SCOTUS: No longer content with stacking, they're now dealing from the bottom of the deck

[No Excuses]

The partisan gerrymandering decision is awful but at least they didn't cave on the citizenship question.

 

Partisan gerrymandering can still be fought if Democrats successfully contest governor houses and state supreme courts (like they have in NC). It's not ideal, but there are ways to neutralizing it that require a lot more effort on the ground and focus on state-level elections.

 

If they had ruled in favor of Trump and DoC on citizenship questions, that would have very successfully and blatantly rigged elections in this country in favor of "non-hispanic whites" as the leaked internal documents stated. This was a bare naked attempt by the GOP to entrench the voting superiority of whites in this country. Anyone still pretending they aren't racist and a white nationalist party is a blind, brainless fool. They literally stated establishing this in the internal documents that were leaked.

[Warhead36]

The GOP are like, 2-3 steps from full on Nazi ism at this point.

[FanboyOf91]

We're probably a decade away from failed-state status.

[NoCalMike]

It's sad that the GOP is pretty blatantly showing their cards and acknowledging that their brand is slowly dying, but rather than adapt to a changing electorate, instead, they are looking to find ways where elections are determined by a less amount of voters wielding increased power. 

[JCB]

Posted this in the Repub thread, but it's worth doing again:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunday/republican-platform-far-right.html

 

By any sane standard of measurement, the GOP is very, very, very extreme right. But oooooh socialism. Repubs who remain are, quite simply, comfortable with the racist right politics.

[Larry]

Looking forward to the Trump administration, which has been arguing that the courts absolutely must allow them to print the citizenship question, because we're right at the printing deadline, now spending a few months working on a new lie, and this time without all those pesky records, and announcing that they've got a new lie, now, and there's time to print new questions now. 

[Fergasun]

No jurisdiction of the courts on gerrymanding makes no sense. The courts are the only "non-partisan" branch of government.

Did they just overturn "One person, one vote"??

[AlvinWaltonIsMyBoy]

RIP America. We are never coming back.

[TheGreatBuzz]

Wouldn't it make sense that how districts are drawn in a state would go to the state supreme court?  And is that what SCOTUS said?

[The Evil Genius]

5 minutes ago, TheGreatBuzz said:

Wouldn't it make sense that how districts are drawn in a state would go to the state supreme court?  And is that what SCOTUS said?

 

Not really. SCOTUS basically shrugged and said it's up to the gerrymandered state legislatures to determine if gerrymandering is ok there.

[Renegade7]

Warren I believe wants a nonpartisan federal commission to establish voting districts going forward.  I'd prefer this, find a way to make an algorithm or something, because I don't trust red or blue to be fair to the other.

[kfrankie]

14 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

Warren I believe wants a nonpartisan federal commission to establish voting districts going forward.  I'd prefer this, find a way to make an algorithm or something, because I don't trust red or blue to be fair to the other.

 

There's no such thing as a non-partisan federal commission.  Government employees at that level are either appointed or elected.  When they are elected, they are partisan.  When they are appointed, the person who appoints them is partisan.

[Renegade7]

2 minutes ago, kfrankie said:

 

There's no such thing as a non-partisan federal commission.  Government employees at that level are either appointed or elected.  When they are elected, they are partisan.  When they are appointed, the person who appoints them is partisan.

 

Is the Fed partisan? IRS?  I get your point, but I don't find this idea impossible or anywhere near as bad as what we are currently doing.

[kfrankie]

Just now, Renegade7 said:

 

Is the Fed partisan? IRS?  I get your point, but I don't find this idea impossible or anywhere near as bad as what we are currently doing.

 

If the last 2 (or maybe 10) years has taught us anything, there is no such thing as a partisan politician, agency, commission, office, etc.  Senator Warren can promise whatever she wants at this stage of the election cycle, but she cannot deliver a partisan commission on anything.

[Renegade7]

3 minutes ago, kfrankie said:

 

If the last 2 (or maybe 10) years has taught us anything, there is no such thing as a partisan politician, agency, commission, office, etc.  Senator Warren can promise whatever she wants at this stage of the election cycle, but she cannot deliver a partisan commission on anything.

 

You didn't answer what you felt about my two examples, just give up hope and continue doing what we're doing.  I mean, is NASA partisan?  There a couple of examples, even the current head of the federal election commission stood her ground and called out Trump when he said he'd accept more help from Russia, that it was against the law, and he later backtracked. 

[Larry]

California seems to have created some rules that sure seem non-partisan to me. I think some of the qualifications is that members must have not contributed more than $500 total, in their lifetimes, to any political organization or candidate. 

 

Or I could go for a different districting system. Districts will be drawn by Google Maps. The computer will know the number of people per block. The locations of city/county lines. Maybe some other demographics like race or income. But absolutely will not know anything about resident's politics or voting. 

[twa]

I've donated less than 500, does that make me non-partisan?

 

 

[Larry]

3 minutes ago, twa said:

I've donated less than 500, does that make me non-partisan?

 

 

 

Nope.  Just cheap. 

 

[Renegade7]

So is this like the unofficial SCOTUS thread now???

Edited June 28, 2019 by Renegade7

[kfrankie]

6 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

 

You didn't answer what you felt about my two examples, just give up hope and continue doing what we're doing.  I mean, is NASA partisan?  There a couple of examples, even the current head of the federal election commission stood her ground and called out Trump when he said he'd accept more help from Russia, that it was against the law, and he later backtracked. 

 

Ok.  Is NASA partisan?  There is some suggestion that it is suffering from mission drift.  NASA might be a good example of an exception, but NASA has no role in the political process.

 

If there is a federal commission appointed by Congress or the President to determine how to draw congressional districts, which is about as political as you can get and will dramatically affect the election process, whichever party controls the appointment process will surely take the opportunity to stack the commission.  I have no doubt it would be a complete cluster ****.  In fact, the idea that there's even a problem with how congressional districts are drawn is up for debate.

 

On your algorithm idea, (1) does a Republican or Democrat design the  algorithm? (2) I'm not about to allow a computer program to start dictating policy, that's about as horrifying an idea as I could imagine.

 

I'm not trying to be overly critical because ideas, even bad ones, sometimes lead to solutions. I also realize that i have no ideas on this issue, nor do I expect to.

[PokerPacker]

2 hours ago, kfrankie said:

On your algorithm idea, (1) does a Republican or Democrat design the  algorithm? (2) I'm not about to allow a computer program to start dictating policy, that's about as horrifying an idea as I could imagine.

It's not really dictating policy, it's merely implementing a map.  People will set the acceptance criteria for the algorithm and then it will draw up a map.  Computers are pretty good at maps.  An open-source auditable algorithm that doesn't take into account any partisan data could probably draw much more reasonable maps than partisan humans would.  Maybe test it against sample data rather than against actual census data so we can confirm that it actually works without tweaking to get particular partisan results.

[PeterMP]

There are already programs building maps and doing these things.

 

A simple thing to do is to make a program that makes the most compact districts possible without breaking up counties.  Divide each state into how many ever districts possible while keeping the districts as compact as possible and keeping counties together.

 

538 has already done it.

 

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-maps/#Compact

 

It is not partisan and could be done tomorrow nationally.

 

Or you could just do most compact and ignore counties.   You could also do completely random districts.

 

There are number of ways to computationally generate districts that would be non-partisian.

 

Edited June 28, 2019 by PeterMP

[Rocky21]

Woke up this morning to the headline Supreme Court OK's Excessive Partisan Gerrymandering. 

 

The U.S. used to be a Hell of a Country.  RIP. 

[killerbee99]

Every Republic falls eventually Rome, etc.... Like a dying star, be glad you were around to witness the beginning of the end, started since the day this country elected this moron.... Its was a good run, about 200 plus years... But eventually corruption rots everything away.... Like the corrupt asshole we have in the white house right now... Too much damage done to institutions where people dont trust anything anymore, just to keep the orange buffon in power.. 

[NoCalMike]

5 minutes ago, killerbee99 said:

Every Republic falls eventually Rome, etc.... Like a dying star, be glad you were around to witness the beginning of the end, started since the day this country elected this moron.... Its was a good run, about 200 plus years... But eventually corruption rots everything away.... Like the corrupt asshole we have in the white house right now... Too much damage done to institutions where people dont trust anything anymore, just to keep the orange buffon in power.. 

 

We are following the same trajectory, founded on an ideal, the ideal was flawed (as in not authentic) from the get-go, eventually corruption sets in at unsustainable levels, the wealth & power continues to be consolidated to a small number of people who wish to rule over everyone else, the masses revolt, etc etc etc.....the major turning point in the modern era seems to be once money was deemed as speech and corporate person-hood.  That put the wealth/power consolidation issues into overdrive.