IOW, you are totally and completely unfamiliar with the very concept of gerrymandering. Google is your friend. Come back when you have a clue.
He’s familiar with it. What you don’t see is the gloating.
This is a truly impressive degree of missing the point. If you do not understand the concept of Gerrymandering to the degree that this response honestly seems reasonable to you, here is crash course, designed to be basically impossible to misinterpret. If you do understand the concept of Gerrymandering, then why would you make this comment? Yeah, individual candidates were running. But those individual candidates represent parties. And due to partisan divides in this country, most candidates are largely interchangeable - the people who vote for Paul Ryan would just as soon vote for pretty much any other person with an (R) in front of their name promising tax cuts and smaller government, and the same is true on the Democrat side.
Now now, it’s entirely realistic that someone could wander into a thread about a subject while knowing absolutely nothing about that subject and offer a nonsensical response that shows they know absolutely nothing about that subject. The best way to respond to that is to try to teach them. After all, if they aren’t interested in learning, it has some rather unfortunate implications.
A test would be “Do you believe that if party X gets roughly 50% of the vote that they should have roughly 50% of the seats?”
The purpose of political power in a representative system of government is to serve the public. Not to game the system for purposes of accruing yet more political power. That way lies the tyranny that most righties say that they’re against.
How do you account for the fickle nature of a district’s constituency to vote for whichever individual candidates are on a ballot? Red turns blue, blue turn red, it’s madness. That should simply be impossible, unless the constituents are allowed to vote for the individual candidate of their choice. Their choice. Assuming that districts were all divided based on the results of the last census, and they were somehow divided equally between voters who voted Democrat or Republican at that point in time, how do you guarantee that voters won’t change their political affiliation/affection/leanings in the next 5, or 10, or 15, general elections? Are we expect to cry “Gerrymandering” every time the voters in a district chose to vote for the individual candidate of their choice?
Districts were created to serve the public. Rural areas, urban areas, geographical borders, etc. were used to provide a constituency with an elected representative. An elected representative which represents them. An individual candidate who primarily supports big city politics/needs/wants isn’t going to be elected in a ranching/farming community. Regardless of the individual candidates party affiliation.
Unless you’re expecting a political party-based redistricting before every general election, how do you prevent a constituency from voting for an individual Republican candidate when they voted for an individual Democrat candidate in the last election? Or vice versa?
To answer your question, “Do you believe that if party X gets roughly 50% of the vote that they should have roughly 50% of the seats”, I would say no based on how the system actually works. A district was created, but that doesn’t mean that the voters won’t change their party affiliation over time. A massive turn out for an individual candidate representing the Democrat Party in district 1 does not change the fact that a individual candidate representing the Republican Party won by a slim margin in district 2. Overall, more voters may have voted for the Democrat Party’s individual candidates, but according to the rules, there will be only one Democrat and one Republican seated in the legislature.
*Gerrymandering
noun [ U ] uk /ˈdʒer.iˌmæn.dər.ɪŋ/ us /ˈdʒer.iˌmæn.dɚ.ɪŋ/
an occasion when someone in authority changes the borders of an area in order to increase the number of people within that area who will vote for a particular party or person:*
The Illinois 4th District is a perfect example of gerrymandering.
However, the claim that gerrymandering must be responsible every time an election doesn’t produce your desired results must also mean that the same alleged gerrymandering is responsible when election results meet your expectations.
Or is it possible that the constituents may have changed their party affiliation, and voted for the individual candidates of their choice?
You lack a basic understanding of how gerrymandering works. You are in no position to instruct others on this, and I recommend either lurking or asking questions until you understand it a little better.
Because political views are sticky. How many people do you know who changed party affiliation in the last election? What percentage? 5%? 10%? Did they also change party affiliation in local and house of representatives elections? Changes in political affiliation are slow and inconsistent. There are pretty decent odds that if you pack a district so that it’s got a slim majority of voters for one party, that district will probably stay that way until the next census. And the data bears this out. You talk about “the fickle nature of a district’s constituency”, but, to put it bluntly, that’s just not a thing - the only elections in the past 40 years to have a house reelection rate lower than 90% were 1992 and 2010.
Um… Buddy… “How the system actually works” is the thing we are complaining about. The point is that if 50% of the voters in a state vote for one party, and 50% vote for the other, and then one party has a supermajority of the actual political power in that state, something has gone horribly wrong. This is democracy 101 - political power is distributed in accordance with the will of the people.
But somehow it doesn’t matter that the republican party also won by a slim margin in districts 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. Or that district 1 doesn’t look like a cohesive district but instead looks like this. Or that republicans got to draw those districts, and are quite candid about drawing those districts in such a way as to ensure that this happens as often as possible. This is blatantly gaming the system, and not only are they open about having done so, they’re doing it again. This isn’t something the republicans are disputing - this is something they’re proudly touting the sequel to.
Nobody is saying that every election is gerrymandered. But elections where the minority party gets a supermajority of the seats are almost certainly gerrymandered.
As previously pointed out: no. This ignores the reality on the ground in numerous ways. Even if constituents had changed their party affiliations, results like we see in Maryland or North Carolina are, in terms of a healthy democracy, fucking atrocious.
(underline added)
The results are atrocious? You don’t like the results so you are almost certain of gerrymandering? Almost? Damn those unfaithful voters!
(post shortened, underline added)
I’ll take your suggestion under advisement.
The Supreme Court case is not about whether the results are liked or not. It is about whether new mathematical techniques can prove whether partisan gerrymandering gave an unfair advantage to one side in an election.
50.3% (fifty point three percent) n. \ˈfif tē ˈpȯint ˈthrē pərˈsent\
- A number larger than 48.8 percent.
Oh my. I see that you’ve finally Googled “gerrymandering” and now pretend to have read the definition. But you didn’t even understand the post to which you made the initial ignorant response.
I did NOT write Democrat-affiliated voters outnumbered the GOP-affiliated. I wrote
“In the 2012 House of Reps election Pennsylvania voted 50.3 - 48.8 for the Democratic Party … and yet the GOP won the most seats, 13 to 5.”
50.3% of the voters, regardless of party affiliation, actually walked into the polling booth on Election Day, 2012 (or voted absentee etc.) and cast their vote for a Democratic candidate.
We’re plumbing the depths of your ignorance, doorhinge, and haven’t heard the rock hit bottom yet. But we’re patient:
Nod ‘Yes’ if you can see the difference between my claim and your faulty understanding of it exposed in the quoted excerpt.
You don’t get it. The voters were faithful. They remained in approximately the same political alignment in 2012 as they were in in 2010, just like one would predict given the data. And as a result, the redistricting in 2010, which led to a situation where you packed voters from one party into a handful of districts (by drawing the districts using a jigsaw and some staples) and distributed voters from the other party into lots of districts, worked.
Do you agree that political affiliations do not change on the drop of a hat?
Do you agree that most house races result in re-election?
Do you agree that, for the vast majority of people, one representative of their preferred party is interchangeable for another? (And if you disagree, could you ask just any random 5 people from your neighborhood whether they know the name of their representative, and what positions their representative takes that differ from the party platform?)
Do you agree that, depending on how you draw districting lines, the exact same distribution of votes by party can lead to a massive swing in political power?
Do you agree that, in a democracy, a party gaining the majority of the power with the minority of the vote is a failure state?
Where, exactly, is the disagreement here? Again, I remind you - the republican party does not deny having done this. They brag about it, and are raising funds to do it again. Clearly, they think that having control over redistricting matters. Do you think that having control over redistricting matters?
Would you be at all concerned if the democratic party controlled the redistricting process in every state, and got to draw the districts however they wanted? After all, going off your premises, there should be nothing to worry about. We shouldn’t even see any substantial gain in democratic electoral success. Right?
In hindsight, I’m going to ask you to please focus on your answer to these two questions.
-
Would it bother you if the democratic party controlled the redistricting process in every state?
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If they did, would you expect to see the number of republicans in the house of representatives go down?
Because those really are the core issues here.
I can understand the idea of a “district” in the sense of local people with local industries and local needs etc, but once you pass a sufficient level of urban density, that tends to fall by the wayside, no? If one lives in a major urban center, it’s less likely one’s fortunes will depend on whether or not a local widget factory shuts down, whereas that could utterly clobber a more rural area where half the population either works at that one factory or works at a business that supplies that factory.
To that end, I suggest a hybrid system - draw up districts where population density is low. In a case like Illinois, 12 of the 18 districts are geographically small and mashed into and around metropolitan Chicago. Have those elections run on a proportional system. If 60% of Chicago votes Democrat, Democrats get 7 of those 12 seats.
It ain’t perfect, but it beats having politicians trying to manipulate district lines street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood.
I have a general question that’s long bugged me about proposed systems like this.
Democrat politicians are, currently, distinct humans. So when twelve democrats run, and seven seats are won, which democrats get the seats? Is there a separate sub-election where the voters rank them? What about the people who love specific politicians irrespective of party? How do they vote?
I saw this thread title today and just started laughing.
“How serious is gerrymandering in the US if at all?”
In that vein:
“How much of your body is covered by skin?”
“Is the temperature of water ice cold enough to cause hypothermia?”
“How many humans have two biological parents?”
“Is blood red at all and how often?”
Yeah, gerrymandering in the USA is incredibly serious. It’s endemic, and a major means of political control.
OK, back to the thread.
There are at least three different ways of doing this:
[ol]
[li]A pretty simple way is an “open list” on the ballot: The voter picks a party, and then has the opportunity to vote for who in the party gets the seats… [ul][/li][li]maybe by marking candidates the voter favors, approval voting style;[/li][li]but in theory you could do it by single non-transferable vote;[/li][li]or even by ranked voting.[/li][/ul]
[li]Some parties may have determined their priority by internal processes separate from the public balloting.[/li][ul]
[li]It would be nice if they published this list beforehand,[/li][li]but they may wait until they know how many seats they have to decide for flexibility or reasons of personal politics.[/li][/ul]
[li]What I would suggest for elections in the USA is that party primary elections be used to make this list, and publish it ahead of the general election.[/li][/ol]
That’s where Single Transferable Vote and Score Voting do better. The voter puts together one’s own list.
Some good writings on gerrymandering by Jameson Quinn:
The second piece (the one on Medium.com) includes a discussion of alternative voting systems, including one called PLACE that Quinn thinks is not only more representational but also retains local representation and a simple ballot.