6 ms·

While it doesn't sound like a bad proposal and could probably get a strong majority of votes in some alternate dimension, the party in power will never allow th

While it doesn't sound like a bad proposal and could probably get a strong majority of votes in some alternate dimension, the party in power will never allow this to make it to the floor of the House for a vote.[1] The more cynical I become, the more I think the party in power doesn't actually want to solve any problems, they only want to focus on wedge issues to ensure they can use {rage, fear, some other emotion} to keep their party constituents engaged enough to vote but not enough to hold their feet to the fire on getting things done. Incumbents in Congress still have 95%+ re-election rates and in 2010 when those rates dipped, Congress was remarkably less productive than usual. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastert_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastert_Rule

dvt 9y ago
> the party in power will never allow this to make it to the floor of the House for a vote The implication here is that the Democrats don't gerrymander. This is patently false. The Democrats are just pissed that the Republicans did a massively better job at it in the past decade. In many ways, it was an arms race, and the Democrats chose not to focus on small and local districts and elections (instead, worrying about the "big picture"). As it turns out, politics trickles up, and small wins for Republicans eventually turned into big wins. To see a perfect exemplar of this, just look at Jon Ossoff's crushing loss last week. There's an excellent NPR podcast about this very issue I listened to a few years ago.
- devwastaken 9y ago
  I think they meant any party in power won't allow it, because partly how they get in power, is gerrymandering.
  - noobermin 9y ago
    There's some merit to this. Chances are the democratic leadership won't let this through. Doesn't hurt to try though.
- jccalhoun 9y ago
  The party is power is whichever party happens to have more votes at any given time. Whoever is in power won't change it because it got them elected so why would they risk doing something that might take them out of power?
  - anarazel 9y ago
    > The party is power is whichever party happens to have more votes at any given time. That's really not true in the political system of the US, even without partisan gerrymandering. Given that the entire point of partisan gerrymandering is to enlarge the distance between popular vote and gained seats, I'm not sure what you're trying to say? > Whoever is in power won't change it because it got them elected so why would they risk doing something that might take them out of power? You can win the electoral college / house / senate / whatever, despite being disadvantaged via gerrymandering (arguably e.g. the case for Obama in 2012). So that's not generally true.
    - lsaferite 9y ago
      > You can win the electoral college / house / senate / whatever, despite being disadvantaged via gerrymandering Of course you can always still overcome gerrymandering with enough political momentum. Gerrymandering currently tips the scales slightly in the direction of one party or another. Fixing gerrymandering would level the playing field (in theory).
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  California, New Jersey, and Washington state, big demotractic states, don't gerrymander by state law. California is a big state, and when they moved to a non partisan commission, the republicans picked up a few seats. The only red states to also do this are Arizona and Idaho.
- wand3r 9y ago
  I also caught some discussion about it on NPR. One argument, even as I am just as cynical as above poster; is that the Republicans did such a good job gerrymandering that best case they can keep their status quo and more than likely; they will be worse off. This was iirc because they balanced the demographics do well with their support base and any restructuring will actually hurt them. Based on the NPR bit which seemed to make a reasonable argument to me; an uniformed person, potentially they could back something like this.
- afpx 9y ago
  Assuming the parent post hasn't been edited, it doesn't seem to say what you suggest it does (at least not by my reading). So, before we succumb to knee-jerk reactions that continue the political dysfunction, can we all just put our energy and minds toward solutions? Revenge politics (they did it, so we will to! get them back!) hurts.
  - jfoutz 9y ago
    Probably not, no. Tit for tat is optimal prisoners dilemma strategy.
    - rpenm 9y ago
      Cooperation can be optimal for an infinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma depending on prisoner's time preference (discount factor).
    - afpx 9y ago
      Interesting. But, prisoners dilemma assumes that there's an authority that is imposing rules and punishments. In democracy, we are the authority and we can change the rules.
- anarazel 9y ago
  > > > the party in power will never allow this to make it to the floor of the House for a vote > The implication here is that the Democrats don't gerrymander. This is patently false. I don't think that's really the implication. At the moment it is pretty clear that the GOP currently overall benefits more from gerrymandering [1]. And they are in power, despite having lost the popular vote [2]. The GOP has control over the WH and both chambers, it'd therefore be political suicide to change the system now in a way that'd hurt them. > The Democrats are just pissed that the Republicans did a massively better job at it in the past decade. They've obviously also gerrymandered, I fail to see what that has to do with OPs point? Are you really arguing that to be able to be against the concept of gerrymandering, you've to give up any chance of ever actually being able to do anything about it? [1]: https://www.apnews.com/fa6478e10cda4e9cbd75380e705bd380 https://www.apnews.com/fa6478e10cda4e9cbd75380e705bd380 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
  - dvt 9y ago
    > Are you really arguing that to be able to be against the concept of gerrymandering, you've to give up any chance of ever actually being able to do anything about it? Not really. I'm arguing that most (in all honesty, probably all) gerrymandering complaints by Democrats are sour grapes because they got outplayed. In fact, Delaney himself was "first elected in a gerrymandered district created specifically for him," according to @mobilefriendly's linked sources. Gerrymandering is generally not that big of a deal and cracking down on it doesn't solve much, as populations are naturally segmented[1]. I will say that sometimes, gerrymandering is racially- or religiously-motivated (SCOTUS heard a case on this a few months ago IIRC), so it can be very problematic in a few edge cases. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/californiajust-proved-that-redistricting-reform-isnt-all-its-cracked-up-to-be/?utm_term=.35637e4379e3 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/ca...
    - shitlord 9y ago
      > Gerrymandering is honestly not that big of a deal and cracking down on it doesn't solve much, as populations are naturally segmented[1]. Please provide more evidence for this claim. Just because it's true in CA doesn't necessarily mean it's true for the rest of the country.
- guelo 9y ago
  The actual history of this decade of gerrymandering is that in 2010 Republicans were able to use anti-Obama tea party energy to capture a bunch of state houses right before the census redistricting. Republicans used that opportunity to lock-in control of the House probably until 2020. It's really just an accident of history. If the pattern repeats itself anti-Trump anger could give Democrats control of more state houses and lock in the next decade of redistricting. But democrats have been less ruthless on these kinds of things. For example by bringing up anti gerymandering initiatives like this one right before they gain power. Also I think Republicans seem to have more capacity for playing strategic long moves, for example, outside conservative money funded a California ballot measure a few years ago that made California's redistricting nonpartisan, thus taking away from Democrats the biggest state where they control redistricting, probably taking away 5-10 seats that Democrats could gerymander for themselves next cycle.
- tptacek 9y ago
  I liked every part of this comment up to "Jon Ossoff's crushing loss", which is crazymaking. Unless I'm missing something very important, Ossoff was competing for a district that hadn't gone to a Republican by less than 20 points in the entire history of the district (it was redistricted sometime around ~2000). Ossoff --- who is not a great candidate! --- took one of the most solidly Republican suburban districts in the country and turned it into a real horse race. What am I supposed to learn from that about Democratic strategic weakness?
  - dvt 9y ago
    The fact that the Democrats outspent the Republicans by a factor of 7[1] and still lost. But that's exactly my point: the Democrats tried to manufacture a candidate in a time of dire need instead of first going for school boards, local municipalities, etc. For what it's worth, Handel was a pretty terrible candidate too. Just goes to show how weak the Democratic strategists are. Obama won because he was an excellent candidate. Here's a novel idea for Democrats: get more awesome people to run for office. [1] http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2017/06/19/the-race-for-georgias-6th-district-now-costs-more-than-50m/ http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2017/06/19/the-race-for-georgia...
    - tptacek 9y ago
      Read the story carefully. It's not a factor of 7, or even close to that. A larger proportion of Handel's support came from outside the campaign.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
j4kp07 9y ago
TL;DR The courts actually require states to intentionally create districts that have a majority population of minorities. It's a difficult thing to manage. As a result of a Supreme Court ruling in regards to civil rights the states are not allowed to spread minority votes across district lines since it was determined that that doesn't give them a strong enough voice and doesn't allow them a united voice as well as the advancement of minority politicians in Congress. States largely complied. But, as time has gone on people often believe that giving minorities their own districts actually hurts their political power because states put them all in their district, they get one politician and then the rest of the districts aren't a melting pot. So now there is a push to try to prevent states from districting based on racial lines, but the Supreme Court has already required them to do this. So it's a very fine balancing act the states have to go through, and in many cases they exploit the Supreme Court requirements/ruling to their political advantage. And if you removed the racial districting you might actually lose minority representation in Congress in terms of number of minority Congressmen, which people don't want. So gerrymandering is this strange mix of affirmative action for Congress and political gamesmanship to protect a party's numbers in Congress.

dvt 9y ago

> the party in power will never allow this to make it to the floor of the House for a vote The implication here is that the Democrats don't gerrymander. This is patently false. The Democrats are just pissed that the Republicans did a massively better job at it in the past decade. In many ways, it was an arms race, and the Democrats chose not to focus on small and local districts and elections (instead, worrying about the "big picture"). As it turns out, politics trickles up, and small wins for Republicans eventually turned into big wins. To see a perfect exemplar of this, just look at Jon Ossoff's crushing loss last week. There's an excellent NPR podcast about this very issue I listened to a few years ago.

devwastaken 9y ago
I think they meant any party in power won't allow it, because partly how they get in power, is gerrymandering.
- noobermin 9y ago
  There's some merit to this. Chances are the democratic leadership won't let this through. Doesn't hurt to try though.
jccalhoun 9y ago
The party is power is whichever party happens to have more votes at any given time. Whoever is in power won't change it because it got them elected so why would they risk doing something that might take them out of power?
- anarazel 9y ago
  > The party is power is whichever party happens to have more votes at any given time. That's really not true in the political system of the US, even without partisan gerrymandering. Given that the entire point of partisan gerrymandering is to enlarge the distance between popular vote and gained seats, I'm not sure what you're trying to say? > Whoever is in power won't change it because it got them elected so why would they risk doing something that might take them out of power? You can win the electoral college / house / senate / whatever, despite being disadvantaged via gerrymandering (arguably e.g. the case for Obama in 2012). So that's not generally true.
  - lsaferite 9y ago
    > You can win the electoral college / house / senate / whatever, despite being disadvantaged via gerrymandering Of course you can always still overcome gerrymandering with enough political momentum. Gerrymandering currently tips the scales slightly in the direction of one party or another. Fixing gerrymandering would level the playing field (in theory).
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
California, New Jersey, and Washington state, big demotractic states, don't gerrymander by state law. California is a big state, and when they moved to a non partisan commission, the republicans picked up a few seats. The only red states to also do this are Arizona and Idaho.
wand3r 9y ago
I also caught some discussion about it on NPR. One argument, even as I am just as cynical as above poster; is that the Republicans did such a good job gerrymandering that best case they can keep their status quo and more than likely; they will be worse off. This was iirc because they balanced the demographics do well with their support base and any restructuring will actually hurt them. Based on the NPR bit which seemed to make a reasonable argument to me; an uniformed person, potentially they could back something like this.
afpx 9y ago
Assuming the parent post hasn't been edited, it doesn't seem to say what you suggest it does (at least not by my reading). So, before we succumb to knee-jerk reactions that continue the political dysfunction, can we all just put our energy and minds toward solutions? Revenge politics (they did it, so we will to! get them back!) hurts.
- jfoutz 9y ago
  Probably not, no. Tit for tat is optimal prisoners dilemma strategy.
  - rpenm 9y ago
    Cooperation can be optimal for an infinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma depending on prisoner's time preference (discount factor).
  - afpx 9y ago
    Interesting. But, prisoners dilemma assumes that there's an authority that is imposing rules and punishments. In democracy, we are the authority and we can change the rules.
anarazel 9y ago
> > > the party in power will never allow this to make it to the floor of the House for a vote > The implication here is that the Democrats don't gerrymander. This is patently false. I don't think that's really the implication. At the moment it is pretty clear that the GOP currently overall benefits more from gerrymandering [1]. And they are in power, despite having lost the popular vote [2]. The GOP has control over the WH and both chambers, it'd therefore be political suicide to change the system now in a way that'd hurt them. > The Democrats are just pissed that the Republicans did a massively better job at it in the past decade. They've obviously also gerrymandered, I fail to see what that has to do with OPs point? Are you really arguing that to be able to be against the concept of gerrymandering, you've to give up any chance of ever actually being able to do anything about it? [1]: https://www.apnews.com/fa6478e10cda4e9cbd75380e705bd380 https://www.apnews.com/fa6478e10cda4e9cbd75380e705bd380 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
- dvt 9y ago
  > Are you really arguing that to be able to be against the concept of gerrymandering, you've to give up any chance of ever actually being able to do anything about it? Not really. I'm arguing that most (in all honesty, probably all) gerrymandering complaints by Democrats are sour grapes because they got outplayed. In fact, Delaney himself was "first elected in a gerrymandered district created specifically for him," according to @mobilefriendly's linked sources. Gerrymandering is generally not that big of a deal and cracking down on it doesn't solve much, as populations are naturally segmented[1]. I will say that sometimes, gerrymandering is racially- or religiously-motivated (SCOTUS heard a case on this a few months ago IIRC), so it can be very problematic in a few edge cases. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/californiajust-proved-that-redistricting-reform-isnt-all-its-cracked-up-to-be/?utm_term=.35637e4379e3 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/ca...
  - shitlord 9y ago
    > Gerrymandering is honestly not that big of a deal and cracking down on it doesn't solve much, as populations are naturally segmented[1]. Please provide more evidence for this claim. Just because it's true in CA doesn't necessarily mean it's true for the rest of the country.
guelo 9y ago
The actual history of this decade of gerrymandering is that in 2010 Republicans were able to use anti-Obama tea party energy to capture a bunch of state houses right before the census redistricting. Republicans used that opportunity to lock-in control of the House probably until 2020. It's really just an accident of history. If the pattern repeats itself anti-Trump anger could give Democrats control of more state houses and lock in the next decade of redistricting. But democrats have been less ruthless on these kinds of things. For example by bringing up anti gerymandering initiatives like this one right before they gain power. Also I think Republicans seem to have more capacity for playing strategic long moves, for example, outside conservative money funded a California ballot measure a few years ago that made California's redistricting nonpartisan, thus taking away from Democrats the biggest state where they control redistricting, probably taking away 5-10 seats that Democrats could gerymander for themselves next cycle.
tptacek 9y ago
I liked every part of this comment up to "Jon Ossoff's crushing loss", which is crazymaking. Unless I'm missing something very important, Ossoff was competing for a district that hadn't gone to a Republican by less than 20 points in the entire history of the district (it was redistricted sometime around ~2000). Ossoff --- who is not a great candidate! --- took one of the most solidly Republican suburban districts in the country and turned it into a real horse race. What am I supposed to learn from that about Democratic strategic weakness?
- dvt 9y ago
  The fact that the Democrats outspent the Republicans by a factor of 7[1] and still lost. But that's exactly my point: the Democrats tried to manufacture a candidate in a time of dire need instead of first going for school boards, local municipalities, etc. For what it's worth, Handel was a pretty terrible candidate too. Just goes to show how weak the Democratic strategists are. Obama won because he was an excellent candidate. Here's a novel idea for Democrats: get more awesome people to run for office. [1] http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2017/06/19/the-race-for-georgias-6th-district-now-costs-more-than-50m/ http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2017/06/19/the-race-for-georgia...
  - tptacek 9y ago
    Read the story carefully. It's not a factor of 7, or even close to that. A larger proportion of Handel's support came from outside the campaign.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

j4kp07 9y ago

TL;DR The courts actually require states to intentionally create districts that have a majority population of minorities. It's a difficult thing to manage. As a result of a Supreme Court ruling in regards to civil rights the states are not allowed to spread minority votes across district lines since it was determined that that doesn't give them a strong enough voice and doesn't allow them a united voice as well as the advancement of minority politicians in Congress. States largely complied. But, as time has gone on people often believe that giving minorities their own districts actually hurts their political power because states put them all in their district, they get one politician and then the rest of the districts aren't a melting pot. So now there is a push to try to prevent states from districting based on racial lines, but the Supreme Court has already required them to do this. So it's a very fine balancing act the states have to go through, and in many cases they exploit the Supreme Court requirements/ruling to their political advantage. And if you removed the racial districting you might actually lose minority representation in Congress in terms of number of minority Congressmen, which people don't want. So gerrymandering is this strange mix of affirmative action for Congress and political gamesmanship to protect a party's numbers in Congress.