Some of these states might actually have the opportunity to pass election regulation laws to prevent gerrymandering, voter suppression, voter caging, etc. Heck, they might even be able to address ballot stacking. (They might have to add consequences to officials and NGOs who do these things anyway. Harsh fines or something.)
Imagine if the US actually strived to make its elections more free and fair.
Ban gerrymandering and implement ranked choice.
They put voters in cages? 😳
Voter caging has been in the news an awful lot lately, mostly regarding DoJ’s lists.
Democrats should not expect future hand-outs like from their voters, unless they actually, for once, dear god, do something useful with the power we just handed them.
spoiler
They won’t.
gerry mandering can actually blow up on your face real quick, that’s what happened in Hungary
Eh, they just switched the right-wingers to a slightly less corrupt one who used to be a member of the same party.
Bro, he sat as president for a total of 20 years. He just needed to go, anyone but that dude. Fat, bloated piece of shit Russian vassal.
Dumb fucks took safe Republican districts and tried diluting them just enough to steal as many seats as possible. Turns out that doesn’t work when your public opinion takes a nose dive.
Yeah, a lot of people don’t know in detail how gerrymandering works. For it to work you need to pack as many D voters as possible into a small number of districts and add a few extra R voters to all the remaining districts. You have to dismantle the safe R districts because you need to distribute those voters among the other districts.
In a standard election that works because the Ds get a huge win in a small number of districts and the Rs get a bunch of tight wins in a larger number of districts, so the Rs win.
But, when there’s a huge wave election, the small number of R voters they added to districts aren’t enough and not only do the Ds get a huge win in a few small districts, they also win some of gerrymandered R districts. There’s nothing safe anymore.
If you don’t gerrymander, you naturally get some safe R districts, some safe D districts and some toss-ups. But, gerrymandering has to eliminate the safe R districts to shift those voters around.
Well said. I was brushing my teeth getting ready for bed when i made my comment last night and didn’t have the brain power to explain it as well as you did.
It’s a bit tricky to understand, and to explain. But, if you don’t understand it, you think it’s just a way of ensuring that you get more R districts.
IMO, it’s important to know how it can backfire if you underestimate the number of R voters you need to add to the D districts to flip them.
Anyhow, I hope that one result of this election is that more places go with laws to ensure gerrymandering can’t happen. It’s absolutely bullshit that parties get to draw districts to pick the voters they want. There are some places (Minnesota?) that have non-partisan commissions that draw the maps. That’s how it should be done.
We’ve got non-partisan maps in CO as well, but we actually got rid of them as a reaction to the gerrymandering Repubs were doing in Texas and other states. It really needs to be fixed at a national level - since a state by state solution is basically like the honor system.
since a state by state solution is basically like the honor system.
One of the strengths and also weaknesses of the US system is that states handle their own elections. If there’s a problem with how elections are run, at least it doesn’t become national. OTOH, you have things like this, where a state can decide to do the right thing, but another state can be dishonest and gerrymander for one party.
I wonder if there’s a solution you can do where it’s the honour system backed up by a nuclear option if other states don’t follow the rules. Like, say that an electoral commission should create 3 maps, one gerrymandered for Ds, one gerrymandered for Rs, and one fair one. If other states play fair, the fair one will be used. If any state defects and gerrymanders to favour one party, then the map that combats that gerrymandering goes into effect.
It could be really effective if a bunch of states band together and say that they will all issue fair maps, but they all agree to switch in case another state doesn’t play fair. That way you could have something like the Republicans gerrymandering Texas, or the Democrats gerrymandering California, and either way this defensive pact is activated. Maybe by doing it this way, you could even get typically Republican states to enter the pact.
The tough part then is proving that another state is gerrymandering to favour a specific party, and deciding if that crosses the threshold. But, at least it’s not just the honour system.
I’m looking forward to some democrat gerrymandering.
If Republicans thought this was bad
Should they gerrymander to solidify control for a cycle or 2? Probably. So they need to? Maybe not.
I think most areas would lean Democrat if maps were fairly drawn. There would definitely still be some GOP strongholds but they would be fair.
Just restore the originals. I honestly don’t want to see them stoop that low if they don’t have to. Just revert them so it doesn’t look they are being just as pety as they were.
Fuck that “when they go low we go high” bullshit. Give it back to them 100 fold do everything possible to lock these monsters up and get them out of power
Nah, unmander everything and make it illegal, preferably by constitutional amendment.
Is there really any “original” we can go back to? Gerrymandering’s been happening for so long - the word was first used in 1812. Entire towns have been created since then. Numerous states have joined the union. Political parties started and died out.
We’d kind of have to start from scratch.
I think they mean the originals from this decade, i.e. the 2020 census
Yes.
Yeah, the country didn’t even have the west coast yet then
It barely had the east coast…
I didn’t expect Louisiana to be a state that early, but yeah we didn’t have many states and a handful of modern states were Mexico at the time
The fight against fascism is critical to our nation. More important than being nice.
Nice isb for after we crush racism.
Should set a law that you can only draw a district with 4 straight lines.
No, because gerrymandering actually has a place. It can be used to elevate the voice of minorities so we don’t just end up with mob rule.
Just give seats proportional to the votes a party got. So kinda like how most developed nations do it.
Would also dismantle your bullshit 2 party system
(Im not trying to defend the democratic systems in Europe, they still suck, but they’re a whole lot better than the US system)
I would love to throw out our dumb system and replace it with a parliamentary system.
Literally dumb as it is called a dummymander.
I chose to avoid the news yesterday and just deal with it in the morning.
Never imagined I’d see a Blue Texas
Mississippi. Mississippi!
Mississippi?
Mississippi!
What’s crazy for Mississippi is their house districts. Very clearly has one packed Democrat district and the rest of them split among rural areas to give Republicans 3/4 seats.
I woke up super early somehow.
Im too excited to go back to bed lol.
There are going to be a lot of angry rich old white men today.
Im not one of em, Im ecstatic! I feel like im walkin on rainbows or somethin
Plenty of happy old white men today. And black, and brown, and pink, and
I forgot the rich part lol
I was up way too late last night watching the results. Ive had a huge, stupid grin on my face all day!
I awoke at precisely midnight my time last night. i had to text my wife (timed to arrive between her waking up and going to work) so i could go back to sleep without waking her unnecessarily
Me, I’m waiting for the end of MAGA and the knock-on effect it will have on neofascism around the world.
This feels more like edging.
Putin’s Russia is still pushing it wherever they can.
As are American fascists.
Even moreso, in fact, partly because they have much more money to throw at it.
They are part of MAGA. So if MAGA dies, Putin and their cronies would as well.
Cut the tree’s trunk, and the branch will die. But cut the branch, and the tree trunk won’t die.
Which one is the branch and which is the trunk? I’m not even really sure.
I look forward to MAGA continuing, but let me explain.
Republican voters will continue to primary these extremists that are now showing to be absolutely unelectable. They can’t win general elections. This should continue to lock Republicans out of office and allow a progressive movement some foothold.
I hope they hold on to the MAGA grift until it finally kills their party
They absolutely can win. When Trump dies and we get more normal looking fascists, they will win again.
Most of them are not as crazy as trump and some others. But there are plenty who support fascism who are electable.
Remember, they largely control the media.
It took extraordinary Natalie craziness from trump to get us less than a two third majority. It should have been almost unanimous. But it’s still not enough to impeach and remove.
This is a good day Don’t get me wrong. But in the bigger picture, it’s not nearly enough.
It probably won’t kill their party long-term. But, what I hope is that as a result of their losses the coalition breaks down and the libertarian, free market, anti-regulation, pro-immigration, athiest / agnostic wing splits from the christian conservative, pro-tariff, anti-immigrant group.
If that happens and there are 2 conservative parties, first-past-the-post will mean that neither one will get a majority and even in conservative areas the democratic candidate will win.
We’re not out of the woods yet
The peak before the sploosh
if you want to make sure it takes, make a show of beating them up. make them squeal like the filthy pigs they are.
Now go git me some scalps!
They still managed to steal mine :(
Also, Alison Gill is one of my better news sources, specifically her Daily Beans podcast.
Where can I see trump and co losing their shit and flailing over this??
This may temporarily satisfy your urges:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOVsdObxjGc
Dr. G talks about Trump’s post election body language (and his progressive dementia)
Probably overshadowed by Republicans in the fundraising sector ecstatic at the scale of money they’ll be able to skim. Parties don’t really lose anything when the lose. They are back in power in 10 years, and they make money in the meantime. And isn’t making money the bigger picture? Both parties do this.
The result is that voting does very little to persuade the parties to serve us over their doaners. If they do what their doaners want they make money. If they lose elections they make money. So when picking between doing what doaners want and winning elections, guess which one they are going to do.
Doughners*
Are there any details on this? I can see that Texas District 23 is a huge one that flipped. It looks like it has a lot of rural voters in it, so I’d assume that it would normally have been a safe Republican district. But, I don’t really know Texas politics.
Is there anywhere that breaks down what things were like before the latest gerrymander, and where Republicans lost a formerly safe seat?
AP’s map shows which seats flipped, but I’m not sure that’s exactly what you’re looking for. They don’t do a comparison to pre-jerrymandered results.
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Lurking b and pol is amazing to watch rn holy fuck
Just went to r/conservative.
Damn, the people there are horrible and quite open about racism being their number one priority. But it is nice to see them despair.
To be fair, it’s like 8 people and a few thousand bots.
I still remember them celebrating that they got a meme into the presidency, back in ‘16.
The 4chan subreddit gloated about it after the election too, in their sidebar.
Wondering how many of the people on those forums have had their lives negatively impacted by Trump administration 1 and 2.
That venn diagram is a circle
I’m not gonna go myself but I would love screenshots
/pol/ right now
accurate
America just blue itself
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Please consider not referencing that ableist slur. The term “retarded” is associated with people with cognitive and developmental disabilities. They know the word and it is hurtful.
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You absolutely did. Please, at least don’t lie. Own using the slur.
Of course, you’re being homophobic now on top of it.
Remember to clean your phones, folks
I’m just gonna hose the whole house down on Sunday.
