Gerrymandering Explained

submitted by Zifnab
1 decade 3 years 4 months 1 week ago
Gerrymandering is the reason that some countries (I’m looking at you, United States) end up with weird electoral districts.

http://blog.cgpgrey.com/gerrymandering-explained/

17 Comments

RFlaggsays...

Based on other videos in this series, we know where he is heading, removing the first past the post vote system. I agree that is needed. However, as the US doesn't have a parliamentary system we have a couple of other issues to address.
First is that we've had 435 Reps since 1911 (save for a couple years where it went to 437). We had a tad over 92 Million people here in 1911, or one Rep per a bit over 200,000 people. The population is now over 298 Million, or one Rep per 680,000 people. If we went back to just the 1911 ratio we would have 1,400 Reps today, and the US population gets better representation, especially if tied with one of the alternative vote systems he's talked about already (or the one he hasn't gone into detail about yet, which I guess is coming up soon). That would require a pay cut for being a Rep, and most Reps would have to stay in their home district and cast their vote via Skype or something like that. However, I doubt that would ever happen. It would make it harder for Reps to be purchased the way they are now, and they like being paid to screw us over.
Next, even with a greatly increased number of Reps, you wouldn't get enough small states to agree to remove the Electoral College and the problems that comes with, which forces us to take another method to handle that, and it is simply remove the winner take all. Each Representative district keeps its electoral vote, and that vote has to go to whomever won the popular vote for that district alone. So states like Florida, Ohio and the like would have their electoral votes split many ways. The two electoral votes go the the overall winner of the state, unless the percentage is close enough (and what defines close enough I don't know, perhaps under 40/60? but that would be for Congress to find an agreement on) to warrant splitting those last two electoral votes. This essentially gives a popular vote while keeping the electoral college intact, though on rare occasions one could still win the popular vote and loose the electoral vote, but it would be closer. It also means that you no longer just have to win a few key areas of a few key states, but you really have to try and win over much larger areas, and third party candidates may take an electoral vote or two. This only changes the outcome of the Presidential election, and I think this one could be pushed through...
Of course getting rid of First Past the Post should perhaps be priority one, but I think the two parties are too entrenched in the US to allow it to happen, and the American public too brain dead to know there are alternative methods out there, or how to use them if they came... considering how many got confused by the butterfly ballot... a ballot where you write numbers down may be a bit much. <sigh>

ChaosEnginesays...

NZ uses an MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) system. Essentially, everyone gets two votes: one for your local candidate and one for a political party on a national scale. This means that even if a party doesn't have enough people in one district to win a seat, if it has enough votes nationally, it still gets allocated some seats based on it's percentage of the vote. So, for example, the Greens didn't win any electorates, but they still got 7% of the national party vote so they get ~7% (9 actual seats) of the seats in parliament. Where it gets tricky, is that a party must get at least 5% to get any votes unless it wins an electorate seat. So in this case, the right wing ACT party won one seat, got 3% of the vote and still got 5 seats. Worse, the party that won the most seats (National) joined with them to form a government, which means that a party with 3% of the national vote gets a ministerial portfolio.

Overall though, it's a much better system than FPP

Mikus_Aureliussays...

This is a more useful issue to tackle than his previous video. People can disagree about which of FPP/av/proportional feels better, but they all produce policy results in line with the wishes of the median voter.

Gerrymandering on the other hand is strangling our government in the US. Legislators have crafted such safe seats for themselves that they are now beholden to homogenous and often extremist constituencies. Thus they have little incentive to compromise. Congress hasn't passed a budget in 3 years, and now is running us scarily close to fiscal catastrophe. We may all lose our jobs if they tank the economy, but their districts are safe for life.

I'm a fan of the independent commissions. We've had good results in the past decade letting retired politicians with no future ambitions and generous pensions work out sensible recommendations on a variety of issues. I'll be interested to see how it works for California and any other states who try this route.

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