1965
The figures only make sense in “first past the post” (or “winner takes it all”) systems.
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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why not count each person instead to avoid the issue entirely
Well, each vote is counted. Gerrymandering affects (federal level in the US) only the House of Representatives, and districts are drawn (ideally) proportional to population. How those lines are drawn are not and cannot be objective; Gerrymandering is when that subjectivity allows for bias.
The objection is that lines are not legitimate. Lines and districts do not represent voters, they represent politicians and that is not democratic.
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Ah yes, because there are only two parties.
This is entirely an emergent property of FPTP voting. Just do PPV or something, smh my head.
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Gerrymandering is the reason I get upset when people assume all texans/southerners are hateful hicks. Lived there for years and the right/left split is pretty balanced, even leaning left on many big issues, in most of the area I've frequented. It's just that poorer areas are rigged to fail and the powers that be have been running dirty campaigns for longer than many of us have been alive.
Just this last cycle, an old friend in the area received two different mail ads for (iirc) Ted "Zodiac" Cruz. One of them was in english and the other spanish. The english one was, for the most part, "honest" (as much as these types can be called honest, I mean) about his platform, while the spanish one explicitly lied in a way that made him seem like he was trying to benefit the immigrant community. Extremely fucked up and not too uncommon, according to a few inter-generational sources. That plus how jurisdictions are divided has made it extremely difficult for the left to get any major wins for the last handful of decades+. The south is even less ruled by the people than the rest of the US and the many decent people just trying their best to survive out there get shit on for what their oppressors choose all the time.
Sorry for the rant and tbc, there are also tons of shitheads out there too. Its just not like what many outsiders assume it is, and everything about the situation pisses me off something rancid.
Is there even a way to mathematically divide up land area into completely fair districts? I heard somewhere that it wasn't possible.
there are generally a couple (probably more but modern democracies afaik have settled on 2) ways of dividing up government: representative (you as a person living in an area elect someone to represent you) and proportional (you as a citizen of the country elect a party to represent your preferences)
rather than dividing land area (representative aka districts) to elect individuals, there are voting systems that take proportionality into account… parties put forward candidates based on their proportional vote (ie the party leader would get in first, and then they have a list of candidates who get chosen based on their % of the vote)… they don’t represent a district/area, but the party… so the idea is that if a minority party gets 10% of the vote, they should have 10% of the representation - districts be damned… philosophy is more important than land… this leads to a whole lot of minor parties having to form a coalition government
i live in australia, and we don’t have proportional representation (we have a party… kind… called the coalition but that’s… different… it’s complex… ignore it… afaik germany and nz have proportional representation: they’re probably the best places i know of to look for these systems: parliaments composed of many minor parties)… we do have ranked choice voting, so we’re kind of a middle ground: ranked choice without proportional representation still leads to a 2 party system, but imo theres debatable up sides and down sides from representative to proportional (proportional systems can lead to a lot of nothing - small parties that are technically the majority but can’t agree on anything and not able to get anything done)
i thiiiink i’ve heard that there are systems that combine proportional and representative (actually, i think our australian senate is proportional and our house of representatives is representative - our HOR is pretty 2 party and our senate has a about 5-6 minor parties) but this is where my knowledge gets fuzzy
first past the post is the root of all evil: there are no up sides, there are only down sides… it causes politics to be horrible (ranked choice you have to worry about not just winning outright but also being likeable - you have to make everyone like you, because you want them to put you 2nd, 3rd, etc because 2nd preference might make you win!), it causes extremism, hate, forced 2 party (in the worst possible way: extremist 2 party), and absolutely no opportunity for change
republicans always use the 4th one, and they make it more convoluted each time to adjust for population growth or loss, im guessing thats why they keep redrawing them, because smaller towns or cities often get so low in population overtime.
Why do votes need to be done by district? Just do it statewide
The purpose is to have the people of smaller areas represented by an individualized Congress member. So the people in say the backwoods of California, aren't being spoken for by all big city people from LA/San Fran etc. When something is going on in your district, you are supposed to have someone who is empathetic to your cause and familiar to it. Then they bring that to the house and make the argument for you.
Aka, when someone brings up a federal code change proposition that will bankrupt the main source of jobs in your town, your legislature is supposed to go to bat, not fall in line and let your town die. 200 jobs being lost doesn't sound like much to a large city, but in a town of 2,000 people that's game over
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Hmmm, interesting choice of colors, considering which famously colored party is currently in the news for aggressively gerrymandering...
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It bothers me that the graphic lists red-then-blue but there text lists blue-then-red. It's inconsistent to how we read the information and makes it confusing to process.
...like gerrymandering
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