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Obviously what Texas is doing is reprehensible but in a winner take all election system where Texas always goes republican and California always goes dem, does this actually makw a difference?
Winner takes all only applies to presidential elections. In this case, they are redistricting for more congressional seats.
Yes because likely CAs redistricting plans to make more blue and less red...therefore offsetting the 5 seats Trump is asking Texas to find (which will be more red and less blue)
And thats assuming Republicans do redistricting math right. At the current outrage levels tightening margins is a big gamble. They could be turning it into a landslide... Assuming elections are fair.
It would be kind of crazy to see the Republican response if they lost like 30 seats or something, I am sure they would try to somehow invalidate the whole thing.
...Assuming elections are fair.
That's exactly what they're trying to prevent.
Muh Jefferson!
Hmm, the UK went for Labour, but their go*ernment banned independent social media and blacklisted protesters anyway. So is the Democratic Party going to save our souls?
Conservatives never gave a damn about genuine fairness, it is time to stop playing ball with the fuckers.
...I don't like this game, but we don't seem to have any GOOD choices, just less awful ones.
Newsom, joined by congressional Democrats and legislative leaders, unveiled a plan, known as the election rigging response act, that would override California’s independent redistricting commission and draw new congressional lines
I don’t fault what they’re doing here; war is war. But just look at how easily the democratic process can be stripped away. Just a flick of the pen and it’s gone. No real safeguards. Not a single shot fired.
It's important to realize you can't really safe guard against authoritarianism once they already control the government
Agreed. We failed loooong ago. Now we are just along for the ride.
This plan will still require an approval from voters.
There was an ICE raid right outside the building he was in today as a total intimidation tactic. ICE only got one person for so many suited up chuds. Fuck this shit
I thought it was border patrol, not ICE. Are they the same thing?
They're both part of DHS
If they act without due process, there is no point in making a distinction.
“We can’t stand back and watch this democracy disappear district by district all across the country.”
Yep, step the fuck up everyone.
This is still a form of gerrymandering, right? I hope this does not kick off a wave of disenfranchisement across other red states.
We really need to get the US territories statehood/representation too. And DC.
what do you mean, "kick off"?
Kicking off, say, five other states redrawing maps to cancel out California and to head off other blue states trying the same.
That sort of frantic escalation wouldn’t be good.
from what I've gathered (although it's been hard for me to find the exact info I'm looking for) most of the states with nonpartisan or bipartisan redistricting commissions seem to be democratic states by a significant margin.
safe to assume the ones that have partisan commissions are already gerrymandered to hell and back. and there's little to gain from doing it more; there will be diminishing returns.
i think an all out war would mostly benefit the dems but again i don't have very concrete data so I'll qualify these statements to be based on gut and not much more.
Hopefully the results is that everyone is concerned about gerrymandering instead of just Democrats and something can be done about it at the federal level.
We tried playing fair, that got us Trump twice
Just a note that none of this impacts presidential elections.
But if Texas does their thing, this would be a necessary response for the house
True... but if Trump had to contend with Democrat majorities in the house and Senate then he would have an incentive not to do illegal shit because he could be removed from office.
For house, sure, Senate not so much.
He might have faced legislative resistance to his initiatives, but removal from office would never have been on the table.
I understand. I just fear out of control escalation like bickering characters in a cartoon.
It's already out of control. This is self defense.
We already lost the rule of law to a dictator. We didn’t fire the first shot of this civil war, but we can’t ignore it.
I would hardly call it a civil war. It's a civil struggle for sure, but I don't think the majority of Americans have their heart in it, and nor should they. They're being ruled by a minority.
For my part, I don't consider MAGATs to be Americans anymore. It is a fundamental reason why I am learning how to use a gun, because I assume that the America we knew is no longer a thing. Concentration camps are not a sign of peace and civility.
I'm right there with you. These people have shown they simply don't understand what it means to be an American. They've betrayed every value.
When Jan 6th happened it should've been the final wake-up call. Every Republican should be filled with the deepest shame and regret.
There are masked men with guns in unmarked cars disappearing people without any law binding them. What would you call that?
I understand, but, if playing the game by the rules doesn't result in victory...
Gotta beat 'em at their own game. Good thing they're parotting senile child rapists and are incredibly predictable. Clever is not in their playbook.
Hunh. Kinda like the Confederacy. 🤷🏼♂️
Can the US just break up already
The Republic of California has a nice ring to it.
Needs something more to distinguish it from the California of old, how about the New California Republic, or NCR for short?
If you want to win you have to play the game.
(Or cheat, a win is a win)
Republicans are geographically dispersed while Democrats are generally packed into urban areas. We lose 100% of the time if we try the same gerrymandering tactics. We need to be smarter, not play their games.
If you think I'm wrong, show me a single state we could flip from red to blue by gerrymandering. You need to show your work though. You can't just say X state, you have to show HOW you could flip the state by gerrymandering.
You could make the maps do anything. You could make every district in the state pass through one city.
is there anything preventing the usual cracking/packing tactics from being used? Create enormous completely red districts consisting of large swaths of rural areas, and then split the urban areas amongst their surrounding rural areas just enough to have a relatively safe win. Yes, the districts would be ugly as hell (and vary hugely in size), but assuming we're okay with gerrymandering that was probably to be expected already
No. The strategy can work perfectly fine both ways.
The entire point of gerrymandering is to make the geography irrelevant.
If you have a large, reliably blue city where 80 percent vote Democrat you can split that into districts that go 60 percent Democrat so that Democrats win more seats but by smaller margins..
If you wanted to gerrymander in favor of Republicans, you would fracture the city even more so that you disperse those Democrat voters over more districts.
that's what I thought