SO MUCH CHAOS WITH A PAPER BALLOT SYSTEM

lol gerrymandering

Ahead of tomorrow's registration deadline, Texas is doing Texas Things

Just pointing out that gerrymandering accounts for some percentage of this but another big explanatory factor is segregation. Most ideas for non-partisan commissions that create 'sensible' geographic boundaries would still inevitably pack Democrats.

Regulators could instead *try* to create districts that achieve partisan balance but that's not non-controversial either.

The left should pay more attention to zoning, social integration, public transit, property taxes, etc. Focusing on gerrymandering alone won't solve for these kinds of effects and one of the nice downstream effects of addressing the total picture of what underlies minority rule in the US is that you solve a bunch of other critical social problems.

Every state should just be required to use a computer program to draw district boundaries, which is fed information about where people live, but nothing about political affiliation, and instructions to come up with the most compact districts possible.

The fact that the House has been limited to 435 members for more than 100 years is probably the single most egregious problem with our representative government today, way more than gerrymandering imo

I thought it was already so large a number that the unwieldiness made it hard to get things accomplished. How do you think having even more representatives would help?

Germany and the UK (among others) have more members of parliament and they still work reasonably well.

The total number is not the question but are the seats divided proportional to population? I know the senate is not proportional.

Yes, the house representation is proportional, with the slight exception that each state must get at least one representative.

The artificial cap renders the concept of "proportional representation" laughable because population growth isn't a zero-sum game, and the votes of reps in smaller districts are obviously weighted heavier than those from larger ones. But there are other good reasons for increasing the number of districts. Most notably, reps of smaller districts tend to be more responsive to the constituency than reps whose districts comprise millions of people.

This already exists fwiw

Right. And the GOP would still have advantages here (e.g., Democrats remain packed in urban areas, GOP voters more geographically diffuse). And -- assuming federal laws mandated the use of algorithms to ensure compactness and we roll back majority-minority districts, you might get less AA representation In Congress. The result then is a potential (not definitive) return back to something like the pre-Civil Rights Era (not exactly, of course) with perhaps more Democrats and even bi-partisanship but a less racially diverse Congress.

From your article:

In the end, I think this is correct. Un-doing these effects likely means a bunch more white Democrats from the Rust Belt and the South; what is the result in the Democratic Party when *that* happens? Remember the radicalization of the GOP and increased partisanship is as much a story about racist southern and midwestern whites leaving the Democrats for the GOP over the last 50 years, as what was left behind in the Democratic Party after the FDR coalition broke down: white liberals and racial minorities. They left behind a more leftist party, a party willing to consider socialism and speak far more openly about social justice as a priority. *That* kind of party has had a specific set of priorities and ideals that are markedly different from your grandfather's Democratic Party. Frankly I think they're better, but this is a tricky area to prognosticate all of the effects of varying policies to roll back gerrymandering.

But I'm confident a lot of liberals who are like END THE GERRYMANDER 1) have their heart in the right place but 2) overestimate the effects and 3) under-appreciate that certain solutions result in a possible retrenchment of a sort of white supremacist bi partisan detente as a solution to the current Cold Civil War or whatever pundits are calling it these days. Your effectively cracking the GOP hold on suburbia, exurbia, rural areas and creating geographically mixed districts. The *kind* of Democrats who can win in these kinds of districts might create a voting bloc that could push the party in a certain direction and collude with the GOP for stuff.

I'm not saying it's axiomatically a bad idea but I'll reiterate I don't see gerrymandering as a primary proximate cause of what we're seeing here, and so solving it doesn't feel especially urgent.

I strongly disagree with your conclusion.

Yes, it's true that gerrymandering doesn't explain the entire gap. Most good estimates I've seen say it's like half of the ~7% gap in the house. But:

(a) that's like, a lot! around 15 to 20 seats
(b) it's getting worse
(c) this is only considering the federal level, and gerrymandering is a huge problem on the state level as well, which further entrenches the problem on the federal level in a cycle

If the Supreme Court rules that partisan gerrymandering is good to go, I sincerely believe we could see a gerrymandering death spiral that essentially puts the GOP into permanent power. So yeah, I think it's an urgent problem.

The racial component is trickier and I agree there may not be a good solution there.

SCOTUS upheld a law disenfranchising tens of thousands of native Americans in ND today. Heitkamp is almost certainly toast now.

And this will get hardly any coverage. This basically locks up the Senate for the GOP, and two more years of this from all of the red states could be game over for our democratic republic.

Democrats MUST win the House and enough at the state level in 2018 to block this garbage over the ensuing two years, until they can take the House, Senate and White House and fight back at the federal level. The problem will be the likelihood of the SCOTUS striking down any law to block voter suppression.

Holy carp that ND law is one of the worst things ever.

That would still result in a large Republican advantage. The whole representation by where you live system is dumb. Democrats self-sort into small urban areas for a variety of reasons. Republicans just live more spread out.

The article notes that 5 of 8 justices would have had to vote to uphold. So either Sotomayor or Breyer did so?

Edit: nm. 5 of 8 would be needed to stay the circuit court ruling. So I assume the vote here was 4-4.

It really is.

Like, okay so you want people to show picture ID to vote, fine whatever, but now you can't vote unless the picture ID ALSO has a street address listed on it? What public good does this law serve? Where are the ****head originalists bemoaning mah founding fathers? This ****ing court was already a joke don't let anyone kid you.

Sure, it wouldn't be perfect, but it would be fairer than the current system.

I would be even more in favor of, in increasing order by radicalness, dumping the electoral college, getting rid of the senate, getting rid of the state governments.

Less of them EVIL brown people voting = good for MURICA #1

How don't you see it?!?!?!!

Agreed but there is no realistic path to change the system. There are realistic ways to stop gerrymandering.

Perhaps this isn't fair to your post, but whenever I see these arguments it seems there's an implication that, welp, we can't fix the whole problem therefore we shouldn't bother with the gerrymandering part.

Fixing half the problem is still a big deal!

Of course the 8th circuit ruling was 2-1 with the two Federalist Society Nazis concurring. Sure, you'll need an ID with a valid street address to cast a vote, that's JUST GOOD LAW. They're going extra hard to one-up each other for the next stolen seat on the People's Court.

What was the SCOTUS split - do we know?