SCOTUS and whatnot

[buddha]

15 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

Yeah but at some point you run out of places to gerrymander. I think Texas gerrymander could backfire since they are relying on a realignment from Hispanics. I’m not sure how many more republican districts you squeeze from the Texas suburbs. Same with California, you’re likely to get more districts in the Central Valley. 

true

[gehringer_2]

31 minutes ago, buddha said:

we can agree to disagree on that one, but there are plenty of folks who would make a similar argument to yours.

the constitution gives the states the right to determine how their elections happen, which includes how their congressional reps get elected.  this may come as a surprise to you, but politicians acted in bad faith in order to draw those districts!  lol.

what do you mean by "one man/one vote" argument?

It's a fundamental constitutional principle that every voter has equal rights, every vote must be given the same weight. If you *deliberately* manipulate districts to effectively vitiate some votes in favor or others that seems as straightforward a violation of the principle as I can imagine. Certainly one that should transcend any state's constitutional election management options. You could argue that the VRA already set a precedent by playing fast and loose with the principle and I wouldn't disagree with you. Sometimes no good deed goes unpunished.

Edited 8 hours ago by gehringer_2

[Motown Bombers]

5 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

Just about any district drawing can be construed as gerrymandering to some people.

We also can argue that "independent commissions" can be guilty as well.

Let's for example divide Michigan into regions with multiple members, giving candidates x number of seats proportionally.

1) Metro Detroit..5 seats. It's usually a 70/30 split Democrats to Republicans...it would come to a 4-1 Dem/Rep House spit

2) West Michigan (Grand Rapids area) 3 seats,  55-45 Republican/Democrat 2/1 Republican House Advantage...

3)Mid Michigan..(Lansing, Flint, Saginaw). 3 seats..usually a 50-50 Split depending on year. Winning party gets 2 seats

Upper Michigan  (Everything else) 2 seats. usually a 60/40 split. Depending on margin of victory winning party would get two seats (or split one seat each)

Include third parties in the process if they receive a certain percentage of votes...everyone usually gets some representation.

Tell me where the gerrymandering is here?

 

I don’t think an R+10 district will elect a Democrat. Regardless, what you presented here is already gerrymandered. What is Metro Detroit? Is it the CSA that includes Ann Arbor and Flint? Is it just the tri counties? The Detroit CSA is 53% of the population. At 5 reps, that’s only 38% of the representation. If you go MSA and only focus on Wayne-Oakland-Macomb, that’s about 43%. Now what do you do with Washtenaw and Genesee Counties? I’m assuming mid Michigan. I’m thinking Washtenaw, Genesse, Ingram and the Tri Cities make it more than 50/50. Where is the Thumb in all this? Mid Michigan? Where does mid end and west begin? What about the north? This still leaves it open to gerrymandering and Detroit is under represented. 

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, Edman85 said:

I want as many purple and competitive districts as possible. Safe seats beget corruption, extremism, and lack of accountability.

As long as states have odd shapes and unequal population density distribution, maps are going to be weird and gerrymandered in some way. Extreme partisan gerrymandering is no good, but gerrymandering itself is a necessity.

You can generate a politically neutral algorithm to create districts weighting integrity of existing political boundaries against a drive for minimum total perimeters and you can create a fair system. The key is the perimeter value. When that becomes extreme that is the key to recognizing manipulation. Force a map with limited total perimeter and you will do away with the ability to do more than marginal manipulation.

[buddha]

8 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

It's a fundamental constitutional principle that every voter has equal rights, every vote must be given the same weight. If you *deliberately* manipulate districts to effectively vitiate some votes in favor or others that seems as straightforward a violation of the principle as I can imagine. Certainly one that should transcend any state's constitutional election management options. You could argue that the VRA already set a precedent by playing fast and loose with the principle and I wouldn't disagree with you. Sometimes no good deed goes unpunished.

there's a lot about the roberts court i dont like (believe it or not), and their stances on campaign finance rules and election rules are two of the biggest.  the inability of states to regulate their campaign finance rules has led to so many bad results, imo.

i dont think theyve done anything to undermine the principle of one man/one vote, but ymmv.  i dislike gerrymandering in all forms, and that includes racial gerrymandering.  on principle alone, i dont see why people must vote for someone who has the same skin color as they do.  i am perfectly capable of being represented by a black person (and am represented by minorities at all levels) and a black person is perfectly capable of being represented by a white person.

however, that may be a particularly pollyanish view of mine.  

it will be interesting to see how things turn out.  it may be that over time those districts turn out to be less republican or democrat than people think.  but certainly not now.

[CMRivdogs]

15 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

I don’t think an R+10 district will elect a Democrat. Regardless, what you presented here is already gerrymandered. What is Metro Detroit? Is it the CSA that includes Ann Arbor and Flint? Is it just the tri counties? The Detroit CSA is 53% of the population. At 5 reps, that’s only 38% of the representation. If you go MSA and only focus on Wayne-Oakland-Macomb, that’s about 43%. Now what do you do with Washtenaw and Genesee Counties? I’m assuming mid Michigan. I’m thinking Washtenaw, Genesse, Ingram and the Tri Cities make it more than 50/50. Where is the Thumb in all this? Mid Michigan? Where does mid end and west begin? What about the north? This still leaves it open to gerrymandering and Detroit is under represented. 

As I said before, everything in gerrymandered in some way. With proportional voting even an R-10 district can elect a D. Given the D gets enough votes to meet the threshold. We're talking about 2 or more reps here. Especially if you include ranked choice voiting.

OR YOU comenup with a better system instead of criticizing everything

Edited 7 hours ago by CMRivdogs

[Motown Bombers]

2 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

As I said before, everything in gerrymandered in some way. With proportional voting even an R-10 district can elect a D. Given the D gets enough votes to meet the threshold. We're talking about 2 or more reps here. Especially if you include ranked choice voiting.

OR YOU comenup with a better system instead of criticizing everything

I did and one that is actually feasible. Congress can expand the house. More seats means states will run out of opportunities to gerrymander. There would also need to be a new voting rights act on proportionality creating districts. 
I can probably create a 11D-2R map. Metro Detroit is only the three counties. That’s +5. Mid Michigan is Washtenaw, Ingham, Genesse and the city of Saginaw. West is Kent County, Kalamazoo county and Benton Harbor and St Joseph. Pack Republicans in the rest. I actually like this plan. 

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, CMRivdogs said:

I've just about come around to accept the idea of multi member congressional districts, Or some sort of proportional voting and representation. cut the number of districts in half or thirds, then vote for multi members. Or something close to that. 

The current system is wrecked,

 

 

yup - the difficulty with proportional systems is that they drive toward a net 'at large' system were people are not attached to particular geographies. That can be good and bad, but I think the bad outweighs the good. As an example of the worst result of at-large representation you had Detroit, where when the City's Black population started to grow at then end of WWI, they shifted to at-large election of all city council members to preserve an all white city council. That outcome was not only racist, but resulted in a politics were no-one spoke up for preservation of neighborhoods. Believe it or not, it took until 2009 before the charter was finally changed back to a district system (mostly).

Edited 7 hours ago by gehringer_2

[CMRivdogs]

10 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

I did and one that is actually feasible. Congress can expand the house. More seats means states will run out of opportunities to gerrymander. There would also need to be a new voting rights act on proportionality creating districts. 
I can probably create a 11D-2R map. Metro Detroit is only the three counties. That’s +5. Mid Michigan is Washtenaw, Ingham, Genesse and the city of Saginaw. West is Kent County, Kalamazoo county and Benton Harbor and St Joseph. Pack Republicans in the rest. I actually like this plan. 

Looks like gerrymandering. Especially since the most recent statewide elections seem to be close to a 50-50 split. 

And I still prefer multi-member districts with proportionality

[buddha]

having more than two viable parties would be even better!  

[Motown Bombers]

1 minute ago, CMRivdogs said:

Looks like gerrymandering. Especially since the most recent statewide elections seem to be close to a 50-50 split. 

And I still prefer multi-member districts with proportionality

Exactly. It doesn’t solve gerrymandering as long as someone is drawing lines. Michigan’s districts are pretty good the way they are. You typically get a 7-6 split with about 2-3 competitive districts. The rest of the country should follow Michigan. 

[gehringer_2]

22 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

Congress can expand the house

More seats would also reduce the electoral college imbalance created by the Senate. I'd like to see them go to 500 reps. Nice round number but not that much harder to manage than 435. Even better would be floating the senate to 200 with the additional 100 seats allotted by population. Much bigger lift of course - but it's on my list with the Constitutional amendments to reverse CU and gerrymandering.

Edited 7 hours ago by gehringer_2

[CMRivdogs]

12 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

yup - the difficulty with proportional systems is that they drive toward a net 'at large' system were people are not attached to particular geographies. That can be good and bad, but I think the bad outweighs the good. As an example of the worst result of at-large representation you had Detroit, where when the City's Black population started to grow, they shifted to at-large election of all city council members to preserve an all white city council. That outcome was not only racist, but resulted in a politics were no-one spoke up for preservation of neighborhoods. Believe it or not, it took until 2009 before the charter was finally changed back to a district system (mostly).

I have no issue against districts. Or even multi districts. I'm not sure there is a perfect system that can't be gamed in some way. Just my belief that if I live in ab state that usually votes 55-45 in statewide contests, representatives should be proportioned that way. The problem is that land gets in the way.

If multimember districts restrict the number of reps from the various parties in a particular race and start forcing us (voters, citizens, whatever) to form coalitions..

But then if men were angels...

Jefferson and Adams had to go and screw things up. If they hadn't someone else would have...

[CMRivdogs]

22 minutes ago, buddha said:

having more than two viable parties would be even better!  

That's where proportional voting comes into play. Third parties would have a better chance of representation. Especially in multi member districts. 

[CMRivdogs]

18 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

More seats would also reduce the electoral college imbalance created by the Senate. I'd like to see them go to 500 reps. Nice round number but not that much harder to manage than 435.

If we used Wyoming as a base. The number of seats would expand to 580. That seems doable to me.

[CMRivdogs]

 

[chasfh]

4 hours ago, buddha said:

having more than two viable parties would be even better!  

That would be nice, but the presidential electoral setup all but forbids this from happening. Setting aside structural barriers such as ballot access restrictions, the U.S. uses a winner-take-all, first-past-the-post election system, where once a presidential candidate beats all their opponents by at least a single vote within a state, they are awarded 100% of all the votes in that state that ultimately matter. This discourages voters who might otherwise be inclined to vote for a third party from doing so because of the concept of wasting the vote on someone who's destined to lose (something that also happens, BTW, when your major party presidential candidate loses your state anyway.) There's also the general tendency of countries that have single-member districts, instead of proportional representation, to emerge as two-party countries. Both the US and UK are emblematic of that.

If we truly want more than two strong parties, we would probably need to move from a winner-take-all system to a proportional representation system, at minimum. Almost none of us here will ever live to see that happen.

 

[buddha]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

That would be nice, but the presidential electoral setup all but forbids this from happening. Setting aside structural barriers such as ballot access restrictions, the U.S. uses a winner-take-all, first-past-the-post election system, where once a presidential candidate beats all their opponents by at least a single vote within a state, they are awarded 100% of all the votes in that state that ultimately matter. This discourages voters who might otherwise be inclined to vote for a third party from doing so because of the concept of wasting the vote on someone who's destined to lose (something that also happens, BTW, when your major party presidential candidate loses your state anyway.) There's also the general tendency of countries that have single-member districts, instead of proportional representation, to emerge as two-party countries. Both the US and UK are emblematic of that.

If we truly want more than two strong parties, we would probably need to move from a winner-take-all system to a proportional representation system, at minimum. Almost none of us here will ever live to see that happen.

 

i understand all that and its not something i expect to happen.

however, its been that way for a long time and parties have broken up before.  its possible they could break up again.  iran is fracturing republicans and anti-semitism is fracturing democrats as we speak.  the social media revolution could still have as of yet unforseen consequences.

we shall see.

[chasfh]

If being critical of Israel, and not co-signing onto the resolution flatly equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, is itself anti-Semitic, then the Republican campaign to set the bar at "you can be either pro-Israel or anti-Semitic, choose one" has been wildly successful.

[gehringer_2]

3 minutes ago, chasfh said:

If being critical of Israel, and not co-signing onto the resolution flatly equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, is itself anti-Semitic, then the Republican campaign to set the bar at "you can be either pro-Israel or anti-Semitic, choose one" has been wildly successful.

I'm sorry I don't remember where but I just read a long piece about the generational divide in the US wrt support of Israel and the journalist's report that in his survey of Israeli opinion people realized it was a problem but thought it would be transient. I have my doubts. 

[buddha]

35 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

I'm sorry I don't remember where but I just read a long piece about the generational divide in the US wrt support of Israel and the journalist's report that in his survey of Israeli opinion people realized it was a problem but thought it would be transient. I have my doubts. 

anti-jewishness has been a problem for as long as there have been jews.  it remains a problem now.  israel is playing a very dangerous game by aligning themselves with trump.  when the iran war fails, the republicans will blame the jews, not trump's lack of intelligence.

[buddha]

59 minutes ago, chasfh said:

If being critical of Israel, and not co-signing onto the resolution flatly equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, is itself anti-Semitic, then the Republican campaign to set the bar at "you can be either pro-Israel or anti-Semitic, choose one" has been wildly successful.

being critical of israel doesnt make one anti-semitic, and conflating the two by the right/social media is going to be disastrous for israel in the long run as the left abandons them.

but what has happened on the left has gone well beyond that.