A Modest Proposal to defeat partisan gerrymandering:
Put everyone who wants to run for a state’s House seats on the ballot. People vote for who they want to hold a seat in descending order, up to the maximum number of seats allotted to the state by the census. The top N vote-getters win.
I’m sure this has potentially negative impacts on racial (and possibly even gender) representation because of vote-splitting and population balances, but that’s why I prefaced it with “Modest Proposal” 
I’ll say it: I think they’re right. How do you draw a line about how much politics is allowed in politics? The source of the problem is not that they can gerrmander, it’s that
a) we’re electing people asshole enough to do it: There will always be a way for elected officials to abuse their power, we just have to not elect people that are so ethically challenged that would do so.
b) it works! I’m flabbergasted that it works, that people are such predictable voters that it can happen. How can we fix that? How do we get people voting on the person and not the little letter next to their name? (Suggestion: drop the little letter next to the name on the ballot, the poll test is then having to know the name of the person you are voting for)
They sent it back to a state who’s state supreme court has already repeatedly ruled against this gerrymander, and ruled psrtisan gerrymanders violate it’s state constitution? A state supreme court that currently has one of the most extreme progressive majorities of any state court nationwide?
The gerrymander in this case is the one put in place by the state GOP controlled legislature during the shit fit after they lost the governor’s mansion and the previous gerrymander was thrown out on racial discrimination grounds (the one that gave us that “surgical precision” quote). The state courts have already repeatedly thrown it out on various grounds, and dictated a fair redistricting process for a new map by 2020. IIRC the NC part of this case was a challenge to those decisions, attempting to get federal courts to supercede the state decision (or that might have been one of the other dozens of court cases on the subject that the SC refused to take up). And that may be part of why we got the decision we did.
Also Maryland. A state entirely controlled by the Democrats.
To an extent all this decision is really doing is solidifying the status quo. The federal courts don’t have a voice a voice in districting unless there is a clear violation of federal civil rights, districting is the role of states. It does state that legislatures have the right, both state and federal. Which could be good or bad depending on which legislature. And there are some concerning things about it. But it does not prevent anyone from challenging gerrymandering on civil rights grounds (which we’re about to hear a whole lot about). Or even challenging partisan gerrymandering if they can find a plausible arguement that it represents a violation of federal constitutional rights, which in part is what was attempted here.
This will probably lead to further bolstering the GOPs electoral manipulation in the states where they’re already succeeding at imbedding it. But its not likely to change anything, or should help, in the larger number of places where they’re losing ground.
It is the way forward, but given the gerrymandering in place it will be tough. Ohio recently passed anti-gerrymandering legislation (voters not the legislature), but the current map is instructive. Despite a 1% difference in vote totals the Republicans got 25% more seats. Once severe gerrymandering is in place it becomes very difficult to overcome through votes for the legislature.
Yeah, this is true.
This is important. Districts are going to be optimized for something. Geographic compactness, existing natural or government boundaries, political or ethnic representation, political competitiveness, etc. One of the questions that the Supreme court avoided was what kinds of considerations are acceptable and desirable.
She learned the wrong lessons from working at WalMart.
And the ruling doesn’t prevent citizens from getting a ballot measure up for vote that puts redistricting in the hands of a neutral board.
I’m tired of THE DARK LORD HAS WON NO REASON TO TRY shtick.
Volunteer, organize, donate, inspire. Be as dogged in pursuit of progressive politics as conservatives are trying to overturn Roe v. Wade, cutting taxes, and getting judges elected.
Yes it is
“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles.”
AKA GOP voters not actually being served by the GOP, and those who would vote left, but don’t vote.
Your handle seems… fitting. 
A reminder that current gerrymandering is so bad that the Jones/Moore election in Alabama would have given six of seven seats to the GOP.
For comparative purposes, here’s what electoral boundaries look like in my old neighbourhood, where they’re set by a relatively apolitical independent organisation :
voters get it whether they put up with it or not. That’s the whole point. It subverts the democratic process so that republicans can always get their way.
Was she ever really a hippie? Seems like she wasn’t. The hippies hated the VU.
It’s 88° F, so I have no idea how it fits in with the Aliens riff.
Oh, just saying your point was coherent and represented truth, or light.
Oh. Right.
Someone still left the god damned global warming on and now I can’t think or use my brain.
…and yet we are expected to get so excited by this next batch of candidates… How am I supposed to trust the machinery that made it possible for 45 to claw his way into power? Theres been no serious noise about scraping the electoral college, no meaningful campaign finance reform… all that stuff lies somewhere off in the future, I guess maybe?
At some point, it is time to pull the patient off the respirator and call the time of death, no matter how badly the family would like us to keep pounding on that chest and zapping that heart.
American democracy is dead. Time to think about what happens next.
