Because 1) last night Rachel talked about Republican efforts to redraw America's electoral map and 2) because we just like maps in general, here is a very cool one from Treehugger: a zoomable map containing one dot for each person person counted in the most recent U.S. and Canadian censuses. That's 341,817,095 dots. Connecting them -- that's the tricky part.
Click for zoomable version.
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Looking for some lemonade out of the electoral college revision, maybe a presidential candidate will actually accrue more votes in a congressional district that the congressional candidate?
Interesting . I had some solid black areas in my sparsely populated area of Central Florida ...then I figured it out
solid = trailer park . people livin' too close together.
In my area there was an almost white area in the middle of the city, which I discovered was Walmart and a few surrounding businesses.
Even if one had no political agenda at all, it would be a real challenge to divide up the US portion of that map into 435 districts, each with an equal number of dots, where no district crossed a state line and communities were kept together, and didn't disfavor ethnic minorities. There would be still be a lot of dragon-shaped (Gerrymandered) districts. In addition, blue enclaves and red areas, as well as red enclaves in blue areas would still never get say in the House of Representatives. Maybe a better way would be to have some kind of proprtional representation.
Or design a program wise to statistics and fractals to devise such a distribution. Then decision-making would at least be nominally reality-based.
Oops! Isn't that by definition bigotry?
Here's what I would like to see. though I know it will never happen... Bear with me, now, as this is a radically democratic, with a small 'd', idea...
The entire concept of Congress is to represent the nation... 2 Senators for each state, originally selected by the state government, now selected by state-wide vote... As many Representatives as the state is allocated, based on the state's proportion of the national population, as determined by the Census every ten years...
The current system has the state's government cut up the state into so many districts, each district electing one Representative... Each district supposedly has as many citizens as the others, so they are equal, but this is where the trouble comes in...
Because Democrats tend towards urban areas, they are concentrated in smaller areas than rural Republicans... Mapping the state's districts by land area therefore favors the more rural Republicans... Gerrymandering, selecting the district borders to exclude Democrat population centers from toss-up areas, exacerbates the problem...
Here is the solution... Get rid of the districts!
Hear me out...
Let us say, a state is determined by the Census to have 10 Representatives... In that state's primaries, citizens of each party are to vote for PRIORITY of ALL those running for that party, each nominee being given priority on what percentage of that party's votes he/she received...
In the general election, each citizen votes for his PARTY, not specific people... The percentage of votes determines how many REPRESENTATIVES that party gets, chosen in order of the primary results... In that state with 10 Representatives. if the state voted 56% (D)- 44% (R), the top 6 Democrats and 4 Republicans would win...
NO gerrymandering... NO 'safe' districts... NO running unopposed... NO redistricting out of office... NO failure to be represented, just because you're a Democrat but all your neighbours are Republican... EVERY Democrat would have six Representatives; EVERY Republican, four...
It would be more economical for the candidates as well... They could concentrate their personal campaigns on the primary, then pool their resources for the general election, while those who got low priority in the primary can save their money...
Too democratic, I know, but... Wouldn't it be lovely?
The form of representation defined by the constitution is purely based on geography, regardless of whether you are talking about the House or the Senate. What voice we have through our representatives is therefore focused only through the lens of commonality due to geography. In contrast, the influence brought against those representatives by moneyed interests such as lobby groups reflects supporters from many places. This makes any conflict between citizens and corporations over an issue an unfair fight. In order to rectify that, representation would have to also be available to citizens based on their interests. Reframing representation so that one house was by geography and the other by interest would offer a better balance between citizens and corporate interests. Because we are thinking in terms defined by the constitution, we have a blind spot in this area. If we were ever to have a real constitutional convention intended to reformulate government to better serve the citizens, it would have to include a discussion of this. Short of it, The People are outgunned by design.
This idea is one I have proposed in the past. I have found it interesting how state legislatures (with the exception of Nebraska) all emulated the federal bicameral legislature by creating a state Senate and a state House or Assembly, but that the Senate was simply the same sort of thing as the House but with fewer members. In both cases they just divide up the state into a certain number of districts.
I think it would be interesting, if the states want to continue with the bicameral format, to have the Senators elected, not by districts, but by affiliation -- apportioned among the available seats. Also, do something like limit Senators so they cannot have two consecutive terms. In other words, make the senate a different body of legislators altogether, not just a glorified step up the career ladder for a state Representative.
I saw Maddow's report on this last night and I think I had anxiety dreams all night. The idea that legislatures are trying to gerrymander the presidency is untenable. Instead of rigging the game why don't Republicans try to convince people that their position is the right one? Oh, that's right they can't so cheating is their only option.
Hey, did anyone else find themselves on this map? Took me a while.
Yeah, but since I had moved since the 2010 Census, I had to look where I used to live.
OK, after Rachel's show last night I literally stayed awake thinking of a 2016 election where a Republican wins because of nuclear gerrymandering. What are the PA House Dems doing about this? Do we all sit around with our thums up our a**es waiting for it? I can't take much more of these fascists. Do something...somebody!