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

[Milchshake]

In two orders, with all of the conservative Republican-appointed Justices voting in favor and all the liberal Democratic-appointed Justices opposed, the Supreme Court put on hold a lower court order for Texas to redraw congressional and state house district lines to cure voting rights problems. The lower court had found that some of the districts were drawn with a racially discriminatory intent, some were drawn with a racially discriminatory effect, and some were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. Had the lower court order been put into effect, there would have been some new districts (which would have benefitted Democratic and minority voters in Texas) for the 2018 elections. Now, it is unlikely that such a remedy could be in place before 2020, the last elections before the next round of redistricting.

For those who expect Justice Kennedy to be a savior here—or in the Gill partisan gerrymandering case (where he also voted with the Court to stop an interim remedy in Wisconsin pending Supreme Court resolution)—this is one data point against that hope.

[JohnBrown1917]

So the American justice system is as partisan as ever?

[Xeones]

So republicans will still cheat their way to stolen representation.

[Beazy]

So the American justice system is as partisan as ever?

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.

[Milchshake]

So republicans will still cheat their way to stolen representation.

Which dovetails with the agenda of pursuing extremely unpopular legislation like TrumpCare and other tax cuts for the super wealthy. While cutting funds for popular social programs. There's no fear of voter backlash...


Basically all the conservative court nominees comes from the Federal Society, founded 1982. Doesnt seem healthy for a Democracy to select judges based on membership to some elite club.

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[Kalador]

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

[Spectral]

Gerrymandering mostly doesn't matter as much as those that want a scapegoat for election losses believe it doss.

In any case, it's hard to come up with an argument that actually sounds particularly compelling that states shouldn't be allowed to draw their electoral maps mostly as they like. I guess you can lean really hard on disparate impact doctrine, but that's already a notion that's been stretched to its breaking point. As Vox puts it in the article linked above:

As Jonathan Ladd has written, gerrymandering is not a very useful concept in itself. Redistricting is just a process that weighs competing values, including but not limited to compactness, competitiveness, preserving communities of interest, and racial representation. If representing particular communities and geographical areas is important, then the resulting districts will likely include many that aren’t competitive. There’s nothing villainous about this; people are just more likely than they used to be to live near people who vote like they do.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Gerrymandering mostly doesn't matter as much as those that want a scapegoat for election losses believe it doss.

In any case, it's hard to come up with an argument that actually sounds particularly compelling that states shouldn't be allowed to draw their electoral maps mostly as they like. I guess you can lean really hard on disparate impact doctrine, but that's already a notion that's been stretched to its breaking point. As Vox puts it in the article linked above:

The title of that article is that gerrymandering gets blamed for government dysfunction, and indeed... that's exactly what it's about.

But in reality, the problem people have with gerrymandering isn't government dysfunction, it's that in several elections, a certain party has drawn district lines so that they get 2/3 of the seats in a state when they lost the state's popular vote by 10 points. And in said elections, if seats were handed out proportionately to state vote, a completely different party would have been in power.

So yeah, it matters a lot for the party getting fucked in the ass by it.

And it also matters for anyone who realizes that gerrymandering is being used by the unpopular party to gain majority seats when that's pretty much the opposite of democracy.

[Lynarii]

Gerrymandering mostly doesn't matter as much as those that want a scapegoat for election losses believe it doss.

In any case, it's hard to come up with an argument that actually sounds particularly compelling that states shouldn't be allowed to draw their electoral maps mostly as they like. I guess you can lean really hard on disparate impact doctrine, but that's already a notion that's been stretched to its breaking point. As Vox puts it in the article linked above:

Except that entire article ignores the really bad cases of gerrymandering. Redistricting, alone, is not a bad process. It's something that needs to happen as populations change and move. But when you have districts that wind a path through specific roads in order to artificially inflate the value of some voters and diminish the value of others, that's a bad thing. That's the line that shouldn't be crossed. Weighing other values, like the mentioned compactness, communities, what have you are fine. But it should never be an attempt to choose winners and losers before the vote occurs.

[Crissi]

yeah...considering a Texas democratic rep had to switch districts cause the one he had been repping for a while was redrawn to suddenly become republican... I find any excuses for this stuff a bunch of partisan bullshit.

The redrawing basically disenfrachised his base, which was mostly minorities.

[Paranoid Android]

I hate scapegoating but elections have their consequences.

[Sky High]

This has little to do with presidential elections as it does one party taking advantage of a system that has given them hundreds of seats. The whole thing is fucked up but if the Dems had any brains they would be doing what it takes to rig the system back in their favor.

[Spectral]

The title of that article is that gerrymandering gets blamed for government dysfunction, and indeed... that's exactly what it's about.

But in reality, the problem people have with gerrymandering isn't government dysfunction, it's that in several elections, a certain party has drawn district lines so that they get 2/3 of the seats in a state when they lost the state's popular vote by 10 points. And in said elections, if seats were handed out proportionately to state vote, a completely different party would have been in power.

So yeah, it matters a lot for the party getting fucked in the ass by it.

And it also matters for anyone who realizes that gerrymandering is being used by the unpopular party to gain majority seats when that's pretty much the opposite of democracy.

Except that entire article ignores the really bad cases of gerrymandering. Redistricting, alone, is not a bad process. It's something that needs to happen as populations change and move. But when you have districts that wind a path through specific roads in order to artificially inflate the value of some voters and diminish the value of others, that's a bad thing. That's the line that shouldn't be crossed. Weighing other values, like the mentioned compactness, communities, what have you are fine. But it should never be an attempt to choose winners and losers before the vote occurs.

I basically support hands off redistricting (which would make Texas look like this), my core point is simply that this doesn't make anywhere near as much of a difference as people think it does in actual net effect. The increased clustering of voters is a much, much more important effect. Here's an example of one piece of empirical work on the matter:

The analysis reveals that while Republican and Democratic gerrymandering affects the partisan outcomes of Congressional elections in some states, the net effect across the states is modest, creating no more than one new Republican seat in Congress. Therefore, the partisan composition of Congress can mostly be explained by non-partisan districting, suggesting that much of the electoral bias in Congressional elections is caused by factors other than partisan intent in the districting process.

When one thinks about how little one seat's worth, it almost seems more valuable to have the rallying cry that Republicans only win by cheating to try to turn up the vote.

I suppose it is disappointing for Democrats that the fantasy of an emerging Democratic majority established by crowding out whites has just kinda failed to emerge though.

- - - Updated - - -

...if the Dems had any brains they would be doing what it takes to rig the system back in their favor.

Isn't that part of the goal of every version of amnesty that gets proposed?

[Cthulhu 2020]

I suppose it is disappointing for Democrats that the fantasy of an emerging Democratic majority established by crowding out whites has just kinda failed to emerge though.

Yes this is a perfectly natural and normally drawn district, spanning a couple hundred miles across the urban centers of many cities, sweeping up as many Democrats in its path as it can.



Nope, nothing fucky to see here.

(and this isn't even the only or the most extreme example)

- - - Updated - - -

Isn't that part of the goal of every version of amnesty that gets proposed?

Dems importing people to vote for them is about as factual a theory as the illuminati shadow government. Meanwhile, there's real observable evidence that gerrymandering has flipped the house to majority Republican control by a wide margin when Democrats were securing most of the popular vote.

That and you know, congressional districts that run for several hundred miles in length and a couple of miles in width in places. But let's just ignore those for this fantasy theory about Democrats importing brown people en masse to cast fake ballots, shall we? Yes let's entertain that stupidity more.

[Sky High]

Isn't that part of the goal of every version of amnesty that gets proposed?

The fuck should I know, or care?

[Lynarii]

I basically support hands off redistricting (which would make Texas look like this), my core point is simply that this doesn't make anywhere near as much of a difference as people think it does in actual net effect. The increased clustering of voters is a much, much more important effect.

Here's the thing. While increased clustering of voters may have a large impact, it's at least an impact that is inline with a democracy. People are choosing to live around people that share similar values. That is their choice. The issue of gerrymandering is that it is an artificial effect imposed upon people to override their own decisions. That's the antithesis of a democracy.

Any time a system that is supposed to be a healthy democracy allows a scenario where a group gets the majority of power with a minority of votes, it should be looked at with a very fine lens to see if it's truly functioning in a healthy way. Sometimes it is, sometimes the amount of artificial intervention that would be needed to get the results to match the popular vote entirely would be too great to consider reasonable. But it should be on the heads of the people responsible for setting up the system to prove that their actions are healthy and reasonable any time that scenario comes to pass, rather than there being a high bar to prove that malfeasance occurred.

[Cthulhu 2020]

The fuck should I know, or care?

I guess he thinks you're in on Killary Klinton's plot with the Illuminati Shadow government to import Democrat voters.

[Spectral]

Yes this is a perfectly natural and normally drawn district, spanning a couple hundred miles across the urban centers of many cities, sweeping up as many Democrats in its path as it can.

<snip>
Nope, nothing fucky to see here.

(and this isn't even the only or the most extreme example)

Are you deliberately trying to seem like you're incapable of addressing reality on reality's terms? I was clear that I prefer hands off redistricting, but provided evidence that it's accounted for about a single seat total. Fuckery with districts is obviously quite common, but it more or less balances at the national level. I'd prefer doing away with it, but it doesn't matter anywhere near as much as the fantasies of partisans make it seem.

Dems importing people to vote for them is about as factual a theory as the illuminati shadow government. Meanwhile, there's real observable evidence that gerrymandering has flipped the house to majority Republican control by a wide margin when Democrats were securing most of the popular vote.

That and you know, congressional districts that run for several hundred miles in length and a couple of miles in width in places. But let's just ignore those for this fantasy theory about Democrats importing brown people en masse to cast fake ballots, shall we? Yes let's entertain that stupidity more.

Nothing I've written lacks for facts - I linked what looks like a perfectly good study to me on the actual net effect. One can easily observe how joyous many were about the notion that more Latino voters would mean a permanent Democrat majority (see my link above); this isn't a conspiracy, it's something that Democrats are still openly counting on. I don't believe this is the primary motivation for Democrats supporting increased immigration and amnesty policies, but I'm fairly sure it doesn't hurt.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Nothing I've written lacks for facts - I linked what looks like a perfectly good study to me on the actual net effect. One can easily observe how joyous many were about the notion that more Latino voters would mean a permanent Democrat majority (see my link above); this isn't a conspiracy, it's something that Democrats are still openly counting on. I don't believe this is the primary motivation for Democrats supporting increased immigration and amnesty policies, but I'm fairly sure it doesn't hurt.

The loosely factual conspiracies about Dems counting on "crowding out" rely more on birth rates than amnesty. And even that theory is blown out of the water when you consider that Republicans want to make it hard as fuck for poor people to get abortions and even simple cheap/free contraception. Meanwhile Democrats push for more women's bodily rights and access to contraception...

Which I'm sure you know, without me having to link a study, lowers birth rates among the destitutely poor a considerable amount. Easy access to abortion and contraception that is. If the Democrat party as a whole wanted to win by crowding out whites, all they'd have to do is pursue good old fashioned theocratic sex and body policing along with Republicans. Then we can watch the poor black and latino populations explode and vote Democrat.

But that isn't happening, so I generally throw that theory into the garbage every time someone brings it up, because by and large, if Dems were ACTUALLY trying to crowd out whites, there'd be a whole fuckton of things they're doing now that they wouldn't be doing, and there'd be things they aren't doing that they would be doing.

And of course Amnesty won't do jack shit, as most of THOSE immigrants end up in states that are as blue as the background of your avatar.

[Lynarii]

Are you deliberately trying to seem like you're incapable of addressing reality on reality's terms? I was clear that I prefer hands off redistricting, but provided evidence that it's accounted for about a single seat total. Fuckery with districts is obviously quite common, but it more or less balances at the national level. I'd prefer doing away with it, but it doesn't matter anywhere near as much as the fantasies of partisans make it seem.

Nothing I've written lacks for facts - I linked what looks like a perfectly good study to me on the actual net effect. One can easily observe how joyous many were about the notion that more Latino voters would mean a permanent Democrat majority (see my link above); this isn't a conspiracy, it's something that Democrats are still openly counting on. I don't believe this is the primary motivation for Democrats supporting increased immigration and amnesty policies, but I'm fairly sure it doesn't hurt.

The only thing that would make more Latino voters equate to a permanent Democrat majority is the stupidity of the GOP. Latinos are not a group of super-liberals. On average, they're not too far off from whites, tending to be a little more liberal in some areas, a little more conservative in others, and even those differences are fairly small once you normalize for age (the Latino demographic has a younger average age). It's kinda the GOP's own fault that they struggle to convince the Latinos who are conservative and whose viewpoints more naturally fall in line with the GOP to actually vote for them.