Supreme Court, on 5-4 Party Line Vote, Blocks Gerrymander Remedy

[Mormolyce]

Oh please. The democrats had the chance in 2008 to get rid of it when they had the majority in BOTH houses of Congress. Did they? Fuck no. They love to bitch about it when they lose, but when they win and are in power it suddenly becomes a non-issue. Why? Because they love to use it every bit as much as Republicans do. And the minute they make gains in Congress again, the oh-so-fucking-important issue of gerrymandering will vanish overnight.

Well... well... well... they didn't stop us!

Is that really all you've got?

SAD!

[Gray_Matter]

I think the evidence on the matter is pretty clear - the majority of this disparity has to do with clustering of populations rather than deliberate gerrymandering. To the extent that they're gerrymandered, the national split gets fairly close to even. Throwing up your hands in disbelief at that isn't actually evidence - see academic paper linked earlier for the empirical work on the matter. The majority of the effect just comes from urban and racial clustering. Think otherwise? Bring evidence.

You mean the same study where they say "To accurately measure the effect of gerrymandering, we would ideally analyze the partisan control of each district in the same election under two different conditions, with and without gerrymandering. But unfortunately, in any given election, we are only able to observe the outcome of each district under a single condition: Either a district is gerrymandered, or it is not. Empirically, we do not observe the partisan control of the districts under a non-gerrymandered counterfactual. Therefore, in order to measure the effect of gerrymandering, scholars have been forced to estimate this counterfactual."?

You are trying to explain away a massive republican advantage, that just happens to occur after they redistrict a whole bunch of zones, as urban clustering. You want proof? Look at the articles that I linked. The GoP wouldn't be gerrymandering if there wasn't a significant advantage. In South Carolina the GoP drew a district around an area that was almost entirely African American where the Dems would have won by something like 90% odd (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...dering/527592/). The courts threw it out. That's gerrymandering to the extreme but you get the point. If you gave me power to control districts I could give a party with 40% of the vote, 60% of the seats. That's absurd and to try and blame anything else but gerrymandering is absurd. There is even a case going to the supreme court for this (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...mandering-case)

Just to show you how crazy it is. This is the one from South Carolina:



This zone one it's own would probably the GoP 2 or 3 seats that they wouldn't have and you are trying to say that it only makes 1 seat difference.

[Spectral]

You can't keep quoting a quasi-opinion article and a source that backs your claim; this is the definition of internet bubbles and people selecting the data that represents the reality they'd like to believe is the case. It's like the anti-climate change people who furiously link the thoroughly refuted and debunked study on Daily Caller, or any of a small handful of other thoroughly refuted and debunked "studies," while ignoring the tens of thousands to the contrary that have been extensively peer reviewed and repeated.

Such as in this case, where there are hundreds that have found that gerrymandering is significant and has lead to an alarming shift in Democrat vote suppression in the area of 15%. This is exactly why Republicans poured millions of dollars into that very goal starting around 2008. It's worked well. Most claims to the contrary are usually cherry-picking or hiding facts, or ignoring the reality that suppression through redistricting needs to be done continuously, as populations tend to shift (and the US is currently in such a major population shift that we've given it a name), and that votes towards the end of a redistricting period will not be so heavily diluted as votes in the beginning of a period.

Can you provide me a citation for the bolded? The existence of cities isn't evidence that the net effect across the country is particularly strong. I'll grant that an article with some snippets of evidence and a single academic paper are hardly the last word on the matter, but I find it pretty odd that there are "hundreds" of papers finding an enormous effect and no one's bothering to cite any of them.

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Why haven't we done this yet? Most people don't even know what district they belong to until election time, and we're supposed to believe that having an elected representative who comes from the same Rorschach inkblot that we do actually matters?

I mean this is really not that hard to remedy, if your state has 5 seats in the House then you vote for 5 people out of a list of all the people putting their hat in the ring, and the top 5 vote getters are seated. Both parties will have an incentive to nominate qualified candidates rather than partisan hacks to avoid getting wiped out by straight party line votes.

This would be an enormous shift in how politics works. I'm not necessarily opposed (I haven't considered it enough to have a real opinion), but shifting from local first-past-the-post representation to state-level ranked voting (or similar) would be a gigantic change in how the system was intended to work. Maybe it's a good idea, but it's a non-obviously good one.

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You mean the same study where they say "To accurately measure the effect of gerrymandering, we would ideally analyze the partisan control of each district in the same election under two different conditions, with and without gerrymandering. But unfortunately, in any given election, we are only able to observe the outcome of each district under a single condition: Either a district is gerrymandered, or it is not. Empirically, we do not observe the partisan control of the districts under a non-gerrymandered counterfactual. Therefore, in order to measure the effect of gerrymandering, scholars have been forced to estimate this counterfactual."?

You are trying to explain away a massive republican advantage, that just happens to occur after they redistrict a whole bunch of zones, as urban clustering. You want proof? Look at the articles that I linked. The GoP wouldn't be gerrymandering if there wasn't a significant advantage. In South Carolina the GoP drew a district around an area that was almost entirely African American where the Dems would have won by something like 90% odd (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...dering/527592/). The courts threw it out. That's gerrymandering to the extreme but you get the point. If you gave me power to control districts I could give a party with 40% of the vote, 60% of the seats. That's absurd and to try and blame anything else but gerrymandering is absurd. There is even a case going to the supreme court for this (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...mandering-case)

Just to show you how crazy it is. This is the one from South Carolina:

<snip>
This zone one it's own would probably the GoP 2 or 3 seats that they wouldn't have and you are trying to say that it only makes 1 seat difference.

Again, no one doubts that individual examples are spectacularly bad. What you're repeatedly ignoring is that on the national level the effect of gerrymandering may be close to counterbalanced by Democrat efforts in blue states. Here, let The Atlantic summarize for Maryland:

New court depositions and previously unseen emails uncover just how determined Maryland Democrats were to take a seat from the Republicans and knock 10-term veteran Roscoe Bartlett—an idiosyncratic conservative who after losing his seat retired off the grid in the mountains of West Virginia, issuing dire warnings about the vulnerability of our power grid—out of office. They also reveal the partisanship with which Democrats approached redistricting in Maryland: As former governor and 2016 Democratic presidential primary candidate Martin O’Malley explains, he and other Democrats wanted to use their party’s control of the governor’s office to secure a 7-1 majority.

“Yes,” said O’Malley, in a deposition. “Part of my intent was to create a map that, all things being legal and equal, would, nonetheless, be more likely to elect more Democrats rather than less.”

I don't condone this behavior from either party, but the only empirical work I can find shows a small net effect nationally. If you've got any work that's been done and not just anecdotes (I see your South Carolina and raise you Maryland and Illinois), I'm all ears - my interest isn't in walking around being deliberately wrong about something for partisan reasons, which is what I think people are doing when they firmly believe that the reason they're losing elections is primarily cheating rather than primarily a demographic/geographic quirk.

[Fugus]

You mean the same study where they say "To accurately measure the effect of gerrymandering, we would ideally analyze the partisan control of each district in the same election under two different conditions, with and without gerrymandering. But unfortunately, in any given election, we are only able to observe the outcome of each district under a single condition: Either a district is gerrymandered, or it is not. Empirically, we do not observe the partisan control of the districts under a non-gerrymandered counterfactual. Therefore, in order to measure the effect of gerrymandering, scholars have been forced to estimate this counterfactual."?

You are trying to explain away a massive republican advantage, that just happens to occur after they redistrict a whole bunch of zones, as urban clustering. You want proof? Look at the articles that I linked. The GoP wouldn't be gerrymandering if there wasn't a significant advantage. In South Carolina the GoP drew a district around an area that was almost entirely African American where the Dems would have won by something like 90% odd (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...dering/527592/). The courts threw it out. That's gerrymandering to the extreme but you get the point. If you gave me power to control districts I could give a party with 40% of the vote, 60% of the seats. That's absurd and to try and blame anything else but gerrymandering is absurd. There is even a case going to the supreme court for this (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...mandering-case)

Just to show you how crazy it is. This is the one from South Carolina:



This zone one it's own would probably the GoP 2 or 3 seats that they wouldn't have and you are trying to say that it only makes 1 seat difference.

The effects on North Carolina are clearly visible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_...onal_districts

Before the last districting, our 13 seats were split so that the Democrats typically had a 1 to 3 seat lead with the republicans occasionally getting a 1 to 2 seat lead. Overall fairly representative of the popular votes here.

Then after the districting, a 50/50 split divides the seats 3/10 in the Republicans favor and even the Democrats winning the popular vote splits them 4/9 in the Republicans favor.

And Trump illegitimately elected Justice was the deciding vote to screw over the will of the people on this.

[Machismo]

I love that there's actually some people trying to say that gerrymandering isn't really a thing. How bored must they be to pretend to be that ignorant, and push such a bullshit false narrative. At this point, it's like being a flat-Earther.

[Fugus]

I love that there's actually some people trying to say that gerrymandering isn't really a thing. How bored must they be to pretend to be that ignorant, and push such a bullshit false narrative. At this point, it's like being a flat-Earther.

Yeah, the last redistricting shown us just how bad it can get with the technology of the day. And now it will most likely be used nationwide to screw the will of the voters to give the current party an advantage. Even if the Democrats wouldn't do it, the Republicans already have proven they will completely screw the voters for their own power with this technology forcing them to do the same.


It has gotten to the point the gerrymandering as well as giving either party the ability to draw the districts is too dangerous to our democracy and should be banned and forced to require a non-partisan group to draw them.

[Machismo]

Yeah, the last redistricting shown us just how bad it can get with the technology of the day. And now it will most likely be used nationwide to screw the will of the voters to give the current party an advantage. Even if the Democrats wouldn't do it, the Republicans already have proven they will completely screw the voters for their own power with this technology forcing them to do the same.


It has gotten to the point the gerrymandering as well as giving either party the ability to draw the districts is too dangerous to our democracy and should be banned and forced to require a non-partisan group to draw them.

That is the hopeful inevitability, but considering we still have the Electoral College, I highly doubt that it will come very fast. We love our corrupt politics in the United States.

[Fugus]

That is the hopeful inevitability, but considering we still have the Electoral College, I highly doubt that it will come very fast. We love our corrupt politics in the United States.

Yeah, while we disagree on many things. This is something that every side of every isle should agree on.

I fear that since the genie is out of the bottle, they will try and twist it to make as strong a grip as they can for each state to the point the collective wills of each state is silenced and it either takes a convention of states, violence, or a candidate pushing for it to be fixed hardcore with the funding to win and the persistence to keep it in public view till the parties have no choice but to listen.

Sad thing about the electoral college that I think helps to keep it around, most people don't know its history of why it is even there or even how it functions. My friend and his family all think it is there to give smaller states more representation and refuse to accept any actual history on it. Evidently they don't know that the purpose of the Senate was for. They think it is to prevent coastal cities from forcing their wills on the rest of them. You can also guess how they vote. I have a feeling that if Trump had won the popular and lost the Electoral College, many of it's current backers would be trying to tear it down now too.

[Karfal]

You ain't seen shit yet son. Just wait until Ginsburg kick the can in the next couple of years. 6 - 3 votes for many many years to come. Dems will be screwed without lube, reach arounds, or even a pity "thank you".

This is were the true damage from Trumps presidency lies.

Ya hopefully that old bitch dies soon. Fucking radicals like her shouldn't be in the supreme court.

Her Kennedy and the other one I'm forgetting should hopefully all be replaced by Trump it could end up being 7-2.


7 constitutionalist and only 2 radicals. That'd be a great site to see.

[Puremallace]

U.S, a political system so broken, even supreme court judges are chosen because they are either democrats or republican. Don't worry 9 out of 10 time they will go with whatever their party thinks it's best... Separation of power... LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Yeah at this point it is a cruel joke. American people get what they voted for so hope they enjoy the results.

[FlatBootyJudy]

U.S, a political system so broken, even supreme court judges are chosen because they are either democrats or republican. Don't worry 9 out of 10 time they will go with whatever their party thinks it's best... Separation of power... LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Once we get rid of people like Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi, thinks will be much better!

[Beazy]

Ya hopefully that old bitch dies soon. Fucking radicals like her shouldn't be in the supreme court.

Her Kennedy and the other one I'm forgetting should hopefully all be replaced by Trump it could end up being 7-2.


7 constitutionalist and only 2 radicals. That'd be a great site to see.

I would rather not have an "auto-resolve" supreme court. The supreme court needs balance. Badly.

[Karfal]

I would rather not have an "auto-resolve" supreme court. The supreme court needs balance. Badly.

That's the wrong thinking. The supreme court is suppose to be constitutionalist. It's not my fault only one party actually cares about the constitution and the well being of United States citizens.

[Poopymonster]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_...onal_districts

This is my districts. Quite literally the will of the people have been silenced in my state and I fear, under the situation, things might end up escalating into violence before shit gets fixed. Look the at representation before the last districting as that should tell you the proper layout, then look at it after it.

The 2013 election was a 55/45 popular vote in the Democrats favor.
The 2015 with a 50/50 split.

Also have to remember this place likes to try and disenfranchise voters now.


The republicans are trying their best to screw this nation for themselves. And one of many future cases where the newly elected illegitimate justice votes against the will of the people and what is best for this nation.

Honestly, districting needs to be removed from all parties as that genie is out of the bottle now with how powerful computers and how the Republicans showed just how effectively they can screw over voters with it last time around. Now it will be free game on both sides whenever districts are drawn.

It's actually worse than the bolded. They think they are doing what's right. Honest and truly what is right. No matter what facts or evidence is shown to them, they are doing what is right.

[Grapemask]

That's the wrong thinking. The supreme court is suppose to be constitutionalist. It's not my fault only one party actually cares about the constitution and the well being of United States citizens.

It's one party that interprets the constitution in the way needed to maintain a conservative bias, even if it directly contradicts how the founders wished it to be interpreted (as a document that not only should adapt to the times, but that they thought would be altogether rewritten a dozen times by now).

[Gestopft]

Ya hopefully that old bitch dies soon. Fucking radicals like her shouldn't be in the supreme court.

Her Kennedy and the other one I'm forgetting should hopefully all be replaced by Trump it could end up being 7-2.


7 constitutionalist and only 2 radicals. That'd be a great site to see.

Yeah. Billionaires could keep owning politicians for decades to come. It would be fantastic.

[Theodarzna]

Yeah. Billionaires could keep owning politicians for decades to come. It would be fantastic.

Billionaires will own them either way, both parties are bought.

[Gestopft]

Billionaires will own them either way, both parties are bought.

Getting money out of politics is one of the issues that US citizens of both parties are strongly united on. If the voters make it a real election issue and we get, say, a more progressive president that gets campaign finance laws through, a conservatively packed court would be highly likely to strike down said legislation.

[Z-Man]

I would rather not have an "auto-resolve" supreme court. The supreme court needs balance. Badly.

I don't know, I think it would be a legendary popcorn event when the Constitutionists agree that the second amendment only applies to well-regulated state militias and not to private citizens (henceforth known as insurrectionists). A strict interpretation of the Constitution could be really mess up some people's agendas.

[Fugus]

It's actually worse than the bolded. They think they are doing what's right. Honest and truly what is right. No matter what facts or evidence is shown to them, they are doing what is right.

I have met some of their supporters who honestly believe that. But that is because they have a selective bias where they only listen to people who say what they already want to believe and will ignore any facts or professionals who prove them wrong. I can see that from their supporters who use the excuse "I am too busy working to have the time to read up on this" but for the candidates themselves, this is their job so this level of willful ignorance should border on criminal negligence.

And you can tell when you see many of them try to discuss it that they know they are talking out their ass and just trying to twist stuff to elude to lies as best they can.