DiscussMormonism.com

This is a big deal. If you want to read the article click here.

Below is a simple diagram of gerrymandering:



Republicans had drawn the district maps so that they were given representation far beyond their representative numbers. The League of Women Voters sued, saying voters were being denied equal representation, and won. The Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal. The court ordered the Democratic Governor and the Republican Legislature to come up with a plan. When they couldn't, the Court drew their own plan.

With the old map, there were 6 Clinton Districts and 12 Trump Districts.
With the new map, there are 8 Clinton Districts and 10 Trump Districts.

That is the distortion of gerrymandering, and Republicans are not the only ones who are guilty of it. We have a 'to the victor belongs the spoils' attitude toward districting, and it is not good. As the League of Women Voters successfully proved, it denies equal representation. It is time to get rid of gerrymandering, and come up with a more fair way for drawing districts. I'm thinking state commissions made up of retired politicians and judges, but not married to that.

Yeah I love this. Here is a before and after of the map:

https://Twitter.com/srl/status/96567611 ... d0e12c1287

This one is a potentially significant positive impact for Democrats in Pennsylvania, the before and after is pretty interesting.

On a related note, here is an interactive map from 538 that shows both current boundaries and some what if scenarios based on "favor Republicans", "favor Democrats", "most competitive", etc. for the entire country. I don't think it has been shared here yet but apologies if it already has. I found it pretty interesting to drill into my state and see what all the different scenarios created.

It's relatively easy to draw a map with the objective of favoring one party or the other. Drawing a map that is objectively neutral is a lot harder.

From my perspective, representation based on where my home mailbox is located is a quaint, arbitrary way of doing things. Really. Why should me and my neighbors have the same representative in Congress? Sure, there is a correlation with our interests being aligned based on geography, but that is only a pretty rough correlation.

If I had my way, people would have the option to group themselves into caucuses based upon the issues that are most important to them. You could join only one, and could choose from the conservative caucus, the liberal caucus, the libertariain caucus, the NRA caucus, the anti-abortion caucus, the American Atheist caucus, the war-mongers for Jesus caucus, or any other caucus that people choose to establish.

Each caucus would then be granted a certain number of seats in Congress based upon how many members it has, and the members of the caucus woudl choose its representative.

In the current enviornment, I live in a deep red bible-thumping state, where with or without gerrymandering, there is no way anybody who shares my views on the topics under debate could possibly win. Sure, I have a vote. But I don't have representation.

But if I could find several hundred thousand like-minded people from accross America to join me in a "poetic naturalism" caucus, then we could send somebody to congress that would in fact represent us.

This type of setup would allow pretty-much everyone to join a group of like-minded citizens and actually get a vote in congress. It would destroy the two-party system, and create an enviornment where compromise would have to happen.

In contrast, even if all maps were drawn completely free of gerrymandering, if you are a Republican in a Democrat district or vice-versa, your vote doesn't count because of where you live, which is basically the thing that getting rid of gerrymandering is intended to eliminate.