The General Election

[Danny Bateman]

I think a lot of opinion on the topic is more or less selfish self-interest. Not that I can really fault people for it.

 

For instance, you and I would support elimination of the EC and shifting toward a nationwide popular vote because we generally support more liberal policies and statistically more people in the US voted for a strongly liberal platform than a strongly Trumpian (or conservative) one. You can see liberals winning certain policy arguments in big ways - presently, healthcare, but America is becoming more socially liberal in many areas.

 

But much of it is also rooted in our historical political culture. Switching to a popular vote would disadvantage conservatives by threatening their ability to attain comparatively large amounts of representation in more sparsely populated areas. No more gerrymandering the House out of reach and no more getting the same number of Senators to rep 585K people as another state gets to rep 39M.

 

So although it would seem like a more fair system to an unbiased neutral observer, it would be one less inherently beneficial to conservatives and they wouldn't want it. People have grown up and lived in a US for many decades with the expectation that two major parties are roughly equally powerful and cyclical changes in power are transitory. Proposing a system that threatens that equilibrium won't garner support from the losers of such an arrangement.

 

However, on the merits, I feel like eventually a popular vote system is more fair and would lead to a more functional and less partisan environment in US politics. There's the major cultural barrier of conservatives afraid of liberals gaining disproportionate power (even if it's just evening the playing field) and likewise with your friend who is afraid of urbanites determining policy.

 

But it would force an environment in which politicians have to create policies with broad support across the US as opposed to little scattered ideological bubbles and pockets. You can see Trump doing the latter extensively since he's visited exclusively red areas since his election and refuses to visit blue ones.

[Moiraine]

It's been said already but I'll repeat it.

 

Gerrymandering.

 

And Omaha was a good example. The Republicans in charge of Nebraska couldn't handle the fact Omaha went to a Democratic presidential candidate, so they moved the lines to include more true Americans I mean White folk.

 

Gerrymandering doesn't normally matter for president (except in Nebraska and Maine) but it has an enormous effect on the House counts.

 

The Supreme Court ruling coming up is HUGELY important.

 

The funny thing is even if the vote is right, what Nebraska did would likely still be legal. Since the shape of the district is very normal it would be nearly impossible to prove the intent was to disenfranchise Blacks and Hispanics and other non-Republicans, even though that was exactly the intent.

[BigRedBuster]

Not disagreeing with you and I hope that the SC rules harshly against gerrymandering and a solution to the problem is found.

But, talking about Nebraska. How would you draw the districts differently than they are now?

[knapplc]

I would return Nebraska's 2nd District to its pre-2011 boundaries. Nebraska Republicans were horrified that Obama took an Electoral Vote out of this state in 2008, and responded by redrawing the boundaries in 2011 to ensure that never happened again.

[Moiraine]

Not disagreeing with you and I hope that the SC rules harshly against gerrymandering and a solution to the problem is found.

 

But, talking about Nebraska. How would you draw the districts differently than they are now?

I know you aren't. Like I said, since the boundaries in Nebraska have a "normal" shape, the purpose couldn't be proved. Like knapp said I would make them what they were before.

 

One option would be that you can't redraw a boundary immediately after a House election. Dunno. There aren't a lot of options. One I've seen is to do it mathematically. Take opinions out of it.

[TGHusker]

If you ask me, the rural minority has a pretty outsize voice in national politics in the United States. I don't mean they should get steamrolled and then have no voice. But there's an imbalance here, it's been heavily in their favor for some time, and it begs for redress.

 

If not, we'll be sitting here wondering how come X, Y, and Z policies "supported by most Americans" are always politically dead in the water until the cows come home. Just like we do already. And we'll probably chalk up the blame to "both parties" and "Washington dysfunction".

This is reflective in the electoral college as well. This is how trump won - taking en mass the rural states and being able to knock off a few key big population states. It is one thing for Trump to win the typical battleground states of Fl, Ohio, Virginia(Hillary won) - these states go back and forth. But being able to pull Mich and Penn and Wisc(not as much of a shocker) was a huge fail of the Clinton campaign - miss judging their strength there.

[knapplc]

When Trump won Pennsylvania I knew it was over.

[Danny Bateman]

Turn district drawing over to independent non-partisan commissions or boards. Take the politics out of it.

One guy devised an algorithm to do the work for us. He focused on "compactness" of districts. Look at the results:

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

I would return Nebraska's 2nd District to its pre-2011 boundaries. Nebraska Republicans were horrified that Obama took an Electoral Vote out of this state in 2008, and responded by redrawing the boundaries in 2011 to ensure that never happened again.

When you look at the map, it's not noticeable. But, reading that, it's pretty clear what they did.

 

I want to repeat this because I don't want any misunderstanding of where I'm coming from. I am not for gerrymandering and I really hope the SC makes a good ruling on this and a solution is found. I highly prefer a third party do the drawing of districts.

 

That said, I want to ask this. Let's say the third party idea comes to fruition and they start from scratch. How do you not draw lines with projected outcomes in mind? Meaning, obviously the Republicans redrew this to hopefully not have the Dems get that one electoral college vote. So......now......if you go back to pre 2011 maps, you are then doing it so that the Dems DO have a much better chance of winning that electoral vote. See what I mean?

 

My question is, why is Sarpy county split in half in the first place? Why not just have Douglas county and Sarpy county all in one district? It's a natural governing border.

 

If you are the third party drawing lines, what do you use as criteria to decide where the line goes?

[Kiyoat Husker]

 

 

My question is, why is Sarpy county split in half in the first place? Why not just have Douglas county and Sarpy county all in one district? It's a natural governing border.

 

If you are the third party drawing lines, what do you use as criteria to decide where the line goes?

 

 

1. congressional districts have to have very close to the same population. Sarpy County is one of the highest population counties in the state, so including the whole thing is probably not an option.

 

2. The Supreme Court's decision in the Fall about Wisconsin may give the best anwer.... (I'll find a link)

[Kiyoat Husker]

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/7/11/15949750/research-gerrymandering-wisconsin-supreme-court-partisanship

 

The case also involves a quantitative measure of gerrymandering — the efficiency gap — that has created a bit of a buzz. One reporter compares it to a “silver-bullet democracy theorem” and a “gerrymandering miracle drug.” Another speculates that it may be the “holy grail of election law jurisprudence.”

 

[...]

 

in a 2006 case, five justices expressed interest in statistical metrics that show how a plan benefits (or handicaps) a given party. The efficiency gap is such a metric.

 

[...]

 

if the Whitford plaintiffs end up prevailing, it’ll be because of their methods, not their metric. The efficiency gap is an elegant way to quantify the extent of partisan gerrymandering.

 

 

Really, this doesn't answer your question (BRB) on how to draw the map, but it does provide a way to analyze a map and determine the level of gerrymandering. All that's left is to establish what is an acceptible level of gerrymandering. They evaluated all of the state's maps and established an average and normal range. We will see what the SCOTUS rules.

[Danny Bateman]

Whitford is particularly important because of those five that IA pointed out that expressed interest in a metric to quantify political gerrymandering, Kennedy was one. It's expected that SCOTUS will vote along party lines in this case with the exception of Kennedy. He left the door open to ruling against gerrymandering in the past (even though he didn't do so) if they could come up with a satisfactory metric. Lots of us are hoping he's pleased with their efficiency gap method.

 

And, for some background, courts have historically (at least in modern times) struck down racial gerrymandering but not political gerrymandering. In other words, you cannot disenfranchise a specific race, but if you do it to a political party, for some reason the courts (SCOTUS) feel it's out of their hands. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Moiraine]

They're not hearing the case until October if I read it right.

 

Hope none of the justices retire or die before then.

[Whistlebritches]

These were people who voted for Sanders in the primaries and voted for Trump in the general. Crazy how it came down to about 40k voters in three states.

 

[zoogs]

^I think there's an interesting counterpoint to this, which is that in '08 more Hillary voters from the primary defected to McCain than Sanders voters to Trump. I haven't verified that, but it does make a lot of sense.

 

These numbers are still really high. And disappointing.