@@ponyboy5637 You see... In terms of Election.... Russia do have an Election. However, one could be certain of the result of the election in Russia, which are often described as unfair and "state-controlled". Seeing how election works in the US (from the video), one could argue that the US have beaten Russia in this case. Russian knows that their election is.... unfair. Meanwhile, American may or may not know, due to these illusions we called Gerrymandering. It is absolutely bonkers, considering that politicians literally choose their constituents....
@@ponyboy5637 Also, the video clearly doesn't contain any conversation/explanation about Russia. However.... In the general conversation, we often describes US as "the pinnacle of democracy, land of the free" and Russia as "the land where democracy dies" or any other description regarding how bad the state of democracy there. Honestly, after watching this video.... I am really questioning these stereotypes. Do US really, trully, adheres to democratic values? Do US really better that Russia in terms of their election?
Gerrymandering really is one of the most insidious political practices, and it's only made as effective as it is by the out dated First Past the Post voting system. The only way to solve that and other issues is with proportional representation.
Once again, if you want to have proportional representation in the U.S., you need to drastically redo the entire setup of separation of powers in the U.S. constitutional system. A powerful executive branch independent of the legislative, with directly overlapping powers, and a unitary head, is going to run roughshod over a divided congress unless you can reliably get supermajority coalitions ready and active to oppose anything the president does that they don't like. This is not a particularly likely outcome.
@@xunqianbaidu6917 germany has a 5% requirement. Normally that is enough to have proper stable coalitions. Also there are rules in place that would apply if a coalition would fall apart which would keep the government going.
Gerrymandering pisses me off not only for all the very important, factual thing mentioned in this video, but also because you have like no sense of ownership or community within a district. People that live 5 miles from me might be a different district, while others that live way further might be in my district. How can a representative represent the interests of s district if the district itself has no single identifying characteristics like geography?
Here some people want more distritcts like in the us. It is curious because we see that democracy is not as representative as it should with whatever system we have. Stay safe! Thanks for the opinion
@@julianescobar2395 I think any system, where votes can turn out to be wasted, is somewhat limited in its democracy. That's why I prefer proportional representation over the first-past-the-post / majority rule systems that can be found in most English-speaking nations.
@@ryanchang5836 true but i think a lot of the democrat controlled state have independent commission to redraw the district, so at least it might be better, not saying democrats dont do gerry mandering like clearly they do in places like maryland, but still way better than many purple or red state where they have strange shape district to include all the african american one, or the one that got struck down by the supreme court in north carolina
I live is Missouri. The Republican controlled Legislation didn't like the Clean Missouri Initiative. So they rewrote the bill and put it back on the ballot, but with confusing language so that voters didn't know what they were voting for. It sucked.
@@bored0886 It's like double-speak or overcomplicating something, to make it vague enough that it sounds agreeable to the general reader while obscuring the actual meaning behind it.
It's like the city where I live in and the city put on the ballot initiative to change the homestead tax exemption to 25,000 when it was already 50,000, with out mentioning that the ballot. Everyone thought they where voting for a tax cut when it was a tax increase. Sadly it suppressed home values, and home owners where paying more money to the school district for schools that are the worst performing the in county.
@DEx Stev There should be clear communication standards for those kinds of things. In law. Then, if a individual or group does catch that the language is off-base or misleading, they could push for it's change with legal authority behind it. This makes sure that individuals have the best chance possible of being properly informed about what they are voting on. (not everyone has the time, resources, or understanding to do the research you suggest. If left up to politicians on how to communicate these important initiatives, they will seek to use misinformation and deceptive language techniques to get the voters to do what they want rather than what's in the voter's best interest). Having it so that those who have the time, resources, and background knowledge to spot and uncover those linguistic maneuverings can push to have them changed is the best solution I can see.
I suppose what is amazing is that the US is the only developed country where this happens. In Canada, Japan, Australia, France, Italy, the UK, etc. there is still a dependency on drawing geographic districts. However, gerrymandering never occurs (in the modern day) because it is all done by independent commissions, even though the politicians of these countries would technically have the same powers as US politicians. The gerrymandering in the US seems much more a result of the cynicism of US voters and consequent unwillingness to punish these transgressions.
@@ziglaus this is such a stupid comment no offence. Politicians choose to be politicians. They aren’t forced into that position and it’s not a burden as you make it out to be.
@@ottovonbismarck1352 Yeah, politicians are either in it for themselves or an insane ideology, trust none of them, unless you find one that is neither a self serving businessman nor a preachy zealot.
@@ottovonbismarck1352 i never said its a burden. Its just a job. We, the people select them, to represent out values in the process of governing our society. Im not saying all politicians are trash, but we literally elect them. We choose who we want to represent us. At least in most first world countries
@@Swodah i'm sorry, but where the hell is right wing authoritarianism rising and what do they want? Strict border controls, not wanting LGBT in schools and voter ID aren't authoritarian policies btw. The left is always authoritarian btw, it's just easier to notice now that they've been unveiling themselves and rising through propaganda from media and corporations alike. Also, both the left and economic authoritarianism have been rising in the west ever since WW2 and maybe even earlier (with the exception of the US that managed to save itself some time with McCarthyism)
Correction: Virginia's Commission is a Bipartisan Commission, not an independent one. This means that politicians still have some control over the redistricting process (both parties pick most of the people who do the redistricting), rather than it being a truly independent process.
Want to add that this means that instead of pure political gain for a party, having politicians from both sides means that the two parties will now have an incentive to build "safe" districts for their legislators, so a gerrymandering for establishment elites, an important reason why the Virgina black caucus wanted to stop the current form of the commission
That is true. However, independent doesn’t mean non biased in terms of ideology. Bernie Sanders is independent but he clearly has a liberal view and tendency to side with the democrats. At least if it is bipartisan both sides have a say and both have a hand on the wheel. Independents would still pick people with ideology similar to theirs or people who have the same goals.
@@northstar4601 Different use of the term independent. For Bernie it refers to his lack of a direct attachment to a political party even though policy wise he's much closer to the democrat platform, whereas independent commissions refers to their independence from elected officials in general. Independent commissions are generally given aspirational goals to shoot for when drawing maps (such as avoiding inefficient districts or making sure districts produce results that are generally proportional to the results of the popular vote) and stick to those rather than drawing maps aimed at benefiting a political party. Essentially they are just people hired to do a job, rather than elected officials who have a direct incentive to manipulate their voting base.
@@spellbound1875 oops my bad. Haha, I know there are a lot of people who don’t know Bernie is an independent. A lot of people I have talked too just assume he is democrat.
@@northstar4601 He acts as one from a layperson perspective given our two party system so its an easy mistake to make. It only really comes up when considering the internal workings of the democratic party where Bernie is able to act more independently since he's not officially part of the organization and free from some of its regulations. It's one of the reasons a lot of "establishment" democrats tend to be rather unfriendly towards him. From their perspective he's an outsider who has a disproportionate amount of sway on their organization (which isn't wrong, just not necessarily a negative thing).
9:00 Stupid as hell that the Supreme Court can say one day, only the State Courts can deal with Gerrymandering, and then immediately after jump in and shoot down a ruling from a state court. What the hell either stay out or do your job .
Well, while I do find it sus, there is a reason to say it could be legit. One can 'we don't have the authority to decide how to do this' and simultaneously say 'your standard doesn't work'. For instance, you may not be able to arrest someone as you are not a police officer, but you can still say they overstepped their authority when they did arrest someone. Essentially, it is the difference between setting the standard, and enforcing the standard.
@@Derekloffin yeah, the courts are the ones interpreting the laws, not the ones who write them. They can't say "here's how you're going to do this" but they can say "you can't do it that way"
@@Ameriguy99 We weren't discussing the senate, we were discussing the house. Both the US and Canadian senate have severe problems but house wise the Canadian system is a million times better.
I mean our system over here in Canada isn’t great either. My home district as well as my college district are all safe liberal, so my vote really doesn’t count. PMs get elected with a third of the vote, unlike the US where an elected president usually gets more than half. However, we have more parties and money isn’t as much of a corrupting influence as it is in America.
@@arjansahota4911 PMs get elected with a third of the vote because of how many parties we have here. If you see it as "how many people voted for Trudeau as PM and how many people voted against him" of course it's going to look unfair, but that's not how it works. Of course it's not the fairest (Conservatives still won the popular vote in 2019, though by a small margin) but it's way fairer than you make it sound.
@@jacobhogan3208 We are talking about democracy right? How representive each system is? To do that we have to examine the entirety of each legislative body. The entire Canadian Parliament and the entire US Congress. If you want to make the claim that Canada fixed the way they dispersed voteinf districts better, you'll get no arguemnt from me, Canada does deserve credit for that. But that's a result of a sound police not a superior form of government. The existence of the Canadian Senate alone makes Canada a far less representative democracy than the US is. Half of the Canadian legislature and the entire Canadian Judical branch is chosen at the total discretion of the Prime Minister. Where as the US system alots for a public vote for each member of the senate and the coordination of the Executive and Legislative branches to appoint the Judical branch. I'm not here to run down Canada, I fought with alot of Canadians overseas. But I do belive the Canadian system which is a mirror of the UK system suffers alot of its flaws as well being overly tied to the concept of a house of lords and monarchy. If this is the system that pleases Canadians than by all means, but I don't think its marginally more representative.
I disagree. In the proportional representation you just have political parties competing for seats. The district system forces local issues to be heard and addressed, politicans need to be geographically tied to a community so that communities needs can be heard by the government that rules them rather than just be subject to the whims of political party of elites
@@Ameriguy99 problem is that is a myth. Noone in house of commons represent their district, but they represent their parties ideology on national level. Which makes sense since their district isnt a long known area with people like states, but an area drawed by party leaders few years ago. And because of this nature local representation in national level physically cant be lower than states, and its already done by Senate.
@@Ameriguy99 But they represent their parties, not the population, as the district lines are drawn without proportions regarding population. Same issue with the Senate as a whole. Every state gets 2 seats and yet a senator from Wyoming represents only 350.000 people or so and a senator from California over 20 million, but they have equal voting power on the federal level.
@@Avatar2312 Each Congressional district has roughly the same population size as well as can be made. I think currently it's around 730,000 people per district. This is why in some cities,.you will see 5 or 6 districts and some entire states have just 1. The districts will sometimes have odd boundaries just because of where people live and the difficulty in evenly dividing a population into districts. Though I'm not denying that the political parties make an effort to tilt that design in theor favor. The fact that they are more inclined to represent their parties than their districts is a very serious issue indeed. One I think could be better served with limiting Congressional terms to 1. Each person going to the house should get 1 2 year term and then be ineligible to run for that sear again. That would greatly demenish the influence parties have as people arnt in the house long enough to establish leverage or alliances. That's the entire point of the Senate. The House exist to represent the needs and desires of the people, whereas the Senate is there to represent the states. It's necessary for the integrity of our union that states have a chamber in government in which all states, no matter how big or small, how rich or poor...have an equal say, an equal voice. Where an issue that concerns Wyoming can be addressed as easily as an issue that concerns New York. If we did away with that second chamber...then what voice would wyoming have? Why would those states won't to be in a union, in a nation where their voice will never be heard, they votes will never matter and their government will never care because 2 neighborhoods in LA hold more power than their entire state? The US isn't just one big country, it's a plurality. It's 50 independent states each with their own laws, traditions and values all working together. The existence of the Senate is the result of years of complex negotiations that had to occur to make each and every member state feel like they are equal partners in this union
The parties which fight to retain the practice are the ones who benefit from it. The parties which fight to end it are the ones who do not. It's really as simple as that. There are no benevolent actors here.
Which is why both Dems and GOP keep the danm thing. The two parties would get annoyed if say the libertarians got in and a heart attack if the Greens ever became viable.
@@billjane5522 not really, in the last election conservatives won about 45% of the public vote and now have a massive majority which basically gives them 100% control. Considering the last election was very Brexit orientated and if I remember correctly there were more votes for remain parties so it was especially bad.
Missouri native here, the repeal campaign for the clean initiative thing was so extremely dirty. (IIRC, there’s also evidence that it was unconstitutional how the repeal campaign conducted itself). They (that is, mainly, the republicans) were able to repeal such a sensible and good law only because they tricked voters with the way they worded the language of the repeal amendment - in short, they basically added some anti-lobbyist stuff to the repeal bill to make it more attractive, and shuffled words around so that it made clean Missouri sound dirtier than it was. Now, anti-lobbyist stuff is of course popular, but the problem with the repeal amendment wrt was that the concessions wrt caps on lobbying was only marginally different from what current law already protected. So really, in material effect, Missouri voters were sold it as major anti-lobbying legislation, but instead of the nature of Missouri lobbying changing very significantly, all the repeal effectively did was destroy Missouri’s first chance at having anything near fair elections.
My state, Maryland, is often cited as the most gerrymandered state in the Union. While Democrats represent a majority of the electorate, they do not have anything like the unanimity among the electorate that they enjoy in the state house or in our congressional representation.
The democrats got 70.2% of the seats in the state house and 65% of the votes, the republicans got 32.6% of the votes and 29.8% of the seats, which mean the democrats have 5% more of the seats than they have votes. In NC the republicans have 50% of the votes and 58% of the seats in the lower house, I think that shows that the guys in NC are probably cheating more than the politicans in MD. But I think we can all agree that the US political system is just bad.
@@fadope1612 You have to be really careful with this kind of quick calculations. Each district can either be blue or red. So if the repartition of voters for each side is perfectly represented in each district, even a 49.9% share of vote would result in 0 district won. The best way would be to creat a fully representative vote where elected officials are not done in districts but on a state or national level based on the actual proportion of total voters to ensure a XX% of voters does bot result in 0 representative.
@@axellacaze9115 Multimember districting is consistent with the American system as it is still a regional and individual voting scheme rather than national and party based. American voting system is based around candidates rather than parties, and hence why everything is messed up as the parties have too much power.
9:09 "Gerry-Mandering will always mean a non zero efficiency gap" is acctually not true. A very unpopular party can benefit from a zero efficiency gerry-mandering. But there are more problems with this method. It basically means that districts should be drawn in a way that the outcome represents the states as one big district. It kills the purpose of districts in the first place.
Well, districts are a flawed idea to begin with. People should be represented based on ideology and policy proposals, not based on where they live. That is a feudal concept and a hold over from Britain's landed gentry based power system. Each vote should count, and each vote should count equally. The most simple solution is to use proportional representation. My country switched in 1917. In the Computer Age, first-past-the-post elections are obsolete and too easy to corrupt.
Hah, yeah, here we were forced to make out capital its own thing thins it has like 1/3 of the total population itself. The area around it is split from it.
In Germany, they are usually changes when the difference between a district ant the mean sice of a district becomes too big. But it doesn't matter that much anyway, because our parliament is proportional anyway. The districts just change who is sent there by the parties and it results in a way bigger parliament because one party with a quarter of the votes wins more than half of the districts.
Honestly why use districts at all? It makes everything so complicated, in state votes as well as national votes. In the Netherlands we have had proportional representative elections for 104 years now. The percentage of votes equals approximately the same amount of seats in the provincial/state elections. (Same mechanism for national elections). Efficiency gap metric/wasted votes AFTER rounding up: almost near zero.
@@elsquidwardo Why? We used to think that was a good idea in the 19th century. But it's not. Representation based on geography and land ownership is a hold over of the British feudal systems. Representation based on ideology and policy choices works much, much better. It also prevents a lot of tribalism and polarization in politics.
@The Anonymous Sir Backspace No it is not. Regional executive elections are an obvious yes, but that doesn't solve the issue of national representation in the legislature. The only point of the creation and formation of Congress was to represent the viewpoints of many millions of Americans equally AND fairly. America at its foundation had very different identities among different states, and it still, in some ways, does! Because of this, the federal government is meant to be a governing force over the greater nation, yes, but only by the consent of each individual state. Each state CHOOSES to partake in the union. Proportional representation in a country that has predominantly more urban than rural and suburban voters would create mob rule, and disallow voters from Wyoming to have much of any say in a union they WILLINGLY PARTAKE IN. It would be like being invited to the party, but not being able to do anything you like because somebody else has 10 times the amount of power you have. It feels unfair.
@@rogerwilco2 "it also prevents a lot of tribalism and polarization" And yet it does the very opposite? Historically, more partisan divide and partisan power has only furthered polarization. Proportional representation would fuel the GOP and Democratic Party to rely on their donors and major partisan hotspots to remain on the top over the less important constituencies. Polarization exists when the peoples' beliefs are not represented in government, and proportional representation does just that.
Seems like common sense that the federal government should draw the maps for federal elections. Obviously through an independent commission though. We all just want fairness. Let the best ideas win.
Well, the senators used to be appointed by the state legislature, so constitutionally, that's probably why House maps are drawn by the state governments. In the original constitution, a lot of powers that honestly should've been given to the federal government were given to the state governments, because of the founder's fear of a powerful central government
That would require an amendment to the constitution. Since you need an amendment anyway why would you settle for that rather than adopt a more democratic proportional parliament?
Or just a real odd thought: Don't use districts like that, as no-one else does that. Gerrymandering is not a thing in European Countries, Australia, Japan etc. The % of votes is what you get. No crazy maps that can increase your influence by 1/3 out of thin air.
@@tr7zw um, Australia and Japan do not have fully proportional systems; both use at least some geographic districts. Technically, it would be possible to gerrymander them, but (as all sane countries do) they have independent commissions that deal with the line drawing. Other countries use geographic districts as well, including Canada, Italy, and France. This is not a defence of geographic constituencies (I support proportional representation), but we should get our facts straight.
but also in Arizona US house elections in 2020, democrats won 5/9 seats with republicans winning 4/9 despite republicans getting 50.1% of votes in the elections with democrats winning 49.9% of votes in the elections according to wikipedia (this is just the US House of Representatives elections in Arizona).
Just wanna say, folks, I've noticed the changes you've made in monetization of the channel and how you place advertisements. It hasn't gone unappreciated, thank you.
Just to be clear for those that don't know the local map, in Maryland, they did not stuff _all_ the Republicans into one district, though the Eastern Shore is heavily conservative and so even in a non-gerrymandered map it would still mostly equate to most of that red district still being there. If there were any "shenanigans" in that map, it was that the western panhandle, which was also heavily conservative, was lumped into the same district as the area just north of DC, which is a heavily populated, much more liberal area of the state, which gave them a narrow majority for that district and allowed them to take the seat. More importantly though, it's not like Maryland has a _ton_ of seats in total, so in practice the Democrats only picked up 1-2 seats due to Gerrymandering, while losing dozens of seats in larger Republican states.
The Gerry for whom this phenomenon was named (after he drew a crazy district that looked like a lizard, lead a critic to call the district the salamander, to which another responded they should call it a Gerrymander) pronounced his name Gear-y. I'm not saying we should pronounce gerrymandering like that, just enjoying that this thing manages to be stupid in every possible way, right down to its naming.
There are 3 types of Gerrymandering: Obviously gerrymandered districts are, well, obvious, and thus easy to call-out. Subtle gerrymandering, as the name implies, can be extremely hard to identify and combat. Inadvertent or accidental gerrymandering can be either easy or hard to spot. Though the first 2 are arguably worse, all 3 can have the same detrimental effects. Campaigns to fight only the first kind ignore the equally bad other 2 kinds. Without switching to some form of proportional based system and/or multi-member districts, I don’t see how to ever make any real progress against all 3 types.
You cant do that because this is not a democracy it's a Representative Republic. That means that members of the House of Representatives, are elected locally among a community to represent that specific community in the federal government. We tend to say things like oh the Republicans won this many seats or the Democrats won that seat. But its crucial we don't forget that those people arnt being sent to congress to represent the party but to represent the local community that appointed them.
@@julianescobar2395 seats according to votes. In proportional representation, every single vote is counted. I don't understand why people want to change to districts
@@Ameriguy99 Can people actually stop with the "it's not a democracy, it's a representative Republic" line? As if being a representative Republic was incompatible with having a proportional apportionment of representatives.
Unfortunately, gerrymandering "just works" _because of_ single-member voting districts, i.e. the winning party gets 100% representation while everyone else gets _none._ And having more than two parties (even just local parties) would actually _magnify_ the problem instead of fixing it due to how single-vote ballots (aka. first-past-the-post) "split" votes between candidates.
First, voters approved a bill in 2018 with broad anti-corruption provisions that also switched from the bi-partisan old system to a non-partisan new system that would draw districts with the intention of making the legislature's party distribution proportionate to the party distribution of votes in statewide elections. Then, voters approved another bill, put on the ballot by the legislature in 2020, that just barely increased the anti-corruption measures that the 2018 bill already had and repealed all the redistricting changes and let the legislature put in its pro-Republican partisan districting.
Okay, to be fair, there are some bi-partisan elements still, so in some ways it's similar to a return to the old districting system. But Republicans are likely to get an even bigger super-majority in a state that didn't even become a clear red state until 2016 in which Republicans have nowhere near a supermajority of support.
Yeah, that whole thing was scummy. Tried to spread information to people I knew about how it wasn’t actually more anti-corruption to vote for the 2020 bill, but in the end it still passed 😕
Don't worry! The Democratic National Redistricting Committee (created by a President from the Democrat Party) has nothing to do with the Democrat Party! Holy shit TLDR what are you guys on ?
Unfortunately, gerrymandering is something the establishment in both parties do constantly, but this year even without it the rush of new households into largely GOP-led states means that even if there were no gerrymandering, it would give the GOP an advantage.
Commenting to say that in spite of our anti-gerrymandering efforts in Utah, we still have some very poorly drawn districts. The Salt Lake metro area which is mostly democratically homogenous has been divided between several districts to give the republicans an advantage.
Instead of having districts, each state should be allowed a certain number of seats and the state's population as a whole should choose the representatives through a ranked voting system, that would completely destroy gerrymandering
Or, if you so desperately want to keep the districts: first do the elections , than divide the seats in accordance to the percentage of votes and than draw the districts so they match that outcome. badabing badabang nothing really changed and America got more democratic.
That doesn't really work though. The entire point of the House of Representatives is so that that public can elect local people to represent their local concerns. They don't represent the state at large, they represent a smaller more localized community. To win that seat you must win that community. The senate already represents states on a statewide basis
When the US was founded, the founding fathers didn't really intend to give voting rights to everybody. They feared the majority that owns nothing would overrun the rights of the property owners. Only white English speaking men over 21 who owned property were allowed to vote originally.
And this is why it would not work in the US: US is a REPUBLIC, meaning there’s a number of sovereign states with their own laws taxes and governments, that constitute a union by forfeiting part of their sovereignty in exchange for representation in said union. Introduce proportional representation and it is literally “taxation without representation” for the states as sovereign entities, hence it is theft and succession should take place leading to dissolution of the union. Do you want that? I bet you don’t
@@pikal6143 the problems are not the people but large corporations and they run deep like military and their imperialism which is felt in their 800 bases around the world not to mention the greater us outside of the us that’s between Mexico and Canada, also big monopolies lobbying things there way turning the country into technofeudalism and so on
Saying it's unfair to have a minority get a majority in the result is saying you want every vote to count in favor of it's vote instead of the majority of your area/state. In other words; throw all votes on 1 pile and the majority wins.
For those confused by Missouri, what happened was some clever mismarketing by the right. Most of the Clean Missouri Initiative was left intact thankfully, though what is left can be scarily used to make things worse potentially depending on how State courts eventually rule on the new districts (because no doubt they will go to court). Essentially 3 things were changed. 1. The independent state demographer who would draw the maps according to several guidelines (with priorities of which are the most important given by order) and then submit several such maps for approval to the Legislature, has been replaced with the bipartisan commission made up of legislatures that the independent state demographer replaced in 2018. This surprisingly was actually accurately mentioned on the ballot though only after the courts rewrote the ballot text because the original ballot text left out that it was replacing the independent state demographer. 2. The priority of the rules by which maps are drawn have been changed slightly. The highest priority was maps that produce proportional amounts of representatives to the number of votes for each party as well as being responsive to shifts in party popularity (so a map that won’t still give 40% of the seats to one party even when their popularity rises or falls above or below the 40% they had when the seats were drawn). While that is still a priority I think it’s now 3rd in the list and the most important is creating compact (not having the squiggling lines that characterizes many gerrymandered districts) districts. For those who don’t know the problem, it is possible to create gerrymandered districts that do not look gerrymandered at first glance. Some guy on TH-cam even created a program to demonstrate this with NC and showed that he was able to create compact districts however he wanted the votes to go whether that be a competitive race, to all safe seats, to only 2 democratic seats out of 14, to democratic majority. None of which looked even remotely gerrymandered. Also the ballot text only indicated priorities were being changes, not in what way, really had to dig into the actual text of the State Constitutional amendment to find it and hoo boy was that a dense read. 3. The part that Republicans sold everyone on: It banned lobbying gifts. HOORAY! A change that isn’t evil! Except that the lobbying gift limit was already only $5 so it made no practical difference anyways. That little detail didn’t make it into the text of the ballot. 4. Also lowered the campaign contribution limit. Though only by $100 from $2500 to $2400 and thus largely irrelevant, a detail again left out of the ballot text. Unfortunately the ballot measure went through two rewrites. Once by the first judge who viewed it and rewrote it to provide an accurate summary of what was going on, and then by the appeals court who rewrote it again to conceal any information originally concealed that didn’t violate the main issue raised by the original plaintiffs, that of the independent state demographer that voters voted for in 2018 being replaced with what was before. Combined with the fact that republicans led a campaign to say that what Missouri had voted for would lead to heavily democratic-skewed gerrymandered maps (despite no map having even been produced yet, or even independent demographer selected) and the bill just barely eeked out a victory which is incredibly frustrating.
First, voters approved a bill in 2018 with broad anti-corruption provisions that also switched from the bi-partisan old system to a non-partisan new system that would draw districts with the intention of making the legislature's party distribution proportionate to the party distribution of votes in statewide elections. Then, voters approved another bill, put on the ballot by the legislature in 2020, that just barely increased the anti-corruption measures that the 2018 bill already had and repealed all the redistricting changes and let the legislature put in its pro-Republican partisan districting.
10:40 False numbers. In 2018, Republicans won 45 per cent of the vote, not 47. In 2016, Republicans won 54 per cent of the vote, not 52. I think he is making it up to prop up his point. With more than 9 per cent point swing, I don't think it's nothing special that four seats flip blue. Republicans do well in many places like Pennsylvania not because of gerrymandering but because Democrats like to live in bubbles. In Pennsylvania's case, in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. When you have a first past the post system emphasizing local representation, other parts of state then end up voting red representatives. In that system, I would go as far to say there is no such thing as fair representation. If that is what you want, you NEED a proportionate election system.
Were the lines not redrawn as well in 2018 for PA & NC? Self sorting is a factor. Packing and cracking people with gerrymandering is another. You can't say one has an effect but the other doesn't. That doesn't compute.
I love how the Supreme Court (the same court that in the early days of itself basically gave them their supreme right) basically went “we know its an issue on both sides, but lets just naaaaaah”
@Nixon First Mapping I never said that. I'd be fine with it applying to everyone. Anyways, I don't believe that free and fair elections can truly exist without proportional representation and publicly financed elections.
@Nixon First Mapping Both sides are being equally undemocratic with their gerrymandering, it should be illegal as fuck in any civilised western country. The only reason it still exists in the US is because both sides are guilty of it.
Who is being "suppressioned" from voting? Are you talking about voter ID? If you're complain about voter ID why don't the Dems support helping people to get ID instead of removing. Getting ID will help them with more than just voting. You get a secure election and a productive citizens (less likely to engage in crime, less likely to be homeless).
There's a board game called "mapmaker" which is fundamentally a competition to see who can place borders to gerrymander their way to victory. It's pretty fun, and really demonstrates how the process works very nicely.
It should be a team of geography experts drawing the lines and according to good and fakr criteria which clearly defibes how they should be drawn, not politicians
Pure proportional is bad. We had that in Italy and a vast majority vote against it in two consecutives referendums. It make impossible to form a stable majority and implementing anything. Multiple seats districts and/or a mixed sistem are the less bad options.
@@lawtraf8008 - Whether there’s good reason or not, it risks introducing bias. Most academics (and I include myself in that number) lean to the left because they’ve spent their life in books rather than in the real world.
Says "Democratic National Redistricting Committee" but shows a screenshot of the website that clearly says "National Democratic Redistricting Committee". Get some QA analysts.
I'm from Michigan and sorry proud of our independent commission. The state legislature has been trying to overturn the commission since 2018 when the initiative was passed. Mainly because over the last 5 elections they only won the plurality of votes once (2016) but have had the majority the last 12 years
1:22 No, they don’t. Every state uses single-member districts. Everyone outside of Nebraska is in one district with a single member in a lower chamber and in one (usually larger) district with a single member in an upper chamber. No state has multiple members per district or proportional representation in the state legislature. The US House uses single-member districts; you might be able to parse the Senate as a two-member district with the whole state being one district, but given that senators are in separate seats elected in offset cycles on a first-past-the-post basis (rather than in the same election, as joint representatives, based on some proportional principle), they’re effectively two single-member districts in how they function.
So we already know the republicans will win the house in 2022. Because of Gerrymandering, 90% of all seats are not competitive. And republicans could simply win the house majority with these safe seats. Policies, campaigning are becoming less and less important. The house majority is mainly decided by redistricting
Voter always surprised everyone, like in the 2018 and 2020 house election, republican have gerrymander it so much that based on polls, democrat shouldn’t have even maintain their majority seat, but they did by winning what supposed to be republican seat. There’s literally a house election in 2020 where the winner is only winning by fucking 6 votes! Literally Only 1 big family needed to change the result, So, my point is, voting in the 2022 midterm election is still important, even if you don’t believe your vote is matter
Even without gerrymandering, you aren't get 100% competitive districts. There's a ton of self sorting. Fair districts might increase the competitive seats by 10-15%. Even in other countries with similar systems but with commissions drawing lines, you are not seeing 100% of districts competitive. In the UK, 10% of the seats were won by 5% or less, 22% by 10% or less in 2019.
Sounds good, but people dont live in nice clear blocks, some places look funny but are very fair, just throwing down squares on a map dosnt allow the same amount of people to be represented by each representitive, not saying there isnt a problem, but just draw straight lines dosnt work either
It's not that wild...Democrats are concentrated in urban centers. You can determine weather a state is Republican or Democrat by determining if the urban population in that state is larger than the rural population in that state. There are simply more people liveing in the city. Look at Illinois, a rural Midwestern state that would be a Republican stronghold....if it weren't for Chicago and its surrounding area driveing the state to the Democrats. It really is a battle between Rural and Urban populations more than competing ideologies
@@Ameriguy99 also a republican can check like three boxes and have universal support from their party a democrat needs to walk a tightrope on like 10 issues, any single one of which will cause a voting bloc to shun them if they're on the wrong side
@@MP-dn4bs The Republicans have their tightrope too. There are multiple factions within the Republican tent that its impossible for any of them to receive universal support. Which is why nearly all Republican administrations are alliances between different factions. Trump (Nationalist/Populist) paired with Pence (Evangelical right), Bush (old money/ establishment) paired with Cheny (boardroom Republican), McCain (establishment) paired with Palin (firebrand/ Evangelical) The Republicans have the MAGA block, the TEA party block, the establishment GOP block, the Rino block, the evangelical block, the big business block, and so on and so on. In nearly any other system you would have Ted Cruz, Trump, Romney, McConnell and Rand Paul all from starkly different parties, but here in the US they are supposedly all under the same tent despite vastly different views. That's reflected in the voteing base too
Except Republicans *don't* have vastly different views for the most part. They have different priorities; there's a difference. Trump/Pence being a divide? The Evangelical right would support Trump over Pence in a heartbeat! He's their messiah at this point. There is no SINGLE issue that is a dealbreaker for Democrats even close to that of being anti-abortion is for being a Republican. If you're anti-abortion (and white), you're voting Republican, full stop, no matter what else you believe in.
The fact this has not yet been dealt with says a lot about how bad of a democracy the US is. They need to try to pass a bill that mandates independent commissions for each state's federal redistricting. I really hope that can get 10 Republicans, even if it's pretty much too late now.
Just want to say there are programmer biases. It can come from either the programmer or the historical data. This happened in HR practices in NY states with automated interviews. So ultimately there would still be bias in these maps unless they had programmer go over the data over and over and over
The general idea is that people like having local representatives that they can hold accountable (in theory, at least). Just having the parties select a bunch of their own candidates with no input from the constituents is probably not something people would look at favorably. That being said, there are MUCH better systems that are more proportional than single-member districts while keeping local representatives (Single transferable vote, mixed-member professional, etc.)
Because geography matters. What happens when you stick country voters in with city voters? The city voters, due to sheer size, will simply outvote them. Which means the country voters grow disgruntled with the system and try to leave. And by leave, I mean declare war. Which you might not think is possible now, but that was very much a danger when the laws were made. And given the greater contrast between the two groups, is a good way to incite domestic terrorism.
@@Hellblade8 "What happens when you stick country voters in with city voters? The city voters, due to sheer size, will simply outvote them. Which means the country voters grow disgruntled with the system and try to leave." Not really. If you did away with districts and used statewide PR to fill state chambers, rural would get seats proportional to their vote. It is using districts that allows you to pack and crack rural or other geographical groups to amplify or wreck their power.
Germany has a system where district winners get elected, but the gap between all district winners and the given number of seats (called the overhang) is filled proportionally from predefined party lists. This way respects both popular politicians, and seniors in districts exposed to adverse demographics, as well as regional/state differences. The Linke party, for instance, which only stands in former East German states regularly get more seats by direct mandate than their national proportion would allow.
@@simpl51 yeah, you are completely right, only that the Linke party only won like 4 seats directly, while 77% where won by CDU/CSU. If Germany had only the direct elected politicians, then they would be dominated by one party.
In my opinion, it would be more fair if the districts were constant, based on some politologic idea (for an example, dividing an area into a capitol, an urban and a rural district) and then, those districts should get assigned the number of seats, according to the census.
that generally sounds like the best idea, make much larger districts that are based on geography and urban/rural divides. outside of that they should be as round as possible (of course not circles but you just don't want long skinny districts). Then you have those districts as multi member, so each district elects multiple representatives. Use STV or single transferable vote for this.
@America First Mapping You can try to invalidate me personally (always a sign of strong political rigour) but that's not going to work on replication studies, infection rates or peer review. (Of course, you don't know what those are, 'cause science.) I mean, "an experimental drug"? Do you think vaccines started yesterday? I don't see why you'd listen to me: I know what I'm talking about & I don't give purchase to strongmen or conspiracy theories.
@America First Mapping And another thing: exactly how to masks infringe on your rights worse than seat belt laws or drunk driving laws or Facebook tracking your every move or the TSA scanning your nude body for no reason? All of that is fine; I'd put down money that you use Facebook and you don't think twice, that you've never protested the TSA before, or held a Tea Party group meeting about the TYRANNY of the gov. telling you to wear a seat belt. 🙄 Get real mate, we all see through you. Take your anti-science garbage, leave your air conditioning & smartphone with us, and go live Biblically in the woods. Otherwise, you're a hypocrite & you know it.
Well, the democracy in the US is the oldest still existing democracy in the world. It was the first successful attempt at a democracy after the fall of the Roman republic. They still stick to it for better or worse. But you got to consider that originally, the founders didn't even intend to give the right to vote to everybody as they worried that the masses that don't own property would overrun the rights of the property owners, also they thought that most people are idiots. They weren't that wrong on that one though. Only white English speaking property owning men were allowed to vote originally. So they actually did advance quite a bit since then. I'm just saying all this, because many people seem to have this warped idea that the US used to be a great democracy before. which it wasn't.
*(un)fun fact:* Missouri passed a voter-based initiative in 2018 that would give redistricting powers to a nonpartisan committee. The GOP legislature had a fit and at a last ditch effort in 2020, put another initiative on the ballot to give the legislature and governor redistricting power. They pumped millions into it and it passed with like 53%. It's appalling! That's why I'm running as a green party candidate and plan to canvass for state rep in my district in MO in 2022. I'm tired of this government and their fascist-dabbling tendencies. I'm gonna try and win and "give 'em hell" (as they used to say to President Truman)
Great video! I'm a little confused on one point. How does the 2010 redistricting compare with the 2020 redistricting? How much do Democrats control in 2020 compared to 2010? How much do Republicans control in 2020 compared to 2010?
at the moment republicans basically benefit from gerrymandering 2 to 1 and after districts are redistricted again ahead of 2022, I only imagine that its even more skewed
@@plip_plop it seems to me the republicans definitely have the advantage in 2020, but less so than in 2010... so that's a little bit of progress in my opinion
Democrats are in a better position than in 2010, Michigan Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have Dem governors/independent commissions, so the GOP Gerrymander of 2010 will be reversed, with full control of the New York and Illinois governments they can draw 23-3 and 14-3 maps, Florida, North Carolina Texas are already gerrymandered almost to the max, so republicans can't net many seats from redistricting there. The Dems are in a substantially better position than last decade
@@kostas9592 the problem with what you’re saying is that non partisan maps are actually fair. For example partisan gerrymandering in CA is banned. If it were not so and dems gerrymandered them so they would win, republicans would have virtually no seats there.
US: "how to stop gerrymandering, we really do not know" Meanwhile in mainland Europe: multi-member districts, based on administrative borders (provinces, cantons, states) with proportional representation.
I visited the site of the anti-gerrymandering organisation that was mentioned and it really doesnt seem as non-partisan and anti-all-gerrymandering when most of their targets and successes they are talking about are "we flipped the seat for a democrat" "we helped elect a democrat". I am totally against gerrymandering, I think its unfair and deceptive, I am happy for initiatives that are going to end it, doesnt matter which side they are on, but feels dishonest the way this organisation was presented (even if they make it more fair for everyone).
My state (Mississippi) has four Congressional districts. Three are safe R seats and 1 is a safe D seat. One of our state legislators threatened the only Democrat representing Mississippians on a statewide or federal level that they'd draw his seat out after 2020. If they redrew the lines to be fair, my district - MS03 - would be a swing district in every election. LSS, every single possible swing seat should be a swing seat.
"We’re on the right path. In the past few years the NDRC has helped fair map Democrats make big gains -- winning nine governors races, flipping eight state legislative chambers, and winning three state Supreme Court races." This doesn't seem non partisain. check your bias
Considering there's been hundreds of bills introduced by republicans in this past year all seeking to in some way restrict the right to vote (be it through 'sensible' arguments or not) I'm pretty sure anyone biased towards a democracy is going to regard such behavior as a negative. If you want perfect non-biased reporting, go to the dry-ass sources and read the bills yourself. You'll find a distinct bias that lines up with recent pew research, wherein more than half of repubs called voting a privilege and nearly 3/4 dems called it a right. Or, you know, reference multiple sources for your info to develop your own insights, maybe share with the class when you find facets that are worth bringing up to the topic instead of jumping on the "this isn't nonbiased" bandwagon
@@SCh1m3ra you seem to be missing the point of my statement, My point is that TLDR said that the site was non partisain in nature, but the first thing they do is brag about winning seats for democrats and say nothing about winning seats for republicans in return, despite as tldr saying that they challenge for both. hence , the website has a clear bias in how they frame things, and tldr doesn't call them out for that
@@ponyboy5637 then they’d need to be moderate and actually make good promises to follow through on, rather than just screaming whatever the hell they want.
Heres what my solution would be. 1 create even districts of people that have reasonable shapes. 2 count the total vote and then award each district a proportion of districts based on proportion of total vote with a preference towards districts with more of their parties voters in.
Sorry but it is ridiculous to talk about this subject without mentioning how Дурак Донни and the Banana Republic-ans politicized the Census Bureau for a favorable 2020 result.
The NDRC is chaired by Eric Holder, he's not exactly the best example of non-partisanship. Hence why they only pressure Democrats gerrymandering in already majority blue states, that way they can say they did something, while ignoring other states that are battlegrounds if the Democrats are doing it. Eg. their website has complaints about NJ and Texas, but not Wisconsin or Ohio. I would suggest more grassroots "non-partisan" political organizations if you want to be seen as independent and objective.
I live in Illinois and currently our democrat majority legislature is radically redrawing the districts to help them even more, in and around the city of Chicago gerrymandering is already really bad.
@@chudchadanstudthe great majority of gerrymandering takes place in states where republicans control the state legislature. If we were to draw a fair map in Maryland, the best we could do is make one more republican district, because the fact still remains that nearly 60% of voters always vote democratic. Whereas in a state like North Carolina or Texas, if we were to draw more fair maps, we could make several competitive or safe Democratic districts. in 2019, the court ordered North Carolina to redraw its congressional map to make it more fair. In doing so, it created two safe Democratic districts in 2020. The GOP is largely against banning gerrymandering because they know that it doesn’t favor them. In the 2018 midterms, Democrats won 48% of the house popular vote in Texas, which is a significant achievement. However, they only won 13 of the 36 districts up for grabs. If the map were redrawn to be more fair, democrats would be receiving several more districts, which is something that the Texas GOP won’t allow.
@@viktoryanokovich3699 >well more of you guys are doing it!!! Nice whataboutism. That's actually not true. Whomever is in power does it. New York and California Dems do it. NY is planning to eliminate the 5 GOP held seats using it. I'm pointing out that both sides are doing it. You're just playing politics. You want to look away when Dems do it.
Another classic American political problem. In Canada nobody ever talks about gerrymandering, and there’s no electoral district that looks like a salamander or grasshopper
Notably left out is that HR 1 forces redistricting to be done independently with no partisan influence in all states. Notice anti-gerrymandering laws are pushed the hardest at the national level by democrats, as making the elections in states they dominate more fair would even further increase the advantage Republicans got for gerrymandering. If Sinema and Manchin had voted to oust the filibuster to pass HR 1, or the Republicans were still truly committed to Democracy as they claim, this video would not be necessary.
Then randomness solution that particular state court had seems like the actual fair one. Conservative voters: But- but- we have our current power in an already gerrymandered system, if we were to make it *fair* then we would lose power. Why would we agree to that? Joe liberal: So you admit supporting injustice? Republican voters: I don't know what you are talking about. *Conservatives winning* is the definition of justice.
I’m okay with politicians gerrymandering right now because you it’s just using the system but I do think we should make a way to stop gerrymandering for the future.
![[ ออกกอง ] วัยหนุ่ม 2544 โลกหลังลูกกรง..ทัวร์กองถ่ายหนังใน "คุกของจริง" | JUSTดูIT.](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vB--aOkZCpw/mqdefault.jpg)
"In democracies voters pick their politicians,
In America politicians pick their voters."
Seems like America beats Mother Russia in this one......... :)
Even still, in Mother Russia.... no one picks anyone. No one except Putin.
@@lgdcommanderchen no one mentioned russia. Why are they in the conversation?
@@ponyboy5637 You see... In terms of Election.... Russia do have an Election. However, one could be certain of the result of the election in Russia, which are often described as unfair and "state-controlled". Seeing how election works in the US (from the video), one could argue that the US have beaten Russia in this case. Russian knows that their election is.... unfair. Meanwhile, American may or may not know, due to these illusions we called Gerrymandering. It is absolutely bonkers, considering that politicians literally choose their constituents....
@@ponyboy5637 Also, the video clearly doesn't contain any conversation/explanation about Russia. However.... In the general conversation, we often describes US as "the pinnacle of democracy, land of the free" and Russia as "the land where democracy dies" or any other description regarding how bad the state of democracy there. Honestly, after watching this video.... I am really questioning these stereotypes. Do US really, trully, adheres to democratic values? Do US really better that Russia in terms of their election?
@@lgdcommanderchen Yeah i agree with you.
Gerrymandering really is one of the most insidious political practices, and it's only made as effective as it is by the out dated First Past the Post voting system. The only way to solve that and other issues is with proportional representation.
it is absurd that political party officials can draw these lines in the US.
Keep in mind, Israel, Netherlands - very proportional, very fragmented… maybe a mix like Germany?
Once again, if you want to have proportional representation in the U.S., you need to drastically redo the entire setup of separation of powers in the U.S. constitutional system. A powerful executive branch independent of the legislative, with directly overlapping powers, and a unitary head, is going to run roughshod over a divided congress unless you can reliably get supermajority coalitions ready and active to oppose anything the president does that they don't like. This is not a particularly likely outcome.
I would state the reasons why proportional representation is a bad idea but I doubt you actually care.
@@xunqianbaidu6917 germany has a 5% requirement. Normally that is enough to have proper stable coalitions. Also there are rules in place that would apply if a coalition would fall apart which would keep the government going.
Gerrymandering pisses me off not only for all the very important, factual thing mentioned in this video, but also because you have like no sense of ownership or community within a district. People that live 5 miles from me might be a different district, while others that live way further might be in my district. How can a representative represent the interests of s district if the district itself has no single identifying characteristics like geography?
Here some people want more distritcts like in the us. It is curious because we see that democracy is not as representative as it should with whatever system we have. Stay safe! Thanks for the opinion
Gerrymandering is so obviously crooked but the only reason it's still easy to pull off in the US is that both the Democrats and Republicans do it.
Where you have electoral boundaries commissions Community is one the issues the commissioners must consider.
@@julianescobar2395 I think any system, where votes can turn out to be wasted, is somewhat limited in its democracy. That's why I prefer proportional representation over the first-past-the-post / majority rule systems that can be found in most English-speaking nations.
@@ryanchang5836 true but i think a lot of the democrat controlled state have independent commission to redraw the district, so at least it might be better, not saying democrats dont do gerry mandering like clearly they do in places like maryland, but still way better than many purple or red state where they have strange shape district to include all the african american one, or the one that got struck down by the supreme court in north carolina
I live is Missouri. The Republican controlled Legislation didn't like the Clean Missouri Initiative. So they rewrote the bill and put it back on the ballot, but with confusing language so that voters didn't know what they were voting for. It sucked.
Now I'm curious what do you mean confusing language ? It's not written in English?
@@bored0886 It's like double-speak or overcomplicating something, to make it vague enough that it sounds agreeable to the general reader while obscuring the actual meaning behind it.
It's like the city where I live in and the city put on the ballot initiative to change the homestead tax exemption to 25,000 when it was already 50,000, with out mentioning that the ballot. Everyone thought they where voting for a tax cut when it was a tax increase. Sadly it suppressed home values, and home owners where paying more money to the school district for schools that are the worst performing the in county.
Republicans are evil
@DEx Stev There should be clear communication standards for those kinds of things. In law. Then, if a individual or group does catch that the language is off-base or misleading, they could push for it's change with legal authority behind it. This makes sure that individuals have the best chance possible of being properly informed about what they are voting on. (not everyone has the time, resources, or understanding to do the research you suggest. If left up to politicians on how to communicate these important initiatives, they will seek to use misinformation and deceptive language techniques to get the voters to do what they want rather than what's in the voter's best interest).
Having it so that those who have the time, resources, and background knowledge to spot and uncover those linguistic maneuverings can push to have them changed is the best solution I can see.
Wow, you mean to tell me a system created by politicians favours the politicians and not the people they claim to represent.
Lets not forget the fact that politicians are also people and they were put in that position by other people
I suppose what is amazing is that the US is the only developed country where this happens. In Canada, Japan, Australia, France, Italy, the UK, etc. there is still a dependency on drawing geographic districts. However, gerrymandering never occurs (in the modern day) because it is all done by independent commissions, even though the politicians of these countries would technically have the same powers as US politicians. The gerrymandering in the US seems much more a result of the cynicism of US voters and consequent unwillingness to punish these transgressions.
@@ziglaus this is such a stupid comment no offence. Politicians choose to be politicians. They aren’t forced into that position and it’s not a burden as you make it out to be.
@@ottovonbismarck1352 Yeah, politicians are either in it for themselves or an insane ideology, trust none of them, unless you find one that is neither a self serving businessman nor a preachy zealot.
@@ottovonbismarck1352 i never said its a burden. Its just a job. We, the people select them, to represent out values in the process of governing our society. Im not saying all politicians are trash, but we literally elect them. We choose who we want to represent us. At least in most first world countries
So... American politics are destroying the very idea america was founded on.
I hope their issues don't escalate further.
Listen, i know things are scary right now, but it's gonna get WAY WORSE
@@kaparg From a libertarian view I'd say the rise of authoritarianism in the west(both left and right) is scary as hell.
@@Swodah i'm sorry, but where the hell is right wing authoritarianism rising and what do they want? Strict border controls, not wanting LGBT in schools and voter ID aren't authoritarian policies btw.
The left is always authoritarian btw, it's just easier to notice now that they've been unveiling themselves and rising through propaganda from media and corporations alike. Also, both the left and economic authoritarianism have been rising in the west ever since WW2 and maybe even earlier (with the exception of the US that managed to save itself some time with McCarthyism)
The foundation of America was destroyed in 1789 with the constitution
@@Commander034 an "Articles of Confederation" fan?
Correction: Virginia's Commission is a Bipartisan Commission, not an independent one. This means that politicians still have some control over the redistricting process (both parties pick most of the people who do the redistricting), rather than it being a truly independent process.
Want to add that this means that instead of pure political gain for a party, having politicians from both sides means that the two parties will now have an incentive to build "safe" districts for their legislators, so a gerrymandering for establishment elites, an important reason why the Virgina black caucus wanted to stop the current form of the commission
That is true. However, independent doesn’t mean non biased in terms of ideology. Bernie Sanders is independent but he clearly has a liberal view and tendency to side with the democrats. At least if it is bipartisan both sides have a say and both have a hand on the wheel. Independents would still pick people with ideology similar to theirs or people who have the same goals.
@@northstar4601 Different use of the term independent. For Bernie it refers to his lack of a direct attachment to a political party even though policy wise he's much closer to the democrat platform, whereas independent commissions refers to their independence from elected officials in general. Independent commissions are generally given aspirational goals to shoot for when drawing maps (such as avoiding inefficient districts or making sure districts produce results that are generally proportional to the results of the popular vote) and stick to those rather than drawing maps aimed at benefiting a political party. Essentially they are just people hired to do a job, rather than elected officials who have a direct incentive to manipulate their voting base.
@@spellbound1875 oops my bad. Haha, I know there are a lot of people who don’t know Bernie is an independent. A lot of people I have talked too just assume he is democrat.
@@northstar4601 He acts as one from a layperson perspective given our two party system so its an easy mistake to make. It only really comes up when considering the internal workings of the democratic party where Bernie is able to act more independently since he's not officially part of the organization and free from some of its regulations. It's one of the reasons a lot of "establishment" democrats tend to be rather unfriendly towards him. From their perspective he's an outsider who has a disproportionate amount of sway on their organization (which isn't wrong, just not necessarily a negative thing).
9:00
Stupid as hell that the Supreme Court can say one day, only the State Courts can deal with Gerrymandering, and then immediately after jump in and shoot down a ruling from a state court.
What the hell either stay out or do your job .
Well, while I do find it sus, there is a reason to say it could be legit. One can 'we don't have the authority to decide how to do this' and simultaneously say 'your standard doesn't work'. For instance, you may not be able to arrest someone as you are not a police officer, but you can still say they overstepped their authority when they did arrest someone. Essentially, it is the difference between setting the standard, and enforcing the standard.
At this point the SC has the burden of proof for proving it is “not good enough”.
@@WinginWolf The court never has burden of proof, they're the deciders of what is proven. That's the nature of courts.
@@Derekloffin yeah, the courts are the ones interpreting the laws, not the ones who write them. They can't say "here's how you're going to do this" but they can say "you can't do it that way"
As a Canadian this system is insane I'm glad it died out here decades ago.
Canada is in no real position to speak Should we examine the Canadian Senate?
@@Ameriguy99 We weren't discussing the senate, we were discussing the house. Both the US and Canadian senate have severe problems but house wise the Canadian system is a million times better.
I mean our system over here in Canada isn’t great either. My home district as well as my college district are all safe liberal, so my vote really doesn’t count. PMs get elected with a third of the vote, unlike the US where an elected president usually gets more than half. However, we have more parties and money isn’t as much of a corrupting influence as it is in America.
@@arjansahota4911 PMs get elected with a third of the vote because of how many parties we have here. If you see it as "how many people voted for Trudeau as PM and how many people voted against him" of course it's going to look unfair, but that's not how it works. Of course it's not the fairest (Conservatives still won the popular vote in 2019, though by a small margin) but it's way fairer than you make it sound.
@@jacobhogan3208 We are talking about democracy right? How representive each system is? To do that we have to examine the entirety of each legislative body. The entire Canadian Parliament and the entire US Congress.
If you want to make the claim that Canada fixed the way they dispersed voteinf districts better, you'll get no arguemnt from me, Canada does deserve credit for that.
But that's a result of a sound police not a superior form of government. The existence of the Canadian Senate alone makes Canada a far less representative democracy than the US is. Half of the Canadian legislature and the entire Canadian Judical branch is chosen at the total discretion of the Prime Minister. Where as the US system alots for a public vote for each member of the senate and the coordination of the Executive and Legislative branches to appoint the Judical branch.
I'm not here to run down Canada, I fought with alot of Canadians overseas. But I do belive the Canadian system which is a mirror of the UK system suffers alot of its flaws as well being overly tied to the concept of a house of lords and monarchy. If this is the system that pleases Canadians than by all means, but I don't think its marginally more representative.
Honestly, gerrymandering really goes to show that proportional representation is better than this district thing.
I disagree. In the proportional representation you just have political parties competing for seats. The district system forces local issues to be heard and addressed, politicans need to be geographically tied to a community so that communities needs can be heard by the government that rules them rather than just be subject to the whims of political party of elites
@@Ameriguy99 problem is that is a myth. Noone in house of commons represent their district, but they represent their parties ideology on national level.
Which makes sense since their district isnt a long known area with people like states, but an area drawed by party leaders few years ago.
And because of this nature local representation in national level physically cant be lower than states, and its already done by Senate.
@@Ameriguy99 But they represent their parties, not the population, as the district lines are drawn without proportions regarding population. Same issue with the Senate as a whole. Every state gets 2 seats and yet a senator from Wyoming represents only 350.000 people or so and a senator from California over 20 million, but they have equal voting power on the federal level.
@@Avatar2312 Each Congressional district has roughly the same population size as well as can be made. I think currently it's around 730,000 people per district. This is why in some cities,.you will see 5 or 6 districts and some entire states have just 1. The districts will sometimes have odd boundaries just because of where people live and the difficulty in evenly dividing a population into districts. Though I'm not denying that the political parties make an effort to tilt that design in theor favor.
The fact that they are more inclined to represent their parties than their districts is a very serious issue indeed. One I think could be better served with limiting Congressional terms to 1. Each person going to the house should get 1 2 year term and then be ineligible to run for that sear again. That would greatly demenish the influence parties have as people arnt in the house long enough to establish leverage or alliances.
That's the entire point of the Senate. The House exist to represent the needs and desires of the people, whereas the Senate is there to represent the states. It's necessary for the integrity of our union that states have a chamber in government in which all states, no matter how big or small, how rich or poor...have an equal say, an equal voice. Where an issue that concerns Wyoming can be addressed as easily as an issue that concerns New York.
If we did away with that second chamber...then what voice would wyoming have? Why would those states won't to be in a union, in a nation where their voice will never be heard, they votes will never matter and their government will never care because 2 neighborhoods in LA hold more power than their entire state?
The US isn't just one big country, it's a plurality. It's 50 independent states each with their own laws, traditions and values all working together. The existence of the Senate is the result of years of complex negotiations that had to occur to make each and every member state feel like they are equal partners in this union
@@Ameriguy99 why should 200,000 people in 1 state decide what 20,000,000 people should do in another?
The parties which fight to retain the practice are the ones who benefit from it. The parties which fight to end it are the ones who do not. It's really as simple as that. There are no benevolent actors here.
Which is why both Dems and GOP keep the danm thing. The two parties would get annoyed if say the libertarians got in and a heart attack if the Greens ever became viable.
@@Xo-3130 Libertarians would just start doing it themselves if they got any kind of power
@@xXEGPXx I think every party in power would do it
Sometimes I forget how much I despise the way America votes. Britain's methods are pretty bad but America is just insane.
There's no perfect democratic system, to be sure... but yeah, the US is messed up.
U.K. system is good actually.
@@billjane5522 It is better than U.S
@@frederikjrgensen252 it's still WAY worse than a proportional system
@@billjane5522 not really, in the last election conservatives won about 45% of the public vote and now have a massive majority which basically gives them 100% control. Considering the last election was very Brexit orientated and if I remember correctly there were more votes for remain parties so it was especially bad.
Missouri native here, the repeal campaign for the clean initiative thing was so extremely dirty. (IIRC, there’s also evidence that it was unconstitutional how the repeal campaign conducted itself). They (that is, mainly, the republicans) were able to repeal such a sensible and good law only because they tricked voters with the way they worded the language of the repeal amendment - in short, they basically added some anti-lobbyist stuff to the repeal bill to make it more attractive, and shuffled words around so that it made clean Missouri sound dirtier than it was. Now, anti-lobbyist stuff is of course popular, but the problem with the repeal amendment wrt was that the concessions wrt caps on lobbying was only marginally different from what current law already protected. So really, in material effect, Missouri voters were sold it as major anti-lobbying legislation, but instead of the nature of Missouri lobbying changing very significantly, all the repeal effectively did was destroy Missouri’s first chance at having anything near fair elections.
My state, Maryland, is often cited as the most gerrymandered state in the Union. While Democrats represent a majority of the electorate, they do not have anything like the unanimity among the electorate that they enjoy in the state house or in our congressional representation.
The democrats got 70.2% of the seats in the state house and 65% of the votes, the republicans got 32.6% of the votes and 29.8% of the seats, which mean the democrats have 5% more of the seats than they have votes. In NC the republicans have 50% of the votes and 58% of the seats in the lower house, I think that shows that the guys in NC are probably cheating more than the politicans in MD. But I think we can all agree that the US political system is just bad.
@@fadope1612 You have to be really careful with this kind of quick calculations. Each district can either be blue or red. So if the repartition of voters for each side is perfectly represented in each district, even a 49.9% share of vote would result in 0 district won.
The best way would be to creat a fully representative vote where elected officials are not done in districts but on a state or national level based on the actual proportion of total voters to ensure a XX% of voters does bot result in 0 representative.
@@axellacaze9115 And thats why I said the US system is stupid. Its unfair and easy to cheat
@@axellacaze9115 Multimember districting is consistent with the American system as it is still a regional and individual voting scheme rather than national and party based.
American voting system is based around candidates rather than parties, and hence why everything is messed up as the parties have too much power.
The most gerrymandered state is probably Wisconsin honestly.
9:09 "Gerry-Mandering will always mean a non zero efficiency gap" is acctually not true. A very unpopular party can benefit from a zero efficiency gerry-mandering. But there are more problems with this method. It basically means that districts should be drawn in a way that the outcome represents the states as one big district. It kills the purpose of districts in the first place.
districts are not drawn on community, cultural, or any other lines anyway. So what's the point you're trying.
Well, districts are a flawed idea to begin with. People should be represented based on ideology and policy proposals, not based on where they live. That is a feudal concept and a hold over from Britain's landed gentry based power system.
Each vote should count, and each vote should count equally. The most simple solution is to use proportional representation.
My country switched in 1917. In the Computer Age, first-past-the-post elections are obsolete and too easy to corrupt.
This Gerrymandering REALLY needs to stop. -_-
They should let us, the swiss, draw the districts for them. We'll be a neutral judge because we dislike both your party 😊
Can u tell me how much do my politicians save our money in ur banks?
Meanwhile in Europe: "change the districts?! we've had these districts for centuries and we will continue to have them centuries hence!"
Hah, yeah, here we were forced to make out capital its own thing thins it has like 1/3 of the total population itself. The area around it is split from it.
Actually, districs in Europe have changed many times.
In Germany, they are usually changes when the difference between a district ant the mean sice of a district becomes too big. But it doesn't matter that much anyway, because our parliament is proportional anyway. The districts just change who is sent there by the parties and it results in a way bigger parliament because one party with a quarter of the votes wins more than half of the districts.
Honestly why use districts at all? It makes everything so complicated, in state votes as well as national votes.
In the Netherlands we have had proportional representative elections for 104 years now. The percentage of votes equals approximately the same amount of seats in the provincial/state elections. (Same mechanism for national elections).
Efficiency gap metric/wasted votes AFTER rounding up: almost near zero.
The problem with this is that in America regionalism means that people want to vote for people from their own area
@@elsquidwardo Why? We used to think that was a good idea in the 19th century.
But it's not.
Representation based on geography and land ownership is a hold over of the British feudal systems.
Representation based on ideology and policy choices works much, much better. It also prevents a lot of tribalism and polarization in politics.
@The Anonymous Sir Backspace No it is not. Regional executive elections are an obvious yes, but that doesn't solve the issue of national representation in the legislature. The only point of the creation and formation of Congress was to represent the viewpoints of many millions of Americans equally AND fairly. America at its foundation had very different identities among different states, and it still, in some ways, does!
Because of this, the federal government is meant to be a governing force over the greater nation, yes, but only by the consent of each individual state. Each state CHOOSES to partake in the union. Proportional representation in a country that has predominantly more urban than rural and suburban voters would create mob rule, and disallow voters from Wyoming to have much of any say in a union they WILLINGLY PARTAKE IN.
It would be like being invited to the party, but not being able to do anything you like because somebody else has 10 times the amount of power you have. It feels unfair.
@@rogerwilco2 "it also prevents a lot of tribalism and polarization" And yet it does the very opposite? Historically, more partisan divide and partisan power has only furthered polarization. Proportional representation would fuel the GOP and Democratic Party to rely on their donors and major partisan hotspots to remain on the top over the less important constituencies.
Polarization exists when the peoples' beliefs are not represented in government, and proportional representation does just that.
@@rogerwilco2 - It was a good idea and still is. People in one place shouldn't have their laws decided by people 3,000 miles away.
Seems like common sense that the federal government should draw the maps for federal elections. Obviously through an independent commission though.
We all just want fairness. Let the best ideas win.
Well, the senators used to be appointed by the state legislature, so constitutionally, that's probably why House maps are drawn by the state governments. In the original constitution, a lot of powers that honestly should've been given to the federal government were given to the state governments, because of the founder's fear of a powerful central government
That would require an amendment to the constitution. Since you need an amendment anyway why would you settle for that rather than adopt a more democratic proportional parliament?
Or just a real odd thought: Don't use districts like that, as no-one else does that. Gerrymandering is not a thing in European Countries, Australia, Japan etc. The % of votes is what you get. No crazy maps that can increase your influence by 1/3 out of thin air.
@@tr7zw I 100% agree. I wish we just had proportional representation.
@@tr7zw um, Australia and Japan do not have fully proportional systems; both use at least some geographic districts. Technically, it would be possible to gerrymander them, but (as all sane countries do) they have independent commissions that deal with the line drawing. Other countries use geographic districts as well, including Canada, Italy, and France. This is not a defence of geographic constituencies (I support proportional representation), but we should get our facts straight.
Again, another correction: In Pennsylvania, the State Court redrew the maps, not the legislature.
but also in Arizona US house elections in 2020, democrats won 5/9 seats with republicans winning 4/9 despite republicans getting 50.1% of votes in the elections with democrats winning 49.9% of votes in the elections according to wikipedia (this is just the US House of Representatives elections in Arizona).
Just wanna say, folks, I've noticed the changes you've made in monetization of the channel and how you place advertisements. It hasn't gone unappreciated, thank you.
Just to be clear for those that don't know the local map, in Maryland, they did not stuff _all_ the Republicans into one district, though the Eastern Shore is heavily conservative and so even in a non-gerrymandered map it would still mostly equate to most of that red district still being there. If there were any "shenanigans" in that map, it was that the western panhandle, which was also heavily conservative, was lumped into the same district as the area just north of DC, which is a heavily populated, much more liberal area of the state, which gave them a narrow majority for that district and allowed them to take the seat. More importantly though, it's not like Maryland has a _ton_ of seats in total, so in practice the Democrats only picked up 1-2 seats due to Gerrymandering, while losing dozens of seats in larger Republican states.
The Gerry for whom this phenomenon was named (after he drew a crazy district that looked like a lizard, lead a critic to call the district the salamander, to which another responded they should call it a Gerrymander) pronounced his name Gear-y. I'm not saying we should pronounce gerrymandering like that, just enjoying that this thing manages to be stupid in every possible way, right down to its naming.
Elbridge Gerry. Who went on to become the Vice President under James Madison
There are 3 types of Gerrymandering:
Obviously gerrymandered districts are, well, obvious, and thus easy to call-out.
Subtle gerrymandering, as the name implies, can be extremely hard to identify and combat.
Inadvertent or accidental gerrymandering can be either easy or hard to spot.
Though the first 2 are arguably worse, all 3 can have the same detrimental effects.
Campaigns to fight only the first kind ignore the equally bad other 2 kinds.
Without switching to some form of proportional based system and/or multi-member districts, I don’t see how to ever make any real progress against all 3 types.
Here in Missouri, politics is a circus.
Here in Texas, our conservative politicians are a major Headache too!
@@TonyWilliams27 Leave
The only way you won't have gerrymandering is if there's Proportional Representation.
Here we have proportional and people want a change to districts. It is curious that sometimes democracy is not that representative
Or an independent commission to draw electorates. That works too.
Proportional representation is great, but it isn't a silver bullet
You cant do that because this is not a democracy it's a Representative Republic. That means that members of the House of Representatives, are elected locally among a community to represent that specific community in the federal government.
We tend to say things like oh the Republicans won this many seats or the Democrats won that seat. But its crucial we don't forget that those people arnt being sent to congress to represent the party but to represent the local community that appointed them.
@@julianescobar2395 seats according to votes. In proportional representation, every single vote is counted. I don't understand why people want to change to districts
@@Ameriguy99 Can people actually stop with the "it's not a democracy, it's a representative Republic" line?
As if being a representative Republic was incompatible with having a proportional apportionment of representatives.
There was a video on TH-cam where a guy made an ai that would give very favourable outcomes without looking all wank, they should hire him
His channel is called AlphaPhoenix
You should check out his other videos he can make super nerdy things sound seemingly normal
Indeed.
Unfortunately bastards in office can use it for evil too..
Unfortunately, gerrymandering "just works" _because of_ single-member voting districts, i.e. the winning party gets 100% representation while everyone else gets _none._ And having more than two parties (even just local parties) would actually _magnify_ the problem instead of fixing it due to how single-vote ballots (aka. first-past-the-post) "split" votes between candidates.
The Missouri thing happened because the repeal was tacked on to another bill.
Lmao damn leeches
First, voters approved a bill in 2018 with broad anti-corruption provisions that also switched from the bi-partisan old system to a non-partisan new system that would draw districts with the intention of making the legislature's party distribution proportionate to the party distribution of votes in statewide elections. Then, voters approved another bill, put on the ballot by the legislature in 2020, that just barely increased the anti-corruption measures that the 2018 bill already had and repealed all the redistricting changes and let the legislature put in its pro-Republican partisan districting.
Okay, to be fair, there are some bi-partisan elements still, so in some ways it's similar to a return to the old districting system. But Republicans are likely to get an even bigger super-majority in a state that didn't even become a clear red state until 2016 in which Republicans have nowhere near a supermajority of support.
Yeah, that whole thing was scummy. Tried to spread information to people I knew about how it wasn’t actually more anti-corruption to vote for the 2020 bill, but in the end it still passed 😕
Yes! Gerrymandering is one of my favourite topics as it brings maps and politics together. I love videos like this!
You have excellent taste in topics 👍
Don't worry! The Democratic National Redistricting Committee (created by a President from the Democrat Party) has nothing to do with the Democrat Party!
Holy shit TLDR what are you guys on ?
Unfortunately, gerrymandering is something the establishment in both parties do constantly, but this year even without it the rush of new households into largely GOP-led states means that even if there were no gerrymandering, it would give the GOP an advantage.
Commenting to say that in spite of our anti-gerrymandering efforts in Utah, we still have some very poorly drawn districts. The Salt Lake metro area which is mostly democratically homogenous has been divided between several districts to give the republicans an advantage.
What about convincing voters by good policy instead of gerrymandering.
Because good policy doesn’t bring billionaire donors
Instead of having districts, each state should be allowed a certain number of seats and the state's population as a whole should choose the representatives through a ranked voting system, that would completely destroy gerrymandering
Or, if you so desperately want to keep the districts: first do the elections , than divide the seats in accordance to the percentage of votes and than draw the districts so they match that outcome. badabing badabang nothing really changed and America got more democratic.
That doesn't really work though. The entire point of the House of Representatives is so that that public can elect local people to represent their local concerns. They don't represent the state at large, they represent a smaller more localized community. To win that seat you must win that community.
The senate already represents states on a statewide basis
@@Ameriguy99 yes you're right, I didn't consider that.
@@Ameriguy99 Some representatives in fact do represent the state at large as some states actually only have one house rep.
@@theuglykwan Yes, but this is true due to the states low population rather than by some constitutional design
Gerrymandering how Skaven make system closer to just. In just world, Skaven-vote worth limitless thing-vote because thing-vote worth nothing yes-yes.
And this, kids is, why proportional representation is the fair way to do elections.
When the US was founded, the founding fathers didn't really intend to give voting rights to everybody. They feared the majority that owns nothing would overrun the rights of the property owners. Only white English speaking men over 21 who owned property were allowed to vote originally.
And this is why it would not work in the US:
US is a REPUBLIC, meaning there’s a number of sovereign states with their own laws taxes and governments, that constitute a union by forfeiting part of their sovereignty in exchange for representation in said union.
Introduce proportional representation and it is literally “taxation without representation” for the states as sovereign entities, hence it is theft and succession should take place leading to dissolution of the union.
Do you want that? I bet you don’t
as someone who just learned Markov Chain Monte Carlo Simulation(MCMC), I approve of using it to solve gerrymandering haha
America really is a second tier democracy.
and even thats a stretch
The people are the problem, not the democracy. I think everyone in the us was half decent the democracy would work well.
Not really. Our system isn't a democracy, infact it was specifically designed to avoid democracy whenever possible
“”””””Democracy””””””
@@pikal6143 the problems are not the people but large corporations and they run deep like military and their imperialism which is felt in their 800 bases around the world not to mention the greater us outside of the us that’s between Mexico and Canada, also big monopolies lobbying things there way turning the country into technofeudalism and so on
Saying it's unfair to have a minority get a majority in the result is saying you want every vote to count in favor of it's vote instead of the majority of your area/state. In other words; throw all votes on 1 pile and the majority wins.
The efficiency gap doesn't work in wisconsin because the state packs liberal vote into 2 cities with a smaller percentage in the rest of the state
Certain ppl only remeber this things exist when it's the side they don't like
For those confused by Missouri, what happened was some clever mismarketing by the right. Most of the Clean Missouri Initiative was left intact thankfully, though what is left can be scarily used to make things worse potentially depending on how State courts eventually rule on the new districts (because no doubt they will go to court). Essentially 3 things were changed. 1. The independent state demographer who would draw the maps according to several guidelines (with priorities of which are the most important given by order) and then submit several such maps for approval to the Legislature, has been replaced with the bipartisan commission made up of legislatures that the independent state demographer replaced in 2018. This surprisingly was actually accurately mentioned on the ballot though only after the courts rewrote the ballot text because the original ballot text left out that it was replacing the independent state demographer.
2. The priority of the rules by which maps are drawn have been changed slightly. The highest priority was maps that produce proportional amounts of representatives to the number of votes for each party as well as being responsive to shifts in party popularity (so a map that won’t still give 40% of the seats to one party even when their popularity rises or falls above or below the 40% they had when the seats were drawn). While that is still a priority I think it’s now 3rd in the list and the most important is creating compact (not having the squiggling lines that characterizes many gerrymandered districts) districts. For those who don’t know the problem, it is possible to create gerrymandered districts that do not look gerrymandered at first glance. Some guy on TH-cam even created a program to demonstrate this with NC and showed that he was able to create compact districts however he wanted the votes to go whether that be a competitive race, to all safe seats, to only 2 democratic seats out of 14, to democratic majority. None of which looked even remotely gerrymandered. Also the ballot text only indicated priorities were being changes, not in what way, really had to dig into the actual text of the State Constitutional amendment to find it and hoo boy was that a dense read.
3. The part that Republicans sold everyone on: It banned lobbying gifts. HOORAY! A change that isn’t evil! Except that the lobbying gift limit was already only $5 so it made no practical difference anyways. That little detail didn’t make it into the text of the ballot.
4. Also lowered the campaign contribution limit. Though only by $100 from $2500 to $2400 and thus largely irrelevant, a detail again left out of the ballot text.
Unfortunately the ballot measure went through two rewrites. Once by the first judge who viewed it and rewrote it to provide an accurate summary of what was going on, and then by the appeals court who rewrote it again to conceal any information originally concealed that didn’t violate the main issue raised by the original plaintiffs, that of the independent state demographer that voters voted for in 2018 being replaced with what was before.
Combined with the fact that republicans led a campaign to say that what Missouri had voted for would lead to heavily democratic-skewed gerrymandered maps (despite no map having even been produced yet, or even independent demographer selected) and the bill just barely eeked out a victory which is incredibly frustrating.
Note: A NEW ballot initiative may be added to the next election... if the ballot measure gets enough votes. "REFORMSTL" if I remember the name right.
The only way the right wins is by lying and spreading misinformation
First, voters approved a bill in 2018 with broad anti-corruption provisions that also switched from the bi-partisan old system to a non-partisan new system that would draw districts with the intention of making the legislature's party distribution proportionate to the party distribution of votes in statewide elections. Then, voters approved another bill, put on the ballot by the legislature in 2020, that just barely increased the anti-corruption measures that the 2018 bill already had and repealed all the redistricting changes and let the legislature put in its pro-Republican partisan districting.
@@tifforo1 AND it made this redistricting person someone DIRECTLY appointed by the governor. I know.
@@dayviduh. Let's not talk about Biden political Carrier. For ur good
10:40 False numbers. In 2018, Republicans won 45 per cent of the vote, not 47. In 2016, Republicans won 54 per cent of the vote, not 52. I think he is making it up to prop up his point. With more than 9 per cent point swing, I don't think it's nothing special that four seats flip blue.
Republicans do well in many places like Pennsylvania not because of gerrymandering but because Democrats like to live in bubbles. In Pennsylvania's case, in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. When you have a first past the post system emphasizing local representation, other parts of state then end up voting red representatives. In that system, I would go as far to say there is no such thing as fair representation. If that is what you want, you NEED a proportionate election system.
Were the lines not redrawn as well in 2018 for PA & NC? Self sorting is a factor. Packing and cracking people with gerrymandering is another. You can't say one has an effect but the other doesn't. That doesn't compute.
It’s like the US should just end itself if it can’t be any fairer…
RIP Any good US principles they once held true.
I love how the Supreme Court (the same court that in the early days of itself basically gave them their supreme right) basically went “we know its an issue on both sides, but lets just naaaaaah”
Gerrymandering and voter suppression should result in a trial leading to capital punishment
@Nixon First Mapping r/selfawarewolves
@Nixon First Mapping I never said that. I'd be fine with it applying to everyone.
Anyways, I don't believe that free and fair elections can truly exist without proportional representation and publicly financed elections.
@Nixon First Mapping apparently yes they always talk about republicans doing it but forget to look at Maryland,Illinois,Massachusetts,etc.
@Nixon First Mapping Both sides are being equally undemocratic with their gerrymandering, it should be illegal as fuck in any civilised western country. The only reason it still exists in the US is because both sides are guilty of it.
Who is being "suppressioned" from voting?
Are you talking about voter ID? If you're complain about voter ID why don't the Dems support helping people to get ID instead of removing. Getting ID will help them with more than just voting. You get a secure election and a productive citizens (less likely to engage in crime, less likely to be homeless).
There's a board game called "mapmaker" which is fundamentally a competition to see who can place borders to gerrymander their way to victory.
It's pretty fun, and really demonstrates how the process works very nicely.
It should be a team of geography experts drawing the lines and according to good and fakr criteria which clearly defibes how they should be drawn, not politicians
Problem is the politicians would get to them one way or another. And academics by their very nature tend to lean to the left.
Pure proportional is bad. We had that in Italy and a vast majority vote against it in two consecutives referendums. It make impossible to form a stable majority and implementing anything. Multiple seats districts and/or a mixed sistem are the less bad options.
@@sirrathersplendid4825 If they tend left, that’s for a good reason
@@lawtraf8008 - Whether there’s good reason or not, it risks introducing bias. Most academics (and I include myself in that number) lean to the left because they’ve spent their life in books rather than in the real world.
@@lawtraf8008 yes, and the reasons is that is what they were taught to think.
Just call it corruption, because it is corruption
Says "Democratic National Redistricting Committee" but shows a screenshot of the website that clearly says "National Democratic Redistricting Committee". Get some QA analysts.
I'm from Michigan and sorry proud of our independent commission. The state legislature has been trying to overturn the commission since 2018 when the initiative was passed. Mainly because over the last 5 elections they only won the plurality of votes once (2016) but have had the majority the last 12 years
1:22 No, they don’t. Every state uses single-member districts. Everyone outside of Nebraska is in one district with a single member in a lower chamber and in one (usually larger) district with a single member in an upper chamber. No state has multiple members per district or proportional representation in the state legislature. The US House uses single-member districts; you might be able to parse the Senate as a two-member district with the whole state being one district, but given that senators are in separate seats elected in offset cycles on a first-past-the-post basis (rather than in the same election, as joint representatives, based on some proportional principle), they’re effectively two single-member districts in how they function.
So.. What about a popular vote and see who wins the majority of the people? I know, crazy talk
So we already know the republicans will win the house in 2022. Because of Gerrymandering, 90% of all seats are not competitive. And republicans could simply win the house majority with these safe seats. Policies, campaigning are becoming less and less important. The house majority is mainly decided by redistricting
Voter always surprised everyone, like in the 2018 and 2020 house election, republican have gerrymander it so much that based on polls, democrat shouldn’t have even maintain their majority seat, but they did by winning what supposed to be republican seat.
There’s literally a house election in 2020 where the winner is only winning by fucking 6 votes! Literally Only 1 big family needed to change the result,
So, my point is, voting in the 2022 midterm election is still important, even if you don’t believe your vote is matter
Even without gerrymandering, you aren't get 100% competitive districts. There's a ton of self sorting. Fair districts might increase the competitive seats by 10-15%. Even in other countries with similar systems but with commissions drawing lines, you are not seeing 100% of districts competitive. In the UK, 10% of the seats were won by 5% or less, 22% by 10% or less in 2019.
@@theuglykwan
Yes, that's what gonna happen without gerrymandering, but it would still be a lot fairer regardless
I think districts should be based off of population, and should be in clear concise blocks, no exclaves
Sounds good, but people dont live in nice clear blocks, some places look funny but are very fair, just throwing down squares on a map dosnt allow the same amount of people to be represented by each representitive, not saying there isnt a problem, but just draw straight lines dosnt work either
i like misrepresentation error as a metric i got it form cgp grey's video: "Why the UK Election Results are the Worst in History."
It's wild how Democrats virtually always have a majority of the support nation wide until you get into local districts
That's Gerrymandering and all other kids of ratfuckery for you.
It's not that wild...Democrats are concentrated in urban centers. You can determine weather a state is Republican or Democrat by determining if the urban population in that state is larger than the rural population in that state.
There are simply more people liveing in the city. Look at Illinois, a rural Midwestern state that would be a Republican stronghold....if it weren't for Chicago and its surrounding area driveing the state to the Democrats.
It really is a battle between Rural and Urban populations more than competing ideologies
@@Ameriguy99 also a republican can check like three boxes and have universal support from their party
a democrat needs to walk a tightrope on like 10 issues, any single one of which will cause a voting bloc to shun them if they're on the wrong side
@@MP-dn4bs The Republicans have their tightrope too. There are multiple factions within the Republican tent that its impossible for any of them to receive universal support. Which is why nearly all Republican administrations are alliances between different factions. Trump (Nationalist/Populist) paired with Pence (Evangelical right), Bush (old money/ establishment) paired with Cheny (boardroom Republican), McCain (establishment) paired with Palin (firebrand/ Evangelical)
The Republicans have the MAGA block, the TEA party block, the establishment GOP block, the Rino block, the evangelical block, the big business block, and so on and so on. In nearly any other system you would have Ted Cruz, Trump, Romney, McConnell and Rand Paul all from starkly different parties, but here in the US they are supposedly all under the same tent despite vastly different views.
That's reflected in the voteing base too
Except Republicans *don't* have vastly different views for the most part. They have different priorities; there's a difference.
Trump/Pence being a divide? The Evangelical right would support Trump over Pence in a heartbeat! He's their messiah at this point.
There is no SINGLE issue that is a dealbreaker for Democrats even close to that of being anti-abortion is for being a Republican. If you're anti-abortion (and white), you're voting Republican, full stop, no matter what else you believe in.
Great, now MCMC follows me here. You can leave the statistics course, but the course won't leave you
The fact this has not yet been dealt with says a lot about how bad of a democracy the US is. They need to try to pass a bill that mandates independent commissions for each state's federal redistricting. I really hope that can get 10 Republicans, even if it's pretty much too late now.
Dems passed a house bill this year to do that (220-1 in their caucus), but the republicans in the senate blocked it.
9:43 I thought I kept up with this stuff, yet these efforts I missed. Good work!
A.G.
US need to adapt single-transferable vote, same with the UK.
So far, two states have already done so: Maine and Alaska.
The hell is single transferable vote?
@@metroidnerd9001 No. ME and AK passed is instant-runoff, which is an improved version of FPTP.
@@kaparg It’s a more representative and less partisan way of election. Checkout CGP Grey’s video (apparently I can’t send links in this channel)
@@Paranoid_Found Single-Transferrable-Vote and Instant Runoff are both forms of Ranked-Choice-Voting though.
I hate living in the same district as half of DC despite living a half hour from Baltimore.
They need to make an AI to do this, people cant be trusted
But who makes the AI.
@@ottovonbismarck1352 good question Chancellor
Or just a bipartisans civilians to do it.
Just want to say there are programmer biases. It can come from either the programmer or the historical data. This happened in HR practices in NY states with automated interviews. So ultimately there would still be bias in these maps unless they had programmer go over the data over and over and over
Why have districts at all? That'll always cause unbalanced representation.
I still don't know what part of the Pennsylvania constitution was used to redraw the district map in 2018 and it's been 3 years now
What first of all, can someone explain why you need districts at all? Why not distribute those seats relative to absolute votes gained in total?
The general idea is that people like having local representatives that they can hold accountable (in theory, at least). Just having the parties select a bunch of their own candidates with no input from the constituents is probably not something people would look at favorably.
That being said, there are MUCH better systems that are more proportional than single-member districts while keeping local representatives (Single transferable vote, mixed-member professional, etc.)
Because geography matters. What happens when you stick country voters in with city voters? The city voters, due to sheer size, will simply outvote them. Which means the country voters grow disgruntled with the system and try to leave. And by leave, I mean declare war.
Which you might not think is possible now, but that was very much a danger when the laws were made. And given the greater contrast between the two groups, is a good way to incite domestic terrorism.
@@Hellblade8 "What happens when you stick country voters in with city voters? The city voters, due to sheer size, will simply outvote them. Which means the country voters grow disgruntled with the system and try to leave."
Not really. If you did away with districts and used statewide PR to fill state chambers, rural would get seats proportional to their vote. It is using districts that allows you to pack and crack rural or other geographical groups to amplify or wreck their power.
Abolish both parties
This will be a very friendly comment section
@Monty. With that being said. It seems to be that one side is a bit too excited about a second civil war.
Stopping first past the post system is the only true way to get rid of Gerrymandering.
Many countries did it so why cann`t the US or UK do it, too ?
Germany has a system where district winners get elected, but the gap between all district winners and the given number of seats (called the overhang) is filled proportionally from predefined party lists. This way respects both popular politicians, and seniors in districts exposed to adverse demographics, as well as regional/state differences. The Linke party, for instance, which only stands in former East German states regularly get more seats by direct mandate than their national proportion would allow.
@@simpl51 yeah, you are completely right, only that the Linke party only won like 4 seats directly, while 77% where won by CDU/CSU. If Germany had only the direct elected politicians, then they would be dominated by one party.
In my opinion, it would be more fair if the districts were constant, based on some politologic idea (for an example, dividing an area into a capitol, an urban and a rural district) and then, those districts should get assigned the number of seats, according to the census.
that generally sounds like the best idea, make much larger districts that are based on geography and urban/rural divides. outside of that they should be as round as possible (of course not circles but you just don't want long skinny districts).
Then you have those districts as multi member, so each district elects multiple representatives. Use STV or single transferable vote for this.
This is just 13 minutes of describing how selfish & dictatorial the American right-wing is.
@America First Mapping You can try to invalidate me personally (always a sign of strong political rigour) but that's not going to work on replication studies, infection rates or peer review. (Of course, you don't know what those are, 'cause science.) I mean, "an experimental drug"? Do you think vaccines started yesterday? I don't see why you'd listen to me: I know what I'm talking about & I don't give purchase to strongmen or conspiracy theories.
@America First Mapping And another thing: exactly how to masks infringe on your rights worse than seat belt laws or drunk driving laws or Facebook tracking your every move or the TSA scanning your nude body for no reason? All of that is fine; I'd put down money that you use Facebook and you don't think twice, that you've never protested the TSA before, or held a Tea Party group meeting about the TYRANNY of the gov. telling you to wear a seat belt. 🙄 Get real mate, we all see through you. Take your anti-science garbage, leave your air conditioning & smartphone with us, and go live Biblically in the woods. Otherwise,
you're a hypocrite & you know it.
@@WorldWarIVXX You really think masks are the only problem?
The USA democratic republic use a lot practices that I would expect to find in a slavic pseudo repubblican autocracy.
Well, the democracy in the US is the oldest still existing democracy in the world. It was the first successful attempt at a democracy after the fall of the Roman republic. They still stick to it for better or worse.
But you got to consider that originally, the founders didn't even intend to give the right to vote to everybody as they worried that the masses that don't own property would overrun the rights of the property owners, also they thought that most people are idiots. They weren't that wrong on that one though. Only white English speaking property owning men were allowed to vote originally. So they actually did advance quite a bit since then.
I'm just saying all this, because many people seem to have this warped idea that the US used to be a great democracy before. which it wasn't.
*(un)fun fact:* Missouri passed a voter-based initiative in 2018 that would give redistricting powers to a nonpartisan committee. The GOP legislature had a fit and at a last ditch effort in 2020, put another initiative on the ballot to give the legislature and governor redistricting power. They pumped millions into it and it passed with like 53%.
It's appalling! That's why I'm running as a green party candidate and plan to canvass for state rep in my district in MO in 2022. I'm tired of this government and their fascist-dabbling tendencies. I'm gonna try and win and "give 'em hell" (as they used to say to President Truman)
Great video! I'm a little confused on one point. How does the 2010 redistricting compare with the 2020 redistricting? How much do Democrats control in 2020 compared to 2010? How much do Republicans control in 2020 compared to 2010?
The Dems are probably still in the process of redistricting
at the moment republicans basically benefit from gerrymandering 2 to 1 and after districts are redistricted again ahead of 2022, I only imagine that its even more skewed
@@plip_plop it seems to me the republicans definitely have the advantage in 2020, but less so than in 2010... so that's a little bit of progress in my opinion
Democrats are in a better position than in 2010, Michigan Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have Dem governors/independent commissions, so the GOP Gerrymander of 2010 will be reversed, with full control of the New York and Illinois governments they can draw 23-3 and 14-3 maps, Florida, North Carolina Texas are already gerrymandered almost to the max, so republicans can't net many seats from redistricting there. The Dems are in a substantially better position than last decade
@@kostas9592 the problem with what you’re saying is that non partisan maps are actually fair. For example partisan gerrymandering in CA is banned. If it were not so and dems gerrymandered them so they would win, republicans would have virtually no seats there.
US: "how to stop gerrymandering, we really do not know"
Meanwhile in mainland Europe: multi-member districts, based on administrative borders (provinces, cantons, states) with proportional representation.
I visited the site of the anti-gerrymandering organisation that was mentioned and it really doesnt seem as non-partisan and anti-all-gerrymandering when most of their targets and successes they are talking about are "we flipped the seat for a democrat" "we helped elect a democrat".
I am totally against gerrymandering, I think its unfair and deceptive, I am happy for initiatives that are going to end it, doesnt matter which side they are on, but feels dishonest the way this organisation was presented (even if they make it more fair for everyone).
That's because republicans do most of the gerrymandering... That's the only way they can win considering majority of people are democrats
My state (Mississippi) has four Congressional districts. Three are safe R seats and 1 is a safe D seat. One of our state legislators threatened the only Democrat representing Mississippians on a statewide or federal level that they'd draw his seat out after 2020. If they redrew the lines to be fair, my district - MS03 - would be a swing district in every election. LSS, every single possible swing seat should be a swing seat.
"We’re on the right path. In the past few years the NDRC has helped fair map Democrats make big gains -- winning nine governors races, flipping eight state legislative chambers, and winning three state Supreme Court races."
This doesn't seem non partisain. check your bias
Considering there's been hundreds of bills introduced by republicans in this past year all seeking to in some way restrict the right to vote (be it through 'sensible' arguments or not) I'm pretty sure anyone biased towards a democracy is going to regard such behavior as a negative.
If you want perfect non-biased reporting, go to the dry-ass sources and read the bills yourself. You'll find a distinct bias that lines up with recent pew research, wherein more than half of repubs called voting a privilege and nearly 3/4 dems called it a right.
Or, you know, reference multiple sources for your info to develop your own insights, maybe share with the class when you find facets that are worth bringing up to the topic instead of jumping on the "this isn't nonbiased" bandwagon
@@SCh1m3ra you seem to be missing the point of my statement, My point is that TLDR said that the site was non partisain in nature, but the first thing they do is brag about winning seats for democrats and say nothing about winning seats for republicans in return, despite as tldr saying that they challenge for both.
hence , the website has a clear bias in how they frame things, and tldr doesn't call them out for that
I remember learning this in school
Well the popular vote nearly always has the Democratic Party winning. The entire American political system, in a sense, gerrymanders against that.
Yep and the weirdest part is many Americans actually support this kind of system despite it being so obviously undemocratic.
@@Chrissy717 yeah, The American government does everything worst than the average European government.
Gotta do as much as they can to keep every person from voting too, because if everyone votes, it skews blue
@@ponyboy5637 then they’d need to be moderate and actually make good promises to follow through on, rather than just screaming whatever the hell they want.
Heres what my solution would be. 1 create even districts of people that have reasonable shapes. 2 count the total vote and then award each district a proportion of districts based on proportion of total vote with a preference towards districts with more of their parties voters in.
Biden has the power to revive people's and to change a person race
Sorry but it is ridiculous to talk about this subject without mentioning how Дурак Донни and the Banana Republic-ans politicized the Census Bureau for a favorable 2020 result.
The NDRC is chaired by Eric Holder, he's not exactly the best example of non-partisanship. Hence why they only pressure Democrats gerrymandering in already majority blue states, that way they can say they did something, while ignoring other states that are battlegrounds if the Democrats are doing it. Eg. their website has complaints about NJ and Texas, but not Wisconsin or Ohio.
I would suggest more grassroots "non-partisan" political organizations if you want to be seen as independent and objective.
It’s difficult to act non partisan when the great majority of gerrymandering is taking place in republican controlled states.
Republicans control both Wisconsin and Ohio...
How is Eric Holder not a best example of non-partisanship?
Antarctica :O.. Mad lads you actually did it!
And they call themselves a democracy! Ha.
I live in Illinois and currently our democrat majority legislature is radically redrawing the districts to help them even more, in and around the city of Chicago gerrymandering is already really bad.
Can't wait the GoP to win the next term by Gerrymandering.
Next term? Honestly pattern recognition suggests it will be the next 6 - 8 years
Dems do the same. You're the pot calling the kettle black.
@@chudchadanstudthe great majority of gerrymandering takes place in states where republicans control the state legislature. If we were to draw a fair map in Maryland, the best we could do is make one more republican district, because the fact still remains that nearly 60% of voters always vote democratic. Whereas in a state like North Carolina or Texas, if we were to draw more fair maps, we could make several competitive or safe Democratic districts. in 2019, the court ordered North Carolina to redraw its congressional map to make it more fair. In doing so, it created two safe Democratic districts in 2020. The GOP is largely against banning gerrymandering because they know that it doesn’t favor them. In the 2018 midterms, Democrats won 48% of the house popular vote in Texas, which is a significant achievement. However, they only won 13 of the 36 districts up for grabs. If the map were redrawn to be more fair, democrats would be receiving several more districts, which is something that the Texas GOP won’t allow.
@@viktoryanokovich3699 >well more of you guys are doing it!!!
Nice whataboutism. That's actually not true. Whomever is in power does it. New York and California Dems do it. NY is planning to eliminate the 5 GOP held seats using it.
I'm pointing out that both sides are doing it. You're just playing politics. You want to look away when Dems do it.
@@xunqianbaidu6917 I'm just pointing out that both sides are doing it. I'm not playing politics.
Another classic American political problem. In Canada nobody ever talks about gerrymandering, and there’s no electoral district that looks like a salamander or grasshopper
1 view, 1 comment, 1 minute ago. wow.
Hello
It appears that so one commented before you.
Always like your videos, big fan!
Another great video, thanks.
Be interested in seeing a video on the UK's version Gerrymandering
Goofy kicking Donald...
I love that... Hahaha....
Notably left out is that HR 1 forces redistricting to be done independently with no partisan influence in all states. Notice anti-gerrymandering laws are pushed the hardest at the national level by democrats, as making the elections in states they dominate more fair would even further increase the advantage Republicans got for gerrymandering. If Sinema and Manchin had voted to oust the filibuster to pass HR 1, or the Republicans were still truly committed to Democracy as they claim, this video would not be necessary.
What? No, no state uses multi-member districts, in fact there's a federal law prohibiting that
Then randomness solution that particular state court had seems like the actual fair one.
Conservative voters: But- but- we have our current power in an already gerrymandered system, if we were to make it *fair* then we would lose power. Why would we agree to that?
Joe liberal: So you admit supporting injustice?
Republican voters: I don't know what you are talking about. *Conservatives winning* is the definition of justice.
It's really nice how Dan Crenshaw drew his district like his eye patch.
I can really appreciate a man with a self-humour about himself.
I’m okay with politicians gerrymandering right now because you it’s just using the system but I do think we should make a way to stop gerrymandering for the future.