone who is not trustworthy, and somehow that will turn out for the better.
If the goal is the party and not the country, then it’s all lizards. You do no good by putting your faith in them.
I’ve read your post multiple times and all I can get from it is a vague sense of “both-sidesism”. If you don’t think both sides are bad, then I apologize for misunderstanding you.
The Democrats are objectively far more interested in fair and honest elections. H.R.1 in the 117th Congress was an attempt to codify independent voting district creation at the federal level. It certainly wasn’t the Democrats that stopped it in its tracks. While I’m at it, fuck Joe Manchin. I expect this shit from the head turtle, but you’re supposed to be better (yeah, I know).
I am delighted to see near-unanimity on support for Prop. 50. Sometimes the “ends do justify the means.”
My worry is about failure even after Prop. 50 passes. Calif’s districts are already split 43-9. The severe gerrymandering needed to improve that to 48-4 (is that the target?) will cause backlash. The QOPAnon-Putin Bullshit Machine will be running on full steam to get out the MAGA voters. I worry that the result might end up worse than even 43-9.
Another worry is that Trump and his lackeys may simply declare Calif’s election void and refuse to seat any Calif Congressmen. Farfetched? The fascists are already doing far worse than that.
This is a point. But “down the road” misses the point. There’s a chance that 2026 (or even 2024) may be the last fair election our once-great Democracy ever has.
Let’s say that I’m the worst of all both-siders who can’t distinguish between the relative goodness and badness of a guy that masturbates to drowning dogs, another flicking them on the ears just to be a dick, and another who likes to give belly rubs and snacks. That’s obviously all the same, not two and certainly not three levels of disparity.
And?
I’m a horrible and despicable person. Wonderful.
What’s your argument against fixing the real problems? What is that line of reasoning?
Well, I’m still lost. It’s probably a me thing, so I’ll concede(?).
Not sure where that came from, so I have no idea how to respond to it.
I’m not against fixing the real problems. I’ve long been a vocal advocate of free and fair elections, ideally with as many people participating as possible. Do I need to provide a reason as to why I’m for fixing the real problems?
With that said, while I don’t live in California, if I did, I’d vote for Prop. 50.
The real problem right now is that the Republican Party is aggressively engaged in the destruction of democracy. They are an enemy to justice and the rule of law. They have declared open war on modern civilization.
The solution is to eliminate them from politics.
As that is not realistically achievable, the next best option is to rapidly contain them, limiting their influence and the amount of damage they can do.
You keep railing on about “real problems and real solutions.” But none of these can be addressed while the GOP lunatics are throwing Molotov cocktails into the machinery of governance. Your argument for slow, sober tinkering in the apparatus of democracy is an argument for its destruction at the hands of those who advocate not against that tinkering but against its very existence.
What, precisely, do you want to achieve with your arguments in this thread? And I mean precisely. Not an abstraction like “an understanding of the context” or “philosophical balance” or anything like that. Your concrete objective. The action you want to trigger in others. What is it?
There isn’t a path where you convince yourself that all politicians are equally evil that turns out well.
And if that were true, no amount of fair voting would fix it. The only thing that would fix it would be to have no politicians. Which isn’t possible, unless we’re going to go back to a population level at which most people live their lives in groups of fewer than about a hundred; and might not entirely work even then.
I got my mail-in ballot yesterday, filled it out, and I will drop it in a mailbox today or tomorrow.
I have sent in my vote. I am not happy about voting “yes,” but I did it for thecreasons outlined in this thread.
I don’t know that it will help; even if the Democrats have a majority in both houses come Jan. of 2027, there will be nothing left if we keep on at the current pace.
If that happens, among other things it will mean that the silent middle has decided to vote against the incipient dictatorship.
Anyway, there has to be some hope, or we might as well all roll over now.
If Schwarzenegger’s plan were applied at the national level, to the whole country, it could offer a real solution to gerrymandering. It could be only temporary though. We have an independent committee draw the map. It is made up of five republicans, five democrats, and four independents. I’m not sure how many votes it takes to approve the final map.
As long as the current two parties remain dominant, the plan works. If we see something like a split in the republican party, it breaks down. A path back to normal politics with mutual respect would probably involve such a split. With two of three parties capable of working together in a coalition, the cult becomes an irrelevant minority. But, who gets the seats on the redistricting commission? It only has room for two parties.
I don’t have a lot, personally, but I voted as if I did!