Author Topic: Crowdpac campaign by Arnold Schwarzenegger to outlaw gerrymandering  (Read 1813 times)

https://www.crowdpac.com/campaigns/207023/this-is-our-chance-to-make-gerrymandering-unconstitutional

this is the most reasonable non-partisan thing I've seen in a while. I figured if i'm going to support something, it'd be this

Good. Outlaw gerrymandering, go back to paper ballots, and create voter ID laws (Like every other western nation) and actually enforce all this, and nobody can ever feasibly rig an election.


no pls...........
I believe we are in for a show tonight...
maybe.
It's actually hard to tell.

Good. Outlaw gerrymandering, go back to paper ballots, and create voter ID laws (Like every other western nation) and actually enforce all this, and nobody can ever feasibly rig an election.
sounds about right.

Make America Fair Again.

Good. Outlaw gerrymandering, go back to paper ballots, and create voter ID laws (Like every other western nation) and actually enforce all this, and nobody can ever feasibly rig an election.

arnold schwarzenegger is a surprisingly good dude

Sounds good on paper, but how do you actually outlaw gerrymandering? I've thought this over a couple of times, and I'm not sure how people would figure out how to make districts that are 'fair'. It's literally just wherever we choose to draw the lines, which is obviously informed by who wants which people as part of their constituency.

Yeah, and how would you be able to identify times when the changing of district lines is without malicious intent

can't tell you i'm sure of that myself but i'd like to find out what this campaign does

It's not as simple as outlawing gerrymandering. You literally have to be able to redraw district lines under the current electoral system because the districts need to have roughly the same amount of people. If you never redraw the lines, the natural population shifting will lead to districts that have either way more or way less power than other districts, which goes directly against their purpose.

If you switched the electoral system to one that doesn't require districts, then you could outlaw gerrymandering, but I don't think that's what this campaign is about.

I mean you could probably draft something saying districts must be defined as geometric shapes and/or by specific geographical lines unless it's impossible to draw the district otherwise and work from there to get something more specific without delving into something like US Code.

it would be kind of tempting to just uproot the whole system and replace it with something more unified though. There's not really a point to districts aside from voting blocks, and it'd just be easier to have it, like, defined by county instead since that's more tangible(which prevents people from loving around with it). But that's just me rambling.
« Last Edit: April 15, 2017, 11:12:55 PM by AutoBahn »

Sounds good on paper, but how do you actually outlaw gerrymandering? I've thought this over a couple of times, and I'm not sure how people would figure out how to make districts that are 'fair'. It's literally just wherever we choose to draw the lines, which is obviously informed by who wants which people as part of their constituency.
Gather a census once every 4 years related to voting district re-drawings and transcribe the data into a computer designed to draw districts as rectangular and as close to a 1:1 ratio between length and width as possible?