Delaney Introduces Bill to End Gerrymandering, Reform Elections
delaney.house.gov
delaney.house.gov
The more cynical I become, the more I think the party in power doesn't actually want to solve any problems, they only want to focus on wedge issues to ensure they can use {rage, fear, some other emotion} to keep their party constituents engaged enough to vote but not enough to hold their feet to the fire on getting things done. Incumbents in Congress still have 95%+ re-election rates and in 2010 when those rates dipped, Congress was remarkably less productive than usual.
The implication here is that the Democrats don't gerrymander. This is patently false. The Democrats are just pissed that the Republicans did a massively better job at it in the past decade.
In many ways, it was an arms race, and the Democrats chose not to focus on small and local districts and elections (instead, worrying about the "big picture"). As it turns out, politics trickles up, and small wins for Republicans eventually turned into big wins. To see a perfect exemplar of this, just look at Jon Ossoff's crushing loss last week.
There's an excellent NPR podcast about this very issue I listened to a few years ago.
That's really not true in the political system of the US, even without partisan gerrymandering. Given that the entire point of partisan gerrymandering is to enlarge the distance between popular vote and gained seats, I'm not sure what you're trying to say?
> Whoever is in power won't change it because it got them elected so why would they risk doing something that might take them out of power?
You can win the electoral college / house / senate / whatever, despite being disadvantaged via gerrymandering (arguably e.g. the case for Obama in 2012). So that's not generally true.
Of course you can always still overcome gerrymandering with enough political momentum. Gerrymandering currently tips the scales slightly in the direction of one party or another. Fixing gerrymandering would level the playing field (in theory).
The only red states to also do this are Arizona and Idaho.
So, before we succumb to knee-jerk reactions that continue the political dysfunction, can we all just put our energy and minds toward solutions? Revenge politics (they did it, so we will to! get them back!) hurts.
> The implication here is that the Democrats don't gerrymander. This is patently false.
I don't think that's really the implication. At the moment it is pretty clear that the GOP currently overall benefits more from gerrymandering [1]. And they are in power, despite having lost the popular vote [2]. The GOP has control over the WH and both chambers, it'd therefore be political suicide to change the system now in a way that'd hurt them.
> The Democrats are just pissed that the Republicans did a massively better job at it in the past decade.
They've obviously also gerrymandered, I fail to see what that has to do with OPs point? Are you really arguing that to be able to be against the concept of gerrymandering, you've to give up any chance of ever actually being able to do anything about it?
[1]: https://www.apnews.com/fa6478e10cda4e9cbd75380e705bd380 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
Not really. I'm arguing that most (in all honesty, probably all) gerrymandering complaints by Democrats are sour grapes because they got outplayed. In fact, Delaney himself was "first elected in a gerrymandered district created specifically for him," according to @mobilefriendly's linked sources.
Gerrymandering is generally not that big of a deal and cracking down on it doesn't solve much, as populations are naturally segmented[1]. I will say that sometimes, gerrymandering is racially- or religiously-motivated (SCOTUS heard a case on this a few months ago IIRC), so it can be very problematic in a few edge cases.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/ca...
Please provide more evidence for this claim. Just because it's true in CA doesn't necessarily mean it's true for the rest of the country.
I fail to see how that's an argument for anything. Unless maybe, if you want to argue that Delaney is voting against his personal interest.
> Gerrymandering is generally not that big of a deal and cracking down on it doesn't solve much, as populations are naturally segmented[1]. > [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/ca....
That primarily seems to be an argument for it not being that a huge issue in CA. Or maybe that the mechanisms for redistricting weren't great in CA.
Given that a significant numbers of states have houses with significantly different party percentages than the popular vote suggests, this is a hard to understand argument.
Unless I'm missing something very important, Ossoff was competing for a district that hadn't gone to a Republican by less than 20 points in the entire history of the district (it was redistricted sometime around ~2000).
Ossoff --- who is not a great candidate! --- took one of the most solidly Republican suburban districts in the country and turned it into a real horse race. What am I supposed to learn from that about Democratic strategic weakness?
For what it's worth, Handel was a pretty terrible candidate too. Just goes to show how weak the Democratic strategists are. Obama won because he was an excellent candidate. Here's a novel idea for Democrats: get more awesome people to run for office.
[1] http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2017/06/19/the-race-for-georgia...
It's a difficult thing to manage. As a result of a Supreme Court ruling in regards to civil rights the states are not allowed to spread minority votes across district lines since it was determined that that doesn't give them a strong enough voice and doesn't allow them a united voice as well as the advancement of minority politicians in Congress.
States largely complied. But, as time has gone on people often believe that giving minorities their own districts actually hurts their political power because states put them all in their district, they get one politician and then the rest of the districts aren't a melting pot. So now there is a push to try to prevent states from districting based on racial lines, but the Supreme Court has already required them to do this. So it's a very fine balancing act the states have to go through, and in many cases they exploit the Supreme Court requirements/ruling to their political advantage.
And if you removed the racial districting you might actually lose minority representation in Congress in terms of number of minority Congressmen, which people don't want. So gerrymandering is this strange mix of affirmative action for Congress and political gamesmanship to protect a party's numbers in Congress.
http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/cct-arc-acca0c6c-9aa4-5159...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Delaney_(Maryland_politic...
I can respect that.
I'm not saying the system doesn't need to be reformed. It does. However, trusting people who say things that sound good, without evidence, is just following more politicians.
That didn't stop me from using tens of thousands from a lottery-funded state scholarship.
I favor sales tax over income tax, but I still pay income tax. That's just the way the world works. I play by the laws but endevour to improve them.
It's a good thing because if some countries went down a political path, it would be very adverse to our self interests and the interests of the world at large (Iran 1979, Cuba 1959, Germany 1939, etc).
Also, "the right thing to do," is a very relative term.
But does that mean it was wrong of me to create this documentary? Not necessarily. If people watch my film and take action to reduce worldwide emissions, it's likely to cancel out the carbon cost of making the film in the first place.
This is absurd in any practical sense, but it's being used to dismiss all kinds of people's arguments simply because they have to actually live in the real world, rather than some ideological fantasy land.
You should read some right winger stuff now and again. It's another world.
(I could give plenty of instances of liberal hypocrisy too, but that isn't the subject at hand.)
I think a more accurate model is that people pick their tribe emotionally, and then "their guy" can do no wrong while "the other guy" is the devil incarnate. All manners of hypocrisy are forgiven in the process.
I suspect for our only two viable political parties, that's a feature, not a bug.
Rhetoric such as the use of logical fallacies like tu quoque is most effective on people who haven't picked a tribe yet. Dyed-in-the-wool supporters have the job of repeating the fallacies aimed at the other guy. It doesn't matter if they believe them or not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_A._Arthur#Civil_servic...
If I remember correctly, didn't someone finally come up with an algorithm which evenly divides populations such that average distance from the average location of the district residents is minimized? A law which mandated use of that or a similar algorithm for district boundaries would actually help. Just moving the problem into committee obfuscates the problem.
Independent committees have historically been pretty effective anti-partisan solutions. One prominent example being the CBO, which both parties like to stand up for while in the opposition, and disparage while in power.
When districts are not competitive (and especially when unlimited secret campaign donations are allowed), the primary campaigns end up driving candidates toward radical positions, because the primary is the only competitive stage of the process.
What we’ve seen with the GOP is a party that has moved sharply away from mainstream opinion, subjects all of its officeholders to strict purity tests, and is largely controlled by religious hard-liners and big donors (oil, defense, pharma, banks, telecoms, etc.), and has become increasingly anti-intellectual and overtly bigoted in the past few decades.
I had a colleague (mathematician) who suggested presenting district-ers with a dramatically distorted map of the region to be districted in which neighbourhoods were unrecognisable, and all that could be seen was population density. One could gerrymander such a map all one pleased, but with (presumably) no better than random chance of thereby accruing a benefit, and random risk of suffering a detriment.
There are undoubtedly other factors to consider than proximity and party affiliation. The key takeaway is that districting is an opinionated act, algorithm or not. If we're going to "solve" gerrymandering, we need to figure out what "successful" districts look like first.
* SOPA - don't pass the bill.
* Health care - spend more, if necessary increase the deficit and we'll figure out the problem later through increased taxes or reduced spending elsewhere.
With electoral reform, it's hard to know what the right thing to do is. Everyone wants to stop gerrymandering but what's the alternative? An algorithm based on population and population density? That has its own set of issues. Heck, it's not straightforward even figuring out if a particular district has been gerrymandered or not. And in some cases, such gerrymandering is considered desirable - such as when it creates district where minorities are the majority.
When the problem is hard to define, hard to explain tangibly, hard to provide solutions for, it's no wonder that people don't get motivated to solve it.
Approval voting or ranking are almost universally agreed to be better than what we have (in most places--some places do have that). That alone would make a huge change.
Independent districting commissions would be a big step forward.
Election day holidays would help.
Actually, a lot of the stuff in this proposed bill would help.
You're right that there's open questions out there, but it's not like there aren't solutions that are obvious first steps.
Re: healthcare, I think that's probably even more complicated than electoral reform. For example, missing from your example are cost-cutting measures, like requiring more transparency in pricing and charging, and deregulating certain things to increase competition.
I don't think enough people are exercised about this issue for it to have much chance of going anywhere any time soon.
Better than districting by committee: multi-member districts.
Election Day holiday: good, but throw in automatic voter registration.
Sadly, I also have very little hope that this will go anywhere.
http://www.fairdistrictspa.com/updates/efficiency-gap-votes-...
The only restrictions on the states is that they may not do obviously unconstitutional stuff when drawing districts like attempting to disenfranchise a race.
Corrections welcome.
Please participate in the discussion by checking on the relevant sources you're citing.
From the US Constitution:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but /the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations/, except as to the Places of chusing Senators
The bill is legal by this provision.
I'm very sure it is not. Article 1, Section 4.
> The topic of "how apportionment is performed" is a different line.
That's not how the law is read (X "topic" is governed by Y statute solely). One section does not provide the guidelines for apportionment, alone. Preceding sections generally override following sections when in doubt, unless explicitly overridden in following sections.
Reapportionment has nothing to do with elections, but the result of the elections as it pertains to the composition of Congress in relation to population. There is nothing in regard to this to require a change to the constitution, as an amendment.
People act like the Constitution we have came down from the heavens in a beam of light. But it was written by a bunch of guys who had never lived in a real democracy before. In fact it was written at a time when there pretty much hadn't been ANY democracies in the whole world for two thousand years. We've had two hundred years of experience and hundreds of iterations of the concept since then, so we have a much better idea of what will work and what won't.
It bothers me so much the passion for the Constitution people have. Yet, there is almost universal distain for Congress and the entire political establishment. Washington is entirely a function of the rules that are set by the Constitution. Electing different people isn't going to change anything. Ending Gerrymandering (if possible while using districts) would help, but it doesn't go far enough. You would still have a two party system. You would still be forced to choose between the lesser of two evils every time you go to the polls. And a large chunk of the country would always feel that they don't have someone in government representing them.
If we want people engaged in government, and to have a government engaged in them, then we need proportional representation in one form or another. Anything else is just a bandaid.
Uh you can achieve that via amendments. And just who is going to write this new Constitution?
> Washington is entirely a function of the rules that are set by the Constitution.
And all of the Supreme Court precedents that have bent the hell out of the document such that it's hardly the same document that it was 200 years ago.
States could, if they wanted to, implement proportional representation themselves without having to amend the Constitution. It obviously wouldn't mean that the entirety of Congress is proportional, but it'd be a start.
Any checks passed before the convention are null and void when it starts. The checks find force in the constitution being nullified by the convention. Constitutional conventions are temporary autocracies. Established when needed, but never to be lightly considered.
Too bad we need 3/4 states to nullify the current constitution before we can establish a new one via another constitutional convention.
How is starting from scratch preferable to passing 3 or 4 amendments in the current system to address the largest issues we've struggled to fix over the decades?
If you look at the list of lies told by trump, you'll find that they each need amendments to fix, not just laws passed, since it laws are only as good as a president that enforces them.
the entire structure of government can change. There isn't an oversight branch that enforces checks and balances, for example.
A parliamentary system is more useful.
Nationalism needs to be curtailed.
Services need to be redefined for the modern era.
And who watches these watchmen?
They would be separate battles, sure, but I think 3 or 4 amendments would solve a majority of the underlying structural problems we face.
A few well-chosen amendments would break our current congressional gridlock, allowing laws to be passed to further address systemic problems but don't themselves require constitutional amendments.
1. voting rights & auditability
2. gerrymandering / district drawing
3. campaign finance
Just these 3 changes alone would radically shift the accountability and representation of politicians in federal government. It would be transformative in terms of policy shifts.
>If you look at the list of lies told by trump, you'll find that they each need amendments to fix, not just laws passed, since it laws are only as good as a president that enforces them.
This is not true. Trump is only 'protected' from Impeachment because the house is not representative of the nation. This is caused by (1) gerrymandering districts and (2) setting an artificial 435 maximum on the number of house representatives. Fixing (2) doesn't even require an amendment, technically, and would shift the electoral college such that Trump would not have won in the first place.
>A parliamentary system is more useful.
It would be interesting for a state to actually adopt a parliamentary system.
>There isn't an oversight branch that enforces checks and balances, for example.
That is the Press. There certainly could be more explicit legal protections to formalize the role journalists play in investigating corruption and whistleblowers.
There are certainly parts of the Constitution that are woefully out-of-date, but it's not really true that it was written in a vacuum, nor that the United States was the first democracy for two thousand years.
This decision has been affirmed more than once, and it makes sense.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/supreme-court-rules...
In such a system private groups would still be free to endorse a particular candidate.
Won't happen, but the problem isn't that primaries are closed, it's that they impact the names that end up on the ballot.
Isn't the issue more around Article 1 enumerated powers?
AFAICT, it's a fairly straightforward application of Congress plenary power to regulate House elections (Art. I, Sec. 4, para. 1.)
Also, the unintended consequence of such an electoral system is that it encourages extreme views, rather than moving towards the centre. Of course gerrymandered districts have the same effect, but centrism is worth striving for, I think. It ensures that a majority of people have a candidate who isn't far from their own views. You can see how proportional representation would help parties like the UKIP do far better than they otherwise would have, which is not necessarily in the best interests of the nation.
In the long run, what's in the best interests of the nation is for the government to fairly represent as much of the electorate as possible, not a fictional "middle ground."
That's not quite true. The seats are distributed by party votes, but if a party wins more local races than it would get seats from the party votes, the size of parliament is scaled up, preserving the ratios until the party has seats for all their local winners. (Which is why the current Bundestag has 631 seats, despite the "base size" being indeed 598, twice the number of districts. And yes, that growth could go pretty high if things go badly, which is why I wouldn't be surprised if the algorithm was changed again). There is also a distribution between states, which makes the entire thing even more complicated.
An older model did not scale up with preserved ratios, but just added the "overhang" of local winners on top, which could cause bad effects where votes had negative value. But the base number of seats also was distributed according to the ratio of the second votes.
Who gets the seats for a party from that state prefers the local winners, and then follows the local candidate list.
Yes. On a federal level everyone has two votes, the first is for a candidate, the second is for a party. The direct vote is for roughly equal sized districts, the second for a party. Normally half of the seats are allocated by first, half by second vote. If the directly elected seats yield a significantly enough party-line difference across a state (Germany is federally organized), additional indirectly elected seats are added to make up for the difference.
In the mixed systems like the German (well, most Western democracies) your vote helped elect someone from a party you choose.. even if it's not the person you personally voted for.
That doesn't solve the issue that there's different directions within a party, and that the choice within a party has significant influence. In the US there's a lot of daylight between e.g. Susan Collins, Rand Paul, and Tom Cotton, all republicans, and they're not along a one dimensional axis. Whether you have 52 Collinses or 52 Cottons, will yield drastically different policies.
> That's roughly how it works in Germany. Poof -- suddenly there is no such thing as gerrymandering.
(context for non-germans) In Germany, the issue I raise is partially addressed by also by having one party vote and one direct vote for an individual. And the difference between directly elected members, and the popular vote is then made up by creating new seats, allocating seats from a ordered list provided by each party. EDIT: To clarify, normally 50% is directly elected, 50% by share. If and only if there's a party share difference between directly elected and indirectly elected seats, then new seats are created to make up for the difference.
But the problem with such a system is that the Party has a lot of directional power, by establishing the order on that list...
On the other hand, IMO this sort of story crosses the threshold into general politics, which in the long term degrades HN and hence doesn't really belong here.
I'm flabbergasted that the SC was 9-0 in their decision. I guess I just don't understand. I thought the lower courts had applied the ban unanimously and it was made in accordance with the law. Is there a way to challenge yesterday's decision further?
However, there is no incentive for Wyoming and ND and Alaska and ... to fix this.
No Taxation Without Representation? Sure, but that doesn't mean the representation has to be fair.
So with Wyoming's 0.1% population of the US then and its 0.17% now, is that a thinkable process or is it gerrymandering?
Is this really debatable? Are we actually arguing about something that can be settled by referencing a dictionary?
The House is supposed to be the proportional one.
We have house that is proportional representation, another that is fixed representation - theoretically the Senate is supposed to represent the interests of each state (which is why they used to be appointed by the Governor of that state) and the House is supposed to represent the people of the nation. Is this a bad idea?
It is a bad idea if you reject federalism (which grandparent might?). If instead of a union we are a mostly homogeneous country with a single identity, a single logical state -- then perhaps it doesn't make sense for the States to exist as independently as they do today.
But the needs of a state as a whole may be significantly different than the needs of one congressional district within the state. Consider that historically the Senate has been a voice of moderation to an often much more radical house.
It's not so much a bad idea as it is completely inaccurate.
At 321.4 million / 435 = 738850. Wyoming wouldn't even get a House member. Vermont wouldn't either.
This is your original intent. This is your design.
"The U.S. Constitution called for at least one Representative per state and that no more than one for every 30,000 persons." [1]
The Appointment Act of 1911 and subsequent Permanent Appointment Act of 1929 capped the total number of House congressional representatives at 435 [2], so the degree of seperation between an individual elector and their representative in any given congressional district continues to grow as population increases. This also has an effect on the Electoral College, as it's membership numbers are based on the number of congress persons. Furthermore, I will assume this limit, combined with a growing population will increase the chances of a Presidential Candidate winning election without also winning the national popular vote, as we have seen on multiple occasions in recent decades.
[1] http://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1901-1950/The....
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929
Remember, the same people who wrote the Second Amendment wrote this. In any case, that was superseded post Civil War by Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment. That allows for the Reapportionment of 1929. It would seem that that would override the 1 House member minimum but it doesn't because, because nothing.
I think the system is outdated today. Of course, hell will freeze over before it is reformed in a fair way.
Because the Republicans at the time wanted 2 states that would vote Republican.
> If they were merged, and became just Dakota, would anyone notice?
Yes, as someone from North Dakota, you're being rather stupendously ignorant of the midwest and the differences between North and South Dakota.
> Why should they get double representation in the Senate vs. California?
Because the Senate is about state representation. The house is for proportional representation. This is basic civics 101 you learn in High School.
> If anything, having North and South California makes more sense.
You're not the first to propose it, feel free to join these people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_st...
You haven't given any substantial reason for why North/South Dakota makes sense, while North/South California doesn't, except that "Republicans... wanted 2 states that would vote Republican", which obviously is not a legit reason. If it were, we would split North Dakota into 100 Dakota's so that it would give 200 Republican votes in the senate.
Also:
> Yes, as someone from North Dakota, you're being rather stupendously ignorant of the midwest and the differences between North and South Dakota.
And North and South California are massively different, yet lo-and-behold they are the same state. Even more different is central vs. costal California.
Umm, no, thats the accepted reason why the territory was split in two instead of becoming a state outright.
From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Territory because apparently one must link history or be called a troll.
> Admission of new western states was a party political battleground with each party looking at how the proposed new states were likely to vote. At the beginning of 1888, the Democrats under president Grover Cleveland proposed that the four territories of Montana, New Mexico, Dakota and Washington should be admitted together. The first two were expected to vote Democratic and the latter two were expected to vote Republican so this was seen as a compromise acceptable to both parties. However, the Republicans won majorities in Congress and the Senate later that year. To head off the possibility that Congress might only admit Republican territories to statehood, the Democrats agreed to a less favorable deal in which Dakota was divided in two and New Mexico was left out altogether. Cleveland signed it into law on February 22, 1889 and the territories could become states in nine months time after that. However, incoming Republican president Benjamin Harrison had a problem with South Dakota; most of the territory was Sioux reservation land and the state would not be viable unless much of this land became available to settlers
> And North and South California are massively different, yet lo-and-behold they are the same state.
Yet they're the same state today, and North and South Dakota are not. Are you proposing we merge these lesser states together and allow California to be the one state to have separations due primarily to population? Just so that it is more "fair" for Californian Senate inputs? The reason for the senate being 2 per state was to allow each state equal voting ability amongst states so that populated states couldn't easily override less populated states.
You're ignoring my overall point. The concept of "states" doesn't make sense in the way it did when the country was formed. The 13 colonies were actually separate states, with separate governments and economies that agreed to join together to form a single state/country.
However, as you pointed out, the process of creating states became political. An example (as you showed) North/South Dakota were split for political reasons, to achieve a certain voting outcome. The criteria being used to separate them is a political one, not something based on separate economic structures, or separate governments, or some other notion of what a "state" is.
This shows that the notion of a "state" has changed since the late 1700's. Some current "states" are the result of political calculations, where as the original 13 states were separate entities in some other sense.
> Are you proposing we merge these lesser states together and allow California to be the one state to have separations due primarily to population?
I'm saying the entire concept of a "Senate" with 2 reps for each "state" doesn't make sense today. It's an outdated concept from a different reality.
The Senate does have other useful properties, of course, but the current division of states doesn't make sense.
Why should they get double representation in the Senate vs. California?
The answer is that the US is not a Democracy, and the Senate was created to limit the short term vacillations of the people.
When you think of representation in the House, think of representation of the States. The United States of America not the United People of America.
That's incorrect just looking at the definition of the word Democracy. Don't look at Google's definition of the word. Google almost always gets their definitions imprecise or incorrect. Look in a dictionary, either online or one that you have.
You may also want to consider that you posted your comment on a page about gerrymandered elections.
> 1. A system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
> 1.1 A state governed under a system of democracy
> 1.2 Control of an organization or group by the majority of its members
> 1.3 The practice or principles of social equality
You are mistakenly assuming that the only form or meaning of democracy is direct democracy (1.2 above). That is not the case.
Any polity where a country is at least de jure considered a public matter can call itself a republic.
Even the UK has 650 members in their lower house.
Being able to look at a line item list of how your rep spent your Federal taxes might bring some much needed fiscal responsibility to government spending.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/09/how-a...
[0] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/supreme-court-no...
Unsurprisingly their jurisprudence on this is a shitshow as they try to square this circle while pretending like it is some sort of neutral antidiscrimination provision while also attempting to secure a minimum threshold of black political power.