We really need to get gerrymandering off the table entirely. In the constitutional construct, the House was supposed to be the vehicle of direct democracy. And gerrymandering has neutered it. Glad to see Trump's brazen attempt to disenfranchise voters has been countered, but dismayed that the solution was to just disenfranchise more voters.
Couldn't agree more. That and take away the power for life on the handful of Supreme Court judges as well. We need term limits, with equal representatives from each party, and force them to actually eliminate partisan bias decisions in the Supreme Court for good.
The problem is you can no more outlaw gerrymandering than you can outlaw being an *******. It's too subjective. That being said, we should make it difficult. Like super duper difficult. We should do as much as we can to ensure the fairest elections possible. Fair meaning the most representative of the actual will of the voters. Not pure. Fair. You will never have an election where there is zero impropriety or mistakes. That's an impossible standard asked for only by partisan power mongers who want to disenfranchise as many political opponents as possible. With MAGA having chosen to ignore and rewrite laws to their liking to hoard power, we now must hoist them up by their own petard. The backlash must be swift, strong, and short.
Well, if it wasn't so hard to amend the constitution, there are formats that eliminate map drawing so you could have representation without gamesmanship. Short of that and of course imperfect are the independent, bipartisan redistricting boards that some (democratic-leaning) states have employed. They were quick to obviate the boards to counter Republican gerrymandering, but if all states had them this probably wouldn't have come up.
This is all the fruit of Tom DeLay's tree. There was gerrymandering before of course, but never between Censuses (Censi?). You had to wait for the ten years to go by before you could change the map. I'll also remind everyone that in 2021 Democrats had a bill that would set up fair practices for drawing districts, but every Republican voted against it.
A word that ends with 'us' is only pluralized with an 'i' if it's of Greek origin. Census is Latin (like Octopus), so the plural is Censuses (and Octopuses).
It seems like you could derive some sort of formula from dividing the total area inside the district by the length of the perimeter to get some sort of ratio? It would at the very least force lawmakers to work much harder at the gerrymandering, if districts had to basically be simple shapes? Just a thought, haven't done any in depth examination.
Also, the problem with modern gerrymandering is that "big data" and all the Palantir databases and AI agents out there let you craft a gerrymander with a custom precision that was unthinkable in the 1970's or 80's. It used to be broad strokes. Now it's micro precision. Its like the difference between a smooth bore flintlock rifle and a full auto minigun. They're both firearms, but the mass lethality of the two different firearms is not remotely similar.
The case is expected to be appealed immediately to the Virginia Supreme Court. Attorney General Jay Jones confirmed that he would appeal the decision
Yeah, this same judge has tried to block this before and gotten slapped down every time. Just another crank looking to shine up his resume for a promotion in maga world. Big ol' nothing burger.
