Maybe I missed it but I’m surprised you guys aren’t discussing the PA Supreme Court decision on gerrymandering and precedent it will set, this seems like the appropriate thread

You missed it I think

Latest update on this: GOP-controlled PA legislature submitted a new map, possibly even more gerrymandered than the existing one; PA governor rejects map; a new map is being drawn.

Get ready for GOP meltdown over the new PA map.

Link, new maps drawn by PA Supreme Court

Old/new maps:

+2 seats per Yglesias

There should be a law stating that the maps of congressional districts have to be drawn by a formula which provides for as much compactness as possible, without any political party inputs.

alternatively, we could stop pretending rural bumpkins are massively different than urbanites and just go proportional.

Hard to imagine how voting for congressional races in a state like California would work under that system.

The Republicans get mostly shutout, since they represent a relatively small number of Californians?

I wasn't meaning anything like that, just not sure how voting would work - would everyone vote for 53 candidates? And everyone would have to run across the entire state? Just seems unworkable. I think proportional is good for the electoral college though, and wish that could somehow be made the rule; it would only be second-best to getting rid of the EC completely.

In most proportional systems you vote for a party and not candidates. The party chooses the people who actually serve.

Germany has a sort of compromise system that has both proportional representation and local candidates:
http://m.dw.com/en/how-does-the-germ...google.de%252F

Yeah, I think that would be too big of a cultural change to ever be accepted in the US, where we have always had personality-based campaigning.

Thanks for the link, although as an American I did get a bit of chuckle over the line, "voter turnout dropped to 70%". If 70% of Americans ever turned out to vote I promise you our politics would look much, much different!

you still can. In some countries you're essentially voting for a list of candidates. Say, if Dems get 30% of the vote, their top 3 candidates win

Yeah there's many options when it comes to the nuts and bolts of parliamentary democracy, but almost any of those in use around the world today are superior to the American system which is designed to disenfranchise as many people as possible.

and i feel like that's the best argument for it. Conservative in California? Your vote matters for once. Liberal in Alabama? Your vote matters for once. Parties get more control over who runs, so they're happy. The parties could be less beholden to corporate interests because you don't have to zero in on the one singular company or industry in a small region.

Hey, almost every other state.

https://cascadiaunderground.com/wash...-registration/

**** you.

Get the ****ing lead out and do this.

My Trumper parents are in town and we had our first fight in a while when my dad claimed that illegal immigrants can vote because all you need to register to vote is a drivers license. I was basically screaming at him to show me any evidence that it actually happens but he just said it could happen. So remember we need voter ID to protect the sanctity of our elections per Republicans but also its super easy for people here illegally to get an aid and register to vote. He also claimed that all the non-Fox networks said Hillary was going to win so that conservatives would stay home. Needless to say our lives are better when we do not discuss politics, which we generally don’t but i got worked up when my wife asked my dad what he thought about the tariffs and he produced some argle bargle about China not selling us steel for tanks.

I just don't see the big deal with not being able to take off work to vote. I'm retired and can get to the polls just fine.

I have no idea how you people can maintain relationships with Trumpers.

For me it’s just my parents and that involves never discussing anything remotely political anymore because I get set off by their aggressive idiocy

My mom and I have actually had the most productive political conversations lately due to our shared hatred of Trump. Of course she still has so blindly vote (R) because abortion. But at least she frets about it!

If abortion is their trigger issue nothing will ever get them to change their mind. There is nothing that is every going to compete with sanctioned baby murder.