Why let humans do it at all? It shouldn’t be too hard to create an algorithm that divides a state into areas of equal population, with adjustments for conventional borders like roads, rivers, etc. Sure, you’d have some homogeneous districts, but you’d also have some with random mixes of people who would just have to figure shit out together.
popped monocle
Who designs the algorithm?
A bipartisan committee, of course. Damn, it seemed like such a good idea …
Some random kid in Zambia. Just give the kid a map, a pencil, some basic instructions and accept what gets drawn as THE boundary for the next 5 years. Totally fair.
Nah, you’d also need one from a random kid in a non-shithole country, and then have a bipartisan committee develop an algorithm to reconcile the two maps.
I’d like to see all future candidates having to submit to a mental competency and a full screen of sociopathology tests.
Name the statute requirement after Trump to serve as an ever present reminder of the past.
Which specific goings on are you most happy about?
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Just outsource it to academia; some comp sci department. Run it by a peer review for fairness and accuracy. Have every state run the same software. Done and dusted.
Again, laws and norms and procedures don’t mean squat if the people aren’t in the mood to vote for officials who care about the laws and norms and procedures.
Good government requires an electorate that demands good government. Changing the rules such that Trump would have been disqualified under the new rules ignores the part where the next asshole isn’t going to be Donald Trump.
The reason we’re floundering isn’t because there aren’t rules that would stop Donald Trump. The reason we’re floundering is because too many people voted for a transparent conman like Trump. Yeah, a few votes the other way here and there and Trump would have lost. So what? Changing the rules so that the next numbskull needs 50% of the vote instead of being able to win with 48% isn’t the answer.
The problem is a debased and degraded people, who can’t tell the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit. And it’s not like Trump was tricking them, since his lies and narcissism and cowardice weren’t exactly hidden behind a clever facade. Nope, they voted for him knowing exactly what he was. There’s your problem. The schemer who hides behind a respectable facade at least knows how to pretend to act in public, and does their dirty deeds in secret. Such a person can perhaps be exposed by revealing their treachery.
But with Trump? It ain’t secret, folks. There aren’t going to be any revelations that are going to suddenly make the deplorables slap their foreheads and realize they’ve been taken in. They weren’t taken in, this is exactly what they expected, and they voted for it anyway.
Your response to Trump’s presidency is to give the president more power?
No. You want multiple universities building competing software to prevent under-the-hood shenanigans, and the actual software used in any state or parish every year needs to be randomized at the last minute from among the various options to prevent gaming the system uphill by moving people around.
You also want all of the software used to be open source so that any citizen can verify the results and prevent partisan fuckery (hi, Diebold !).
You know, as much as I want to make a clever joke about how they just owned you libs and y’all can’t take a troll ; I really wonder about that, especially based on the numerous Brexis voters who now grouse that, say, they’ll have to get a visa to move into the EU or won’t be able to influence EU matters any more or the NHS won’t get more funding (despite the thoroughly debunked UKIP campaign slogan/promise)
People really are fucking stupid, and low-information voters are really, but really easily influenced. Apparently.
Why is this never used for good ?!
Careful, don’t wanna overfeed that thing.
How about we make it so the party in power cannot willfully ignore presidential usurpation of power. Think brazen violations of the emoluments clause. Make it so the highest law of the law cannot be flouted because it is not convenient to those in power.
I’m not sure how you get there but I am sure someone can come up with something.
…law of the land… :smack:
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”–Alexander Hamilton
Obviously we haven’t the will to demand that government enforce the law.
We do have something. If the party in power won’t do its job you put the other party in power.
The problem with that is, it seems less and less feasible all the time. I don’t know whether it’s because partisanship is on the rise, or gerrymandering, or voter turnout or wedge issues doing the wedging real good but fewer and fewer people in your great nation have a meaningful voice in determining the outcome of presidential elections.
There didn’t use to be red states and blue states. When Nixon lost in 1960, 20 states came within a 5 point margin, representing a good 75% of the electoral college. People had to campaign and message in every corner of the US back then. In 2012 Obama won with 4 states coming within that 5% margin. When Trump got elected, 4 states were actual close (less than 1%) races. Four. 12 within that 5 point margin. And I think we can agree that Trump is a slightly more, ah, polarizing completely insane figure compared to JFK, or Obama.
In the other 38 States, people on the wrong side of the established split may as well stay home on election day because results have been the same for ever, come hell or high water. To be fair, minority voters in those places still have a voice when it comes to gubernatorial and congressional votes. But what they can’t do is meaningfully react to whatever the White House is cooking.