From: ahk@chinet.com
Rhino wrote:
>On 2026-02-04 2:59 p.m., Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>> As vile and illiberal as various Trump policies have been since he
>> regained the presidency, the biggest threat to our democracy has been
>> John Roberts preventing federal courts from reviewing too many terrible
>> choices made by state legislatures that take away rights from
>> individuals.
>>
>> Yes, I've always blamed the inflexibility of the Voting Rights Act of
>> 1964, which effectively mandates single-member districts. You see, to
>> have minority representation, however defined, district lines must be
>> gerrymandared to make a minority a majority of the voting population, at
>> least in that district. With cummulative voting or other methods and
>> multi-member districts, minorities get to define themselves and choose
>> their own representatives, say one out of three elected, with no
>> gerrymandering at all.
>>
>> But no, redistricting is political, which courts cannot review. The
>> solution is political, except that's a Catch 22 as gerrymandering allows
>> incumbants to select their constituency in lieu of the constituency
>> selecting its representation.
>>
>> Somehow Roberts fails to recognize the obvious as it's inconvenient for
>> his legal theory.
>>
>> Both political maps pushed by Trump, the Texas map favoring Republucans
>> in congressional redistricting and the California map, in reaction,
>> favoring Democrats, will not be enjoined. This was expected. No justice
>> dissented.
>>
>>
>https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-california-congression
l-maps-8362a34b739ea91d37a190eee1b6a6d1
>>
>> I'm a moderate. I get zero representation.
>Am I correct in understanding that the main impetus for changing
>electoral boundaries is to ensure that each electoral district has
>approximately the same population as every other so that each person has
>approximately the same amount of influence in terms of selecting
>representatives? It seems to me that is the "prime mover": if that
>weren't necessary, there'd be no justification at all for changing
>electoral boundaries.
Computers can draw districts so that there is a single person population
difference.
>Of course once they've got the necessity of redrawing boundaries, the
>politicians unsurprisingly make every effort to redraw them to their own
>advantage. Democrats redraw to help their electoral chances and
>Republicans redraw to help their own.
Sometimes they pack districts with their own voters as a favor to
certain incumbants but it means they lower their chances in other
districts.
>If I'm right in what I've said so far, I think it would be wise for us
>to think about this matter and figure out if: rough equality in the size
>of electoral districts is really that important and, if it is, whether
>there is some better way to divide the districts in a a wholly
>non-partisan way.
They do it to remove a reason for a judge to choose another map.
>I gather that some states have supposedly "neutral" institutions to
>redraw their boundaries but I have no idea if they really ARE neutral or
>if they merely profess to be while bending over backwards to help
>whatever party dominates the institution. Does anyone have insight into
>that?
California was one of those states but smended its constitution to pull
this crap.
>For what it's worth, I agree that this seems like the sort of matter
>that Supreme Courts at either the state or national level really ought
>to address.
I'm telling you that the Supreme Court already upheld the power of state
legislatures to do this.
>This is also an issue in Canada. People in some provinces have long held
>grievances that there are substantially more people in ridings in their
>province than in other provinces. I remember Horny Goat making that
>point multiple times over the years. I believe his province of BC is
>particularly aggrieved by this.
But we require both re-apportionment and redistricting.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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