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this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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politics
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I mean... People live in regions. Those regions have representatives. How are those regions defined? Maps. Nothing uniquely American about it as far as I can tell.
Maps generally aren't strange. District maps are fucked. "Regions" takes on a whole different meaning in the US.
This and absolutely this. We've completely ignored the idea of geographical regions having a common interest and bastardized the concept of districts into
shoving all of your opponents into one district that only gets one vote
slicing up areas that are dominated by friendlies into as many districts as possible
in competitive areas, try to shove your opponents into districts that are already lost to you and create narrow bridges through opposing districts linking friendly districts. Essentially, go on a walkabout through the state collecting votes.
There's even a game you can play where you control redistricting for a hypothetical area. Given the same population, you can draw the maps such that election winners roughly match the proportions of voters, then to give full control to one side, then to give full control to the other side. The idea is to show you how the people who draw the maps can make voting irrelevant.
In democracy voters pick the politicians. In the USA politicians pick the voters
"Corporate Managed Democracy" might more accurately describe the US.
I'm liking this phrase. It's mine now. I stole it.
Capitalism baby!
Eh. It's not a very good phrase. I'll buy it from you for a dollar.
(Think fast. I have already printed 1000 tee-shirts.)
Anything to keep power out of the hands of black people and/or poor people who are "woke".
So does my country, but we don't change how the regions are distributed every election to benefit one party. Once the region/district is set we leave it alone.
The redistricting every 10 years is because there is a (Constitutionally-mandated) census, and regions/districts change their population, so you have to adjust the representation they get or people will not be fairly represented. You can't keep the same borders of a city that has grown 30% or the people will be getting less representation per person.
States used to do some dumb stuff like the Nevada State Senate had a district with less than 600 people and a different district with 120k+ and they counted the same. We got rid of that thanks to a Supreme Court ruling in 1964 (Reynolds v Sims).
The unique thing is that, depending on the layout, votes matter differently. I don't know of any other democratic country that makes it possible to change election results by changing districts.
Yes, we bastardize the districts, but when the upstream comment said "Election maps seems wild to me" (not any map in particular, just the idea of a map) I brought up my point.
No just the idea of a "map". Election maps that changes because a party wants the advantage is wild to me.
Technically correct, but there are systems that don't have to rely on maps per say. For example, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party-list_proportional_representation where representatives are assigned proportionally based on the votes. You don't have "your own representative".
Obviously there are downsides to this, but at the same time it requires no districts and manipulation in that regard is not possible.