Fun With Gerry Mandering

[stephinrome]

What are your favorite congressional district shapes?

How about Texas District 19:



(btw-that's larger than a few states)

Could these one day replace rorschach?

[Suich]

1. Is that Delay's district, by any chance? n/t

[stephinrome]

4. Good question, but no, this is Tom's...

[highnooner]

2. Here's the 12th in NC

:crazy:

[Marie26]

16. OMG - I had no idea!

Were they trying to hit every city, or what? They'd want to corral all those urban Dem. votes into one seat & leave the rest free for Republicans. The funniest part of the "district" is that the south-eastern corner of Charlotte is left out. This is also, coincidentally, the wealthiest & most Republican section of the city.

[highnooner]

3. Here's the 25th in TX

[tridim]

5. Tetri-mandering

[stephinrome]

11. that's what I was thinking!

(now those shapes will be dancing around in my brain all evening)

[Selatius]

6. Gerrymandering is a shameful legacy of both Republicans/Democrats

They're both equally guilty of the same thing. If you're going to call the pot black, then you should admit you're the kettle as well. Whichever party is in power has been guilty of gerrymandering regardless if it is Republicans or Democrats. It is even more disgusting when one studies the history of gerrymandering with respect to minorities in this country.

This is why I believe some form of proportional representation is better because it totally sidesteps district rigging. If you want to talk about democracy, you can do better than what we have currently, but if you don't, then you're better off not criticizing Republicans at all on the point of gerrymandering.

[stephinrome]

12. who said anything about the republicans? n/t

[MadAsHellNewYorker]

7. I like my congressional district, NY 8!

spanning a river and two islands!

[MadAsHellNewYorker]

8. another fun one is NY 12, 4 unconnected different areas

[baldguy]

9. NY 28th

[Yupster]

10. Would most people agree with

just putting the instructions into a computer to make the most compact districts possible with equal numbers of people in each district and live with the results?

I know that would split communities and run afoul of the voting rights act, but I'd go for it.

[MadAsHellNewYorker]

13. but whose instructions?

just as a small example, the prison-industrial complex builds most of their prisons in republican districts. Why? While these prisoner's are disenfranchised, the prison population counts toward the overall population of a district...is that a fair instruction? just some food for thought

[BlooInBloo]

14. Not even close to capturing the genuine complexity of the matter...

Here's an example of an attempt to deal with more of the true complexity involved with the notion of "fair representation"...

http://www.rev.net/~aloe/district/


Don't get me wrong - I'm not sayin I agree with everything here - just sayin that it at least hass a more complete notion of what's involved.

[Selatius]

17. They use computers PRECISELY to gerrymander. They...

...put instructions into computers and draw up boundaries in such a way that, yes, it does benefit the party in power but, no, it is not legally considered gerrymandering because they also include rules that would prevent the computers from drawing up boundaries that would break the law. In short, they use computers to bend the law as far as possible without breaking them.

It's gerrymandering gone high tech, in essence.

[trof]

15. Alabama 1st.

Baldwin County, my home, is lower right, on Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico..
It's the largest (land area) county in the U.S. east of the Mississippi.

[MadAsHellNewYorker]

18. kick

cause this is just a fun thread