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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026

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That just a who’s watching the watchers game. A fight to gain political power within the selection committee.

But a bigger issue and a huge Chesterton Fence is it would be an attack on State’s Rights and their internal politics. I know the left generally hates States Rights because it limits their power more but we do have regional economies. You can only have a few SuperStar high margin based economies. Most do not work in those fields. Most people build a widget for $4 and sell it for $5. A lot of people have seen a huge QOL improvement being able to move out of California. Somewhat housing related but the tax regime Apple or Jane St can bear is not the same tax regime a small moat manufacturer can bear.

Perhaps you could just pass an Amendment limiting it to congressional districts but it would be a slippery slope.

Federal Election gerrymandering is bad but if everyone does it then it’s overall effect on federal politics is smaller.

That just a who’s watching the watchers game. A fight to gain political power within the selection committee.

It is a solved problem in every other democracy with single-member districts, despite the stakes being even higher in Parliamentary systems. I agree that the level of partisan rancour in the US right now is that it couldn't be done from scratch, with the possible exception where a non-partisan populist governor in a purple state like Jesse Ventura decided to make ending gerrymandering in the state part of his legacy. In the US context, proportional representation within states (or large multi-member districts in the largest states - NY could have separate lists for NYC+LI and upstate, for example) is the obviously correct approach.

But a bigger issue and a huge Chesterton Fence is it would be an attack on State’s Rights and their internal politics.

This is a good rhetorical point for conservatives to make to each other, but the moral logic of States' Rights doesn't include a state's right to organise its government in a sufficiently non-democratic way. There isn't a Chesterton's Fence here - the general principle is in the Constitution (the "republican form of government" clause) and there is a history of successful federal interventions against insufficiently internally democratic states during the civil rights era. (Under current SCOTUS doctrine there are no grounds for intervention, but "current SCOTUS doctrine" is not a moral argument, and in a world where "everyone knows" that SCOTUS is a partisan institution that doesn't really believe in the rule of law it isn't a legal argument either.)

There are some purple states (notably North Carolina and Wisconsin) where the state legislature is so gerrymandered (and has the power to continue to gerrymander itself in perpetuity) that state legislators are no longer meaningfully accountable to voters. In the current year there is no federal authority that could intervene as anything other than a blatant partisan flex, but if SCOTUS still had the credibility it did in 1964 then intervening would be very much within the tradition of American constitutionalism.

Federal Election gerrymandering is bad but if everyone does it then it’s overall effect on federal politics is smaller.

Federal election gerrymandering ultimately destroys state-level politics by making state elections proxy federal elections. This is a large part of why the OG Progressives supported the 17th amendment. (The other was that US senate elections in state legislatures were a bribe magnet). This is an old problem - the 1858 state legislative elections in Illinois are famous for a series of debates between US Senate candidates who were not on the ballot.