Most sane countries leave electoral boundaries to an independent commission
YSK that Gerrymandering allows politicians to choose their own voters. In many countries, it's illegal. Gerrymandering is common in the United States
Submitted 8 months ago by Davriellelouna@lemmy.world to youshouldknow@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f90c201d-b8ca-40c4-a45c-1b052f69d1c0.png
Comments
arc99@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Zwiebel@feddit.org 7 months ago
Most sane countries just count the total votes, making the boundaries not matter
kalistia@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
pjwestin@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Number 2 is the actual ideal, not number 1. Number 1 represents, “good,” gerrymandering that politicians argue for, but it really only serves them. They get to keep highly partisan electorate that will reelect them no matter what, which means they can be less responsive to the will of their voters. They only have to worry about primary challengers, which aren’t very common, and can mostly ignore their electorate without issue.
It’s also important to note that this diagram is an oversimplification that can’t express the nuances of an actual electorate. While a red and blue binary might be helpful for this example, a plurality of voters identify as independents, and while most of them have preferences towards the right or left, they are movable. The point is that actual voters are more nuanced and less static than this representation.
Number 2 is how distracting would work in an ideal world; it doesn’t take into account political alignment at all, but instead just groups people together by proximity. A red victory is unlikely, but still possible if the blue candidate doesn’t deliver for his constituents and winds up with low voter turnout. It also steers politicians away from partisan extremism, as they may need to appeal to a non-partisan plurality. That being said, when literal fascists are attempting number 3, we’ll have to respond in kind if we want any chance of maintaining our democracy, but in the long term, the solution is no gerrymandering, not, “perfect representation,” gerrymandering.
birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
Number 1 is actually better, as it disables gerrymandering entirely.
Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
2 and 3 are indistinguishable if you don’t take political alignment into account. What counts as a line or a column in real life? You need to group/sort people by something in order to draw any of those lines.
pjwestin@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Do you mean one and two? Two and three are clearly different, as three has no pattern other than disenfranchisement. I agree that one and two are both valid ways to divide the squares visually, but the text is stating that one is, “perfect,” and two is, “compact but unfair,” implying that the goal should be getting each political group some representation. That is still allowing politicians to pick their constituents, and even if it’s more fair than three, it still built to serve the candidates, not the voters. Compact (i.e. a system that divides districts entirely by geography and population, without consideration towards demographics or political alignment) should be the actual desired outcome.
pyre@lemmy.world 7 months ago
the fascists aren’t attempting 3, they’ve already been doing it for decades. now they just want to do even more, because it’s open fascism season so why be coy about it.
pjwestin@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Everyone’s been doing either one or three for decades, the fascists are just more effective at it. What’s changed is that they’re doing it in a non-census year with the explicit goal of changing the outcome of the 2026 midterms. The only states with have unbiased districts are the places where people have passed ballot measures against partisan districting, but Democrats have been just as happy as Republicans to pull this shit.
Dorkyd68@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I will never understand how the highest number of votes isn’t winning. Bucha cheatin ass bitches
stevedice@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Well, it’s a complicated issue. Let’s assume there’s a state where all but an area of 10 blocks votes for candidate X. If that area happens to be split between several cities, the people living there are SOL as their vote is basically useless. Gerrymandering allows them to have a say in what goes on. But yes, as with everything, corruption ruins it.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 7 months ago
What? With districts and zones, people vote. Majority wins. Pretty basic.
Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
No vote woule be useless because they would all count the same.
laserm@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Gerrymandering by definition implies malicious intent
Ltann0607@endlesstalk.org 8 months ago
Lol Voting is irrelevant Prepare for the country to be Texafornicated
pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
yeah no, jerry foreman explained better
FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Where do we draw the line?
pishadoot@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
I’ll caveat this by saying that I detest gerrymandering and think it’s one of the roots of the decline of the US political systems.
That being said, I’m going to answer a question you might not have even asked with a bunch of information that doesn’t answer things better than “it’s complicated.”
The easiest “fair” way to divide up districts is based on equal polygons (say squares that are XX miles/km on an edge, for simplicity’s sake). The issue is that this doesn’t take into account population gradients due to terrain and zoning, or cultural/ethnic clusters. So, on its face it looks reasonable but you’ll end up with districts that cover a city with 1 million people of diverse cultural makeup standing equal with a district of 1000 people that are culturally/ethnically homogenous. Not actually fair.
So, you can try to draw irregular shapes and the next “fair” way to try and do that is to equalize population. Now you quickly devolve into a ton of questions about HOW to draw the districts to be inclusive and representative of the people in the overall area you’re trying to subdivide.
Imagine a fictional city with a cultural cluster (Chinatown in many American cities for example), a river, a wealthy area, a low income area, and industrial/commercial areas with large land mass and low resident populations.
How do you fairly draw those lines? You don’t want to disenfranchise an ethnic minority by subdividing them into several districts, you might have wealthier living on the river, you might have residents with business oriented interests in the industrial areas AND low income… It quickly becomes a mess.
A “fair” districting can look gerrymandered if you’re trying to enfranchise separate voting blocs in proportion to their actual population.
The problem is that politicians play this song and dance where they claim they’re trying to be fair (until recently in Texas where GOP said the quiet part out loud and just said they want to redraw lines to get more seats) but in reality they are setting up districts that subdivide minority blocs into several districts that disenfranchise their voting interests.
It’s disgusting, it’s a clown show. But none of OPs photos are representative of what a good district looks like, because every location is different and there’s likely an incredibly small number of locations that would divide that cleanly, if any.
So, it’s complicated. Needs to be independently managed outside politics as best as possible and staffed by smart people and backed up by good data.
Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
I say #2, specifically because it can be done mathematically, as opposed to trying to agree on some definition of “fairness” that isn’t completely different for every office and doesn’t have to be wholly redistricted every election as a consequence.
Say, something like least split line. Basically, if you have an even number of seats for a region, draw the shortest length line that splits the region into two regions of equal population. If you have an odd number of seats > 1, then draw the shortest line that splits the region based on number per seat given one side gets the “extra” seat (for example, for 5 seats you’d split so that one side is 2/3 of the other side and give 3 seats to one side and 2 to the other). Repeat the process for each region created by these lines until each region represents one seat. If there are multiple shortest lines, you the one closest to a NS axis. The extra seat always goes to the west side of the line.
stevedice@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Ltann0607@endlesstalk.org 8 months ago
At least half his base has WOKE up. The other half still under the cult trance… keep it alive and he’ll be gone next election gerymand.be dammed
n1ck_n4m3@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’m curious what makes you think any of his base have woken up? Absolutely nothing seems to be stopping his administration at this point, and the polls from republicans still seem to show very high support for his actions.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Anything to undermine democracy
Ltann0607@endlesstalk.org 8 months ago
That’s what happens when a convicted felon and an unregistered sex offender is made President
AeonFelis@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It started waaay before Trump was even born.
DarkFuture@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Our nation will continue circling the toilet until gerrymandering is outlawed.
And with how many stupids there are here that are scared of change, even when presented with facts proving it’s better for them, the odds of things getting better are pretty slim.
SuperCub@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
It’s almost like the idea that representation based on land instead of based on people is flawed to begin with.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Not sure what you mean, get rid of districts? If you break up the population into groups then you get a geographic area.
end_stage_ligma@lemmy.world 7 months ago
y u no direct democracy?
SuperCub@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Yes. Representation should be proportional. In other systems of democracy, you vote a party and if that party wins 25% of the vote, then they win 25% of the representatives. Gerrymandering works because it’s based on land being more important to representation than people.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 8 months ago
We were never going to do representation by population. We barely got the southern colonies to agree to apportionment with land. (This was the 3/5ths compromise.)
Jarix@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This is kinda if topic, but why does the US have term limits for the presidency, but not all the other major positions?
AA5B@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They focussed more on term length
- House: two years for frequent turnover, voice of the people
- Senate: 6 years for stability, maturity
- judges: lifetime, for independence from who appointed them and from politics of the day
While these don’t seem to be working right, anyone proposing changes needs to understand what they were trying to do and not make it worse trying to fix another aspect
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It was added for the president with Roosevelt. Likely because the president has much more power than a single congressman.
Jarix@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Oh I knew it happened then, but I don’t really follow the reasoning.
I am glad it affects Trump, but I think Obama might still be president of he was ever elected (he may never have run as the world would have been very different anyways)
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 8 months ago
In the original Constitution, there are no limits for any of them. George Washington made it a tradition not to seek a third term, but it wasn’t actually enshrined into law until ~150 years later.
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
It was invented because FDR was so popular that rumor has it without that rule, his bones would probably still be president to this day.
AndrewZabar@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The United States is not a nation anymore. It’s a corporation. It’s also 100% corrupt. When will people come to terms with this? As long as most people are in denial of this, it will always be so.
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Fun fact, the term for running a nation like a corporation is fascism.
AndrewZabar@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Well it’s already been this way for like 20 years almost. It’s been forming for many decades, but it’s a done deal.
3x3@lemy.lol 8 months ago
You guys are entering the late decadence phase as already experienced in the Roman Empire
AndrewZabar@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Not exactly, but similar. The dynamics of the haves and have-nots are different because of the sheer numbers. But we are at a point where if just a certain amount more of the wealth is shifted to the oligarchs, then the entire system will collapse.
I’ve already gotten a three day ban on Reddit for making certain statements, so I’ll just state my opinion that the only way to stop this is to mortify a few billionaires. But aside from that, the problem is apathy, complacency, and lack of unity. This is why they came up with all the petty divisive “issues” which are really not issues. This is why the Orange Feces-Man did that whole mask thing. Because if people were united and everyone felt they were on the same side, there would be rebellion - nay, revolution. It’s happened in the past many, many, many times around the world through history. But I don’t think they ever had the sheer magnitude of distractions that we have today. Bread and Circuses vs Streaming, social media, entertainment more than all the humans of the earth could collectively consume. THAT, the Romans did not have at their disposal to weaponize.
riquisimo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
It bothers me that the graphic lists red-then-blue but there text lists blue-then-red. It’s inconsistent to how we read the information and makes it confusing to process.
…like gerrymandering
piecat@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They listed the majority first. That’s all they did here.
merc@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Where text lists blue-then-red?
riquisimo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
In the image attached to the post.
dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
this assumes a left to right interpretation which is not universal, the graphic in a sense is not absolutely red then blue
the text could be positioned left and right like the graphic does, but I found it natural to list the larger number first and the smaller second - so not everyone feels the same as you about the graphic being confusing
lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
this assumes a left to right interpretation which is not universal
While this is true, the graphic is in English using the Latin script. The Latin script is, as you might know, a left to right script which triggers a left to right interpretation of the whole thing.
Honestly, it didn’t trigger me at all but it would be more logical to also put the bigger color first (read: on the left)
pupbiru@aussie.zone 8 months ago
gerrymandering goes both ways: it can make a majority a total victory, and a minority also a victory… i think building up is a good way of displaying that: you can go from a representative minority to a total win, and a representative minority to a total loss depending on how you draw the lines
Legisign@europe.pub 8 months ago
The figures only make sense in “first past the post” (or “winner takes it all”) systems.
angrystego@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The last one would be unfair in most systems using districts.
AA5B@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The last one might be the most fair, if it were based on criteria other than voting tendencies. Complex districts are meant to let different voices be heard, but what those voices are makes it challenging.
Let me make a hypothetical scenario. Consider a state where half the people are urban and half are rural, and has two representatives. Those groups has different priorities so districts drawn only for simple shapes means that someone’s voice is not being heard. It would be better to have one representative elected by urban voters and one by rural voters. Now picture those urban areas following a winding river because that follows historical settlement patterns. The most fair choice might be a complex shape following population density to result in one representative speaking for rural voters and one speaking for urban voters, but indistinguishable from gerrymandering.
Of course that same exact result might just be a proxy for political affiliation, which is unfair. This is why preventing gerrymandering is impossible: whether it’s good or bad depends on what you’re trying to do not how you do it
lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
From my understanding “winner takes it all” is on state level, so the winner gets all the votes people. I only know this from the US.
“First past the post” is when there is one elected person per district and they need a relative majority which is also true in the UK.
In other countries like France, you have more than one round or need an absolute majority. Still gerrymanderable but not “first past the post”.
some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This is what the US has, for the most part. It makes it extremely difficult for ranked choice or similar to gain a foothold.
deaf_fish@midwest.social 8 months ago
Is there even a way to mathematically divide up land area into completely fair districts? I heard somewhere that it wasn’t possible.
pupbiru@aussie.zone 8 months ago
there are voting systems that take representation into account… generally you have your representatives that you vote for, and another number to “fill the gaps”… so you have the people who represent your area, and then others who the parties put forward based on their proportional vote… they don’t represent a district/area, but the party… so the idea is that if a minority party gets 10% of the vote, they should have 10% of the representation - districts be damned… philosophy is more important than land
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
n7gifmdn@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
It’s also illegal in the united states.
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It isn’t actually, not in all cases. There is nothing in the constitution preventing it and the Supreme Court and state courts have said that there is no mechanism in place to either identify it objectively, nor to remedy it if found, with a few exceptions. The biggest exceptions are where it violates the Voting Rights Act or otherwise demonstrably discriminates on the basis of racial demographics, in which case it can be kicked back to the legislature with the directive to try to be less racist this time.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Don’t forget that if you say it’s because the minority group votes against you then it’s officially political and not racist. Thanks SCOTUS.
Bosht@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This I didn’t know, wtf. So this whole bullshit has literally been illegal to begin with???
n7gifmdn@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
It was, though a few years ago SCOTUS decided it’s OK as long as you aren’t doing it because you are racist.
geissi@feddit.org 8 months ago
So, “perfect representation” is when one side wins that does not represent 40% of the votes?
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 8 months ago
When there is one seat, and you’re using First Past the Post voting (which is a terrible voting system), yes. They perfect out come is majority win. When distributing multiplw district seats, proportional representation is the perfect outcome, which that also acheives.
geissi@feddit.org 8 months ago
When there is one seat, two parties, and you’re using First Past the Post voting (which is a terrible voting system that inevitably causes the two party divide), yes
So we can agree the system is inherently bad at representation?
Sounds more like that outcome is the “least bad” rather than “perfect”.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
When there’s just two “teams”, yeah. What’s more fair than majority rule in that situation?
geissi@feddit.org 8 months ago
Maybe proportional representation instead of winner takes it all?
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 8 months ago
I’ve said it many times, the US is a model example of what not to do in so so many different ways.
melsaskca@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Integrity is most common in other countries, but not in the united states.
ThunderclapSasquatch@startrek.website 8 months ago
Pay more attention to home friend, Europe is sliding into corruption hand in hand with us. But that would get in the way of nationalism wouldn’t it?
merc@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
The US is failing more rapidly than other countries. But, it should be seen as an opportunity to look at your own country and think “ok, how would a morally bankrupt party exploit this thing that just used to be a tradition or a norm, and exploit it because there’s no actual rule?”
buttnugget@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Fragile Europeans: Americans are children who need a babysitter
Also fragile Europeans: a couple brown people arrive welp, back to the 1930s
Peereboominc@piefed.social 8 months ago
Why even have the system with districts? Just calculate all the votes and see who wins?
If you live in a place where most people vote x, why even bother to vote y. Your vote will go straight in the bin.pupbiru@aussie.zone 8 months ago
i did a big ol post here about this
generally what you’re talking about is proportional representation… systems like this tend to lead to a government comprised of a lot of minor parties, which sounds great!
but it has its down sides (and i’m not saying 2 party is much better, but it’s useful to be aware of the situations it creates): when there are a lot of minor parties with no clear “above 50%” majority, they have to form a coalition government and that can be extremely fragile
you can’t hold parties to election promises, because you just don’t know what they’re going to have to give up to form a coalition, and even if they do end up forming a coalition you really don’t know how stable that coalition is going to be!
i guess in the US there’s gridlock anyway, so what the hell right? may as well at least have gridlock with parties blocking legislation based on things you believe in… buuuuuuut that’s probably a bad example: first past the post is far more to blame in that case than proportional vs representative democracy
AA5B@lemmy.world 8 months ago
i guess in the US there’s gridlock anyway, so what the hell right?
Historically there were many compromises where representatives worked with the other party to find a solution they could all agree to. We like to think that’s how politics work.
However over the last few years it’s gotten much more divisive. Currently it seems like everything is a party line vote. It seems like one party especially elevated party loyalty above serving constituents, above doing the right thing. There is no more voice of the people, only the party and the evil orange overlord.
Filibusters have always been a thing, where you can hold the floor as long as you can talk about something, delaying everything. That was both a challenge for someone to do and had a huge impact when Congress had the motivation to do what they saw as right for their constituents. Now it’s automatic. You simply need to declare it. A majority vote is no longer enough for most choices because you always need the supermajority sufficient to overcome the filibuster, to “silence the representative “. Now you can’t get anything done.
For most of our history, Congress understood their highest priority was to pass a budget, and they did. Now that is no longer important. Brinksmanship means there is no longer a downside to hold the whole country hostage over whatever issue so they do. “Shutting down the government” by not passing a budget has become the new norm. Meaning we not only can’t get anything done but disrupt everything else.
merc@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
you can’t hold parties to election promises
You can’t do that today either. In fact, it’s worse today. What are you going to do if your party doesn’t fulfill its electoral promises? Vote for the “bad party”?
AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The limit (with infinite districts made of infinite people) is theoretically 1/4 support, in a 2 party system, with a choice made from separately decided districts. If you add another level of districts, it could be 1/8, another would be 1/16, and so on.
In practice you can’t make a district with a actually 100% support of the opposing party, and you need to leave a little room for error in the districts you plan to win. Also there aren’t an infinite number of districts lol
vga@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Both sides have had opportunities to make it illegal and neither have done it. I wonder why.
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Some of these are absolutely insane
lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com 8 months ago
Yeah, a common pattern in pseudo democracies like Hungary…
Bloomcole@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Non-surprisingly it exists in some form in anglo countries.
UK and CanadaHugeNerd@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
No no, it’s Russia you see.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 8 months ago
republicans always use the 4th one, and they make it more convoluted each time to adjust for population growth or loss, im guessing thats why they keep redrawing them, because smaller towns or cities often get so low in population overtime.
Geobloke@aussie.zone 8 months ago
In the USA, politicians chose the voters!
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Illegality is slowly being erased in america