Well, each vote is counted. Gerrymandering affects (federal level in the US) only the House of Representatives, and districts are drawn (ideally) proportional to population. How those lines are drawn are not and cannot be objective; Gerrymandering is when that subjectivity allows for bias.
callyral@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
why not count each person instead to avoid the issue entirely
blitzen@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
j4k3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The objection is that lines are not legitimate. Lines and districts do not represent voters, they represent politicians and that is not democratic.
blitzen@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I feel like you are misunderstanding representative government. There is value in districts, provided they are drawn apolitically. Without it, people living in sparsely populated areas would effectively have their unique needs unmet.
I am not saying the system is without critique. There is loads wrong with it as is, as the gerrymandering problem illustrates. But while one person / one vote would be ideal for an office like president (and it should be changed so this is the case), it would have other issues if it were used for all offices.
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Districts by their very nature represent voters.
I feel like you are misunderstanding representative government. There is value in districts, provided they are drawn apolitically. Without it, people living in sparsely populated areas would effectively have their unique needs unmet.
It’s really important to understand why this is not the case. Districted voting essentially introduces first-past-the-post voting at more levels. Each level of FPTP creates a larger disparity between what voters want and who gets elected. This is in part due to gerrmandering, but that’s not a required thing.
Every time you decide a district election through FPTP, you essentially create a rounding error, a disparity between the election results and what voters actually voted for. This FPTP system then reinforces the two-party system that the US and UK have a very hard time escaping. And as you may be able to guess, having a mere two major parties to choose from is fucking terrible for getting niche voters represented. It’s why the US and UK see comparatively little regional focus and increased disillusionment with national politics in these areas.
Abolishing districts actually helps local representation(!). Because under proportional representation, if someone campaigns on serving the needs of a small group of voters, said group can vote for them and they will be elected. It lets anyone basically define their own “district” of voters, without political manipulation. If they fail to attract a sizeable enough share of votes, then this electoral niche is simply too small to be represented at the national level, and this group should perhaps petition local government instead.
We see this effect quite clearly in countries like the Netherlands, where there are quite a few national parties to choose from, and several focus on a specific group of voters (eg the BBB which focuses on farmers, or the FNP which focuses on people living in the region of Friesland.
Dojan@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Without it, people living in sparsely populated areas would effectively have their unique needs unmet.
Why? That’s why you have different tiers of government. Parliament shouldn’t have to worry about the state of the water in a particular municipality, that’s a local government issue. Similarly, the state sets the budget for healthcare, but the regions allocate those resources based on the needs of the municipalities.
potatoguy@potato-guy.space 3 weeks ago
Here in Brazil, one person means one vote, no districting, no gerrymandering, none of this things, one vote for the president is one vote, one vote for your state senator is one vote, one vote for your deputy is one vote for them and their party (in this part it’s weird, but makes sense that the politician also represents their party, but creates effects like “party gerrymandering”).
Bolsonaro went into house arrest yesterday, so this could mean something.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
Bolsonaro went into house arrest yesterday, so this could mean something.
He was also elected President, so that can mean something too.
potatoguy@potato-guy.space 3 weeks ago
Majority of people didn’t want him and don’t want him again, like with Trump, but only one of them got reelected.
callyral@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
I am also from Brazil and that’s why I was a bit perplexed. To me, simply counting votes directly instead of counting districts makes more sense.
merc@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
So what, one representative for all those people?
Sneptaur@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Because then the rich wouldn’t be able to control everything
GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
I’m not sure that would make much difference. When you control the media companies (including social media), you control what people see and hear. When you control what people see and here, you control what they believe and how they act, to a large extent.
Which is not to say that it wouldn’t be an improvement, just that it wouldn’t solve that particular problem. At least not directly. Perhaps it would make it easier to implement systemic changes we’d need to truly address it.
Jeff Bezos didn’t buy the Washington Post out of a love for journalism, that’s for damned sure.