Virginia Redistricting PASSED!!
- Thread starter Chumpsky
- Start date
I think it is fair enough to point a finger about the mid decade stuff, which I hate, but the decennial has absolutely been a both sides/simultaneous issue.
but even as to mid decade, courage has been shown in places like md, in (at cost), and even yesterday in sc. it should be applauded and encouraged.
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The NCGOP redrew the districts in 2023 when they changed it from 7-7 to 10-4. They redrew them again in October of last year to make it 11-3. They’re getting ready to do it again in response to the recent SCOTUS decision. I’ll support partisan gerrymandering by Dems anywhere at any time. F*ck the GOP.
Well then, a pox on both you and R's in Florida, NC, etc., I guess.
I know you largely agreed with SCOTUS that partisan gerrymandering was non-justiciable (you don't have to answer this now but how are they able to judicate a racial gerrymander but can't a partisan?) but what reforms would you like to see/would accept at the federal level on gerrymandering (if any)?
I think we're pretty well proven that the states can't be trusted just to do the right thing.
if at some point (probably post trump) a credible truce is reached between the parties does the gerrying accomplished in 2025-28 get reversed or stays as a new baseline?
I was actually thinking about this some last night.
If I were going to try to write a federal law that would preempt or at least restrict states in this field (which is legal and an idea that is sounding better by the hour), I think the way you'd go about that is to sort of assume that the first cut as a practical matter is always going to be done by some sort of mapping software. So, you'd write the law by specifying the priority of factors that the software must consider when drawing potential sets of lines for consideration. (While I don't know enough about mapping software, I assume you could actually assign some sort of mathematical weights.)
--Highest priority would of course go to relative equality of population size across districts (the Baker v Carr principle, which hopefully isn't going anywhere and I'll assume is sort of a non-negotiable parameter).
--My next tier of criteria would be designed to foster, for lack of a better phrase "coherence", and would take into account two things -- minimizing the radius from the center of each district to its maximum outer limit, BUT allowing for exceptions adjustments to account for natural geographic features which tend to define areas (e.g., the Shenandoahs in VA as a practical matter separate east from west, and I'd imagine there are probably many places where rivers or bodies of water perform the same role [the chesapeake estuary is probably another example).
--The third tier criteria would encourage/allow coherence around urban/rural or economic interests so that the 'voice' of those interests can be heard. So for example, concentrations of people in cities should have "their" reps, or (again, taking Virginia as an example) the predominance of the military and shipping economy in the Tidewater, or mining, or agriculture, etc.
--The fourth tier would be to design districts that minimize changes from prior district maps, in that there is a legitimate interest in long term voter representation and stability. Indeed, with the way things are playing out (or may play out) in VA, you could have people showing up in three different districts in a 6-year cycle, and that doesn't help voters.
So you run the software against those criteria, and the software spits out some minimum number of options.
From there is where many would probably start to disagree with me. First, I really don't believe there is such a thing as an "independent" anything (cynically underscored by one of VA's former 'independent' board members featuring prominently in recent campaign ads), so I would then retain the ultimate selection/modification/approval by the legislature, not just because of my skepticism but also because I do think there are practical and legitimate state perspectives that can inform the process. So what could the legislature (permissibly) do under my approach? First, they could tweak things* (within an emphasis on tweak) based on the political (as distinguished a bit from the "merely" partisan) -- for example, if your state has the chair of the house transportation or approps committee, the state as a whole damn well has a legitimate interest in that person being in office. Second - and this is probably the squishiest in light of Callais -- the legislature to tweak* things to retain some coherence to social factors that they know better than any computer. To be clear, IMO, this might even include doing things to maintain the coherence of racially or otherwise culturally coherent communities.
So, what do I mean by 'tweak' and how do I control for it? I mean playing around the edges of the optional computer maps, perhaps with some sort of back-end computerized checks (eg, the selected map and the option it was derived from deviate no more than some %, or the selected map deviates from the existing map no more than some percentage).
As to enforcement, I've not really thought about that part, but I do wonder it might make some sense to define those eligible to sue in a somewhat narrower way, and also to specify timeframes for such suits. Frankly, I'd also be open to prohibiting mid-decade redistricting entirely, or at least really limiting it to situations where revisions are necessary in light of adjudicated violations committed during the initial map drawing (NOT changed circumstances, populations, or politics). Again, decennial predictability is a benefit to the voter.
Also also wik --- setting all of the above aside, and ignoring practical reality even more than the above, I actually think the better solution would be increasing the size of the house dramatically. Districts have really just become too large for representatives to actually follow a classic "constituent" model.
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That's interesting and well thought out.
I've grown suspicious of the concept of single member districts, entirely. While I agree that the way that you prescribed would be "fair", I really don't like the idea that parties should be subject to the efficiency in the geographic dispersion of their voters.
I think that increasing the size of the House (on its own) could make Gerrymandering worse and not better.
I think what could be done without an amendment is force the states to use multi-member districts wherever possible and probably increase the size of the House to ensure that each state has a minimum of 3 Representatives (and state that every district must have between 3 and 10 members or something + enforce that the members within each district in each state are as equal as possible). The apportionment of those seats within those districts must be done proportionally but I could be swayed on doing something like single transferrable vote or party list. Yeah, people who no longer have "their" representative but I can tell you its done my precisely zero good knowing that Joe Wilson is "accountable" to me and no one else is in the House.
Once you do all of that States can redistrict all they want to, it won't really matter.
I really like multi-member proportional representation like they have in Germany and New Zealand but I think that'd require constitutional amendments.
Read a really interesting piece this morning, about an episode in the 1930s where districts in VA were overturned and, amazingly (but not permissibly under modern law), representatives were selected at large based on statewide voting (ie, no districts all).
In 1932, Republicans challenged redistricting and won in court. What happened next was an election that wouldn’t be allowed today.
The 1932 House elections in Virginia were a one-of-a-kind election in which every seat was elected at-large.
cardinalnews.org
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Read a really interesting piece this morning, about an episode in the 1930s where districts in VA were overturned and, amazingly (but not permissibly under modern law), representatives were selected at large based on statewide voting (ie, no districts all).
In 1932, Republicans challenged redistricting and won in court. What happened next was an election that wouldn’t be allowed today.
The 1932 House elections in Virginia were a one-of-a-kind election in which every seat was elected at-large.
That was an interesting read. It does make me wonder how the seats were filled. I'd think it was like how we do school board elections here (you get 5 votes for 5 candidates and whichever 5 have the most win, which is asinine).
It's also still weird to me that SCOTUS hesitated at all to mandate "one person one vote". Like I get that the Constitution doesn't explicitly say the States can't do that but come on.
I'm speculating here, but I wonder whether the hesitation might have had something to do with consistency with british tradition. My sense is that British parliamentary constituencies (districts) were not historically uniform in size and were often tied more to towns, locales or other things like universities. I am pretty sure that the population size of British constituencies only standardized (to around 70k) in the last few years (which is sort of mind boggling). (Note: I took a peek at 2002 data, and there were some English ones as small as about 75000 and some larger than 120000, with some in Wales under 60k.) So, in the absence of our constitution actually saying something about it, it was probably left to the states (which the constitution does say something about) given where our legislative tradition on district size came from.
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For those interested, the commonwealth’s brief to scotus
an interesting read in a couple of senses.
1. It doesn’t necessarily paint a flattering picture of the ag’s preservation of defenses for appeal, though a couple of the points are probably overplayed a bit.
2. It spends comparatively little time on the “election” substance, and instead offers scotus some decent grounds to deny the stay (again, some perhaps self inflicted by the ag) without the need to even get into the independent legislature theory or the federal preemption theory.
interestingly, those arguments are left for an amicus. One other curiosity which is a little surprising that no one seems to have argued regarding the states argument that the federal definition of Election Day is somehow controlling. The relevant election here was an exclusively state one - for the general assembly, and va votes in off cycle years so there were literally no federal offices on the ballot.
I could see scotus taking the procedural out, or denying a stay without opinion, given that Florida may come back to them
an interesting read in a couple of senses.
1. It doesn’t necessarily paint a flattering picture of the ag’s preservation of defenses for appeal, though a couple of the points are probably overplayed a bit.
2. It spends comparatively little time on the “election” substance, and instead offers scotus some decent grounds to deny the stay (again, some perhaps self inflicted by the ag) without the need to even get into the independent legislature theory or the federal preemption theory.
interestingly, those arguments are left for an amicus. One other curiosity which is a little surprising that no one seems to have argued regarding the states argument that the federal definition of Election Day is somehow controlling. The relevant election here was an exclusively state one - for the general assembly, and va votes in off cycle years so there were literally no federal offices on the ballot.
I could see scotus taking the procedural out, or denying a stay without opinion, given that Florida may come back to them
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Missouri Supreme Court just upheld the new map draw givng r+1 more as well. Fantastic news.
Democrats would never agree because fair districting nationwide would lose them 30 plus house seats. They have been cheating and rigging the game for decades which is why states like Illinois have maps connecting champaign to east st louis. I'm thankful Republicans are finally playing for keeps as well.
If you had a moral compass, you'd be ashamed about this blatant attempt to keep voters from holding your sociopathic president accountable. But for the record, there's a huge movement brewing to penalize these sorry *** red states that are systematically silencing black voices in order to please a fat, special needs cantaloupe. There will be consequences...
Don't Play Where Your Votes Don't Count: A Whole-of-Black-Community Response to Callais Begins on the NCAA Recruiting Trail
Movement 3.0 | Part One of a Series on Black Cultural and Economic Power After Callais
alvintillery1.substack.com
If you had a moral compass, you'd be ashamed about this blatant attempt to keep voters from holding your sociopathic president accountable. But for the record, there's a huge movement brewing to penalize these sorry *** red states that are systematically silencing black voices in order to please a fat, special needs cantaloupe. There will be consequences...
Don't Play Where Your Votes Don't Count: A Whole-of-Black-Community Response to Callais Begins on the NCAA Recruiting Trail
Movement 3.0 | Part One of a Series on Black Cultural and Economic Power After Callais
Spare me your nonsense. Scotus ruled racist democrat map draws are unconstitutional. Suck it up and maybe offer decent policy for a change then maybe you wouldn't be on track to lose the mid terms.
Plenty to celebrate in Republicans finally growing a back bone and giving dems some of their own medicine imo especially when democrats are proposing maps such as this.
Don't worry though, Republicans in LA are replacing the old white jew with a black woman. DEI enthusiasts everywhere should celebrate this epic day.
Funny how this taint-licking Supreme Court decided this right before the mid-terms. It's almost like they're putting their hands on the scale to help a deeply unpopular president avoid the wrath of the voters.
And miss me with your map that ignores the below:
Red states with ZERO Dem house seats:
Oklahoma
Arkansas
Iowa
Utah
Nebraska
Idaho
Montana
West Virginia
Alaska
North Dakota
South Dakota
Wyoming
Red states with just ONE Dem house seat:
Mississippi
South Carolina
Tennessee
Kentucky
Kansas
South Carolina will be zero dems too. Good!
I'm not sure the blacks are too concerned with what the party who finances the kkk has to say. "Good luck" though lol those SPLC revelations sure were something.
Enjoy what comes next, comrade. The pendulum just started swinging back hard.
Uh four of those are single member states
oh come on let’s not go overboard. You want them to play in the pac 10 or the … wait, there is no northeast athletic conference.
This will not save you from the wrath of the voters in the mid-terms and LOL at your outrage at the fake SPLC charges that are only meant to protect this White House's white supremacist friends. You're so easy to cvck
Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio says he met with Trump in Florida
Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio says he met President Donald Trump over the weekend in Florida.
apnews.com
You're showing your stripes Aardy. Nothing to say about the blue new England states he first posted about?Uh four of those are single member states
oh come on let’s not go overboard. You want them to play in the pac 10 or the … wait, there is no northeast athletic conference.
Yeah. They don’t have an athletic conference, and with the possible exception of New Hampshire are overwhelmingly liberal and thus unsurprisingly blue given their relatively small size. (Oh yeah vt is a one seat state).
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This will not save you from the wrath of the voters in the mid-terms and LOL at your outrage at the fake SPLC charges that are only meant to protect this White House's white supremacist friends. You're so easy to cvck
Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio says he met with Trump in Florida
Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio says he met President Donald Trump over the weekend in Florida.
The SPLC coordinated and funded the entire Charlottesville fine people hoax. That's just a fact per the grand jury indictment. Not much has changed since the democrats founded the kkk apparently.
As for the mid terms I am not worried about the dems doing much. Your party has zero to offer and is going down by ~12 to 15 seats in redistricting on top of that. This is just the start btw, the 2030 census is going to strip dems of another dozen house seats AND electoral votes with mass flight from liberal states like CA and NY.
Nice dodge
Vermont has exactly 1 Congressional district (an at-large seat).
Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island each have exactly 2 Congressional districts.
Semi seriously, wasn’t lane kiffin already saying something about not getting Kids to come to Oxford (so he moved to Baton Rouge)?
No matter how much they deny it, or milquetoast fans of the process choose to take a 10,000 ft view of this as if they are just an observer, they are acting at the behest of a politician and have successfully made themselves a political body. Probably forever.
The real annoyance will come when the conservatives lose control and the same lickspittle gatekeepers will lie until their blue in the face about how this happened. F@ck them all.
For a Harvard grad, you sure do get your news from some ****** sources. Paying an informant in an organization is not the same as paying the organization itself and before this disgusting admin came along, they openly cooperated with government who knew exactly what they were doing. Then Trump's criminal *** cut them off.
SPLC claims DOJ lied about informants, says it shared information that saved lives
They didn't pay informants, they directed specific behavior and coordinated travel plans for neo nazis. They weren't paying random people to rat on the actions of the group, they were funding leadership to behave in disgusting ways so they could fundraise off of it and claim it was actually the Republicans who were associated with these people. Not surprising behavior from the party that filibustered the civil rights act.
Yeah, basically, the ne is the equivalent of much of the list in the earlier post. Not hiding anything, and there are no substantial gerrymandering inferences (+\- a small number) to be drawn in either case.
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We've already gone over all this with him at the other site....over and over and over.
Scrubby's just a troll. As a suggestion, may consider putting him on ignore like the rest of us.
Nice to see the Republicans putting a final end to this democrat nonsense. No more democrat cheating/breaking the law will be tolerated.