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>You WANT the representatives deciding the boundaries because they are ultimately beholded to the people How are they beholden to people if they can disenfranc

by ABCLAW 4y ago

>You WANT the representatives deciding the boundaries because they are ultimately beholded to the people How are they beholden to people if they can disenfranchise people via gerrymandering? The primary check against arbitrary action of an elected official is to vote them out, but gerrymandering allows them to significantly lower the responsiveness of voting to their benefit. You can't argue that you should support gerrymandering on the basis of democratic representation given that gerrymandering DIRECTLY MITIGATES the effectiveness of democratic representation.

zackees 4y ago
> How are they beholden to people if they can disenfranchise people via gerrymandering? Redistricting also ENFRANCHISES people by putting heavily democratic counties together into voting blocks and conservatives into their voting blocks. YOU DONT WANT 50/50 splits, you want 90/10 splits. That’s maximizing enfranchisement. But this democratic lever is an impediment to power to the left. So the result is endless propaganda when the right is using it to contain the influence of the cities from suburban and rural areas. The msm and leftist governments use redistricting (gerrymandering) to their advantage ALL THE TIME. When the left does it is called sex (redistricting). When the right does it is called rape (gerrymandering). The leftist media is perfectly happy to celebrate any gain by the left to disenfranchise any conservative county by moving its boundaries into a city voting block. The writers of the constitution new this. That’s why they built the resistricting laws right into the constitution.
- ABCLAW 4y ago
  If Gerrymandering was used to district people into exclusively 90/10 distribution segments, it wouldn't favor either party. But that's not what happens. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/03/gerry.png https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/03/... You're claiming gerrymandering is used to create the situation in option 1. I haven't seen any indication that this is the case from any reputable source. Most mathematical analysis of gerrymandering shows that option 3 is what's occurring, which does NOT enfranchise people. Almost every piece mathematically quantifying gerrymandering efforts in the states has indicated that it substantially favors the GOP. Here's one example centered on the 2016 election: https://apnews.com/article/elections-race-and-ethnicity-voting-rights-census-2020-election-2020-fa6478e10cda4e9cbd75380e705bd380 https://apnews.com/article/elections-race-and-ethnicity-voti... Some of the discussion is regarding how much of the bias is intentional (due to intentionally gerrymandered districts) vs. unintentional (due to the geographic clustering of democratic voters in urban areas), but I haven't ever seen an analysis that attributes an overall advantage to democrats as a result of districting at the state or national level.
  - zackees 4y ago
    Dude, you are getting your political news analysis from the AP. Of course they are going to report that gerrymandering hurts democracy and conservatives are to blame. Why don’t you ask Russia Today about whether Russia is a strong and prosperous country that’s good for the world? Same tier of propaganda. You should diversify and be more inclusive of your news sources.
    - ABCLAW 4y ago
      It's unfortunate that you exclusively focus on the source rather than the argument when the information contained in the links I provided can be found in peer reviewed papers, other news publications, etc., all of which can be easily searched for online. The math isn't particularly complicated, nor is it controversial. Here's an article about gerrymandering in NC in the journal of Statistics and Public Policy: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2330443X.2020.1796400 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2330443X.2020.1... The NC2012 and NC2016 plots in comparison with the neutral districting is almost cartoonish in how much packing was performed. As an aside, I don't understand why you're claiming that the AP, of all news sources, is a propaganda outlet (let alone one favoring democrats?). Do you have some reason to believe that their take regarding district policy is suspect? Or do you just have an nebulous distrust of news media in general? You're more than welcome to post a reputable source that provides an analysis claiming that gerrymandering enfranchises people so that we'd have some subject matter disagreement to dig into.

by ABCLAW 4y ago

zackees 4y ago

> How are they beholden to people if they can disenfranchise people via gerrymandering? Redistricting also ENFRANCHISES people by putting heavily democratic counties together into voting blocks and conservatives into their voting blocks. YOU DONT WANT 50/50 splits, you want 90/10 splits. That’s maximizing enfranchisement. But this democratic lever is an impediment to power to the left. So the result is endless propaganda when the right is using it to contain the influence of the cities from suburban and rural areas. The msm and leftist governments use redistricting (gerrymandering) to their advantage ALL THE TIME. When the left does it is called sex (redistricting). When the right does it is called rape (gerrymandering). The leftist media is perfectly happy to celebrate any gain by the left to disenfranchise any conservative county by moving its boundaries into a city voting block. The writers of the constitution new this. That’s why they built the resistricting laws right into the constitution.

ABCLAW 4y ago
If Gerrymandering was used to district people into exclusively 90/10 distribution segments, it wouldn't favor either party. But that's not what happens. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/03/gerry.png https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/03/... You're claiming gerrymandering is used to create the situation in option 1. I haven't seen any indication that this is the case from any reputable source. Most mathematical analysis of gerrymandering shows that option 3 is what's occurring, which does NOT enfranchise people. Almost every piece mathematically quantifying gerrymandering efforts in the states has indicated that it substantially favors the GOP. Here's one example centered on the 2016 election: https://apnews.com/article/elections-race-and-ethnicity-voting-rights-census-2020-election-2020-fa6478e10cda4e9cbd75380e705bd380 https://apnews.com/article/elections-race-and-ethnicity-voti... Some of the discussion is regarding how much of the bias is intentional (due to intentionally gerrymandered districts) vs. unintentional (due to the geographic clustering of democratic voters in urban areas), but I haven't ever seen an analysis that attributes an overall advantage to democrats as a result of districting at the state or national level.
- zackees 4y ago
  Dude, you are getting your political news analysis from the AP. Of course they are going to report that gerrymandering hurts democracy and conservatives are to blame. Why don’t you ask Russia Today about whether Russia is a strong and prosperous country that’s good for the world? Same tier of propaganda. You should diversify and be more inclusive of your news sources.
  - ABCLAW 4y ago
    It's unfortunate that you exclusively focus on the source rather than the argument when the information contained in the links I provided can be found in peer reviewed papers, other news publications, etc., all of which can be easily searched for online. The math isn't particularly complicated, nor is it controversial. Here's an article about gerrymandering in NC in the journal of Statistics and Public Policy: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2330443X.2020.1796400 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2330443X.2020.1... The NC2012 and NC2016 plots in comparison with the neutral districting is almost cartoonish in how much packing was performed. As an aside, I don't understand why you're claiming that the AP, of all news sources, is a propaganda outlet (let alone one favoring democrats?). Do you have some reason to believe that their take regarding district policy is suspect? Or do you just have an nebulous distrust of news media in general? You're more than welcome to post a reputable source that provides an analysis claiming that gerrymandering enfranchises people so that we'd have some subject matter disagreement to dig into.