Before that both sides worked together (mostly) to produce very safe districts.
People keep saying “they have been doing this forever “, but not like this.
For say something like the state legislature race in a state, they count up all the seats they have won in each district, and whichever party has won the most seats wins the race. Voters are therefore put in buckets (districts) and their votes are counted in aggregate.
This allows a process called "gerrymandering" to redraw district boundaries arbitrarily. So if there is say a democratic-party majority voting bloc in a particular area, I can redraw the surrounding districts to split that geographic area into many parts, so their votes get split across multiple districts and hence "diluted".
The voting rights act asserted this is a form of voter suppression. Specifically related to black voter suppression, if a state is say 40% black by population and they have no black representatives, it warrants a closer look as to why.
I hope that wasn't too confusing of an explanation. I'm not from the US but I'm quite interested in these things.
Our education curriculum is also a big problem here. If I stopped random people on the street in the U.S. and asked them what first-past-the-post is, I suspect only a small number would be able to answer.
Yet people are baffled as to why we have the two party system, gerrymandering, and all of the other problems. You can’t fix what you don’t understand. We have to start there.
Ranked choice is starting to gain some traction in the U.S. But there are many different ranking methods and the one we are using is instant-runoff, which has many of the same problems as first-past-the-post, including polarizing candidates and winners. I think if these systems were more broadly understood, many people would prefer Schulze for its fairness properties and to reduce polarization.
Curious to hear your thoughts on all of that.
You can have the answer if you want it.
The supreme court has called this "racial gerrymandering" which is a bit rich considering they previously ruled that gerrymandering itself was just fine. Apparently, only fine when it has partisan benefits.
Either way, the solution here is a tool not available when the VRA was passed, and that's fair ungerrymandered maps. There are tons of algorithms that produce fair maps, certainly much more fair maps vs the current gerrymandered maps. We even have algorithms that can measure the level of gerrymandering.
An anti-gerrymandering bill would be good for everyone and should be supported at the federal level. The only people it's not good for is incumbents.
the whole point of gerrymandering is for politicians to pick their voters vs. voters picking their politicians and if you are able to pick your voters you can easily guess how that will work out for you…
