He called the ruling a “huge win” over a “horrible gerrymander.” But Trump himself has ordered many GOP states to gerrymander maximally. So here Trump openly declared that Republicans reserve the right to rig elections while Democrats do not. His actual position is that Republicans should play by their own corrupt rules, a declaration of intent to functionally steal the midterms.
That’s how they do it now. It’s just about which constraints to use, which is why the VRA was so important.
No, a commission of people draw congressional districts. If a computer did it, the districts would be rectangles except at the boundaries of the states.
Maybe if that program was written for an Apple II. Programs have gotten a little more advanced than that.
Great! Then a computer districting program is feasible. Then why are the Democratic or Republican Party not interested?
Well, for one thing, it doesn’t solve the problem of unbiased districting, but you refuse to acknowledge that.
Of course it does. In order to gerrymander, knowledge of the party leaning of various areas are required. A computer program wouldn’t have that information. All it needs to know is where people live, the number of districts desired, and the state’s boundaries.
The mistake you are making, and it’s a common one, is assuming the subject is simpler than it is in reality. People do this all the time in more fields than I can mention. Here’s a simple hypothetical. Imagine a city with 5 councilors. 15% of the population have very similar views and vote along the same lines, and quite differently to the rest of the city. The also live in the same area. The program you described doesn’t know any of this and cuts their population in half, giving them a minority of the vote in two districts rather than a majority in one. Now they have no valid representation at all, despite the districting not being intentionally to their detriment. Is that okay because the system doesn’t care? Well, one solution is to add those demographics and make districts of more similar people. But now you have a program that is very aware of those differences, and only needs a few minute bugs to disenfranchise people. Now we have to trust those reviewers to not gloss over the bugs that, which gets us back to the original problem - people with biases and regulations, not programs, to solve it.
If you’re interested in getting the most brief insight into these complexities, I recommend watching John Oliver’s episode on gerrymandering.
(All of which is a result of FPTP voting and single representative districts. But fixing that is a longer term project)
Yes, agreed. This system wasn’t a bad implementation for a quarter of a millenium ago, but it could use a few tweaks to get rid of the flaws we’ve noticed since then…
Incorrect. A district should represent the views of people in that district. A district is not drawn to represent specific views. A computer program will draw districts based on population size, each district having the same number of people. It will not and should not be based on the beliefs of people.
Then what is the purpose of gerrymandering? It doesn’t require some especially larger or smaller districts, by population, yet it can move seats from one party to another. How can this happen if drawing the district lines in one place rather than another doesn’t enhance or diminish the vote of some subset of the members in a district?
Again, this subject is far more complex than you seem to grasp. This isn’t something that is going to be fixed by the beauty of math or the impartiality of a computer program (both of which are things I deeply appreciate).