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Gerrymandering is only a problem (with respect to climate change) if around half of the voters don't care about climate change. As you said, there are good pol

Gerrymandering is only a problem (with respect to climate change) if around half of the voters don't care about climate change. As you said, there are good politicians. Its us that do not vote for them. In Germany, it was always the same: in between elections, the Green party have really nice results in polls. However, when it comes to the election, people prefer reducing (or not increasing) taxes and stuff over fixing the climate. People DO know about climate change. There IS good information available online. Its not that people have no idea what's happening. They just don't care to do something themselves - there's enough other people to fix it. Its like an email with lots of recipients, no one feels responsible to reply. > But feel free to support them. I never said I support them. I said we could easily get rid of them, of we only wanted to. The problem is (half of) the people around you, not the elites put in power by them.

Retric 5y ago
Gerrymandering can give a great deal of power to ~26% of the population. It takes just over 1/2 the seats in a congress to control legislation, and ~1/2 the voters in those locations. 1/2 * ~1/2 ~= 1/4 The US senate is even more extreme. Wyoming at 578,759 people has exactly as much power as California with 39,512,223. Clearly a party aiming to minimize the number of voters it needs to please would avoid California. After all if you get the right 10% of voters you win and who cares about anything else.
- j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
  > t takes just over 1/2 the seats in a congress to control legislation, and ~1/2 the voters in those locations. 1/2 * ~1/2 ~= 1/4 I don't follow. I assume turnout would have to be taken into account? Also, I was specifically saying "voters", not "population" (more by luck, though) ;-) > The US senate is even more extreme. Yeah that's very true. Weren't some of the sates basically only created to give a certain party the majority? Forgot where I read or heard that though.
  - whoooooo123 5y ago
    Suppose there are 100 seats in parliament. To gain political power, you need to win 51 seats. So in theory you could get (50+epsilon)% of the votes in each of 51 seats, and 0 votes in any of the other 49 seats and hold power, despite only getting ~25% of the overall vote (assuming the population is evenly distributed among the seats). Actually you don't even need to get that many votes. Depending on the electoral system you might not need to win a majority of the votes in any constituency, you just need more votes than anyone else, which could be a very low percentage if the opposition is split enough ways. The current governing party in the UK holds a comfortable majority of seats despite only winning 43% of the vote in the last election. And in fact, this was the highest vote share received by any party in decades. Labour in 1997 won more seats on a lower vote share. > Weren't some of the sates basically only created to give a certain party the majority? I've read that the reason Dakota Territory was split in two (North and South) upon statehood was mainly as a cynical ploy to get two extra senate seats for the favoured party.
    - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
      > So in theory you could get (50+epsilon)% of the votes in each of 51 seats, and 0 votes in any of the other 49 seats and hold power, despite only getting ~25% of the overall vote Ah ok, got it. However, probably an unlikely scenario even in a "segregated" (republicans vs democrats) country as the US. But yeah - the reality right now that 40, 45% of the votes are enough for - in the case of the US - the republicans to win is pretty bad already. > Depending on the electoral system you might not need to win a majority of the votes in any constituency, In Germany we have two ways to get into the Bundestag (national parliament) - the one is a "Direktmandat" (the candidate with the most votes in one county county gets the seat), the other is via the party ticket. The parties have lists of candidates, and depending on their percentage of the total vote, the first X candidates get a seat. That system tries to balance between each county getting the representative in they favor, but also representing the relative votes via the party ticket.
waihtis 5y ago
Is the green party in Germany really a primarily green party or is it like the Finnish green party, which is simultaneously green and hardcore leftist? Asking because that is why voting for the green party may be a huge turnoff for many (like myself.)
- j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
  Luckily, nowadays they pretty much got rid of their fundamentalist/leftwing arm. They kinda turned "conservative", but in a positive sense. In my opinion, them being a possible choice for conservative voters keeps our conservative party from doing too much rightwing crap, as they will know they'll loose voters to the Greens. We'll see how stuff goes in September (national elections). Under the hood, there's still lots of rightwing tendencies in our conservative party, unfortunately.
  - waihtis 5y ago
    What do you constitute as rightwing crap, out of interest?
    - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
      For example, appealing to voters of this party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany Its an officially extremist party (observed by the "Verfassungsschutz" [or: "Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution"], that traditionally kind of ignored the far-right), one of their leaders can officially be called a fascist (court ruling), and another leader says the 3rd Reich was kind of not that big of a deal.
      - waihtis 5y ago
        Figured since we can observe the same phenomena everywhere in EU. Regardless, by this point I think it is inevitable some of the hardcore right wing politics will enter mainstream; we (as in Europe as a whole) took too many immigrants without any consideration of how to manage them. Lest anyone try to throw the nazi card my way it should be stated that this is a failure born from rigid top-down management structure of the EU which does not even remotely have the flexibility required to manage external shock events like this. Same reason why the joint debt mechanism being forced on the excuse of COVID is a horrible idea and will end in tears for many.

Retric 5y ago

Gerrymandering can give a great deal of power to ~26% of the population. It takes just over 1/2 the seats in a congress to control legislation, and ~1/2 the voters in those locations. 1/2 * ~1/2 ~= 1/4 The US senate is even more extreme. Wyoming at 578,759 people has exactly as much power as California with 39,512,223. Clearly a party aiming to minimize the number of voters it needs to please would avoid California. After all if you get the right 10% of voters you win and who cares about anything else.

j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
> t takes just over 1/2 the seats in a congress to control legislation, and ~1/2 the voters in those locations. 1/2 * ~1/2 ~= 1/4 I don't follow. I assume turnout would have to be taken into account? Also, I was specifically saying "voters", not "population" (more by luck, though) ;-) > The US senate is even more extreme. Yeah that's very true. Weren't some of the sates basically only created to give a certain party the majority? Forgot where I read or heard that though.
- whoooooo123 5y ago
  Suppose there are 100 seats in parliament. To gain political power, you need to win 51 seats. So in theory you could get (50+epsilon)% of the votes in each of 51 seats, and 0 votes in any of the other 49 seats and hold power, despite only getting ~25% of the overall vote (assuming the population is evenly distributed among the seats). Actually you don't even need to get that many votes. Depending on the electoral system you might not need to win a majority of the votes in any constituency, you just need more votes than anyone else, which could be a very low percentage if the opposition is split enough ways. The current governing party in the UK holds a comfortable majority of seats despite only winning 43% of the vote in the last election. And in fact, this was the highest vote share received by any party in decades. Labour in 1997 won more seats on a lower vote share. > Weren't some of the sates basically only created to give a certain party the majority? I've read that the reason Dakota Territory was split in two (North and South) upon statehood was mainly as a cynical ploy to get two extra senate seats for the favoured party.
  - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
    > So in theory you could get (50+epsilon)% of the votes in each of 51 seats, and 0 votes in any of the other 49 seats and hold power, despite only getting ~25% of the overall vote Ah ok, got it. However, probably an unlikely scenario even in a "segregated" (republicans vs democrats) country as the US. But yeah - the reality right now that 40, 45% of the votes are enough for - in the case of the US - the republicans to win is pretty bad already. > Depending on the electoral system you might not need to win a majority of the votes in any constituency, In Germany we have two ways to get into the Bundestag (national parliament) - the one is a "Direktmandat" (the candidate with the most votes in one county county gets the seat), the other is via the party ticket. The parties have lists of candidates, and depending on their percentage of the total vote, the first X candidates get a seat. That system tries to balance between each county getting the representative in they favor, but also representing the relative votes via the party ticket.

waihtis 5y ago

Is the green party in Germany really a primarily green party or is it like the Finnish green party, which is simultaneously green and hardcore leftist? Asking because that is why voting for the green party may be a huge turnoff for many (like myself.)

j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
Luckily, nowadays they pretty much got rid of their fundamentalist/leftwing arm. They kinda turned "conservative", but in a positive sense. In my opinion, them being a possible choice for conservative voters keeps our conservative party from doing too much rightwing crap, as they will know they'll loose voters to the Greens. We'll see how stuff goes in September (national elections). Under the hood, there's still lots of rightwing tendencies in our conservative party, unfortunately.
- waihtis 5y ago
  What do you constitute as rightwing crap, out of interest?
  - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
    For example, appealing to voters of this party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany Its an officially extremist party (observed by the "Verfassungsschutz" [or: "Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution"], that traditionally kind of ignored the far-right), one of their leaders can officially be called a fascist (court ruling), and another leader says the 3rd Reich was kind of not that big of a deal.
    - waihtis 5y ago
      Figured since we can observe the same phenomena everywhere in EU. Regardless, by this point I think it is inevitable some of the hardcore right wing politics will enter mainstream; we (as in Europe as a whole) took too many immigrants without any consideration of how to manage them. Lest anyone try to throw the nazi card my way it should be stated that this is a failure born from rigid top-down management structure of the EU which does not even remotely have the flexibility required to manage external shock events like this. Same reason why the joint debt mechanism being forced on the excuse of COVID is a horrible idea and will end in tears for many.