Comments | marcusmarcusrc: Gerrymandering?

marcusmarcusrc

Gerrymandering?

Nov 09, 2012 12:11

Those of you who are my facebook friends may have noticed some posts by me about various voting issues - bemoaning my lack of Senator or Representative, for example - but also pointing out what I think is an interesting paper by a family friend of mine on gerrymandering (google stephanopolous gerrymander to see a few of his articles ( Read more... )

Comments 4

dcltdw November 9 2012, 20:23:50 UTC

Wouldn't you have lots of small districts in cities (because population density is high) and very large districts in the rural areas? Think concentric circles -- the opposite being the PA map (spokes on a hub centered on cities).

marcusmarcusrc November 10 2012, 18:51:55 UTC

Yeah, you would definitely have small city districts and large rural districts, but the small city would have, say, 3 districts each with 90,000 D votes and 10,000 R votes each, and the large rural area might similarly have 3 districts with, say, 60,000 R votes and 40,000 D votes each... and so you split the state 50/50 R/D even though the population is almost 2:1 D:R...

marcusmarcusrc November 10 2012, 18:56:56 UTC

Oh... or are you pointing out that the PA map is not small-urban/large rural, because they are merging urban/rural areas in the gerrymandering process? There might be some of that. That's certainly what they've done in Utah, where the Salt Lake Urban area is split between 3 large districts each covering about a quarter of the state. Fortunately, the D managed to pull off an upset victory anyway ( ... )

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marcusmarcusrc November 10 2012, 18:59:39 UTC

Yeah, I know that the Senate is designed to make sure the heavily urban states can't run roughshod over the rural states, but... I thought the whole point of the House was to represent the people, and I'm unconvinced that the rural interests need THAT much over-representation.

(certainly, if you think about the problems that the massive farm subsidies in the US and EU cause for developing countries, I'd argue that the rural-over-representation is currently not only bad for our country, but for the world) (I'd be more okay with farm subsidies if they actually went more to small farmers than big agri-business, and veggie farmers over corn farmers, etc.)