Redistricting and the Supreme Court have cut voters out of US House races

Redistricting and the Supreme Court have cut voters out of US House races(reuters.com)

47 points by Propelloni 15 days ago | 29 comments

deckar01 15 days ago |

I’m ready for a modern form of representation that isn’t constrained by how many people an old building can hold. I wish small groups could have a representative with a proportionally small fraction of voting power.

M95D 14 days ago | |

Then, why have groups at all? Direct democracy!

deckar01 14 days ago | | |

Mainly participation. Voter participation is already very low. It would be interesting if voting was more like jury duty and a random sample of the population was selected to vote per issue. That way there are no termed representatives to corrupt and participation is always significant and uniform.

amanaplanacanal 15 days ago |

Gerrymandering is a deal with the devil. You need to be really sure of your polling. You theoretically get more districts with a majority for your party, but the majority in each of those districts is thinner than it was before. If something bad happens and there is a wave for the other party, you lose more seats than you would have otherwise.

lokar 15 days ago | |

And this is modern, post-gingrich gerrymandering.

Before that both sides worked together (mostly) to produce very safe districts.

People keep saying “they have been doing this forever “, but not like this.

vaadu 14 days ago |

If both parties MAXXED OUT on gerrymandering ... https://x.com/BenHart_Freedom/status/2050337190996000963

dlcarrier 13 days ago | |

I've always presumed that gerrymandering would benefit rural areas over urban. It's nice to see data backing that up. Here's the direct source: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/hating-gerrymandering-i...

xhkkffbf 15 days ago |

I'm not sure how this is any different from before. Each person gets one vote. And if the district has a different number, that doesn't mean the voter is cut out of the races. The headline doesn't make sense to me at all.

kitchi 15 days ago | |

This is true for a direct democracy, but for a representative democracy like the US (and many other countries) there's more nuance. Combined with first past the post voting, there's a lot of room for suppression of voices that are not aligned with those already in power.

For say something like the state legislature race in a state, they count up all the seats they have won in each district, and whichever party has won the most seats wins the race. Voters are therefore put in buckets (districts) and their votes are counted in aggregate.

This allows a process called "gerrymandering" to redraw district boundaries arbitrarily. So if there is say a democratic-party majority voting bloc in a particular area, I can redraw the surrounding districts to split that geographic area into many parts, so their votes get split across multiple districts and hence "diluted".

The voting rights act asserted this is a form of voter suppression. Specifically related to black voter suppression, if a state is say 40% black by population and they have no black representatives, it warrants a closer look as to why.

I hope that wasn't too confusing of an explanation. I'm not from the US but I'm quite interested in these things.

lokar 15 days ago | | |

Which state elects the governor via anything other than the total popular vote?

sholladay 14 days ago | | |

You explained it well. Representative democracy complicates systems of fairness since it adds another layer that itself also needs to be fair. And each is an opportunity to be corrupted into unfairness.

Our education curriculum is also a big problem here. If I stopped random people on the street in the U.S. and asked them what first-past-the-post is, I suspect only a small number would be able to answer.

Yet people are baffled as to why we have the two party system, gerrymandering, and all of the other problems. You can’t fix what you don’t understand. We have to start there.

Ranked choice is starting to gain some traction in the U.S. But there are many different ranking methods and the one we are using is instant-runoff, which has many of the same problems as first-past-the-post, including polarizing candidates and winners. I think if these systems were more broadly understood, many people would prefer Schulze for its fairness properties and to reduce polarization.

Curious to hear your thoughts on all of that.

browningstreet 15 days ago | |

At the risk of raising the ire of the anti-AI crowd, this is exactly the kind of knowledge gap that AI can easily handle. Just point any AI at an article like this and say “explain this”. You don’t have to wait for someone else to provide a bespoke answer just for you.

You can have the answer if you want it.

boothby 15 days ago | | |

As a resident anti-AI curmudgeon, you're basically saying "just google it" but nowadays, LLMs store a lot of common-sense answers to plain-language questions, and this is probably a fine use for that. That said, I think there's value in asking questions like this. Conversation is how humans learn.

cogman10 15 days ago | |

The voting rights act was a recognition that there's something wrong if a state with 10 congressional representatives and 30% black population ends up with only 1 or even 0 black representatives. That was often done by drawing districts such that the 30% of black voters are diluted by the 70% white voters.

The supreme court has called this "racial gerrymandering" which is a bit rich considering they previously ruled that gerrymandering itself was just fine. Apparently, only fine when it has partisan benefits.

Either way, the solution here is a tool not available when the VRA was passed, and that's fair ungerrymandered maps. There are tons of algorithms that produce fair maps, certainly much more fair maps vs the current gerrymandered maps. We even have algorithms that can measure the level of gerrymandering.

An anti-gerrymandering bill would be good for everyone and should be supported at the federal level. The only people it's not good for is incumbents.

a13n 15 days ago | |

Let’s say you’re a democrat (or republican, w/e) who lives in a district that’s 50-50 dem/rep. Then maps get redrawn so your district is 80-20. Is your vote worth the same as it was before? Is it a good or bad thing that only ~10% of the population’s vote matters?

simonh 15 days ago | |

I'm not a fan of proportional representation as commonly implemented, but think it is important that the results of an election fairly represent the preferences of the voters.

thinkling 15 days ago | | |

What do you dislike about the common proportional representation models?

bdangubic 14 days ago | |

take a peek at re-drawn maps and picture will become crystal-clear (see texas and virginia to understand “both sides” so-to-speak).

the whole point of gerrymandering is for politicians to pick their voters vs. voters picking their politicians and if you are able to pick your voters you can easily guess how that will work out for you…

tootie 15 days ago | |

I can only assume you're being deliberately obtuse since we can very plainly see that gerrymandering directly changes who gets elected. It doesn't even matter if you understand how, the results are blatantly obvious. They can carve up a state such that one party sends proportionally fewer representatives than it's total vote would imply.