America’s most gerrymandered congressional districts Crimes against geography. This election year we can expect to hear a lot about Congressional district gerrymandering, which is when political parties redraw district boundaries to give themselves an electoral advantage. Gerrymandering is at least partly to blame for the lopsided Republican representation in the House. According to an analysis I did last year, the Democrats are under-represented by about 18 seats in the House, relative to their vote share in the 2012 election. The way Republicans pulled that off was to draw some really, really funky-looking Congressional districts. Contrary to one popular misconception about the practice, the point of gerrymandering isn't to draw yourself a collection of overwhelmingly safe seats. The process of re-drawing district lines to give an advantage to one party over another is called "gerrymandering". The process of re-drawing district lines to give an advantage to one party over another is called "gerrymandering". 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
This computer programmer solved gerrymandering in his spare time Yesterday, I asked readers how they felt about setting up independent commissions to handle redistricting in each state. Commenter Mitch Beales wrote: "It seems to me that an 'independent panel' is about as likely as politicians redistricting themselves out of office. This is the twenty-first century. How hard can it be to create an algorithm to draw legislative districts after each census?" Reader "BobMunck" agreed: "Why do people need to be involved in mapping the districts?" They're right. You can see for yourself how his boundaries look. Here's Maryland, currently the least-compact state in the nation: And here's North Carolina, the second-least compact: Huge differences, yes? Now, some argue that compactness isn't a very good measure of district quality. And therein lies the problem: You can define a "community of interest" pretty much however you want. Wonkbook newsletter Your daily policy cheat sheet from Wonkblog. Please provide a valid email address.
The Electoral College Was Meant to Stop Men Like Trump From Being President Americans talk about democracy like it’s sacred. In public discourse, the more democratic American government is, the better. The people are supposed to rule. But that’s not the premise that underlies America’s political system. Most of the men who founded the United States feared unfettered majority rule. The framers constructed a system that had democratic features. The Bill of Rights is undemocratic. That’s the way the framers wanted it. Donald Trump was not elected on November 8. The Constitution says nothing about the people as a whole electing the president. This ambiguity about how to choose the electors was the result of a compromise. It is “desirable,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 68, “that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of” president. As Michael Signer explains, the framers were particularly afraid of the people choosing a demagogue. In truth, Americans are wedded less to democracy than to familiarity. This makes sense. Related Videos
Voters Not Politicians The Constitution lets the electoral college choose the winner. They should choose Clinton. Lawrence Lessig is a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of “Republic, Lost: Version 2.0.” In 2015, he was a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary. Conventional wisdom tells us that the electoral college requires that the person who lost the popular vote this year must nonetheless become our president. That view is an insult to our framers. It is compelled by nothing in our Constitution. It should be rejected by anyone with any understanding of our democratic traditions — most important, the electors themselves. The framers believed, as Alexander Hamilton put it, that “the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the [president].” Hillary Clinton spoke to supporters, Nov. 9, offering a message of thanks, apology and hope. Hillary Clinton spoke to supporters, Nov. 9, offering a message of thanks, apology and hope. [Don’t blame the electoral college. Many think we should abolish the electoral college. So, do the electors in 2016 have such a reason? opinions
Competitive Congressional Districts This is a proof-of-concept of an idea from Dr. Sam Wang at Princeton Election Consortium to create an app allowing people to enter an address and find nearby competitive Congressional Districts. Competitive districts, shaded in purple, are those defined as Tossup or Lean D or R, by the Cook Political Report. Click on a district for more information. Thanks to Stephen Wolf at Daily Kos Elections for an updated geographic file that incorporates 2015 Florida and Virginia redistricting. Updated Oct. 14. Enter Address, City or Zip Code Search Reset
$ in Politics: The Top 10 Things Every Voter Should Know As surely as water flows downhill, money in politics flows to where the power is. Individuals and interest groups will give campaign contributions to politicians in the best position to deliver what they're looking for. That means incumbents get vastly more than challengers, committee chairmen and legislative leaders get more than rank-and-file members, and parties in power get more than parties in the minority. Incumbents vs. challengers Interest groups like safe bets, and in the political world nothing is so safe as giving money to a politician who's already in office. Congressional committees In the halls of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., most of the nitty-gritty work of crafting new laws gets done not on the floor of the House or Senate, but at the committee level. Majority vs. minority party When the balance of power changes on Capitol Hill, the contributions from interest groups shift almost immediately to the party in control.
4/4/17: The Mathematics Behind Gerrymandering Quantifying Bizarreness Gerrymanderers rig maps by “packing” and “cracking” their opponents. In packing, you cram many of the opposing party’s supporters into a handful of districts, where they’ll win by a much larger margin than they need. In cracking, you spread your opponent’s remaining supporters across many districts, where they won’t muster enough votes to win. For instance, suppose you’re drawing a 10-district map for a state with 1,000 residents, who are divided evenly between Party A and Party B. Such gerrymanders are sometimes easy to spot: To pick up the right combination of voters, cartographers may design districts that meander bizarrely. Yet it’s one thing to say bizarre-looking districts are suspect, and another thing to say precisely what bizarre-looking means. The Supreme Court justices have “thrown up their hands,” Duchin said. The compactness problem will be a primary focus of the Tufts workshop. The Accidental Gerrymander Wasted Votes The Question of Intent
SMART Elections 10/27/15: How the Colorado GOP changed the nomination game Colorado's Republican Party recently changed the rules governing its presidential caucus, expected to occur next March 1. Basically, the caucus will still go on, but there will be no presidential preference vote. We won't know which candidate "won"; participants will just be electing delegates for subsequent conventions. Caucuses are not high-turnout events. The state party's decision in Colorado will likely substantially reduce turnout at the March contest. When you add in the straw poll during that [caucus] experience it inflates the number of people who come by a dramatic amount and all kinds of problems have ensued. As is well understood in political circles, the fewer people show up at an event, the easier it is to control the outcome. But this doesn't only affect the presidential race. The fewer people show up at an event, the easier it is to control the outcome This is an important shift. Vox Video: The way politicians dictate elections
3/4/20: TX Has Closed More Polling Stations Than Any Other State Who gets to vote? That question was supposed to have been decided by the Voting Rights Act back in the ’60s. But since 2013, people in the South lost at least 1,200 polling stations. In Texas, the state closed 750 polling stations — more than any other state — as part of a state-wide effort to create centralized voting centers. But the irony is, efforts to centralize voting may instead be disproportionately keeping people of color from the polls. Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, and Myrna Pérez, the director of the Brennan Center's Voting Rights and Elections Program, joined The Takeaway to discuss the impact these polling station closures are having. Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this segment.