Destiny's take on gerrymandering:
"If you get rid of gerrymandering, it will actually hurt democrats because they all live in compact areas."
This is based on a misinterpretation of something that Eitan Hersh said in their convo.
Eitan's statement was that completely compactness based gerrymandering would disadvantage Democrats compared to fair maps.- and this is true!
https://elections-daily.com/redistricting-radar-2022-the-77-septillion-redistricting-scenarios/
Let's take a look at GA to demonstrate how Eitan is correct. It was the closest state in 2020, and with a compact map, it is 6-8 Republican. The compactness of Democrats in Atlanta hurts their efficiency in compact maps. The fair map is 7-7, which fits well with the state.
The problem with Destiny's take is that we aren't comparing the compact map to a fair map, we're comparing it to the status quo., which in most states is a Republican Gerrymander. If you look at the R Gerrymander of Georgia, it is 4-10 Republican, with the 10 all being incredibly safe. This is what State Republicans in GA are likely to do. So in GA, going to fully compact maps would net Democrats 2 seats over the status quo.
Repeat this across the country, and Democrats would gain dozens of seats over the status quo if Gerrymandering is banned. With the status quo, Republicans could gain a massive gerrymandering advantage. Last time, in the 2012 House elections, Democrats would have needed to win nationally by 7.8% to win the tipping point (218th) House District in Ohio's 6th.
Destiny also said that Gerrymandering is not a big deal- I think this is also a bad take.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Wisconsin_State_Assembly_election
This is probably the worst gerrymander ever. Democrats win by 8, and yet Republicans win 63% of seats. The tipping point seat was R+20, meaning that Democrats could have won the state by 19 points and still lost the Assembly. I don't even think this is a democracy.
The political problem is that if you have such an unbelievable gerrymander, it allows the Republican party to be completely fucking crazy because they have zero fear of electoral consequences. This happens at the national level as well, albeit to a less extreme extent. If Republicans didn't have advantages at every level of government they would have to be far less crazy in order to win elections.
How do we solve this? It is certainly a difficult
... keep reading on reddit ➡Let me know what you think, anything not explained or poorly worded, or if you have something I missed.
The Koch/Republican network is taking - over - state - legislatures across the country: closing voting stations in minority areas, purging voters, engaging in extreme gerrymandering of districts and efforts to oppose this through popular ballots are restricted, disenfranchising voters, engaging in "vote caging", preventing students from voting, enacting nebulous signature mismatch rules, as well as onerous^1[^2](https://www.npr.org/2018/10/13/
... keep reading on reddit ➡
It would be great if there was independent redistricting nationwide but if Republicans are going to use trifectas in their stronghold states to increase their congressional strength, I wanna know if you think Dems should be doubling down on it too. A good example would be NY. It can use gerrymandering to flip five GOP seats and eliminate one, including that of Elise Stefanik (Liz Cheney’s likely replacement as GOP conference.) It would be spiteful, petty and very unfair, but I’m wondering if you’re ok with that as a political necessity.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 81%. (I'm a bot)
> The journey from optimistically frustrated Facebook post to leader of the grassroots group Voters Not Politicians forms the backbone of Slay the Dragon, a new documentary from Frontline veterans Barak Goodman and Chris Durrance, premiering at the Tribeca film festival, that illuminates the deep, deliberate shadiness of America's decennial districting process.
> The practice of "Packing" like-minded constituents into one district or "Cracking" the population into an ineffectual minority over many has existed since at least 1812, when the Massachusetts governor, Elbridge Gerry, signed a bill partitioning Boston into a salamander-shaped district.
> "This is not even the kind of gerrymandering that was being done in 1990 or 2000 - the computers are faster and more powerful, the information that the mapmakers have is just deadly precise. And they can go up and down the streets and pick the voters that they want and draw the districts with absolute certainty with how they will perform for a decade."
> Voters don't naturally cluster in districts shaped like Donald Duck kicking Goofy, or a winged bat, says Daley.
> There are redistricting emails encouraging the closed-door committee in Michigan to "Cram Dem garbage" into the south-eastern districts, and portraits of smug political analysts flown in to skew North Carolina's district lines.
> You can't slay a dragon you can't see, and "Once you start seeing American politics through the lens of redistricting and gerrymandering, it changes the way you see everything".
Summary Source | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: district^#1 Daley^#2 gerrymandered^#3 Vote^#4 Dragon^#5
Post found in /r/uknews, [/r/electionReformNews](http://np.reddit.com/r/electionReformNews/comments/bjjqdx/it_changes_the_way_you_see_everythi
... keep reading on reddit ➡I just drew this up showing how a non-gerrymandered district map of Georgia could look. When making it I emphasized keeping counties whole, keeping suburban counties with their urban core county, and keeping a sense of regional similarities inside of the district.
Only Fulton, Gwinnett, and Clayton counties were divided. The first two because of the population requiring they be divided and Clayton to include the areas around the airport in the Fulton district.
For example, by splitting Macon and Columbus up, the existing 2nd district would no longer be the majority-minority district it is today. What we have now are three districts representing parts of Columbus and Macon, two solidly red and one solidly blue. My map has Columbus and Macon represented by two separate toss-up districts.
It won't be long before we see the newly proposed districts and I imagine the gerrymandering effects will be turned up. This tool is a kinda fun way to show how that can be done or how it could be done fairly.
For example could we just reframe districting as an optimization problem. Given the population distribution or the voter locations could we make the districts so as to minimize the sum total of boundaries, or minimize the average distance from the center, or ...
Simply put this should be a sophomore math optimization problem not a political fight.
How best to remove the politics from districting?
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