11 ms·

In case it's not entirely clear, the font ridicules the practice of gerrymandering: toying with electoral district borders so that the results favor the incumbe

by yholio 7y ago

In case it's not entirely clear, the font ridicules the practice of gerrymandering: toying with electoral district borders so that the results favor the incumbent while corralling the voters of the adversaries. So extensive is this practice that the resulting shapes can approximate any letter of the alphabet. Quite readable too.

swebs 7y ago
There's currently a push to take it to the supreme court so it can be stopped once and for all. Archive link because the Baltimore Sun doesn't like Europe: http://archive.is/a3mMR http://archive.is/a3mMR
- GavinMcG 7y ago
  That's an article from several months ago. The Supreme Court already ruled, and said that federal courts couldn't do anything about it, so state governments that are controlled by one party can continue to entrench their power. https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/06/gerrymandering-symposium-supreme-court-confirms-that-it-will-not-save-our-maps-only-voters-can/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/06/gerrymandering-symposium-...
- non-entity 7y ago
  > There's currently a push to take it to the supreme court so it can be stopped once and for all. I may be mistaken, but I thought I read the court ruled it constitutional
  - Delmania 7y ago
    Their ruling was that the Supreme Court is not the decider here, this has to be done at a state level.
- sergiotapia 7y ago
  If they do this doesn't this mean 5 cities will dictate who is in charge of the country?
  - jascii 7y ago
    I'm not quite sure I follow you, could you elaborate?
    - Spivak 7y ago
      One of the arguments in favor of the electoral college is that it boosts the voice of people who are in areas with lower population density. This is to ensure that minority interests are respected and taken into account by presidential hopefuls. Without this protection the voices of people who live outside the 5 major metropolitan areas simply wouldn't matter and candidates would have no reason to listen to their issues and have no repercussions for hurting them to favor city-dwellers. This would be bad. Very bad. A straight population vote ends up being a scheduling algorithm for issues where rural interests have unbounded wait time. One could say that the solution of weighting rural votes higher is a clunky system but any replacement voting system needs to take this into account as those small towns are where almost all of our primary industry is.
      - TheBranca18 7y ago
        If this is the issue, the electoral college doesn't solve this. Because what happens is the campaigning for the general election is usually dictated by swing state status and when the caucus or primary takes place in the election calendar. If you look at the distribution of states visited during the campaigning for the general election, it backs this up. Also, the Senate is supposed to combat the House in this instance. That's what it's there for, and frankly, because of the importance of the Senate, a voter in Wyoming has more voting power than a voter in California. This isn't good either as you mention in your last statement.
        andrekandre 7y ago
        yep, and i would posit that hanging everything off of swing states gyrates the presidential debates into wild swings in extreme directions which possibly further divide the population against each other over time
      - 7y ago
- hsnewman 7y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, there is nothing in the constitution about doing this. It is unfortunately completely legal.
- agjm 7y ago
  I think the Baltimore Sun probably likes Europe just fine - what they don't like are self-contradictory rule sets that can cost them $20,000,000+ on top of the cost of achieving "compliance." 'Sarah Toporoff, a Massachusetts native who works in Paris for the Global Editors Network, which promotes newsroom innovation, raised similar questions. She said U.S. newsrooms “are a benchmark for digital innovation” — and it’s important that their content be available in Europe.' 'It is naive and wholly irresponsible to think that U.S. news holds no relevance beyond U.S. borders...' Perhaps, then, Europe should've had some international discussion about their hyper-aggressive legislation, to try and prevent this situation. I am dumbfounded that anyone thinks the U.S. corporations are to blame for not spending millions to comply with a foreign law from countries where they have no legal representation. Preventing that sort of 'taxation without representation' is something of a popular idea over here. https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/08/more-than-1000-u-s-news-sites-are-still-unavailable-in-europe-two-months-after-gdpr-took-effect/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/08/more-than-1000-u-s-news-si...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - zimpenfish 7y ago
    > on top of the cost of achieving "compliance." Compliance with GDPR is easy though - don't aggressively track and monitor European visitors. If you've stuffed your website that full with invasive trackers et al that you can't show it to Europeans for fear of broaching personal privacy legislation, you should probably have a good long think about where you've gone wrong.
    - erik_seaberg 7y ago
      GDPR is not merely a list of bad things to avoid, it adds a lot of ongoing burdens to every company active in the region. Hire more people. Actively investigate your own compliance. Wait months for government permission to deliver features. There are people who aren't doing anything wrong, who did the math and decided they can't clear a profit on proving they aren't doing anything wrong.
labster 7y ago
Except that it uses non-gerrymandered districts from California, where elected officials are not allowed to draw the lines. So any statement is lost, but I guess it’s a fun art project.
- EForEndeavour 7y ago
  Only three letters in this project include California; only the letters T and X are represented exclusively by California. The statement is powerful and hilarious, not "lost."
  - AlanSE 7y ago
    It's not even a very good T. Some letters are more impressive than others. Q is totally worthless for the political point. But N, D, U, and a few others are real gems.
    - furyofantares 7y ago
      I’m imagining this debate playing out in my head. I’m not sure if gerrymandering is all that bad. Wait, what’s this, a font made out of gerrymandered districts? It must be really bad, we should do something about it. Except the T doesn’t look that great, and it’s from California anyway. Maybe this isn’t such a big deal after all. And the Q! The Q is barely even gerrymandered. Fuck it, I’m gonna go play some video games.
    - aqme28 7y ago
      What's wrong with D? That looks like a pretty reasonable district. B is the worst one I think.
    - caf 7y ago
      K and H are pretty egregious at first glance.
  - raldi 7y ago
    The T district doesn't even look problematic to me. Nor does the other California letter, X, which is made up of a combination of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_8th_congressional_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_8th_congression... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_14th_congressional_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_14th_congressio... ...both of which seem like textbook examples of what a good, non-gerrymandered district should look like.
jypepin 7y ago
Thanks for clarifying! Was not aware of the practice and didn't even notice the states represented the alphabet! (Non US resident here).
- schoen 7y ago
  Note that these are Congressional districts (a sub-state district used for electoral purposes). The states' shapes themselves exist for other historical reasons that are probably not mainly related to gerrymandering.
taude 7y ago
How accurate are the rest of the districts? Or were there some tweaks to make it work out as the alphabet a little better? Pretty amazing, though.

by yholio 7y ago

swebs 7y ago

There's currently a push to take it to the supreme court so it can be stopped once and for all. Archive link because the Baltimore Sun doesn't like Europe: http://archive.is/a3mMR http://archive.is/a3mMR

GavinMcG 7y ago
That's an article from several months ago. The Supreme Court already ruled, and said that federal courts couldn't do anything about it, so state governments that are controlled by one party can continue to entrench their power. https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/06/gerrymandering-symposium-supreme-court-confirms-that-it-will-not-save-our-maps-only-voters-can/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/06/gerrymandering-symposium-...
non-entity 7y ago
> There's currently a push to take it to the supreme court so it can be stopped once and for all. I may be mistaken, but I thought I read the court ruled it constitutional
- Delmania 7y ago
  Their ruling was that the Supreme Court is not the decider here, this has to be done at a state level.
sergiotapia 7y ago
If they do this doesn't this mean 5 cities will dictate who is in charge of the country?
- jascii 7y ago
  I'm not quite sure I follow you, could you elaborate?
  - Spivak 7y ago
    One of the arguments in favor of the electoral college is that it boosts the voice of people who are in areas with lower population density. This is to ensure that minority interests are respected and taken into account by presidential hopefuls. Without this protection the voices of people who live outside the 5 major metropolitan areas simply wouldn't matter and candidates would have no reason to listen to their issues and have no repercussions for hurting them to favor city-dwellers. This would be bad. Very bad. A straight population vote ends up being a scheduling algorithm for issues where rural interests have unbounded wait time. One could say that the solution of weighting rural votes higher is a clunky system but any replacement voting system needs to take this into account as those small towns are where almost all of our primary industry is.
    - TheBranca18 7y ago
      If this is the issue, the electoral college doesn't solve this. Because what happens is the campaigning for the general election is usually dictated by swing state status and when the caucus or primary takes place in the election calendar. If you look at the distribution of states visited during the campaigning for the general election, it backs this up. Also, the Senate is supposed to combat the House in this instance. That's what it's there for, and frankly, because of the importance of the Senate, a voter in Wyoming has more voting power than a voter in California. This isn't good either as you mention in your last statement.
      - andrekandre 7y ago
        yep, and i would posit that hanging everything off of swing states gyrates the presidential debates into wild swings in extreme directions which possibly further divide the population against each other over time
    - 7y ago
hsnewman 7y ago
If I'm not mistaken, there is nothing in the constitution about doing this. It is unfortunately completely legal.
agjm 7y ago
I think the Baltimore Sun probably likes Europe just fine - what they don't like are self-contradictory rule sets that can cost them $20,000,000+ on top of the cost of achieving "compliance." 'Sarah Toporoff, a Massachusetts native who works in Paris for the Global Editors Network, which promotes newsroom innovation, raised similar questions. She said U.S. newsrooms “are a benchmark for digital innovation” — and it’s important that their content be available in Europe.' 'It is naive and wholly irresponsible to think that U.S. news holds no relevance beyond U.S. borders...' Perhaps, then, Europe should've had some international discussion about their hyper-aggressive legislation, to try and prevent this situation. I am dumbfounded that anyone thinks the U.S. corporations are to blame for not spending millions to comply with a foreign law from countries where they have no legal representation. Preventing that sort of 'taxation without representation' is something of a popular idea over here. https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/08/more-than-1000-u-s-news-sites-are-still-unavailable-in-europe-two-months-after-gdpr-took-effect/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/08/more-than-1000-u-s-news-si...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- zimpenfish 7y ago
  > on top of the cost of achieving "compliance." Compliance with GDPR is easy though - don't aggressively track and monitor European visitors. If you've stuffed your website that full with invasive trackers et al that you can't show it to Europeans for fear of broaching personal privacy legislation, you should probably have a good long think about where you've gone wrong.
  - erik_seaberg 7y ago
    GDPR is not merely a list of bad things to avoid, it adds a lot of ongoing burdens to every company active in the region. Hire more people. Actively investigate your own compliance. Wait months for government permission to deliver features. There are people who aren't doing anything wrong, who did the math and decided they can't clear a profit on proving they aren't doing anything wrong.

labster 7y ago

Except that it uses non-gerrymandered districts from California, where elected officials are not allowed to draw the lines. So any statement is lost, but I guess it’s a fun art project.

EForEndeavour 7y ago
Only three letters in this project include California; only the letters T and X are represented exclusively by California. The statement is powerful and hilarious, not "lost."
- AlanSE 7y ago
  It's not even a very good T. Some letters are more impressive than others. Q is totally worthless for the political point. But N, D, U, and a few others are real gems.
  - furyofantares 7y ago
    I’m imagining this debate playing out in my head. I’m not sure if gerrymandering is all that bad. Wait, what’s this, a font made out of gerrymandered districts? It must be really bad, we should do something about it. Except the T doesn’t look that great, and it’s from California anyway. Maybe this isn’t such a big deal after all. And the Q! The Q is barely even gerrymandered. Fuck it, I’m gonna go play some video games.
  - aqme28 7y ago
    What's wrong with D? That looks like a pretty reasonable district. B is the worst one I think.
  - caf 7y ago
    K and H are pretty egregious at first glance.
- raldi 7y ago
  The T district doesn't even look problematic to me. Nor does the other California letter, X, which is made up of a combination of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_8th_congressional_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_8th_congression... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_14th_congressional_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_14th_congressio... ...both of which seem like textbook examples of what a good, non-gerrymandered district should look like.

jypepin 7y ago

Thanks for clarifying! Was not aware of the practice and didn't even notice the states represented the alphabet! (Non US resident here).

schoen 7y ago
Note that these are Congressional districts (a sub-state district used for electoral purposes). The states' shapes themselves exist for other historical reasons that are probably not mainly related to gerrymandering.

taude 7y ago

How accurate are the rest of the districts? Or were there some tweaks to make it work out as the alphabet a little better? Pretty amazing, though.