Illegality is slowly being erased in america
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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
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.
~~2 and 3~~ 1 and 2 are indistinguishable if you don't take political alignment into account. What counts as a line or a column in real life? You need to group/sort people by something in order to draw any of those lines.
Edit: somehow I missed the actual numbers in the image and counted them starting from the sample, so when I said 2 and 3 I was thinking of 1 and 2.
~~Do you mean one and two? Two and three are clearly different, as three has no pattern other than disenfranchisement.~~ I agree that one and two are both valid ways to divide the squares visually, but the text is stating that one is, "perfect," and two is, "compact but unfair," implying that the goal should be getting each political group some representation. That is still allowing politicians to pick their constituents, and even if it's more fair than three, it still built to serve the candidates, not the voters. Compact (i.e. a system that divides districts entirely by geography and population, without consideration towards demographics or political alignment) should be the actual desired outcome.
the fascists aren't attempting 3, they've already been doing it for decades. now they just want to do even more, because it's open fascism season so why be coy about it.
Everyone's been doing either one or three for decades, the fascists are just more effective at it. What's changed is that they're doing it in a non-census year with the explicit goal of changing the outcome of the 2026 midterms. The only states with have unbiased districts are the places where people have passed ballot measures against partisan districting, but Democrats have been just as happy as Republicans to pull this shit.
It's almost like the idea that representation based on land instead of based on people is flawed to begin with.
Where do we draw the line?
I'll caveat this by saying that I detest gerrymandering and think it's one of the roots of the decline of the US political systems.
That being said, I'm going to answer a question you might not have even asked with a bunch of information that doesn't answer things better than "it's complicated."
The easiest "fair" way to divide up districts is based on equal polygons (say squares that are XX miles/km on an edge, for simplicity's sake). The issue is that this doesn't take into account population gradients due to terrain and zoning, or cultural/ethnic clusters. So, on its face it looks reasonable but you'll end up with districts that cover a city with 1 million people of diverse cultural makeup standing equal with a district of 1000 people that are culturally/ethnically homogenous. Not actually fair.
So, you can try to draw irregular shapes and the next "fair" way to try and do that is to equalize population. Now you quickly devolve into a ton of questions about HOW to draw the districts to be inclusive and representative of the people in the overall area you're trying to subdivide.
Imagine a fictional city with a cultural cluster (Chinatown in many American cities for example), a river, a wealthy area, a low income area, and industrial/commercial areas with large land mass and low resident populations.
How do you fairly draw those lines? You don't want to disenfranchise an ethnic minority by subdividing them into several districts, you might have wealthier living on the river, you might have residents with business oriented interests in the industrial areas AND low income... It quickly becomes a mess.
A "fair" districting can look gerrymandered if you're trying to enfranchise separate voting blocs in proportion to their actual population.
The problem is that politicians play this song and dance where they claim they're trying to be fair (until recently in Texas where GOP said the quiet part out loud and just said they want to redraw lines to get more seats) but in reality they are setting up districts that subdivide minority blocs into several districts that disenfranchise their voting interests.
It's disgusting, it's a clown show. But none of OPs photos are representative of what a good district looks like, because every location is different and there's likely an incredibly small number of locations that would divide that cleanly, if any.
So, it's complicated. Needs to be independently managed outside politics as best as possible and staffed by smart people and backed up by good data.
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.
I've said it many times, the US is a model example of what not to do in so so many different ways.