So you would prefer enclaves of (essentially) pure Republican or Democrat voters, to make it easy for the representatives and the pollsters and those areas where the demarcation is evenly balanced should be disenfranchised because patently they don’t care who or even if they are represented?
The concept of inclusive democracy is a bit of a struggle for you, isn’t it?
Los Angeles is an example. In this case, it’s a rail corridor that goes to the port.
Eh? How did that work?
It’s an American institution, for better or for worse. Here’s a better example of the history of the term, which appeared first in a newspaper in 1812, to refer to the salamander shaped district proposed by Mass. Governor Elbridge Gerry.
His name was pronounced with a hard G, not like a J. I (and he) were born between the two claws of the 'mander’s right talon. Elbridge, by the way, was a governor, then vice president of the USA, and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The elementary school bearing his name, and where I attended for 6 years, recently celebrated its 100th anniversary, still in service.
Nope, I’m a one person, one vote man in a representative system. The way the system is now the people who pay the closest attention to who represents them and vice versa have the greatest interest in and likelihood of getting their voice heard short of some legal form of bribery. You simply haven’t thought through the consequences of your position. As ugly as gerrymandering may be on a map, and as frustrating as it may be to be in the minority in a district, it is vastly superior to any alternative that has been proposed. In California during the past 30 plus years the Republicans have tried one scheme after another to entice the public to drop gerrymandering. The public has in an inclusive and democratic manner rejected every single one of those schemes as much, much worse. The public has over and over again rejected having a supposedly neutral group draw the boundaries of districts in favor of their elected representatives drawing the districts. There is no good reason majority should not rule in the drawing of district lines. The problem in Congress is not majority rule, but rather minority rule allowing a blockage of business in the Senate. The problem in California is that it requires a two thirds majority to pass a budget, and thus a minority distorts the process through partisan gridlock.
While blacks are majorities in some cities today, historically they were never a majority in any single political jurisdiction. Indeed, municipal borders were routinely expanded to head off majority-minority jurisdictions (e.g. The consolidation of New York City). Any area that we’d in danger of having a back majority would be merged into mule-member districts to ensure that whites sledge stayed a majority.
(Good freaking god. Posting from a phone) Read that last sentence as –
Any area that was in danger of having a black majority would be merged into multi-member districts to ensure that whites stayed a voting majority, thus effectively preventing any black candidate from winning any office. This could be applied to any disfavored minority that might otherwise have voting power in targeted geographic entities – Hispanics, Native Americans, immigrants in general. Thus, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 explicitly banned multi-member districts.
Notice, also, the VRA did NOT altogether abolish any form of multi-member constituency in all *state *houses and city/county councils, but required them to prove they were still guaranteeing effective protection of voting rights. The statute that defines the current composition of the US House of Representatives ***was ***amended to explicitly ban multi-member districts there.
Court precedents and legislation DID strike apportionment solely per geographical subdivision at any level other than US Senate – so in a state with 4 urban and 20 rural counties, but where those 4 conurbations have half the population, delegates from the countryside only get half the seats, not 5/6ths.
I’ve always imagined that one way to deal with gerrymandering would be to set a maximum allowable “square miles in a district to sum length of all its borders with other districts ratio”. Since some borders would be drawn along rivers or other geographical features, there would need to some way to define these borders as straight lines or continuous curves, but I’m sure some people more mathematically inclined than I could come up with a way to do this.
In large parts of the US gerrymandering is sometimes required by law. It is against civil rights laws to dilute minority voting if it is possible to avoid. So if you have a minority majority district and some set of borders (no matter how distorted) then those borders have to be used unless there is a very good reason not to.
I would say that it’s even more entrenched than that, because it benefits the individual representatives in power at the time, in both parties. Drawing boundaries to assemble a majority-minority Democratic district can have the effect of creating a gerrymandered Republican district nearby from the excluded communities. Whether or not the arrangement is good for either party, it is good for the individual officeholders, who both have incentive to preserve it.
I think American political culture is more pervasive in our society (for instance, we tend to have more local elective offices than many countries, if I’m not mistaken), and so there is more of a tendency to distrust the view that an institution organizing political matters can itself be apolitical or independent. People would be concerned that in fact it would be captured, if only behind the scenes, by political interests.
Some states, based on a somewhat different localized culture, have been able to organize such institutions, but it would be difficult to reproduce consistently around the country or nationwide.
I’ve worked on similar problems. There are just so many variables involved. Even if you could get agreement on what variables are most important (Area? Population density? Alignment with local boundaries?) there are millions of ways to draw districts. So the problem isn’t that nobody can figure out how to fairly divide a state into districts; it’s that there are so many versions of fair, based on various values of “fair”.
Imagine a state with one big city in the center and sparse population everywhere else. And then imagine you want to divide into two districts. Even that simple problem has a lot of reasonable solutions. Assign the SDMB redistricting committee to the problem and name callingwon’t be far behind.
So, what do you expect from the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, which comes into effect with the 2010 Census? It takes the function away from the legislature and into a body that has 5 Ds, 5 Rs and 4 from other, where you need 3 from each set to approve. Of course, I can already see a flaw in that it could be possible to pack the 4 “other” with proclaimed independents but whose leanings are suspected…
