[quote]PB-Crawl wrote:
HG Thrower wrote:
Bill Roberts wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
I don’t see how redistricting changes the inherent flaws of democracy.
It doesn’t change various factors you are concerned about but that doesn’t mean it must be useless.
Here is an example to illustrate:
Suppose a state or other political entity is comprised of 55% intelligent people with good judgment, and 45% complete parasites, gelatinous tapeworms, and solipsistic amoebas.
Now if these were homogenously distributed, in every district the voters with good judgment would prevail.
However, let’s say they are not even distributed.
And let’s say that politicians who cater to the parasites are in control of districting.
It will be fairly easy – at least if allowing lines that appear insane – to draw lines where there a majority of districts which for example are 60/40 parasites, and thus won every time by politicians who cater to them.
Let’s say for example there are a million people and there will be 100 districts.
We have a total of 550,000 persons who are responsible for themselves, and 450,000 parasites.
Let’s say we succeed in drawing 60 districts that are dominated 60/40 by parasites. This uses up 360,000 of the parasites – leaving 90,000 – and only 240,000 of the self-responsible people, leaving 310,000.
The remaining 40 districts can then be at a ratio of 310 self-responsible people to 90 parasites.
Result: the parasite-heavy districts win about 60 of the seats every election, and the low-parasite districts win only about 40 seats.
Thus accomplishing political control via districting.
Very accurate analogy to what has happened here. A key reason why the idiots remain so entrenched in Sacramento. Also the reason why they campaigned and spent VERY heavily during Arnie’s first term to defeat his re-districting ballot measure.
Actually this hasn’t been the problem for Cali as you explained it. 2001 Gerrymandering was fully embraced by both parties, districts were drawn up as “safe democrat” and “safe republican.” This wasn’t a case of one party drawing squiggly lines to save itself.
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As so often happens, my edit to my post, while appearing at the time, vanished in some refresh of the system. I had added a line stating that the above was only one of the purposes of gerrymandering and is not the only one with adverse effect.
The other purpose is as you say.
Both can be accomplished at the same time: a party locking in overall power this way, while individual politicians of the other party get their positions locked in and thus agree to the deal.’
Whether it is the case in California that one party obtained more districts than would be the case from overall voter percentage, I don’t know. It is doable with gerrymandering, however.