You Should Know

They are so insane they inspired art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU8H-Ts_rfA

Ah, the minority locator.

That first one is no longer like that, but according to Wikipedia was done by the Democrats.

It's a complex issue as well, because it's not always done for nefarious reasons. If say 20% of a city is black, they might bundle them up so that they end up with one black guy and four white guys running the city, rather than the 5 white guys that would come from a "fairer" distribution.

But it's all just window dressing on the fact that first past the post systems aren't fit for purpose. If I vote for something, I want that counted at all levels up to the national level, not just thrown away because my particular group of streets doesn't like it.

Pay more attention to home friend, Europe is sliding into corruption hand in hand with us. But that would get in the way of nationalism wouldn't it?

The idea was that you get direct representation - your representative should be focused on your issues and the issues plaguing people in your district. But it breaks down today because politicians in the US just vote with their party.

just one of the many reasons you see such consistent low turnouts in american elections

The American political system was designed for weak parties, and geographical representation above all, in a political climate where there were significant cultural differences between regions.

The last time we updated the core rules around districting (435 seats divided as closely to proportionally as possible among the states, with all states being guaranteed at least one seat, in single member districts) was in 1929, when we had a relatively weak federal government, very weak political parties, before the rise of broadcasting (much less national broadcasting, or national television, or cable TV networks, or universal phone service, or internet, or social media). We had 48 states. The population was about 120 million, and a substantial number of citizens didn't actually speak English at home.

And so it was the vote for the person that was the norm. Plenty of people could and did "switch parties" to vote for the candidate they liked most. Parties couldn't expel politicians they didn't like, so most political issues weren't actually staked out by party line.

But now, we have national parties where even local school governance issues look to the national parties for guidance. And now the parties are strong, where an elected representative is basically powerless to resist even their own party's agenda. And a bunch of subjects that weren't partisan have become partisan. All while affiliations with other categories have weakened: fewer ethnic or religious enclaves, less self identity with place of birth, more cultural homogenization between regions, etc.

So it makes sense to switch to a party-based system, with multi member districts and multiple parties. But that isn't what we have now, and neither side wants to give up the resources and infrastructure they've set up to give themselves an advantage in the current system.

Mainly because these jerryrigged districts are counting on you not voting in order for them to work.

Ideally, your Reps are supposed to be local, so states are supposed to be divided up into relatively equal populations where the citizens have similar economic and social demographics so they get equitable representation of their local issues at a federal level.

Personally, I think we need a law where voting districts are limited by complexity. Create a law that establishes a maximum perimeter-to-area ratio for congressional districts, and also mandates that the most and least populous districts must be within 10% of eachother's population.

The last one would be unfair in most systems using districts.

https://bdistricting.com/

there are generally a couple (probably more but modern democracies afaik have settled on 2) ways of dividing up government: representative (you as a person living in an area elect someone to represent you) and proportional (you as a citizen of the country elect a party to represent your preferences)

rather than dividing land area (representative aka districts) to elect individuals, there are voting systems that take proportionality into account… parties put forward candidates based on their proportional vote (ie the party leader would get in first, and then they have a list of candidates who get chosen based on their % of the vote)… they don’t represent a district/area, but the party… so the idea is that if a minority party gets 10% of the vote, they should have 10% of the representation - districts be damned… philosophy is more important than land… this leads to a whole lot of minor parties having to form a coalition government

i live in australia, and we don’t have proportional representation (we have a party… kind… called the coalition but that’s… different… it’s complex… ignore it… afaik germany and nz have proportional representation: they’re probably the best places i know of to look for these systems: parliaments composed of many minor parties)… we do have ranked choice voting, so we’re kind of a middle ground: ranked choice without proportional representation still leads to a 2 party system, but imo theres debatable up sides and down sides from representative to proportional (proportional systems can lead to a lot of nothing - small parties that are technically the majority but can’t agree on anything and not able to get anything done)

i thiiiink i’ve heard that there are systems that combine proportional and representative (actually, i think our australian senate is proportional and our house of representatives is representative - our HOR is pretty 2 party and our senate has a about 5-6 minor parties) but this is where my knowledge gets fuzzy

first past the post is the root of all evil: there are no up sides, there are only down sides… it causes politics to be horrible (ranked choice you have to worry about not just winning outright but also being likeable - you have to make everyone like you, because you want them to put you 2nd, 3rd, etc because 2nd preference might make you win!), it causes extremism, hate, forced 2 party (in the worst possible way: extremist 2 party), and absolutely no opportunity for change

Because if you have the power to make it illegal, by definition, the old system worked for you (you won), so why would you change it?

It's cynical as all hell, but that's how it works.

Now we just need a way to do that

I have some ideas.

that isn't vigilante violence.

Oh. Nevermind...