this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2025
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As Texas Republicans try to muscle a rare mid-decade redistricting bill through the Legislature to help Republicans gain seats in Congress -- at President Donald Trump's request -- residents in Austin, the state capital, could find themselves sharing a district with rural Texans more than 300 miles away.

The proposed map chops up Central Texas' 37th Congressional District, which is currently represented by Democrat Rep. Lloyd Doggett, will be consumed by four neighboring districts, three of which Republicans now hold.

One of those portions of the Austin-area district was drawn to be part of the 11th District that Republican Rep. August Pfluger represents, which stretches into rural Ector County, about 20 miles away from the New Mexico border.

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[–] Empricorn 6 points 16 hours ago

A quick reminder that gerrymandering, the unethical process where politicians choose their voters (instead of the other way around), is not legal in any other western democracy. It's runaway corruption, shouldn't exist, and needs to be publishable by jail time...

[–] mcv@lemmy.zip 26 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Get rid of districts and fill Congress through proportional representation. That solves so many problems.

[–] LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

But it creates others. In the US we vote for people, in proportional representing, you vote for parties.

You can argue that's better, but it's very different from what we have now.

[–] mcv@lemmy.zip 1 points 17 hours ago

It is different, and I would indeed argue it's better. And let's face it, you are mostly voting for parties anyway. How many independents are there really?

But if you want to have district representatives, you could do a hybrid system where half the seats are assigned by district, and the other half are assigned from a national list to fill out the proportionality.

Republicans would be getting most of their seats from districts, Greens and Libertarians would get them entirely from the national list, but at least they'd get representation.

[–] tehn00bi@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

We should make it proportionate to economic output. Not number of people. Seems like the capitalist way.

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[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 2 points 20 hours ago

Just enough farmer jokels in there to neutralize democratic city dwellers.

[–] sdcSpade@lemmy.zip 148 points 2 days ago (21 children)

I will never understand how this obvious manipulation has been legal for decades.

[–] Deflated0ne@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

We've lived in a fascist country for a long time.

[–] Mediocre_Bard@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago

Money. Every American politician is corrupt as fuck.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 56 points 2 days ago

The pretense is gone now though, which is fascinating. And scary.

It’s literally just partisan warfare with legal exploitation, and voter bases apparently think it’s justified. I mean, what are they gonna do, side with the other party over it?

[–] ozymandias@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 2 days ago (3 children)

when lawmakers break the law and nobody enforces the law, it stops being the law.

[–] filcuk@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago

Laws still apply, just not to the people in power.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 3 points 1 day ago

They always forget that the laws they pass to punish their enemies or enrich themselves goes both ways.

If they start acting like the law is anything they can get away with without going to jail, then the same can apply to the rest of us.

[–] korazail@lemmy.myserv.one 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And so many things were just 'common sense,' and not enshrined in laws because the thought was that anyone breaking them would be held accountable by the populace. We now have a critical mass of stupid, self absorbed, or malicious people that laws don't matter, much less norms.

[–] Zink@programming.dev 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

We also have mechanisms of communication, propaganda, and control that were beyond imagination 249 years ago.

I mean, a second Trump term means that any "but surely they wouldn't accept somebody who-" is out the window. His two impeachments weren't for affairs or for perjury. They were EACH for betraying the damned country in totally different ways.

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[–] Prox@lemmy.world 209 points 2 days ago (7 children)

This repub regime is really showing us how much our system of government depends on having good-faith actors in (elected) positions of power. There truly are not sufficient checks in place to protect against one election's worth of bad actors.

Kind of amazing that this all worked for about 250 years, and heartbreaking that it could crumble in the next 2.5.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 5 points 1 day ago

For about 200 years, a candidates morality was an important factor, now we apparently don't care, especially the MAGAs.

[–] verdantbanana@lemmy.world 99 points 2 days ago (11 children)

worked for about 250 years for a select group of people only

didn't work for the native americans, slaves, poor people, etcetera

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[–] absquatulate@lemmy.world 44 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

Apologies if I misunderstood the american election system, but the fact that for the past 100+ years you've had a bipartisan system in which both parties pander to the wealthy tell me it hasn't really worked. Or rather only worked for the ruling elite.

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[–] tupalos@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Question, does that make it overall blue or red for everyone else? I imagine Austin has more people than that rural area but idk

[–] theyoyomaster@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It’s only a small portion of Austin. If you take a sliver of a city where 20k people live and add it to a large rural district with 30k people across thousands of square miles you then spread the population of the dense city across the rural districts without overwhelming the ratio.

[–] Obi@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Utterly ridiculous stuff, how can the US call itself a democracy.

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[–] the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 90 points 2 days ago (3 children)

These assholes are going to make violent revolution inevitable. Why they think they will survive that revolution is a mystery.

[–] thanksforallthefish@literature.cafe 52 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Because they think they have the vast majority of those institutions with the ability to inflict violence on their side.

And from where I'm sitting, it looks like they're right

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[–] foggy@lemmy.world 67 points 2 days ago (8 children)

Ranked choice

Popular vote

All this goes away.

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[–] ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 47 points 2 days ago (15 children)

The worst part is that democrats will fight back by gerrymandering harder, and it just won't be as effective because gerrymandering always benefits the person behind. If democrats had an ounce of intelligence, they would be fighting for standard algorithms to manage redistricting. If it was federal law to minimize district perimeters, this whole nonsense would end.

[–] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 38 points 2 days ago

If democrats had an ounce of intelligence, they would be fighting for standard algorithms to manage redistricting.

The problem with that is they would need to regain power to be able to fix anything. But that would also assume they did, in fact, have the intelligence to fix problems while in power. Unfortunately, the reason the fascists are fighting so hard to dismantle democracy is to ensure that they can never lose power again despite their growing unpopularity.

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[–] Zier@fedia.io 52 points 2 days ago

If you can't win, cheat. It's the official slogan of conservatives worldwide.

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