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 Post subject: political redistricting
 Post Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:30 am 
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yeah, technically this is allowed. but i saw my veteran congressman in dayton ohio get forced out a few years back when the opposing party carved his district into a very creative shape with pieces stretching over 25 miles outside of his original district.

my big issue though is that redistricting takes the election away from the people who were originally involved in it. Someone who gets elected can then change the circumstances so that they can perpetuate their election without having to appeal to the people who voted against them the first time. also, the minority that lost is made into a smaller minority, who most likely will be completely ignored by the elected official. I just think it ought to go by geographics or population density.

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 Post Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:43 am 
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Gerrymandering is a time-honored tradition of disenfranchising immigrants and minorities in American politics. It would take a hell of a revolution in the system to fix that.

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 Post Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 6:55 am 
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Well, it has changed a little bit. You have to lie about why you're doing it if it's entirely aimed at disenfranchising a minority group; because that's illegal. Doing it for electoral advantage, without any undue consideration for other factors than party affiliation, is legal; so everyone duly claims that they're doing the latter no matter what.

There are a few cracks in the dam, though. The Supreme Court recently overturned a ruling allowing the GOP to do their mid-term redistricting of Texas; sending the case back to the appeals court (without comment) to be redone. So there was something there they felt went over the line, even if we don't know exactly what.

There is also one of the western states, Colorado if memory serves, which has a non-partisan panel redistricting on the basis of smallest possible contiguous districts; and all but one of their last house elections was competitive, so I doubt the major parties will fall in love with that precedent any time soon. The Democrats may embrace it out of tactical advantage, as a side effect of Governor Dean taking over the party apparatus; but they won't love it.

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 Post Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 9:30 am 
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I've never understood why this is such a problem in the States. Districting over here is done by a non-partisan body - the electoral commission - and is done to get as close as possible to equal population in each constituency without dividing up communities much. This seems like such a patently obvious way of doing things.

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 Post Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 9:40 am 
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Becaaauuuuuse, they're Americans. Duh.

It's a problem because you can always count on politicians to ignore obvious common sense if it's in their interest to do so. Who thought of such a stupid system in the first place, I really don't know.

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 Post Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 9:52 am 
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Well, it was some guy named Gerry that first did it; thus the name. I'm sure with a bit of prodding (prod, prod) Were will find us a link to the story of the origins of Gerrymandering. It was in a New England state; Jersey or Pennsylvania, I think.

New Mexico only hase three districts, so there's not much Gerrymandering that can be done, but we still have largely uncompetitive districts. Of course, that's largely because we only have three major population centers (one in each district, imagine that!), so the district more or less goes the way of the major city in its area. Thus, we have one Democrat (from our northern district, decided by the artsy community of Santa Fe) and two Republicans (one from the southern district, decided by the city of Las Cruces, and one more moderate from the central district, decided by the city of Albuquerque - of course, in the latter's case, Albuquerque IS the district.) It'd be hard to do any Gerrymandering around here.

However, one of the big problems with the districts is the fixed size of the House; with only 435 members, every election a Representative represents more and more people, making it harder and harder for them to really represent their constituencies. I'm not sure what the real number is, but I know that is representative populations were restored to what they were when the nation started, there would be over 2000 Representatives. More Reps = smaller districts = less Gerrymandering.

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 Post Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:26 am 
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...sigh...

His name was Elbridge Gerry, and he was the governor of Massachussets in 1812 when he approved the uniquely shaped district that bore his name.

Btw; Pennsylvania and New Jersey are Mid-Atlantic states.

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 Post Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 1:39 pm 
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But it would surely be to the advantage of politicians over here to gerrymander away. If Labour split Sherwood up into the surrounding districts and made a new constituency on the edges, that's be a Tory seat overwhelmed by ex-mining villages and they'd be an MP down - but they can't do it. American politicians are no more scum than our own; so why can they get away with it there but not here.

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 Post Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 5:15 pm 
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caffeine wrote:
But it would surely be to the advantage of politicians over here to gerrymander away. If Labour split Sherwood up into the surrounding districts and made a new constituency on the edges, that's be a Tory seat overwhelmed by ex-mining villages and they'd be an MP down - but they can't do it. American politicians are no more scum than our own; so why can they get away with it there but not here.

Tradition, mostly. Historically, while the US was figuring out how to exploit essential redistricting for partisan gain; England was figuring out newer and better ways to avoid essential redistricting for partisan gain. The US gerrymander is the British rotten borough.

As a result of these separate histories; the US has a system with mandatory, nation wide redistricting at least once a decade; while Britain seems to redistrict rarely, grudgingly, and on a case by case basis (so far as I can tell). It makes it much harder for British politicians to exploit redistricting; being rarer, and drawing more attention when it happens.

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:16 am 
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Rotten Boroughs are... wait, wait..... um....districts where hardly anybody lives anymore, but which still return an MP to Parliament to represent 12 easily-bribed farmers and 50 sheep? I think there was one that was actually underwater, in a lake. Am I right?

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 9:40 am 
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I'm not sure how one could be underwater; that would imply that a medieval city was flooded on a permanent basis. Otherwise, you've got it. The farmers in question also didn't need to be bribed very often; they would vote for whoever their lord told them to vote for, so it was their lord who needed to be bribed.

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 10:30 am 
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Can't remember where I read about the flooded district, but it was recent. I think some British minister was trying to get out of some duty by seeking "alternative employment" as the lord of said flooded district. It was a manor that got permanently flooded centuries ago, but nobody ever bothered to take it off the list.

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 11:42 am 
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We don't have rotten boroughs anymore Kea; they were abolished in one of the reform acts. I don't know the story you're thinking of, but it sounds like someone trying to claim manorial rights over somewhere that doesn't exist any more. There was probably some tax reason for doing so.

Were - boundaries are reviewed every 5 years by the Boundaries Commission, which adjusts them slightly to compensate for population changes. There's just been a major redistribution in Scotland on the recommendations of the Privy Council, to remove thirteen Scottish seats. Scotland was always overrepresented as part of the Act of Union, but people have argued that's outdated now we have a Scottish Parliament. It got a lot more iffy when Scottish MPs decided two close and controverial votes last year that only affected England.

As a quick aside, apparently not everyone trusts the Boundaries Comission. My housemate just claimed to have read a study showing that redrawing boundaries tends to subtly benefit whichever party is in power.

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 8:58 pm 
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That's a lot better than blatantly benefiting (as they do in the US), don't you think?

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 Post Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 10:19 am 
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caffeine wrote:
Were - boundaries are reviewed every 5 years by the Boundaries Commission, which adjusts them slightly to compensate for population changes. There's just been a major redistribution in Scotland on the recommendations of the Privy Council, to remove thirteen Scottish seats.

Ah, I see. I really should look into this kind of thing more carefully. Still, that's a lot more grudging and case specific than sending whole districts halfway across the country every ten years.

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