"The Supreme Court’s attacks on voting rights are about rigging elections for Republicans," said Rep. Greg Casar, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
The Supreme Court has determined that partisan gerrymandering is acceptable because there is no means to determine that the redistricting is partisan. However, a computer program is definitely not partisan and consequently, can be imposed on states.
The only inputs a computer program need is the boundaries of the state, the population size, where people live, and the number of districts desired. How can such a program be biased?
How can it be assured that the commissions are nonpartisan?
This Supreme Court?!? Of course they ruled to allow gerrymandering. Most gerrymandered states are controlled by republican legislatures. It’s no surprise the Scotus would let thise legislatures keep drawing their own congressional maps.
Typically it’s up to the state courts to declare those maps to be illegally gerrymandered. That happened in Ohio, but the legislature ignored the ruling and somehow held elections with those illegal maps. But it’s up to the state to sort that out.
a computer program is definitely not partisan
A computer program absolutely can be partisan, if it’s designed by someone who’s partisan.
and consequently, can be imposed on states
No it can’t. That’s not how the constitution works, you thick-skulled looby.
The only inputs a computer program need is the boundaries of the state, the population size, where people live, and the number of districts desired. How can such a program be biased?
Clearly you don’t know how gerrymandering works if you don’t realize there’s still room within those constraints for partisan fuckery.
How can it be assured that the commissions are nonpartisan?
This question is moot because a majority of states have already successfully implemented it. You wanna know how they did about it, go read about it instead of armchair politicking.
What inputs would you manipulate to make the program partisan? Once the state is entered, the program will know the state’s boundaries and number of districts. Population size and locations could probably be extracted from the US census data base.
Do you not realize that there are still multiple ways to slice that pie?
The whole point of gerrymandering is to split up opposition strongholds (typically blue areas in red states, i.e. cities) and attach them piecemeal to larger-by-area districts with lower population densities in order to water down their votes in redder districts.
That way instead of a city having one or two reps who are blue and can actually represent their constituencies, you have a bunch of tiny slivers of that city that are represented by the reps for the rural districts they’re attached to. It’s how republicans have disenfranchised urban voters for a long time. And yes, there’s a heavily racial subtext to this, since urban areas tend to be more non-white than rural areas. It’s how republicans disenfranchise non-white voters.
A computer program can still do the same thing. That doesn’t solve gerrymandering.
The Supreme Court has determined that partisan gerrymandering is acceptable because there is no means to determine that the redistricting is partisan. However, a computer program is definitely not partisan and consequently, can be imposed on states.
The only inputs a computer program need is the boundaries of the state, the population size, where people live, and the number of districts desired. How can such a program be biased?
How can it be assured that the commissions are nonpartisan?
This Supreme Court?!? Of course they ruled to allow gerrymandering. Most gerrymandered states are controlled by republican legislatures. It’s no surprise the Scotus would let thise legislatures keep drawing their own congressional maps.
Typically it’s up to the state courts to declare those maps to be illegally gerrymandered. That happened in Ohio, but the legislature ignored the ruling and somehow held elections with those illegal maps. But it’s up to the state to sort that out.
A computer program absolutely can be partisan, if it’s designed by someone who’s partisan.
No it can’t. That’s not how the constitution works, you thick-skulled looby.
Clearly you don’t know how gerrymandering works if you don’t realize there’s still room within those constraints for partisan fuckery.
This question is moot because a majority of states have already successfully implemented it. You wanna know how they did about it, go read about it instead of armchair politicking.
What inputs would you manipulate to make the program partisan? Once the state is entered, the program will know the state’s boundaries and number of districts. Population size and locations could probably be extracted from the US census data base.
Do you not realize that there are still multiple ways to slice that pie?
The whole point of gerrymandering is to split up opposition strongholds (typically blue areas in red states, i.e. cities) and attach them piecemeal to larger-by-area districts with lower population densities in order to water down their votes in redder districts.
That way instead of a city having one or two reps who are blue and can actually represent their constituencies, you have a bunch of tiny slivers of that city that are represented by the reps for the rural districts they’re attached to. It’s how republicans have disenfranchised urban voters for a long time. And yes, there’s a heavily racial subtext to this, since urban areas tend to be more non-white than rural areas. It’s how republicans disenfranchise non-white voters.
A computer program can still do the same thing. That doesn’t solve gerrymandering.