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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25391 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 18, 2025

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Wonderful. Another norm for the shredder. At least this time it’s closer to a tenuous gentleman’s agreement than settled law, right? Right?

From my perspective, gerrymandered districts are an insult to the idea of representative democracy. I hope CA fails in its shenanigans. I hope we Texans find a spine. Failing that, it would be nice if our leadership could pander to anyone other than Trump.

But I know how much those hopes are worth.

Gerrymandering as a term dates to 1812. Some gerrymanders are more egregious than others, but the practice is very hard to expunge. It’s also limited by the fact that the canvas these districts are painted on, and the political parties themselves, are ever-shifting. A gerrymander can only ever be a temporary success. If a party gets too strong, and too unrepresentative, people will successfully organize to take it down a notch. That’s how it’s always been.

I’d relax about this particular problem. Unless your specific qualm is that you’re a Democrat in Texas and are worried about being disenfranchised. In that case I fully understand your concern and would recommend you view it as a personal issue (and move states) or a local issue (and organize with state Democrats to undermine Republican rule by adopting a more Texan-palatable local platform). I wouldn’t think of this as the end of Democracy in America. It’s just the usual political grift. Unpleasant but sustainable.

Yeah it's a problem as old as the republic and has a buncha good to go with the bad - making a minority district so the minority actually gets a representative instead of just getting diluted is a good thing. Or a bad thing?

...It's deeply complicated.

Yeah my understanding is that even in a lot of gerrymandered situations the boots on the ground for the party that's losing out would frequently rather have one ultra-secure seat to enable a 30 year tenure in the House versus 2 55-45 seats in which they've got competition coming both internally and from the other side. Plus more vulnerable to random macro upheavals.

There's a reason a bunch of the longest house tenures are Southern Democrats who essentially sit in Rotten boroughs.

There's a reason a bunch of the longest house tenures are Southern Democrats who essentially sit in Rotten boroughs.

A non-trivial number of these are effectively required to exist by the Civil Rights Act.

How does that work? I genuinely do not know.

Very roughly: If there is an opportunity to give black people a majority black district, then it is required to do so. The American south has lots of black people. Some of whom packed into gerrymandered districts giving them black congressional representatives. This is “good” gerrymandering required by law.

How large does said district have to be? A city block? An apartment complex? Ten thousand people?

In the other reply, @VoxelVexillologist says that it's not well defined, except by litigation and negative examples, but a rough ballpark would be something I'm interested to know.

All congressional districts are A: contiguous and B: have very roughly the same number of people- the number of Americans divided by the number of representatives. Google says this is 747,000, but grain of salt. The one caveat to (B) is that every state gets at least one representative, even if- like Wyoming- it has less than 747,000 people.

You can just google congressional district maps- by state probably gives a more detailed view- to see the twisting contortions involved.

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