- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
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It’s almost like the idea that representation based on land instead of based on people is flawed to begin with.
I’ve said it many times, the US is a model example of what not to do in so so many different ways.
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Most sane countries leave electoral boundaries to an independent commission
I will never understand how the highest number of votes isn’t winning. Bucha cheatin ass bitches
The United States is not a nation anymore. It’s a corporation. It’s also 100% corrupt. When will people come to terms with this? As long as most people are in denial of this, it will always be so.
Fun fact, the term for running a nation like a corporation is fascism.
Well it’s already been this way for like 20 years almost. It’s been forming for many decades, but it’s a done deal.
You guys are entering the late decadence phase as already experienced in the Roman Empire
Not exactly, but similar. The dynamics of the haves and have-nots are different because of the sheer numbers. But we are at a point where if just a certain amount more of the wealth is shifted to the oligarchs, then the entire system will collapse.
I’ve already gotten a three day ban on Reddit for making certain statements, so I’ll just state my opinion that the only way to stop this is to mortify a few billionaires. But aside from that, the problem is apathy, complacency, and lack of unity. This is why they came up with all the petty divisive “issues” which are really not issues. This is why the Orange Feces-Man did that whole mask thing. Because if people were united and everyone felt they were on the same side, there would be rebellion - nay, revolution. It’s happened in the past many, many, many times around the world through history. But I don’t think they ever had the sheer magnitude of distractions that we have today. Bread and Circuses vs Streaming, social media, entertainment more than all the humans of the earth could collectively consume. THAT, the Romans did not have at their disposal to weaponize.
Where do we draw the line?
Integrity is most common in other countries, but not in the united states.
Pay more attention to home friend, Europe is sliding into corruption hand in hand with us. But that would get in the way of nationalism wouldn’t it?
Fragile Europeans: Americans are children who need a babysitter
Also fragile Europeans: a couple brown people arrive welp, back to the 1930s
At least in the UK, Germany and France, certainly. Although, tbf, Americans are their own kind of unreasonable, fearful and violent. Western Europe is America-lite.
Congrats, you have written the dumbest take I’ve read today
The US is failing more rapidly than other countries. But, it should be seen as an opportunity to look at your own country and think “ok, how would a morally bankrupt party exploit this thing that just used to be a tradition or a norm, and exploit it because there’s no actual rule?”
We really aren’t we just have a spotlight on us and third parties deliberately making it look bigger and worse
Good take!!
Illegality is slowly being erased in america
Number 2 is the actual ideal, not number 1. Number 1 represents, “good,” gerrymandering that politicians argue for, but it really only serves them. They get to keep highly partisan electorate that will reelect them no matter what, which means they can be less responsive to the will of their voters. They only have to worry about primary challengers, which aren’t very common, and can mostly ignore their electorate without issue.
It’s also important to note that this diagram is an oversimplification that can’t express the nuances of an actual electorate. While a red and blue binary might be helpful for this example, a plurality of voters identify as independents, and while most of them have preferences towards the right or left, they are movable. The point is that actual voters are more nuanced and less static than this representation.
Number 2 is how distracting would work in an ideal world; it doesn’t take into account political alignment at all, but instead just groups people together by proximity. A red victory is unlikely, but still possible if the blue candidate doesn’t deliver for his constituents and winds up with low voter turnout. It also steers politicians away from partisan extremism, as they may need to appeal to a non-partisan plurality. That being said, when literal fascists are attempting number 3, we’ll have to respond in kind if we want any chance of maintaining our democracy, but in the long term, the solution is no gerrymandering, not, “perfect representation,” gerrymandering.
Anything to undermine democracy
This is kinda if topic, but why does the US have term limits for the presidency, but not all the other major positions?
In the original Constitution, there are no limits for any of them. George Washington made it a tradition not to seek a third term, but it wasn’t actually enshrined into law until ~150 years later.
It was invented because FDR was so popular that without that rule, his bones would probably still be president to this day.
Ive never understood why someone who is popular can’t keep doing the job. I also don’t understand lifetime appointments like the supreme court without mandatory retirement ages or other mechanism to prevent mentally deficient people in the role
Fun fact: the bones of any president would be a better leader than our current president.
They focussed more on term length
- House: two years for frequent turnover, voice of the people
- Senate: 6 years for stability, maturity
- judges: lifetime, for independence from who appointed them and from politics of the day
While these don’t seem to be working right, anyone proposing changes needs to understand what they were trying to do and not make it worse trying to fix another aspect
It was added for the president with Roosevelt. Likely because the president has much more power than a single congressman.
The figures only make sense in “first past the post” (or “winner takes it all”) systems.
The last one would be unfair in most systems using districts.
The last one might be the most fair, if it were based on criteria other than voting tendencies. Complex districts are meant to let different voices be heard, but what those voices are makes it challenging.
Let me make a hypothetical scenario. Consider a state where half the people are urban and half are rural, and has two representatives. Those groups has different priorities so districts drawn only for simple shapes means that someone’s voice is not being heard. It would be better to have one representative elected by urban voters and one by rural voters. Now picture those urban areas following a winding river because that follows historical settlement patterns. The most fair choice might be a complex shape following population density to result in one representative speaking for rural voters and one speaking for urban voters, but indistinguishable from gerrymandering.
Of course that same exact result might just be a proxy for political affiliation, which is unfair. This is why preventing gerrymandering is impossible: whether it’s good or bad depends on what you’re trying to do not how you do it
not in proportional representation… If half the people are rural and half are urban and vote for different people then 50% of the representatives represent each side, no matter how the land is divided.
From my understanding “winner takes it all” is on state level, so the winner gets all the votes people. I only know this from the US.
“First past the post” is when there is one elected person per district and they need a relative majority which is also true in the UK.
In other countries like France, you have more than one round or need an absolute majority. Still gerrymanderable but not “first past the post”.
This is what the US has, for the most part. It makes it extremely difficult for ranked choice or similar to gain a foothold.
Is there even a way to mathematically divide up land area into completely fair districts? I heard somewhere that it wasn’t possible.
there are generally a couple (probably more but modern democracies afaik have settled on 2) ways of dividing up government: representative (you as a person living in an area elect someone to represent you) and proportional (you as a citizen of the country elect a party to represent your preferences)
rather than dividing land area (representative aka districts) to elect individuals, there are voting systems that take proportionality into account… parties put forward candidates based on their proportional vote (ie the party leader would get in first, and then they have a list of candidates who get chosen based on their % of the vote)… they don’t represent a district/area, but the party… so the idea is that if a minority party gets 10% of the vote, they should have 10% of the representation - districts be damned… philosophy is more important than land… this leads to a whole lot of minor parties having to form a coalition government
i live in australia, and we don’t have proportional representation (we have a party… kind… called the coalition but that’s… different… it’s complex… ignore it… afaik germany and nz have proportional representation: they’re probably the best places i know of to look for these systems: parliaments composed of many minor parties)… we do have ranked choice voting, so we’re kind of a middle ground: ranked choice without proportional representation still leads to a 2 party system, but imo theres debatable up sides and down sides from representative to proportional (proportional systems can lead to a lot of nothing - small parties that are technically the majority but can’t agree on anything and not able to get anything done)
i thiiiink i’ve heard that there are systems that combine proportional and representative (actually, i think our australian senate is proportional and our house of representatives is representative - our HOR is pretty 2 party and our senate has a about 5-6 minor parties) but this is where my knowledge gets fuzzy
first past the post is the root of all evil: there are no up sides, there are only down sides… it causes politics to be horrible (ranked choice you have to worry about not just winning outright but also being likeable - you have to make everyone like you, because you want them to put you 2nd, 3rd, etc because 2nd preference might make you win!), it causes extremism, hate, forced 2 party (in the worst possible way: extremist 2 party), and absolutely no opportunity for change
It bothers me that the graphic lists red-then-blue but there text lists blue-then-red. It’s inconsistent to how we read the information and makes it confusing to process.
…like gerrymandering
They listed the majority first. That’s all they did here.
gerrymandering goes both ways: it can make a majority a total victory, and a minority also a victory… i think building up is a good way of displaying that: you can go from a representative minority to a total win, and a representative minority to a minority win depending on how you draw the lines
the point being to show that gerrymandering is more influential than the vote, regardless of which “side” you’re on… it’s bad for everyone
Where text lists blue-then-red?
In the image attached to the post.
this assumes a left to right interpretation which is not universal, the graphic in a sense is not absolutely red then blue
the text could be positioned left and right like the graphic does, but I found it natural to list the larger number first and the smaller second - so not everyone feels the same as you about the graphic being confusing
this assumes a left to right interpretation which is not universal
While this is true, the graphic is in English using the Latin script. The Latin script is, as you might know, a left to right script which triggers a left to right interpretation of the whole thing.
Honestly, it didn’t trigger me at all but it would be more logical to also put the bigger color first (read: on the left)
agreed, I think the reasoning makes sense given that context 😄
Thanks, I like being right on the internet
ha, relatable
I do have to think about these assumptions in web design, e.g. using block start or end padding styles instead of padding left or right, so that the page will render correctly if loaded in a different cultural context / language. Euro-centrism is strong, but English isn’t the only language, and Western culture isn’t the only culture.
Yeah, it’s written in English, which is read left to right.
Thanks fot adding context to my comment
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