My favorite electoralism bit is the guy that made a font where all the characters were all different gerrymandered districts.
Aside from the fact that the sentence had to be written wrong because there's no 'q'.
Lol I actually made that picture, I just typed it wrong. Here's the website.
Oh, lol. I thought that was too big of a coincidence. That's cool.
Libs say the founding fathers were smart and innovative in the way they crafted our "democracy" but this is roughly the system they created (although obviously there wasn't even a semblance of democracy to start in the first place).
They were smart about creating a system where the effect of popular opinion is minimized. It's truly marvelous how everyone votes and everyone more or less wants the same things but the votes or wants never actually matter.
Yeah they were careful in only extending the electoral system to groups of people (workers, women and black people) once they were assured electoralism would be useful to control those demographics.
Not just suffrage but the intricate political rules and mechanisms in place to dilute and distort popular will.
holy shit.
When pieces of two different cities are in the same district. Which state will one up Texas with 3 cities?
I still think the "ear muffs" in Chicago takes the cake as the most strangely shaped district. A northern and southern portion connected only by a single interstate in the far west side. Literally, just one interstate in width and neither of the neighborhoods on either side of the interstate are actually part of the district
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/IL/4
doesn't Eyehole Crenshaw's district look like a fucking spiral or some shit?
Ohio's 9th district is only connected by a bridge that runs across the Sandusky Bay
If that bridge did not exist, the two halves of the district would be 30 miles apart.
Texas 2nd district, which encompasses 3 cities. Also the 33rd district.
:vote:
But yeah, in all seriousness, the rich and powerful send the Pinkertons and people are like "I know, we'll post on Facebook and shame them!"
Shockingly, the rich and powerful have been using their wealth and power to stay wealthy and powerful. And, shockingly, they don't care about people who aren't rich and powerful. So, shockingly, appealing to their sense of pathos ain't gonna work.
Congressional districts are American Rorschach tests. I refuse to elaborate
I think stuff like this is part of why electoralism can be so appealing. Like if we could just fix shit like this things would have to get better right? Right??
Things actually would, at least for a while. But then capital would start to reassert itself.
Locals call this ‘the fajita’ district because it looks like a piece of stringy fajita meat.
I do like my dad's idea of just making a mark at the center of a state & making even population wedges from there. Start with the smallest area to get to the population & spread from there.
Not perfect, but better than whatever the hell this is.
Someone developed an algorithm along those lines that tries to make evenly-populated districts that all look mostly compact, I think it worked by trying to minimize the sum of the perimeters of the districts, which would penalize long, thin districts like this
Mathematically, fair districting is pretty simple once you define what "fair" is, but politicians don't care about that.
I'm not good at code, so making an algorithm never even occurred to me. Just going radially seemed more straightforward. But I don't see why that wouldn't work either.
why do you need districts? Just vote for representatives on the city, county, state and federal level by counting the votes for each party/candidate against those of the others, everyone living in that place is automaticaly eligible to vote there
I think there is, but it also follows Crusaders Kings rule, where it still counts as contiguous if there is a sea route connecting it. Like one of Maryland's districts has two non-contiguous regions both on the mainland.
when your borders look like they've been through 100+ years of disputes under multi-factional colonial rule but actually it's just your shitty government drawing squiggles on a map to keep the poor people out
they are going to print that in the history books to show what a sham american democracy was :amerikkka:
Deliberately designing districts in such a way that the people designing the districts are specifically choosing to empower specific groups is a terrible system that is not only vulnerable to abuse, abuse is practically guaranteed. Furthermore, the upside you appear to be describing is that districts like this subvert majority rule.
The scenario you described where districts are a homogenous grid is superior.
Astonishing that you’re out here claiming that other people don’t know how districts work.
The ideal solution is to skip all of this nonsense and just use proportional representation. Of course that would also mean the end of the two party system in the US, so it will never happen.
I'm open to hearing counter arguments if anyone has specific information on the district.
Yeah, it's TX-35 . It's been gerrymandered to pack a bunch of Dem voters.
From Wikipedia:
In March 2017, a panel of federal judges ruled that the 35th district was illegally drawn with discriminatory intent.[10] In August 2017, there was another ruling that the district is unconstitutional.[11] However, the district was allowed to stand in the Supreme Court's 2018 Abbott v. Perez ruling.[12]
AI doesn't solve the problem because the problem isn't drawing lines on the map. It's deciding what to base the lines on.
If every district is competitive, a small popularity swing for a party is multiplied in legislative elections. If they're not competitive, the results are guaranteed and candidates don't need to work to attact voters. Packing minorities into districts can be discriminatory. Diluting them in majority white districts can be discriminatory.
The technocratic solution is to take poll data, predict the overall vote totals, then gerrymander in favour of that. That's still rigging the election and isn't viable long term.
The real solution is to abolish territorial represenation.
That's the problem though. You can't create the algorithm until you decide what the percentages and priorities should be. If we knew that, the people drawing the districts would already be doing it.
It wouldn't be a linear "algorithm>line>election" process either. Just as you can predict the election from the districts, you can predict the districts from the algorithm. Once the debate shifts from what the lines should be to what the algorithm should be, all you're doing is complicating the data analysis. Instead of some guys drawing the lines they want, they determine the algorithm that will give them the lines.
At some point that local region has to have political power over itself and/or elect higher representation.
That's what federalism is for. And municipal governments.
It's the same either way. You vote for the algorithm that favours your party vs you vote for the election commission that favours your party.
You're assuming it's possible to discuss these things in the abstract. It's not. "What people want out of their representation" is the same as who they want.
It will take literally 10 minutes for this to turn into a partisan pissing patch. Liberals will want represenation of minorities. Conservatives won't want them given any special treatment.
If abstracting it were possible, and people decided what they want without knowing the consequences, the outcome would likely be worse. Competitive elections sound good in theory, but it's safe spots where 3rd parties can emerge as the alternative.
