DelendaEst
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User ID: 1199
DelendaEst
5d ago
Gerrymandering: California will soon vote on whether to redistrict itself for the express purpose of counteracting a Republican gerrymandering plan in Texas. The rewards from gerrymandering are extra House seats which could tip the balance of House control -- a tasty prize. Democrats had unilaterally disarmed themselves with bipartisan commissions in many states, but that did little to convince Republicans to ease up. Democrats could probably go even if they play hardball, which is a lot better than the status quo where they’re down somewhere between 8-20 seats depending on the fairness metric used.
I disagree that California's independent commission constitutes unilateral disarmament. In 2024 the difference between the percentage of the vote that went to the out party (Rs in California and Ds in Texas) an the percentage of house seats they won was more "unfair" in California, and a commission which is 1/3 D 1/3 R and 1/3 "neutral" parties who all agree with the D side all the time is not exactly the platonic ideal of fair districting. And there are D states where Rs are wildly underrepresented, but the district lines look fair and the Ds say "well its not gerrymandered, what do you want?" as if the problem was squiggly lines on a map and not the unrepresentative outcomes. I am not saying that refusing the gerrymander and have independent commissions is BAD, but getting worse outcomes than Texas and then acting holier than thou about Texas's districting is laughable.
The correct solution for all states with more than 1-2 seats is multi-member districts which would get the ratios better and allow everyone to be represented, but that never seems to be on the table unfortunately.
But this IS the reason that gerrymandering feels bad, the reason that people instinctively dislike it. Its not that people hate the squiggly lines in and of themselves, they dislike that the lines lead to unfair vote distributions. So it is not immediately obvious to me why having even worse distributions without squiggly lines is better.
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