SCOTUS to hear gerrymandering case - Politics and Economics

Two Plus Two Forums Other Topics Politics

SCOTUS to hear gerrymandering case

...

Page 1 of 4

1 2 3 4

Page 1 of 4

1 2 3 4

06-19-2017 , 01:09 PM

Max Cut

Guest

Posts: n/a

Cross-posting from pres thread. Mods can decide if this should instead go into the related thread here: forumserver.twoplustwo.com/41/politics/us-districting-1671619/. tyty

Quote:

Originally Posted by Max Cut

https://twitter.com/srl/status/876795389411766272

Thanks, Mitch McConnel, for stealing a SCOTUS seat that will sit in judgement of the case on stealing congressional seats like yours. Easy game.

For the sake of accuracy:

Quote:

Burden noted that because the Wisconsin case only deals with state legislative districts, separate litigation would be needed to deal with the way congressional districts are drawn.

06-19-2017 , 04:24 PM

hacksaw JD

journeyman

Join Date: Jan 2017 Posts: 209

sounds like WI can still use gerrymandered boundaries until the case is heard. is that correct? so wouldn't that likely go through the 2018 elections? would they even be able to re-draw the districts quickly enough prior to 2018 elections if they are found to be unconstitutional?

06-19-2017 , 04:46 PM

Namath12

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jan 2011 Posts: 55,849

can you smeeeeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllllllll what the STATES RIGHTS is cookin?

06-19-2017 , 04:54 PM

simplicitus

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 10,840

Quote:

Originally Posted by hacksaw JD

If the WI court struck down the districts they are illegitimate under the law. This would only change if the WI court stayed its opinion pending appeal or the SCt issued a stay. I don't know the specifics of the case, but both are unlikely.

06-19-2017 , 05:35 PM

einbert

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 14,911

Remember that whatever the results of this case are, they are illegitimate. The Supreme Court seat was STOLEN last year from the Democratic party and any and all Supreme Court rulings made under this current court are completely illegitimate.

06-19-2017 , 05:38 PM

einbert

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 14,911

Your ability to enact change through democracy is gone. The Supreme Court has been stolen and we will never be able to reverse all the illegitimate results through democracy:

https://twitter.com/imillhiser/statu...82503226753024

06-19-2017 , 05:41 PM

RV Life

old hand

Join Date: Jun 2016 Posts: 1,935

I know gerrymandering is wrong but how does it help or hurt one party more than the other?

06-19-2017 , 05:46 PM

Loki

binary duo

Join Date: Nov 2015 Posts: 12,772

Quote:

Originally Posted by RV Life

I know gerrymandering is wrong but how does it help or hurt one party more than the other?

Say you have a state that gets ten house seats. The vote is split 50-50 Dems and Repubs. You would normally expect five seats for each party, maybe six to four or so, but through the magic of gerrymandering you can ensure that your party gets 7-8 seats and the other only 2-3. This dilutes the power of minority party voters and greatly over values votes toward the party who did the gerrymandering.

Sadly, proportional representation is the only way to reasonably ensure equal protection and representation.

06-19-2017 , 05:48 PM

JoltinJake

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: May 2004 Posts: 5,236

Quote:

Originally Posted by RV Life

I know gerrymandering is wrong but how does it help or hurt one party more than the other?

Republicans control more state legislatures and thus control the process in more states.

Also, Republicans are more willing to "play the game" while Democrats are more concerned about fairness. So you end up getting aggressively gerrymandered districts in red states while blue states like California are drawn by independent commissions.

06-19-2017 , 05:50 PM

#10

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,077

Quote:

Originally Posted by RV Life

I know gerrymandering is wrong but how does it help or hurt one party more than the other?

The party in power when districts are drawn can try to draw them in a way that benefits them. I thought this Vox article was fairly good.

06-19-2017 , 06:49 PM

#11

RV Life

old hand

Join Date: Jun 2016 Posts: 1,935

Good answers guys. Thanks.

06-19-2017 , 08:15 PM

#12

cuserounder

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 8,217

This one's a must-win for the democracy, but I have a feeling we're going to lose it 5-4. Maybe a 15-20% shot of pulling it out?

06-19-2017 , 08:17 PM

#13

einbert

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 14,911

They get to use their stolen Supreme Court seat to rubber-stamp their stolen gerrymandered districts. Neat! Who says cheaters never prosper?

06-19-2017 , 08:20 PM

#14

einbert

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 14,911

Great thread on gerrymandering and how its effects are so powerful:

https://twitter.com/absurdistwords/s...09340493156352

Quote:

On November 6, 2012, Barack Obama was reelected President of the United States by nearly a three-point margin, winning 332 electoral votes to Mitt Romney’s 206 while garnering nearly 3.5 million more votes. Democrats also celebrated victories in 69 percent of U.S. Senate elections, winning 23 of 33 contests. Farther down-ballot, aggregated numbers show voters pulled the lever for Republicans only 49 percent of the time in congressional races, suggesting that 2012 could have been a repeat of 2008, when voters gave control of the White House and both chambers of Congress to Democrats.

But, as we see today, that was not the case. Instead, Republicans enjoy a 33-seat margin in the U.S. House seated yesterday in the 113th Congress, having endured Democratic successes atop the ticket and over one million more votes cast for Democratic House candidates than Republicans. The only analogous election in recent political history in which this aberration has taken place was immediately after reapportionment in 1972, when Democrats held a 50 seat majority in the U.S. House of Representatives while losing the presidency and the popular congressional vote by 2.6 million votes.

[...]

2012 Congressional Elections: REDMAP’s Impact

President Obama won reelection in 2012 by nearly 3 points nationally, and banked 126 more electoral votes than Governor Mitt Romney. Democratic candidates for the U.S. House won 1.1 million more votes than their Republican opponents. But the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is a Republican and presides over a 33-seat House Republican majority during the 113th Congress. How? One needs to look no farther than four states that voted Democratic on a statewide level in 2012, yet elected a strong Republican delegation to represent them in Congress: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Michigan

The effectiveness of REDMAP is perhaps most clear in the state of Michigan. In 2010, the RSLC put $1 million into state legislative races, contributing to a GOP pick-up of 20 seats in the House and Republican majorities in both the House and Senate. Republican Rick Snyder won the gubernatorial race, and with it Republicans gained control of redrawing Michigan’s 148 legislative and 14 congressional districts. The 2012 election was a huge success for Democrats at the statewide level in Michigan: voters elected a Democratic U.S. Senator by more than 20 points and reelected President Obama by almost 10 points. But Republicans at the state level maintained majorities in both chambers of the legislature and voters elected a 9-5 Republican majority to represent them in Congress.

Ohio

Ohio once again proved to be the national bellwether, voting to reelect President Obama to a second term in the White House by almost two points. On the statewide level, Ohioans also elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate by more than five points. But the Republican firewall at the state legislative and congressional level held. In 2010, REDMAP allocated nearly $1 million to Ohio House races, resulting in a Republican take over of the House and increasing the GOP majority in the Senate. With the election of Republican John Kasich to the governor’s mansion, the GOP controlled the redrawing of 132 state legislative and 16 congressional districts. Republican redistricting resulted in a net gain for the GOP state House caucus in 2012, and allowed a 12-4 Republican majority to return to the U.S. House of Representatives – despite voters casting only 52 percent of their vote for Republican congressional candidates.

Pennsylvania

A REDMAP target state, the RSLC spent nearly $1 million in Pennsylvania House races in 2010 – an expenditure that helped provide the GOP with majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. Combined with former Republican Attorney General Tom Corbett’s victory in the gubernatorial race, Republicans took control of the state legislative and congressional redistricting process. The impact of this investment at the state level in 2010 is evident when examining the results of the 2012 election: Pennsylvanians reelected a Democratic U.S. Senator by nearly nine points and reelected President Obama by more than five points, but at the same time they added to the Republican ranks in the State House and returned a 13-5 Republican majority to the U.S. House.

Wisconsin

In 2010, the RSLC spent $1.1 million to successfully flip both chambers of the Wisconsin legislature. With the election of Republican Governor Scott Walker, the GOP gained control of the redistricting process and gave Wisconsinites and all of America a firsthand look at what bold conservative leadership looks like. In mid-2012, Democrats were able to regain control of the Wisconsin Senate, albeit for a period of time when the chamber was out of session. In November 2012, however, running on lines redrawn after the successes of 2010, Republicans were able to retake the Senate and add to their margins in the House. On a statewide level, in 2012, Wisconsin voters elected a Democratic U.S. Senator by nearly six points and reelected President Obama by nearly seven points, but still returned a 5-3 Republican majority to Congress, including the GOP vice presidential nominee, Representative Paul Ryan.

http://www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/?p=646

06-19-2017 , 09:22 PM

#15

goofyballer

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 70,719

I've read a couple things recently (I think one was in a link I found when someone else was asking about algorithmic district drawing) that make me not optimistic about the end of gerrymandering to suddenly make everything rosier for Democrats. They were suggesting that Democrats' tendency to concentrate in cities is disadvantageous for district-level elections no matter how the districts are drawn.

As an example, this Wikipedia page lists every district in the country by Cook PVI. The most extreme red district in the country is R+33. There are 21 districts that are D+33 or higher (up to D+43), and all of them are in or around big cities:

NYC (x7)
Oakland
Philadelphia
Chicago (x2)
SF
LA (x4)
Miami
Atlanta
Boston
Detroit
Seattle

The extra blue-ness of these districts (to the extent that can be quantified) essentially represents wasted votes, in that there is no Republican district that matches their level of partisanship. Without any gerrymandering at all, this fact alone would still allow Republicans to win the House without necessarily winning the popular House vote.

06-19-2017 , 09:34 PM

#16

grizy

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 20,568

Everything I've read suggests the same. Almost all of the gerrymandering effects are "natural" in the sense lots of votes would still be wasted even if totally impartial machines drew up the districts.

06-19-2017 , 10:06 PM

#17

RV Life

old hand

Join Date: Jun 2016 Posts: 1,935

Yea, that was kinda what I was getting at when I asked how it helps one party more than the other. You guys did a good job explaining what I was saying/asking.

It really sucks that some bozo in rural Montana has more say w/ his vote than people in a city.

06-19-2017 , 10:55 PM

#18

cuserounder

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 8,217

Quote:

Originally Posted by goofyballer

As an example, this Wikipedia page lists every district in the country by Cook PVI. The most extreme red district in the country is R+33. There are 21 districts that are D+33 or higher (up to D+43), and all of them are in or around big cities:

NYC (x7)
Oakland
Philadelphia
Chicago (x2)
SF
LA (x4)
Miami
Atlanta
Boston
Detroit
Seattle

The extra blue-ness of these districts (to the extent that can be quantified) essentially represents wasted votes, in that there is no Republican district that matches their level of partisanship. Without any gerrymandering at all, this fact alone would still allow Republicans to win the House without necessarily winning the popular House vote.

While there are certainly some districts that will always be extra blue and waste votes, the key here is there aren't any Republican districts that are that bad... and THAT is a product of gerrymandering. If you look at North Carolina, they have three Democratic districts with Cook PVI's of +17, +17, +18. Meanwhile there are six Republican districts with Cook PVI's of +6 to +9, then a couple in the 10-12 range and one +14.

Thus, you get ~2.4M Republican votes and ~2M Democrat votes, which should leave the balance around 7-6 Republican but instead it's 10-3... and let's not forget they're also disenfranchising minorities in North Carolina.

The issue isn't the districts in major metropolitan areas like NYC, Chicago and LA, even though that does hurt Democrats a little. That's offset to some degree by districts in the midwest and south that waste Republican votes because they're all always going red.

The issue is taking swing states or right leaning states and carving up the districts to combine small/mid-sized cities and concentrate/waste Democrat votes in those districts, or to exclude Republican-leaning suburbs from districts they belong in, but where their votes would be wasted. I'm pretty sure that's what happened in NC-04, and you can see a great example of connecting small/mid-sized cities in the now-redrawn FL-05, which used to snake from Jacksonville to Gainesville to Orlando, with sections of it about the width of a highway (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.c379d19de7fb).

Gerrymandering is probably worth about 20 seats in the House for the GOP right now. Flip them and it's very, very close. Flip them and the AHCA doesn't pass the House.

06-19-2017 , 11:05 PM

#19

JoltinJake

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: May 2004 Posts: 5,236

Quote:

Originally Posted by goofyballer

Without any gerrymandering at all, this fact alone would still allow Republicans to win the House without necessarily winning the popular House vote.

Sure, it's true that Democrats tend to cluster in small geographic areas and thus Republicans will always have a natural advantage. But it's a question of degree. With gerrymandering, the Republicans' edge is higher than it should be.

The estimates I can find say that, in 2012, Republicans were +11 house seats due to gerrymandering. That's apparently what you get by using 2012 votes on 2000-2009 districts.

And -- I'm no expert here, so someone correct me if I'm wrong -- but gerrymandering was already a thing prior to 2010, so I don't think it's a stretch to say Republicans might be something like +15 right now compared to a "fair" system without gerrymandering.

15 seats is actually a lot. That would have been enough to swing control of the house for all 6 congresses between 1995 and 2007, for example. Since then, the spread has been larger.

Gerrymandering works. If it didn't matter very much, the parties wouldn't spend so much time/money on it.

06-19-2017 , 11:29 PM

#20

goofyballer

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 70,719

Quote:

Originally Posted by cuserounder

While there are certainly some districts that will always be extra blue and waste votes, the key here is there aren't any Republican districts that are that bad... and THAT is a product of gerrymandering.

I haven't seen evidence of this being the reason. Gerrymandering matters (your NC data and JoltinJake's posts below are both good examples of the reason why) but it's not the whole story.

06-19-2017 , 11:33 PM

#21

corvette24

banned

Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 1,020

Quote:

Originally Posted by einbert

Your ability to enact change through democracy is gone. The Supreme Court has been stolen and we will never be able to reverse all the illegitimate results through democracy:

https://twitter.com/imillhiser/statu...82503226753024

This Ian Millhiser sounds like a deplorable piece of **** that I'd like to punch in the ****ing nuts.

06-19-2017 , 11:56 PM

#22

RV Life

old hand

Join Date: Jun 2016 Posts: 1,935

Yea if you support gerrymandering, you are basically saying "Our party's ideals are so ****ty that the only way we can win is to cheat!"

06-20-2017 , 12:02 AM

#23

einbert

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 14,911

https://twitter.com/brennancenter/st...16806660292608

http://www.brennancenter.org/publication/extreme-maps

Quote:

This decade’s congressional maps are consistently biased in favor of Republicans.

In the 26 states that account for 85 percent of congressional districts, Republicans derive a net benefit of at least 16-17 congressional seats in the current Congress from partisan bias. This advantage represents a significant portion of the 24 seats Democrats would need to pick up to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018.

Just seven states account for almost all of the bias.

Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania consistently have the most extreme levels of partisan bias. Collectively, the distortion in their maps has accounted for seven to ten extra Republican seats in each of the three elections since the 2011 redistricting, amounting to one-third to one-half of the total partisan bias across the states we analyzed.
Florida, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia have less severe partisan bias but jointly account for most of the remaining net extra Republican seats in the examined states.

Single-party control of the redistricting process is closely linked with biased maps.

The seven states with high levels of partisan bias are all states where one political party had sole control of the redistricting process. Court-ordered modifications to maps in Florida, Texas, and Virginia — all originally drawn under sole Republican control — have reduced but not entirely curbed these states’ partisan bias.
States where Democrats had sole control of redistricting have high partisan bias within state congressional delegations, but the relatively small number of districts in these states creates a much smaller effect on partisan bias in the House overall.
By contrast, maps drawn by commissions, courts, and split-control state governments exhibited much lower levels of partisan bias, and none had high levels of bias persisting across all three of the elections since the 2011 round of redistricting.

There is strong evidence that the bias in this decade’s congressional maps is not accidental. With the exception of Texas, all of the most biased maps are in battleground states. These states routinely have close statewide elections and a fairly even distribution of partisanship across most of the state — two factors that do not naturally suggest that there should be a large and durable underrepresentation of one political party.

06-20-2017 , 12:33 AM

#24

corvette24

banned

Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 1,020

Quote:

Originally Posted by corvette24

This Ian Millhiser sounds like a deplorable piece of **** that I'd like to punch in the ****ing nuts.

Annnd my reading comprehension might have lapsed a bit here. Taken out of context, I thought Ian was tweeting FOR gerrymandering. Now I'm not so sure. Derp.

06-20-2017 , 12:55 AM

#25

cuserounder

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 8,217

Quote:

Originally Posted by corvette24

Annnd my reading comprehension might have lapsed a bit here. Taken out of context, I thought Ian was tweeting FOR gerrymandering. Now I'm not so sure. Derp.

Yeah, he's tweeting against it if you read his timeline and look at where he works.

Page 1 of 4

First

1 2 3 4

Last

...

Page 1 of 4

First

1 2 3 4

Last