He called the ruling a “huge win” over a “horrible gerrymander.” But Trump himself has ordered many GOP states to gerrymander maximally. So here Trump openly declared that Republicans reserve the right to rig elections while Democrats do not. His actual position is that Republicans should play by their own corrupt rules, a declaration of intent to functionally steal the midterms.
The solution is to have a computer program draw congressional districts but neither party wants it because they like gerrymandering as long as it benefits it benefits their party.
The dems have tried to pass a no gerrymandering law multiple times. The states with laws against it are blue states. Dems are bad but you are outright lying to advance a point.
the states with Democratic majorities should be aggressively gerrymandering with rhetoric directly pointing out their parallel efforts to ban partisan gerrymandering.
I do not disagree. The problem is many blue states haven’t laws banning it which strong arms them because they refuse to stoop to the same level ad the republicans and out right not listen to the courts.
yeah I know. the high road isn’t really working out that well right now.
Its really not. There’s a reason I’ll never call myself a democrat.
Explain why neither party has proposed having a computer program draw districts.
Uh… The Virginia referendum was to suspend the state constitutional amendment requiring a non-partisan districting committee to draw the districts. That amendment was championed by Democrats. Most Republican voters also support measures like this (though not in a high numbers as Dems, last I looked). GOP politicians are staunchly opposed to any anti-gerrymandering legislation. I’ll give you three guesses as to why.
Have a computer program do it. If Republicans oppose it, use it against them during reelection.
Well, there is absolutely no reason for the Democratic Party to unilaterally disarm.
Fuck that noise.
If the Republicans would get on board with passing a bill to end the practice, then we talk about ending it.
Democratts should propose that the US government put out a bid for companies to create a computer program to draw congressional districts. If Republicans oppose it, use it against them during reelection.
I’m pretty sure Democrats have put up bills and voted for them, while Republicans vote against.
I haven’t heard of any. The DNC should adopt a computer districting program as part of their platform.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_People_Act#Unsuccessful_narrower_proposal:_Freedom_to_Vote_Act
Of course, unhelpful dumbasses did a “compromise” version in the Freedom to Vote Act (which had voter ID requirements and got rid of the requirement to offer no-excuse mail-in voting and same-day voter registration - thanks Manchin, you asshole. What a “centrist”. Same for Klobuchar. So unhelpful. ).
IMHO, Democrats should absolutely constantly message uniformly on this, and ask Republicans why it is that they want to make it so very hard to vote. Over and over again, keep asking them. Don’t let them do their horseshit Gish Gallop routines about “illegals”, either.
Yes, but Democrats should continue to publicly push for a computer districting program. It’s something that people will easily understand as impartial.
Well, they’d have to be very careful in that language. The cons absolutely used computers to draw maps - it was the REDMAP scheme.
What must be emphasized is independent commissions to draw district lines, perhaps informed by computers. But computers can and have been weaponized to draw maps - the REDMAP scheme is called “gerrymandering on steroids” and it’s that way because of computers turned to nefarious ends.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP
Democrats would point out that the computer program would be subjected to peer review. It could also be open source.
Computers have been used for gerrymandering since the late 1970s. I know people who worked on it.
The US government should have companies bid on a program to draw congressional districts. All states would be required to use the winning program. The winning program would be subject to peer review. Ask your computer programming friend how such a program would be used for gerrymandering.
The point is, the program doesn’t solve the problem. In your statement, the peer review of the program may solve the problem. Now, who picks the members for the peer review group? The same people who pick the congressional district committee? How does that solve the issue of bias in the committee? At best, the only thing this does is make them write out the criteria for districts, but code can be written to be obtuse, too.
Those doing the peer review would be university professors of computer science randomly chosen from top universities.
So we’re back to legislation and regulations picking people who we have to trust. Which is how it will always end.
How would a professor of computer science cheat? Remember there would be many other professors reviewing it.
They would cheat the same way any other committee would cheat. They would dismiss the biases they’re in favor of and highlight the biases they’re against. Or are you just assuming professors are completely objective and are paragons of virtue?
The computer program will be based on mathematics. Mathematics is not biased. Suppose someone wanted to divide a large piece of land into lots of equal sizes. How would the calculation be biased?
The problem is not really the code. It is writing the specification of what the code should do. What properties the drawn districts should have. Anyone can then run the program and confirm that the results match the spec.
Hell, with a good spec, you can just vibe code that thing.
That’s how they do it now. It’s just about which constraints to use, which is why the VRA was so important.
No, a commission of people draw congressional districts. If a computer did it, the districts would be rectangles except at the boundaries of the states.
They use computers to create the options then they all agree on it. It takes 4 seconds to type into google and you’ll learn they do use it. You’re so incredibly naive about this process, and it’s ok but just accept it. It’s an opportunity to learn something new.
Yes, but the computer program is designed to gerrymander, otherwise there would be no options. Also, the computer districting program would be required to be used by all states.
Maybe if that program was written for an Apple II. Programs have gotten a little more advanced than that.
Great! Then a computer districting program is feasible. Then why are the Democratic or Republican Party not interested?
Well, for one thing, it doesn’t solve the problem of unbiased districting, but you refuse to acknowledge that.
Of course it does. In order to gerrymander, knowledge of the party leaning of various areas are required. A computer program wouldn’t have that information. All it needs to know is where people live, the number of districts desired, and the state’s boundaries.
The mistake you are making, and it’s a common one, is assuming the subject is simpler than it is in reality. People do this all the time in more fields than I can mention. Here’s a simple hypothetical. Imagine a city with 5 councilors. 15% of the population have very similar views and vote along the same lines, and quite differently to the rest of the city. The also live in the same area. The program you described doesn’t know any of this and cuts their population in half, giving them a minority of the vote in two districts rather than a majority in one. Now they have no valid representation at all, despite the districting not being intentionally to their detriment. Is that okay because the system doesn’t care? Well, one solution is to add those demographics and make districts of more similar people. But now you have a program that is very aware of those differences, and only needs a few minute bugs to disenfranchise people. Now we have to trust those reviewers to not gloss over the bugs that, which gets us back to the original problem - people with biases and regulations, not programs, to solve it.
If you’re interested in getting the most brief insight into these complexities, I recommend watching John Oliver’s episode on gerrymandering.
(All of which is a result of FPTP voting and single representative districts. But fixing that is a longer term project)
Incorrect. A district should represent the views of people in that district. A district is not drawn to represent specific views. A computer program will draw districts based on population size, each district having the same number of people. It will not and should not be based on the beliefs of people.
https://youtu.be/Lq-Y7crQo44
Not according to computer scientists that have shown that just with the data you would use, they can absolutely gerrymander the districts, and they don’t end up square.
Put out a bid to software companies and see if they can create an unbiased program.
FLOSS is there for a reason. Stuff like this is ideal for FLOSS, as the code can then be checked
Yes, we need people in political office who know something about computer programming.
having a computer program do it isn’t some guarantee of unbiasedness, you can easily make a program that will optimize for republican party win
A computer program only needs to know where people live, the number of desired districts, and the boundary of the state. Explain how just this information can be used to gerrymander.