Just how gerrymandered are the House Districts right now?

I need to find the source again, mind you. I read as of election night, which still left a lot of the west coast to be tallied, that more Americans voted for Democratic House candidates than their Republican counterparts yet there will be in the neighborhood of 30-35 more Republicans in the House than Democrats. This is the reverse 1960s-70s all over again. Really a sad state of affairs when it comes to picking our Representatives.

I agree, but the reason it doesn't change, among other things, is reflected in most of the comments i've seen on the subject, which basically say "OMG look how the Republicans have totally fucked us with gerrymandering"

As if the Republicans suddenly invented the practice in 2010.

The reason it continues is both parties are very invested in doing it when they have the power to.

and like the reality of the dominance of those two parties, it won't change - because too many voters are sheep to make them pay for their sins. the only way to change it is to blow up the whole damned thing and start over.

I like the approach California is taking.

WA does a decent job. Each Party (there are only two right?) picks two board members. The four then agree on non-voting technocrat to lead them. He basically does the work, they tweak it, and then three out of the four have to agree with it for it go on to the leg for an up or down vote.

Yeah it is yet another example of the two parties controlling everything, but it works better than most.

Maryland's districts were pretty blatantly gerrymandered its new map. Joshua Bartlett lost district 6 leaving them with one Republican representative. However, it's interesting that some analysis suggests Bartlett (86 years old) might have lost to his challenger anyway, who is a dynamic young Democratic self-made businessman.

Florida had a few Congressional and Legislative seats change hands after the voters approved a constitutional amendment requiring them to cut out the gerrymandering. Hopefully it's a sign that a more representative legislature is not far down the road. There aren't many states that I know of where the domination of one party in both houses is so far out of line with the registration of the voters.

I agree California came up with a pretty good idea. I gather that their problem was that damn near every seat was a safe seat for one party or the other. That creates no incentive for moderation or compromise.

As for the "each party" bit, here's the relevant text in the state constitution:

A threshold delegation size of 10% might be better in theory than "the two largest political parties," but realistically speaking in practice it doesn't make a difference. At least the text allows for a third party to supplant one of the current major parties if it grows large enough.

I've seen some of the maps. Pretty outrageous (and apparently racist). Is there no oversight of this sort of thing? Seems like banana republic stuff.

There is limited oversight, and the oversight that exists is on the verge of being declared unconstitutional by the radical right wing Supreme Court.

Well, part of the gerrymandering is basically in order to ENSURE that blacks are elected to Congress by giving blacks super majorities in some districts.

Of course, some also argue that this dilutes minority voting strength by concentrating their numbers in a smaller overall number of districts.

that might be partly due to the fact that the law itself sets the precedent by requiring minority-majority districts. At least for some of us.

That law only applies to certain states with a history of drawing districts designed to dilute minority representation.

Florida is one of those.

almost 50 years ago.

Would they do it still? Maybe, but no more so than, say, Pennsylvania politicians would try to draw districts which protected the majority party in power.

In any case, in my view continuing to treat unequally several states for the sins of their grandfathers is objectively unconstitutional.

Believe it or not California's solution was pushed by Republicans and its actually a good solution. Make it so that it is a math model with a requirement that all districts be as compact as possible and represent as much of one city or region as possible and just remove politicians from the whole thing. That said, it's obvious why Repubicans were pushing this in California and not in Texas just like it is obvious that there is no way to enforce such measures except at the state level because the constitution lets states do literally what ever the hell they want including gerrymandering when it comes to districts.

I'd like to see something like what happened to force states to change the legal drinking age from 18 to 21. The Congress couldn't legally order it so they just tied education funds, highway funds, medicare funds, and a bunch of other money to having a drinking age of 21. That means it's the free choice of the state whither they want to move it or not but there are billions in loses if they don't do it. Tell the states, this math model is what we want to see, you can ignore us if you want, but then no one in your state gets any Federal money and see how the politicians are forced to react.

If the drinking age is 21, then the voting age and the age at which men are required to register for selected service should be 21 as well.

I agree with the principle, but advocate instead for the drinking age to revert to 18.

Dayton is the chosen one who will bring balance to the House.

Huffpo link

That might shed some light, and no its not *just* a Republican thing, but it is the thing keeping the Republicans in power in the House now...

Is there a list of states that use independent commissions?

So far I've gotten:

Washington, Arizona, California, Hawaii, and New Jersey.

http://www.slate.com/articles/techn...ommissions_put_an_end_to_gerrymandering_.html

Any others?

I FUCKING TOLD YOU ABOUT THAT! *beats baba with a pie plate*

I've argued this before. Get rid of the districts entirely and send a delegation by statewide party proportion.

So who decides on which actual people get the seats? The party bosses? No thanks.

http://themoderatevoice.com/167907/gerrymandering-time-to-end-the-not-so-slight-of-hand/

A great article on gerrymandering by TheModerateVoice.

Colorado is done by a court (or at least used to be), so that's close enough.

There are these things called party primaries.

But even with a less democratic method, the party bosses have to make choices that people like, or their party loses seats.

In a rigged district the primaries are all that matters since everyone knows who will win in a 90-10 district. The problem is that means the primaries become nothing more than a contest to see who can be the most extreme and insane to make the party base happy even though the party base man only make up 20% of the people in the district. It means the other 80% end up with no real choice as to who to represent them plus it means national politics becomes ever more poisoned as the crazy extremists feel no pressure to compromise for the public good.

Hence why non extremists need to stop complaining and vote in primaries. They only show up to vote every four years for President and then wonder why they don't like the two choices.

The U.S House needs to be expanded to at least 1,000 members anyway in order to get the number of people represented by each one back to a reasonable number.

It should then be expanded every ten years with the population.

there is nothing in the Constitution that specifies 435 members.

Yet another failure to know what is in the Constitution, Dayton.

Technically they could make it so that each rep has represents fewer than 30k though.