If one party wins the popular vote but not a majority of seats, the districts are not correct. I look forward to an Internet stranger telling me otherwise.
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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In Wisconsin, Republicans would win something like 40% of the vote and subsequently 60% of the seats. This district map, you see, is Fair and Balanced, as they say.
If you can't give the constituency a reasonable name in three words or less, you have a BULLSHIT CONSTITUENCY—
- Texas 29 — ❌ BULLSHIT CONSTITUENCY
- Georgia 6 — ❌ BULLSHIT CONSTITUENCY
- Illinois 4 — ❌ BULLSHIT CONSTITUENCY
- Midtown Manhattan — ✅ REAL CONSTITUENCY
But what about South Central Los Angeles? That's 4 words! You saying Ice Cube's proposed district is bullshit? 😛
If you have a particular goal in mind when designing your election map, you'll achieve it. Be careful, though, because Goodhart's Law applies. Elections can be made to order. And focusing on one measure of "success" for a fair map inherently reduces the effects of others. If we go too far down this rabbit hole, we're designing our maps to get us the election results we want, which is democratically backwards.
Which is, of course, how we got INTO this mess. The GOP are designing maps with a priority on winning and maintaining power above all else. Above having communities held together as communities. Above making sure the various demographics all each get their own says. Above having a healthy, competitive contest of elections.
There's no such thing as an apolitical, objective, quantitatively "right" or fair map. We can only judge maps off of subjective, political standards.
So what this internet stranger will tell you is that you shouldn't try to come up with any simple test for the correctness of an election map. You should be holistic and compromising -- both are necessary to get fair maps. The process must be bi- or nonpartisan and it must be highly transparent.
Which is not the case in Wisconsin. It is a 100% political process carried out by agents acting in the most cynical, heinous bad faith. The Wisconsin GOP wants to win at any cost. Democracy is an obstacle to their power. Equity and fairness are vices to them. This veto is a good thing. The lawsuits are a good thing. The GOP needs to be called out and shamed loudly and often. Because in spite of everything I said about it being impossible to objectively tell a map is fair, when a map is THIS unfair even a child can call it out rightly.
There's no reason we need to have first past the post, single seat districts.
You can make much more representative maps with RCV of multi member districts. And that district could be statewide if you wanted, then no special map to make anyway.
These ideas all sound good to me.
But also, these system choices are a political ones that affect political results, and so whether that effect is positive or negative is subjective to politics. There's winners and losers being picked in every system adjustment.
It’s to protect people from ‘the tyranny of the majority’. You don’t want the minority to be quelled and silenced just because more people disagree with them than agree. This is a fair and balanced take and ensures democracy works so long as the republicans are the minority. We’d make substantive changes if that were to change because we really want to avoid the tyranny of the ~~democrats~~ minority after all.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Tony Evers on Tuesday vetoed a redistricting proposal that the Republican-controlled Legislature passed last week in a last-ditch effort to avert the drawing of legislative boundaries by the state Supreme Court.
The political stakes in both cases are huge for both sides in the presidential battleground state, where Republicans have had a firm grip on the Legislature since 2011 even as Democrats have won statewide elections, including for governor in 2018 and 2022.
The Legislature raced to pass maps ahead of Thursday’s deadline for consultants hired by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to submit their recommendations for new boundary lines.
That lawsuit argues that decision last month ordering new state legislative maps opens the door to the latest challenge focused on congressional lines.
In a motion filed Monday, they argued that her comments critical of the Republican maps require her to step aside in order to avoid a due process violation of the U.S. Constitution.
Those seeking her recusal in the congressional redistricting case are the GOP-controlled Wisconsin Legislature and Republican U.S. Reps. Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grothman, Mike Gallagher, Bryan Steil and Tom Tiffany.
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