Pa. Supreme Court strikes down congressional map as unconstitutional

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Pa. Supreme Court strikes down congressional map as unconstitutional, orders change before May primary

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/p...rders-change-before-may-primary-20180122.html

Looks like Democracy is finally fighting back as the Pa. Supreme Court spit in the right-wing opponents of democracy. At issue were highly gerrymandered election maps that provided the dying party of the American right-wing a decisive advantage in a state that has shifted purple over the years.

In addition, the Court has ordered the election maps to be redrawn before the May primaries. The Republicans intend to seek a stay through the US Supreme Court but since this is a state matter it's unlikely that SCOTUS will step in. The PA Constitution grants much broader rights as opposed to attempting to reduce them like many red state Republicans desperate to shore up their power in the face of the waning of their main voting block.

Good news for American Patriots everywhere! Hopefully, more states will follow suit and purge the one-sided election maps that have given the Republicans an unfair advantage for nearly a generation.

This could lead to and additional 3-5 seats swinging blue.

 

Describe to me what makes a district map "fair", please.

 

Good. Districts should be based on geography and urban/rural (or neighborhood in major cities like LA, Miami, NYC, etc.) divides. This picking and choosing of voters needs to end, no matter the party calling the shots.

 

One that doesn't result in a party that gets less than 50% of the vote winning 75% of the seats.

 

What sense does that make?

You're saying don't draw districts based on how people vote ...draw them based on how people vote.

Btw there was no good answer you could have given because there is no "fair" district map.

That's why these things are always changed, always challenged, always a mess.

For PA its just a matter of the Dems having won.

They were able to get in on enough State law to make it so they were the ones who would be able to decide what is "fair".

I mean look at it, the entire point comes down to "this is proper cause we said so".

Even they don't know how to define districts "fairly".

In the end all this will do is **** the State of PA as nothing comes from Democrats in charge but debt, taxes, crime, more crime, more debt, and more taxes.

 

That doesn't even make sense. If a party gets 50% of the vote and 75% of the seats that's NOT how the voters voted. Asking that said party only get 50% of the seats is and the other 50% be alloted to the other party/parties is as fair as it gets.

 

Something that doesn't clearly, plainly, and palpably violate the state constitution...if you need more, well....you shouldn't....

 

The districts must be fixed so Democrats win the majority of seats and you must have as many black majority districts as possible so you can have black representatives because blacks only come out to vote for other blacks.

 

No, what you said makes no sense.

Districts are drawn based on population, they're supposed to be as equal in population as possible.

So if the the Dems had "50% of the vote", which I'm assuming you mean as a sum of all Congressional votes for the State, but only walked away with "25% of the seats" then that obviously means that the allocation of that sum of votes was concentrated into a few districts.

So to redraw them based on that is to basically say "because more people in District A voted for X and not Y then that means the votes for Y in District B should count for less".

Did I explain that well enough?

 

Nevermind that being precisely what's been struck down but okay. This isn't an issue of partisanship but logic.

 

Basically, yea that's the Dem definition of fair haha.

 

Just because the state writes a law to do thus dose not make it fair, it just makes it the state law.

When redistricting is presented its always under the context of "whats fair", and that's what I'm speaking about.

This challenge had nothing to do with "whats fair".

Check post #9.

Whats happening is that a concentration of voters that vote a particular way are being made to have their votes "worth more" than those elsewhere in the State.

Its not fair, although it may prove to be legal per that States laws.

 

See the thing about seats (note the plural) is that's a reference to multiple elections. If 50%+1 or a plurality vote 1 way then that's who takes the seat. But when Party A only wins 50% of the state's electorate but take 75% (the number is commonly far worse than that, I'm just using OPs numbers) of that states in the House and state government, the districts are clearly non-representative.

 

In which election did this happen?

 

You're getting too caught up in percentages, classic mathematical mistake.

Lets make it simple, a hypothetical state has 100 people (who all vote btw*), 5 districts, and for the purpose of simplification each district has 20 people because they're all supposed to be as equal as practical anyways.

District A - 9 vote D, 11 vote R - R wins seat.
District B - 9 vote D, 11 vote R- R wins seat.
District C - 9 vote D, 11 vote R- R wins seat.
District D - 19 vote D, 1 vote R - D wins seat.
District E - 19 vote D, 1 vote R- D wins seat.

Dems get 65 votes and 2 seats.
Reps get 35 votes and 3 seats.

So the Democrats in this example got more votes but earned less total seats and the reason for that is we're simply adding up the votes for reasons that have no bearing on the individual districts.

We're just doing it to do it, does this make better sense?

More overall votes is, in this context, a pointless thing to discuss because it is a sum of the individual single-member districts.

So any percentages based on that sound telling, but its flawed logic.

--edit to include more--

Forgot to address what you said about this being "non-representative".

I can see what might cause someone to think that ...if they are under a very simple impression that the House of Representatives represents the State.

However, technically, the House of Representatives doesn't represent "the State" ...it represents portions of the State.

Think about it along those lines and it makes a lot more sense.


*The number of people who vote in the districts is also a huge HUGE factor in this conversation but it gets complicated and we'll be doing more than napkin math so we can just let it be.

 

I got bored after the 3rd sentence of that wandering post...

Could you give a tl:dr; using a more coherent structure?

 

That's not how it happened though.

http://www.fairvote.org/2016_house_races_in_pennsylvania

The Pa maps are grossly obvious in they way they carved out areas in order to keep Republicans who have something like 700,000 fewer registered voters in PA than Democrats ending in Democrats winning the majority of votes but only winning 5 out of 18 seats.



The GOP knows that if the voting process was fair, they'd never hold a majority again.

 

tl: dr; When it comes to complicated issues with multiple valid points of view you don't want to hear anything more than "wahhh Republicans are bad and racist and cheating and this isn't fair and Russia Russia Russia".

In your own thread I gave you a solid, civil argument and you threw a fit.

Become more mature by the next time we converse, please.

 

https://www.wired.com/2017/04/gerrymandering-illegal-mathematicians-can-prove/

 

That's cute but the inverse is also just as problematic.

Redistributing people in densely packed areas so that they beef up the numbers in the sparsely packed ones is no better a tactic.

 

Yay! Finally some pushback against the Republican gerrymandering.

 

You're correct. I started this thread. I'll try to properly reply to your post tomorrow.

 

Ok I'll look for it.

 

As I said, base districts on geography and urban/rural (and neighborhood where appropriate) divides. These snaking districts that cut across streets based on voter registration at the time of the previous census and to cut out incumbent politicians of the opposition party are plain wrong. No amount of mathematical wordplay changes the clear intent to anyone with eyes and an electoral map.

 

all one has to do is look at it, if it's all odd shaped and that shape benefits the party making it, it's not fair