https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/06/19/supreme-court-to-tackle-partisan-election-maps/102683460/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatodaycomnation-topstories
>WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a potential landmark case that addresses how far lawmakers can go in choosing their voters, rather than the other way around.
>Venturing into what one justice recently called the "always unsavory" process of drawing election districts for partisan advantage, the court will try to set a standard — something it has failed to do in the past.
>The case under review comes from Wisconsin, but about one-third of the maps drawn for Congress and state legislatures could be affected by the justices' ruling. Similar cases are pending in North Carolina and Maryland.
>The issue is reaching the high court at a time when both Republicans and Democrats have improved the art of drawing congressional and legislative maps to entrench themselves in office for a decade at a time. Computer software increasingly helps them create safe districts for their most conservative and liberal candidates, whose success invariably leads to more partisan gridlock in government.
>“Partisan gerrymandering of this kind is worse now than at any time in recent memory," said Paul Smith of the Campaign Legal Center, who will argue the case next fall. "The Supreme Court has the opportunity to ensure the maps in Wisconsin are drawn fairly, and further, has the opportunity to create ground rules that safeguard every citizen’s right to freely choose their representatives.”
>The court recently struck down some congressional and state legislative districts in North Carolina because they used voters' racial composition to maximize Republicans' political advantage. The court has ruled similarly on Virginia and Alabama racial redistricting plans.
>Now, however, the Wisconsin case will confront the high court with raw politics, not race. The state is one of several battlegrounds where Republicans and Democrats fought to a virtual draw in last year's presidential election, but where Republicans enjoy election districts that have given them a nearly 2-to-1 advantage in the state Assembly.
>The situation is similar in Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, where lines drawn by Republicans have given the GOP the lion's share of the seats in Congress and state legislatures. North Carolina's congressional delegation tilts 10-3 Republican. Michigan's state Senate has 27 Republicans, 11 Democrats. In Virginia, where President Trump lost handily, Republicans have 66 of 100 seats in the House of Delegates.
>Democrats do likewise where they control the line-drawing process, such as in Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts. But they have all the levers of power in just six states; Republicans control 25 states, with 197 of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives.
>As a result, congressional lines have become ever more partisan in recent years. In 2012, Republicans won 53% of the vote but 72% of the House seats in states where they drew the lines. Democrats won 56% of the vote but 71% of the seats where they controlled the process.
>A federal district court in Wisconsin ruled 2-1 in November that election districts drawn by Republicans discriminated against Democratic voters "by impeding their ability to translate their votes into legislative seats." It demanded that the legislature draw new district lines by this November.
>The state asked the Supreme Court to block that requirement on the assumption that the justices would hear its appeal in the 2017 term, which begins in October. And on Monday, the court ruled narrowly, 5-4, that the state does not have to redraw its maps until the case is decided. The court's four liberal justices dissented from that order.
>In three landmark cases from 1962, 1986 and 2004, the high court has retained a role for itself to review partisan gerrymandering but has never defined how much is too much. In the last case, four justices sought to curtail that role by declaring it a political question outside their jurisdiction. But Justice Anthony Kennedy, 80, would not go that far; he may be the swing vote in the new case — if he doesn't retire over the summer.
>Two years ago, the court ruled that states can try to remove partisan politics from the process by creating commissions to take the job away from legislators. Kennedy joined in that narrow ruling by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who noted in her opinion that Kennedy previously labeled partisan gerrymanders "incompatible with democratic principles."
>Even justices who favor giving lawmakers discretion to draw district lines hold their noses when it comes to how they do it.
>"Partisan gerrymandering is always unsavory," Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a dissent from the ruling against North Carolina's use of race. But "while some might find it distasteful, our prior decisions have made clear that a jurisdiction may engage in constitutional political gerrymandering."
>What's different this time from past Supreme Court clashes is the existence of data-driven models to measure election results against other factors. One such standard — dubbed the "efficiency gap" — counts the number of "wasted" votes for winning candidates in districts purposely packed with the opposition party's voters, as well as for losing candidates in districts where those voters were purposely scattered.
>>150540
Election districts ought to be based on country and city borders and major roads and streets within large cities.
Seems like a simple enough solution to me, that would help or hinder all political parties equally.
>>150590
Honestly no argument. People will move themselves and elect what represents them over time if the process is not a bunch of convoluted fuckery
I hope /ourguys/ keep the current redistricting rules. We're going to need every little tool and trick to beat the liberals once and for all.
>>150540
This is a really tough situation because while conservatives spread over the state, liberals tend to concentrate in cities. If they try to redraw it so that each County has the same number of votes, it will be very convoluted and divide major cities into multiple small fragments which would only confuse voters. Further it will potentially remove representation from key resources, such as mining and manufacturing towns with fewer citizens in order to hand it to large cities who do not understand their concerns. The current divisions, while unfair, do take into account that different geographic regions in a state have different needs. I just don't think there is a way to divide a state while keeping everyone happy.
>>150590
Is an unbiased method, though I worry it will have the same problems which I pointed out above.
While I understand that it is never going to happen, The Shortest-split method is definitely the least politically biased method available that is still relatively simple, as >>150857 said about the reason that using cities isn't a possibility.
>>150857
It doesn't have to be perfectly equal. The problem is when the lines are skewed to give one party a consistent majority. If the lines were designed around existing landmarks or community boundaries, something - anything that makes natural sense, then any unequalities would be easier to swallow, because they aren't so blatantly rigged. This is a fine line to dance but I'm pretty sure no one's saying it has to be a level playing field, just that it needs to be less intentionally rigged. This goes for both parties.
>>150960
While that makes sense on paper, there is just too much of a population density problem to work.
Take Minnesota for instance. The total population for the state is 5.5 million and the state is 87k sq. miles. Now when we look at the Twin cities, with a population of 3.3 million in an area of 6.3k sq. miles. There are 87 counties. If we were to distribute these roughly evenly, that would mean 50 would be within the Twin Cities and the rest of the 80k sq. miles of state get to split the remaining 37. That is only the state level. At the federal level there are 8 districts, so 5 would be in the Twin Cities alone and the remaining 3 would be split among the rest of the state. Now not every state is going to be as absurd as this example, but I think it does serve to highlight issues with drawing of boundaries. Even if you divided by highways and landmarks people in the cities would complain they are being as represented as the less dense rural regions. The counter argument to this is that the rural regions often have more diverse needs due to the vast expanses they cover and the less regulated environment then those in the cities. Looking at the party side of things actually shows much the same divisions, with cities being more liberal then rural regions, presenting the same hardships. Much of the Midwest is like this and I would imagine it holds true in most states except the smallest ones. Honestly, no matter how hard you try, someone is going to get screwed and even if it was an unbiased they are not going to take it lying down.
Probably one of the more interesting ideas I've heard is removing districts altogether and having floating representatives. You have all the candidates run as a pack, with a certain percentage of the vote as a goal. Using a single transferable vote system (you rank the candidates in the order you want instead of voting for just one guy), anyone with an excess past that % goal wins one seat, and his excess is passed to the respective second choices of those excess voters (by ratio).
In theory, this system is more likely to produce representatives whose ratio better matches the total political make up of the state (ex. if 60% of the populace is Republican, 60% of the representatives are Republican). The problem, of course, is because they are all floating they don't represent specific parts of the state. As such, this would probably be restricted to federal level positions, where the minutia of local politics doesn't matter as much.
The SC is a blessing and a curse. Can't wait to see the elections that follow if they put their foot down
>>150968
But the districts are based on population, not area.
Here’s the districts for State House of Representatives for metro Detroit;
http://www.rightmi.com/old/4.bp.blogspot.com/-Epr7vlLBy1s/Tf13GnyWohI/AAAAAAAAAIw/8n5glth_npw/s1600/HouseRepSE.jpg
There’s not reason why District 25 in macomb County has that odd “peninsula” sticking down south into the city of Warren, (my home town) between Districts 22 and 28.
There is no reason why the districts couldn’t be drawn along county and city borders and major roads, with each district having approximately the same number of people as required by law.
>>150764
You need to kill all socialists and communists, starting with those god damned activists.