Independent redistricting moves the debate into the bureaucratic sphere, but it doesn't and can't solve the inherently political nature of redistricting.

There's also a trade-off between most seats won and how secure those seats are, parties pursue different strategies in different states at different times to try and maximize political control over the long-term.

Looking at 538's map, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of difference between egregious Democrat and Republican maps.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/did-redistricting-commissions-live-up-to-their-promise/amp/

This post was edited by bogie160 on Feb 16 2022 12:31pm

Excuse me, but that's a dumb argument. A seat in the House is a seat in the House, no matter if its coming from a safe blue/red state or a swing state.



That's a fair argument. I would still caution that we have to take the natural political geography of a state into account when assessing these maps. Considering how badly Democrats are self-packed into NYC and how much of a geographic bottleneck Westchester county is, the natural efficiency gap of NY should actually lean R. Dito for states like Illinois and North Carolina. If the natural efficiency gap of both NY and NC were, say, R+5, then NY's D+8.4 map and NC's R+20.1 map wouldn't be far apart from one another in their degree of gerrymandering.

Essentially, just like we have to measure electoral performance of a party in a seat or state by the margin relative to the lean of the seat/state, we also have to assess these maps relative to the political geography of the state.




Funnily enough, the VRA and the requirement to draw black majority districts is the basis for Republican gerrymandering in much of the South. When they cram as many minority voters as possible into a single D+infinity district, they can always point to the VRA.


Empty words, the true hope of course is to have 2 Democratic seats. NM's new map has undeniably traded an increased the risk of losing Hispanic representation for an increased opportunity at another seat for Dems. This might backfire in 2022 though if it turns into a proper wave election.


Another option would be to simply have a lot more seats. Look at the UK, where the House of Commons has 650 seats for a population of 65m. With so many seats, gerrymandering becomes a lot more difficult. And afaik, many political scholars in the U.S. have long argued that the population per House seat has become far too high to keep up intimate representation.




I think communities of interest should be the #1 factor in redistricting. And yes, an indepdent commission which draws the entire US House map based on COI would hurt the GOP in a lot of places because they could no longer combine deep-red rural areas with swingy suburban areas to create medium-red districts which are safe yet don't waste a lot of votes. On the flip side, Democratic bacon-stripping in NY/Illinois would also become impossible.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 16 2022 01:26pm

That's not true at all. Look at the most recent cycles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections
In 2020, Democrats narrowly won the House popular vote, by 3.1%. Once we exclude uncontested seats, of which there typically exist more blue than red ones, then Democrats won the House popular vote for contested seats by a margin of something like 2%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections
In 2016, Republicans outright won the House popular vote - btw during a cycle in which their presidential candidate at the top of the ticket underperformed and lost the popular vote.

Simply put, in the three most recent presidential years, the House popular vote was always very close and competitive. And as always, we have to keep political geography into account. Democrats have a stronger tendency for self-packing than Republicans, so even impartially drawn maps would, on average, favor Republicans by a bit.



Gerrymandering favored Republicans considerably following the 2010 redistricting cycle, yes. Studies have confirmed that and I have already admitted to this fact. Historically, however, it were Democrats who gerrymandered more excessively than Republicans. And in the current redistricting cycle, both parties are trading blows quite evenly.




Oh look how noble the Democrats are for favoring proportional representation. This is conveniently ignoring the fact that the current numbers edge of Democrats is fueled by decades of sky-high illegal immigration (ofc championed by Democrats) which produced millions of US-born children and eligible voters. Like I've mentioned multiple times in these debates: Mitt Romney in 2012 and Bush Sr. in 1988 had almost exactly the same margins among whites and blacks, but while this was good enough for Bush to win in a landslide, Romney was defeated convincingly based on the same margins. Democrats are getting stronger from cycle to cycle without even having to convince any pre-existing voters.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 16 2022 01:48pm

lol, so basically your "argument" here is that the partisan rigging of districts in favour of republicans is only fair because their policies and rhetoric don't appeal to immigrants. i mean, i know that's one of the rationales, but usually republicans are a bit more subtle about it - not that it even makes any sense to begin with as it is NOT the purpose of districting to draw the election map in a way that keeps both parties relevant through demographic shifts, lol.

You were making a moral argument of sorts that the US election system is outdated and "undemocratic" and that proportional representation is the only way to go. To which I replied that there is nothing moral or "fair" about one side having a numbers advantage as a result of decades of violations of the law going unpunished.



But nice to see you drop your talk about the GOP "becoming irrelevant over night" after I pointed out that they were in fact competitive in the House popular vote in all recent presidential cycles.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 16 2022 02:19pm

you're imagining things, the republican party becoming basically irrelevant over night if all districts were drawn fairly is simply a FACT.
proportional representation would completely fuck them. trump lost both his elections by MILLIONS of votes. i just focused on you slipping up and saying the quiet part out loud, lol.
calling immigration "a violation of law" doesn't change that, especially since it's not even remotely true. actual violations of law are republican voter disenfranchisement efforts...

This post was edited by fender on Feb 16 2022 02:30pm

can you define what a fair district meta in america would look like? broad strokes.

borders dividing the area in question into roughly equal parts (population wise), drawn by independent commissions without partisan goals in mind, respecting geographic features and communities of interest, ideally compact, facilitating voting access and fair representation across social, cultural, and racial groups.

what's the point of this exercise? you know what i'm talking about in essence. trying to 'catch' me forgetting / not mentioning an important aspect - or picking a single point and suggesting that's what heavily gerrymandered states actually do, doesn't magically turn this argument around, lol. sounds like a very camboy-esque approach to this discussion tbh.

This post was edited by fender on Feb 16 2022 03:15pm

would fairness include the goal of districts matching the GOP vs DNC voting tendencies of the state?

like if you're in a state that has 80% GOP to 20% DNC voters, and 10 congress seats, should the independent council try to draw districts that will return 8 GOP and 2 DNC congress reps?

when i personally hear fair i think of it in terms of overall population representation, which works fine in some states, but in other states with 90% of the population in a few cities that can be tough.

i think personally the most fair system would be a GOP vs DNC vote, then a # of seats is assigned to both sides, then people run for those party seats, and the original voters vote only on the party they voted for at the beginning. i dont think it would happen, but that seems more fair to me than district at all.

there are many different paths you could take, each and every one of them superior to the current "whoever is in charge tries to creatively rig the map in a way to disenfranchise as many people from the other side as possible" bullshit - and each of them would heavily favour democrats overall, which is my whole point here, debunking blackz' braindead false equivalence...