Both are wrong. We need nonpartisan redistricting commissions.

And who chooses the members of these nonpartisan commissions? The reality is that these commissions end up being full of partisan hacks who keep tipping the scales in favor of their team, even if not as egregiously as the gerrymanders drawn by the legislatures in states like Illinois or now in Texas.

Btw, this is the map which the Democratic state legislature of North Carolina drew up during the 1990s:



Aside from looking like a tissue sample from a late stage cancer patient, note how the purple and the light green, as well as the orange and the brown seat, intersect each other at some sort of "singularity point".




I'm just posting this to show that egregious gerrymanders are absolutely nothing new in American politics. What happened in Illinois, New York, Maryland or Nevada in 2022, or what's happening in Texas now, is neither new nor actually a "norm-shattering escalation".

Multiple states have varying rules regarding this. It’s such a cop out to argue another system may not be perfect so gimme the pure ass system that’s currently in place in most states so we can continue to gerrymander as we see fit.

This post was edited by TeenyUncle8 on Aug 21 2025 05:12am

Again: the parties will just try to game the commissions as much as they possibly can. The end result will still be partisan gerrymanders, just with a veneer or pretense of legitimacy and bipartisanship. Look no further than California's 43-9 map which was drawn by an "independent commission".

In the 2024 House elections, Republicans got 39.2% of the vote in California, but only 17.3% of the seats. For comparison: Democrats got 40.4% of the votes in Texas and netted 34.2% of the seats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections_in_California
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections_in_Texas


But somehow Texas getting more aggressive now isn't seen as drawing even, no, it's seen as an aggressive partisan power grab. Meanwhile, the independent commission setup which gave California a 39% vs 17% disparity is seen as the model other states should follow.

There are multiple states where independent commissions have worked well. Arizona, Montana, Michigan, and Colorado for example are states where the commission results have generally been considered pretty positive. Again there are different rules governing these states. We don’t have to follow California’s standards.

Montana was a one-seat state until recently, and even with 2 seats, it's a deep and homogeneously red state, there isn't a lot to gerrymander.
Arizona and Michigan are purple battleground states in which state government is divided more often than not, so that it's unlikely that one side can fully gain the upper hand in the commission.

Montana skews 20 points republican. In a 2-seat state it would be an incredibly democratic gerrymander to have a guaranteed split. You have one incredibly safe red district (expected) and one pink district that could be competitive in certain situations. From a partisan standpoint that’s pretty fair for that state. Both parties were also relatively content with where the maps ended up. When have both parties agreed on anything?

This post was edited by TeenyUncle8 on Aug 21 2025 07:17am

Virtually any, yes.

Many such cases! But if centrists are unwilling to violate taboos erected by the left due to fear of retribution, what role do you see them playing in politics exactly, or even the broader culture as a whole? Following the 2024 election the few Democrats who complained about trans-identifying men playing in women's sports were condemned by members of their own party. Back during the plandemic I recall very little push back from centrists when the CDC, in the name of social justice, recommended guidelines that focused on rationing medicine towards historically marginalized groups despite the fact that this would directly result in more deaths - something which they acknowledged, accepted, and proposed anyway since the majority of the people who would succumb to the illness were white.

If i remember correctly you're Canadian right? I'd also love to hear your thoughts on that big controversy over there about the “unmarked graves” of Indigenous children because I've read some rather hilarious stuff about the whole ordeal.