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DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!
In this thread, let's talk about proportional representation, why it's superior to the alternative, and the ways it could be achieved in the USA. Also, we can also talk about various other types of electoral reform, like how to fix gerrymandering, what is "fair redistricting", and so on.

Why do we need electoral reform?

Basically, there's a big problem with the USA's "operating system". The First Past the Post system was essentially something the founders copied from the existing English model, and it virtually guarantees that a two party system evolves and that whoever we pick to represent us -- be that the President, Congress or local representatives -- is the choice that the fewest people actually like. It encourages strategic voting, to deny other people their candidate, and for people to choose "the lesser of two evils" rather than going with what they truly believe.

For a great explanation of what this is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

(Actually CGP Grey's videos on this subject are all really interesting and worth a watch)

Political scientists and mathematicians have gotten together and devised a number of algorithms that fix this problem. So far, the best solution, invented in the mid 19th century, and put into place in many European parliaments, is proportional representation. This is something we desperately need here in the USA; we can't keep running a 21st century society on an outdated operating system.

What is Proportional Representation?

I'll let this political scientist explain:

quote:

What is "proportional representation" and why do we need this reform?

Douglas J. Amy
Mount Holyoke College

Americans continue to be disillusioned with politics. Cynicism about candidates and parties runs high and voter turnout is abysmally low. A number of proposals designed to revitalize American elections have been made, including term limits and campaign finance reform. But a new reform is also beginning to get some attention: replacing our present single-member district, winner-take-all election system with proportional representation (PR) elections. Political commentators writing in The Washington Post, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Christian Science Monitor and USA Today have endorsed this reform. Grassroots groups in several states are now organizing to bring proportional representation to local elections. Leaders of most alternative parties, including the Libertarians, the Greens, and the New Party, are also pushing for a change to PR. And many in the voting rights community, including Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier, have concluded that proportional representation would be the best way to give minority voters fair representation.

So why all this sudden interest in proportional representation? What exactly is PR, how does it work, and what are its advantages over our present system? Describing how it works is simple. Proportional representation systems come in several varieties, but they all share two basic characteristics. First, they use multi-member districts. Instead of electing one member of the legislature in each small district, PR uses much larger districts that elect several members at once, say five or ten. Second, which candidates win the seats in these multi-member districts is determined by the proportion of votes a party receives. If we have a ten-member PR district in which the Democratic candidates win 50% of the vote, they would receive five of those ten seats. With 30% of the vote, the Republicans would get three seats. And if a third party received the other 20% of the votes, it would get the remaining two seats. (For more information on the various types of PR systems, see How Does PR Work?.)

At first glance, this voting process might seem a bit strange to many Americans. We are used to our single-member district system, in which we elect one candidate in each legislative district, with the winner being the candidate with the most votes. But while we view this winner-take-all system as "normal," in reality our approach to elections is increasingly at odds with the rest of the world. The vast majority of Western democracies see American-style elections as outmoded and unfair and have rejected them in favor of proportional representation. Most of Western Europe uses PR and a large majority of the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have chosen PR over our form of elections. The United States, Canada, and Great Britain are the only Western democracies that continue to cling to winner-take-all arrangements.

Is there any organization that is supporting this?

Yes! Currently Fairvote.org is the leader in promoting this reform. There's a lot of other helpful and enlightening articles on the site that go into depth explaining how proportional representation works, and how it could be implemented.

Problems

There's a few problems that I'd like to throw open the floor to discuss:

  • How do you convince the currently-existing parties, within the current system, to implement a system that is to their disadvantage?
  • How do you teach ordinary Americans how this concept works?
  • We must update our legislature to ensure that it's more representative, because the country has more than 300 million people. How many more representatives do we need? How do we make the legislative process more efficient when there will be ten, or even a hundred times as many legislators?

News

I was really excited when the ballot initiative in Maine to try to enact proportional representation passed. However, there's been an unfortunate, though not unpredictable, setback:

http://www.pressherald.com/2017/05/23/maine-high-court-says-ranked-choice-voting-is-unconstitutional/

quote:

Maine’s highest court rules ranked-choice voting is unconstitutional

The advisory opinion means lawmakers must start the process of amending the Constitution to allow the voter-approved law or repeal it, which is more likely.

AUGUSTA — Maine’s highest court concluded Tuesday that the nation’s first statewide ranked-choice voting system violates the Maine Constitution even though it was approved by the state’s voters in a referendum in November.

In a unanimous advisory opinion, the seven justices on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court acknowledged the validity of citizen-initiative ballot questions but noted that even citizen-enacted laws can be unconstitutional.

----------------------------

I am by no means an expert on political science, or voting systems, just someone who's interested in this subject and wants to discuss and see what other people think about it! Let's talk about this effort. Is it a pie-in-the-sky dream that will never happen? What do you think? :)

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stone cold
Feb 15, 2014

we should make sure people can vote op

Party Plane Jones
Jul 1, 2007

by Reene
Fun Shoe
Comedy answer: :thermidor:

Nothing is going to change until/unless Democrats start winning in waves as the GOP's whole strategy now is legislatively Jim Crowing the gently caress out of the electorate so that they don't get voted out.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Neat thing is that multi-member districts have already passed constitutional muster. North Dakota had two at large members from 1903-1913 and from 1933 to 1963.

qkkl
Jul 1, 2013

by FactsAreUseless
Make it so anyone with over X amount of votes gets to go to Congress. Make the voting power of representatives proportional to the amount of votes they got. For example if candidate A got 25% of the votes, and candidate B got 75% of the votes, then candidate B's vote is worth 3x as much as candidate A.

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

Party Plane Jones posted:

Comedy answer: :thermidor:

Nothing is going to change until/unless Democrats start winning in waves as the GOP's whole strategy now is legislatively Jim Crowing the gently caress out of the electorate so that they don't get voted out.

I definitely think that the big blue wave that may or may not appear in 2018 and 2020 will be helpful to steering the country in a much better direction. That being said, though, do you think the Democrats would be "okay" with instituting proportional representation once in power? I mean, there's no real alternative but to go with that, of course, but I'm just wondering, like, what sort of arguments we could put forth to convince Democrats on the fence that a multi-winner / proportional system would be in their favor? Also, how would we explain it to the average voter?

icantfindaname
Jul 1, 2008


the problem is the executive presidency not the voting system

we need a parliament

Communist Zombie
Nov 1, 2011
Would more extensive reforms than PR and removing FPTP be fine for this thread? Because I have a whole slate of ideas on how to fix elections, including some out there ideas.

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

Communist Zombie posted:

Would more extensive reforms than PR and removing FPTP be fine for this thread? Because I have a whole slate of ideas on how to fix elections, including some out there ideas.

:justpost:

I mean... as long as it's not, like, "Full communism now". Which, I mean, is obvious, but not real helpful!

Trin Tragula
Apr 22, 2005

I would like to point out a couple of things.

quote:

The United States, Canada, and Great Britain are the only Western democracies that continue to cling to winner-take-all arrangements.

First, a point of pedantry. This is not strictly true; the French system has two rounds (to ensure that the winner in each district gets at least 50% of the vote) but is not proportional; En Marche and its ally the Democratic Movement secured a solid overall majority and 60% of the National Assembly with 49% of the national vote.

On a wider level, please do not think that PR by itself will be a cure-all. You know what PR means? PR means hung legislatures with no absolute majorities and nobody in clear control. PR means that if you want to get anything done, you need coalitions. Lots and lots and lots of lovely coalitions. Coalitions require weeks and possibly months of negotiation and horse-trading and understanding between different parties to form compromise agreements that are never going to totally satisfy anyone who voted for the parties that form them. Sometimes it means that nobody can agree, and then you need either to accompany it by ditching the set-in-stone coordinated American election cycle, or else accept the very real possibility that you are baking four-year total gridlock periods into the foundations of the system.

How's that going to go down in the current American political atmosphere, where a Republican is an evil RINO if they try to raise taxes on anyone ever, and a Democrat is a spineless traitor if they aren't passionate advocates of single-payer? If nobody is allowed to openly compromise, they can't form a coalition, nobody can govern, and you still have gridlock. At the start of this decade it took Belgium nearly two years to form a new government after elections. The King of Spain had to call for fresh elections in 2016 after six months of negotiating went nowhere (mostly because the new insurgent leftists and the old-guard centre-leftists hate each other worse than the Judean People's Front), and it then took another five months to form a minority right-wing government that's been trying to solve a secession crisis by hitting it with big sticks.

Also, do not think that PR will automatically benefit the left. Consider the Germans. Germany had a federal election three weeks ago, and they're now settling in for a protracted negotiation period. The German left-wing voter in that election had an absolute bastard of a choice. The main left-wing party is the traditional option of the SPD. However, if you voted SPD in 2005 or 2013 in an effort to keep the centre-right CDU out, guess what? The SPD and CDU, as the two largest parties in the Bundestag, formed a grand coalition with the CDU's Angela Merkel as Chancellor. (In 2009 she was able to go into coalition with a smaller right-wing party.)

So now what do you do? You could just be sensible and German and keep calm and vote for the Chancellor. To the apparent left of the SPD we find first the Greens, who may or may not care more about their green policies than their left-wing ones, and who might go into coalition with the CDU soon if they get over their hatred for the minor right party the FDP, who would also have to be a partner. Then there's Die Linke. They're the direct successors of the ruling party of East Germany whose representatives are mostly still old enough to be dogged by often-accurate accusations of having been Stasi informants, and the stink of this is continually dragging them down. Then there's a motley collection of oddballs and also-rans who can't get near the 5% threshold for representation, and by this point you might as well vote for the German version of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, which at least has a seat in the EU parliament.

There is a very real possibility that introducing PR into American legislatures results in a bunch of unsatisfying grand coalitions led by people in the mould of Joe Manchin and Dick Durbin, while the Tea Party and the Bernie Party fulminate impotently in opposition, neither of them able to get near to 50% by themselves and neither of them able to compromise enough to work with the continuity Democrats or Republicans. (On the plus side, it also makes it much more likely that the RENT IS TOO drat HIGH guy might win an independent seat somewhere, and I'd pay a *lot* of money to see him as the kingmaker of any legislature you'd care to name.)

I don't dislike PR, in whatever of the many forms it takes around the world. It's an empirically fairer way of deciding elections than FPTP. Just don't imagine that you can go down to IKEA and get the Swedish flat-pack electoral system. PR has its own issues and you need to figure out how to design them out, or deal with them.

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!
That's a really great point that you've brought up there, and was something I wondered along those lines as well -- would a PR Congress with ruling coalitions be, in the end, all that different from "Big Tent" party politics? Democrats and Republicans encompass a whole huge wide range of people all along the political spectrum, from left to right and authoritarian to libertarian (though probably no authoritarian leftists!) Just like coalition governments, even if the Democrats or Republicans win the House and Senate, they end up having to do plenty of horse-trading within the party to govern -- just look at the existence of the various caucuses like the Freedom Caucus or the Tea Party.

I'm not sure about this myself!

On another note, I read this interesting Daily Kos article.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/8/31/1416318/-What-if-the-US-had-a-parliament-with-proportional-representation

It gives some breakdowns on a hypothetical what-if scenario. Pretty interesting stuff!

Party Plane Jones
Jul 1, 2007

by Reene
Fun Shoe
There's no way on god's green earth (pun intended) the Green party would hold that many seats. To call them wingnuts would be an insult to the fastener industry.

tehinternet
Feb 14, 2005

Semantically, "you" is both singular and plural, though syntactically it is always plural. It always takes a verb form that originally marked the word as plural.

Also, there is no plural when the context is an argument with an individual rather than a group. Somfin shouldn't put words in my mouth.

Party Plane Jones posted:

There's no way on god's green earth (pun intended) the Green party would hold that many seats. To call them wingnuts would be an insult to the fastener industry.

Yeah, Stein was a goddamn nutjob. Given her level of education, the amount of conspiracy type drivel she pushed was amazing.

icantfindaname
Jul 1, 2008


Party Plane Jones posted:

There's no way on god's green earth (pun intended) the Green party would hold that many seats. To call them wingnuts would be an insult to the fastener industry.

Also, given the experience of European countries with Green parties, they probably should not be considered as to the left of the mainstream Democrats. Greens in Germany are about to go into coalition with the conservatives, etc.

ShadowHawk
Jun 25, 2000

CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Trin Tragula posted:

How's that going to go down in the current American political atmosphere, where a Republican is an evil RINO if they try to raise taxes on anyone ever, and a Democrat is a spineless traitor if they aren't passionate advocates of single-payer?
These sort of incentives completely change under PR systems. Winning a gerrymandered primary election no longer becomes the most important thing for securing a seat.

ShadowHawk fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Oct 10, 2017

Star Man
Jun 1, 2008

There's a star maaaaaan
Over the rainbow
Include seats for the Native American tribes where tribal members vote for representation in Congress.

Communist Zombie
Nov 1, 2011
Heres my wide ranging slate of reforms which range from realistic to fantastical. And i would appreciate explanations for why my more radical reforms are actually bad ideas.

Election Reforms
  • Consolidate election schedules: Make all elections, local, state, and federal, happen on the same day every four years, preferably on a weekend. I have no preference
    on whether senators would have four year or eight year terms. Off year or off day elections were used to purposefully reduce turn out since it takes some political awareness and activism to be aware that you would need to vote on days other than for president. Though ballot fatigue is a thing so if it is an issue a compromise where you have election days in the beginning and end of the year with each one being a mix of all levels to help prevent one election day becoming hte 'main one'
  • Guaranteed early voting time blocks: Two weeks of early voting starting three weeks before election day would be the minimum amount of early voting available.
  • Election day is universal paid day off: Making a (paid) day off means people are more likely to go out and vote since work wont prevent them from going, making it paid is just an extra touch to help the poor. For jobs that cannot have all have a day off, like emergency services, or for some other reason still have to go work then the employer must give all employees working on election day a paid day off of the employees choosing during early voting. And since a lot of minimum wage jobs are 'on call' or otherwise have schedules that change weekly there would be some sort of formula to determine how much they would have worked.
  • Mandatory minimum sizes for poll centers: Too small poll centers has also been used to discourage voting since waiting in line is no fun especially if its very long. So all poll centers should be able to process everyone in the voting district in a reasonable amount of time. The formula I came up with is there would be a maximum of a fifteen minute wait time assuming two-thirds of the entire voting population came to vote evenly between 8am and 5pm.
  • Allow Mail in voting: Self explanatory, Id also allow people to turn in mail in ballots at poll centers.
  • Remove FPTP and runoff elections: OP already went over why this needs to happen
  • Add a 'none of the above' or protest vote option: Considering the state of US politicians I think its good for democracy for citizens to say none of these are suited to represent us. As for what happens if none of the above wins I see two options: the state appoints someone to that position who also will be barred from running for reelection, or the second most votes gets the position. But in either case they would be officially considered the acting representative and would not get any privileges of office, mainly franking which lets them send mail for free, and possibly also prevents them from running again for that seat.
    A protest vote option would be for ballot questions and can be done either stand alone or in tandem with other options. Stand alone protest votes would be to show that you actively disagree with the entire question and arent just neutral or cant decide. While a protest yes/no vote exists to allow people to vote how they want will also letting their displeasure at the establishment/status-quo be known and so prevent situations like the Brexit vote or the FARC Peace Treaty vote where a significant number of people voted against what the ruling party wanted instead of their actual choice leading to the option they wanted failing.
  • Suffrage for highschoolers: All residents aged 16 or older will be able to vote in municipal/local elections as well as for the school board. This will help people get engaged with civic life and start voting since 18 year olds also move for college which makes registering to vote harder, and if people dont vote when theyre young they are much less likely to vote overall in the future. And shouldnt students get a voice in how schools are run and their community? Berkeley passed a measure letting 16 year olds vote in school board elections last year.
  • National Preclearance: Any change that would affect voting would require preapproval from the US Attorney General or the DC district court. I would change the bailout requirements from 5 years to three elections if elections have been unified.
  • Universal recall elections: Any elected position

Legislative Reforms
  • 2 or 3 Representatives per state minimum: An indirect method of reducing the size of congressional districts, and of course the smallest unit would be the basis for how many representatives each state gets. 2 minimum would give 1095 reps at 282k pop each, 3 min for 1642 at 188k pop each. Alternatively a 250k population size could work, giving 1231 representatives (1252 for all territories), especially if all of the US territories became states since that would push the House of Representatives to over 11.5k members with a 2 minimum rule.*
  • Separate Voting Representatives for 'Federal Territories': All US territories, colonies, dependencies, etc would be each entitled to however many representatives they would get if they were state, but do not get a minimum number of representatives, and they would all have voting power. But territories would not get Senators.
  • Create proportional representation chamber: Ideally I would move Senators into the House of Representatives, essentially making them two at-large districts, and make a new upper house. OP already covered why PR is a good idea.
  • Allow multi member districts: This would just allow states more flexibility in choosing how they want to be represented.
  • Representatives for Native American tribes: Native Americans have always gotten the short stick in American politics and policy, and have been powerless despite all the claims of co-sovereignty with the US, giving them specific voting power would help fix that. People living inside tribal lands as well as members of tribes would be able to vote for voting representatives in Congress as if they were a state, which would include Senators. Each tribe can choose whether they apportioned with the state they reside in or with other tribes. If there are enough Native Americans to get multiple representatives then the tribes will decide how to group themselves, with a preference towards preventing small tribes to be split among multiple reps or being joined with disproportionally larger tribes.
*I did math for how big the House of Representatives would be under various proposals and whether or not various territories and DC would be included if anyone wants to see.

Judicial Reforms
  • Ban re-election of judges: Its been shown that judges give harsher punishments when they are near reelection, since the judiciary should be impartial this is obviously a major issue. I have no issue with the idea of electing judges, just reelecting them. If judges must regularly face the people then they should have term limits and have to wait one election before they can stand for election again.
  • The Bar creates judicial nominee list: To keep politicians from nominating professionally unsuitable but ideologically extreme candidates to the judiciary the state's bar would create a wide list of potential nominees that the government would have to choose from. If thats too technocratic for your taste then the bar could either have veto power over nominees or the government and bar have to agree on a candidate.

Also I think an effort post summing up the different ways to vote and have assign representatives would be useful. I know CPGrey has his videos but he doesnt cover all options.

sirtommygunn
Mar 7, 2013



Communist Zombie posted:

Heres my wide ranging slate of reforms which range from realistic to fantastical. And i would appreciate explanations for why my more radical reforms are actually bad ideas.

Election Reforms
[*]Election day is universal paid day off: Making a (paid) day off means people are more likely to go out and vote since work wont prevent them from going, making it paid is just an extra touch to help the poor. For jobs that cannot have all have a day off, like emergency services, or for some other reason still have to go work then the employer must give all employees working on election day a paid day off of the employees choosing during early voting. And since a lot of minimum wage jobs are 'on call' or otherwise have schedules that change weekly there would be some sort of formula to determine how much they would have worked.

I think it might be easier if we had an election three day weekend rather than a single election day, with all employees needing to have at least one of the election days off. Maybe businesses could also be forced to give poll locations and voting hours to their employees ahead of the voting weekend. I don't know much of anything about election organizing, so if there's any reasons we couldn't hold elections over multiple days I'd like to know about them.

e: oh nooooo the new newbie av

evilweasel
Aug 24, 2002

Congress has the power to mandate the voting method for senate and house seats, including the power to ban single-district winner-take-all elections, under Article I, Section 4, which is a power that has been nearly forgotten but is extremely powerful and gives a basis for a lot of these proposals. Congress has the power, for example, to ban gerrymandering by states but has not done so for decades.

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

Communist Zombie posted:

Heres my wide ranging slate of reforms which range from realistic to fantastical. And i would appreciate explanations for why my more radical reforms are actually bad ideas.


I think I'd be down for everything you posted except for the 16 year old voting and the none of the above thing. Our brains -- our logic centers -- are not even fully developed until around 25 or so, so a 16 year old voting would just be getting a completely uninformed vote. Of course, even with adult brains, you get tons of stupid people wasting their votes with throwaway votes, so I guess it wouldn't change things significantly.

California already has a couple of these too, like mail-in ballots, and being able to drop off mail in ballots at polling places on the day of. Mail-in ballots should just be standard everywhere. I can't remember the last time I actually voted in an in-person polling place.


ShadowHawk posted:

These sort of incentives completely change under PR systems. Winning the a gerrymandered primary election no longer becomes the most important thing for securing a seat.

Incidentally, this brings up the issue of gerrymandering, which is a separate one from PR. It's also a worthy electoral reform goal and there's a lot of ways to handle redistricting that we can discuss too!

nessin
Feb 7, 2010

evilweasel posted:

Congress has the power to mandate the voting method for senate and house seats, including the power to ban single-district winner-take-all elections, under Article I, Section 4, which is a power that has been nearly forgotten but is extremely powerful and gives a basis for a lot of these proposals. Congress has the power, for example, to ban gerrymandering by states but has not done so for decades.

That's a very broad interpretation of the what constitutes power to regulate elections vice interfering with time, place, and manner. I think if you were to go to a court, especially the current Supreme Court, you'd find a drastically different interpretation would hold. I agree on the gerrymandering but as to a voting method or direct interference with the process? I doubt that would hold up even in a polar opposite court to what we've got.

evilweasel
Aug 24, 2002

nessin posted:

That's a very broad interpretation of the what constitutes power to regulate elections vice interfering with time, place, and manner. I think if you were to go to a court, especially the current Supreme Court, you'd find a drastically different interpretation would hold. I agree on the gerrymandering but as to a voting method or direct interference with the process? I doubt that would hold up even in a polar opposite court to what we've got.

There are existing laws on the books to ban multi-member districts which were permitted before that law and nobody has ever raised a peep about them, plus past laws have banned gerrymandering but those expired and were not renewed. Plus, the reference to banning altering the "place of choosing senators" makes it clear that's a very broad power, one that without that restriction would allow Congress to mandate Senate direct elections instead of legislatures selecting Senators (until the 17th amendment was passed requiring direct election).

Sure, a lawless court could ignore two centuries of precedent but they can do that no matter what hook you use.

maskenfreiheit
Dec 30, 2004
it might not be ethical to let some populations (eg: rural poor) vote. they're addled by opiates and failing schools, unable to give informed consent. we may need to move to a more parlimentary type system where you vote in a PM whose party elects other people who then go make decisions for the poors

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

maskenfreiheit posted:

it might not be ethical to let some populations (eg: rural poor) vote. they're addled by opiates and failing schools, unable to give informed consent. we may need to move to a more parlimentary type system where you vote in a PM whose party elects other people who then go make decisions for the poors

:frogon:

Insanely classist tirades aside, so, actually the urban-rural divide is really kind of a myth. Regions matter more -- certain regions whether they be urban and rich or rural and poor tend to vote reliably for one side or another. Proportional representation would more fairly represent everyone, the true diversity of a country, without the need to resort to something as terrifying as mass disenfranchisement based on one's geographic location.

Clochette
Aug 12, 2013

DrSunshine posted:

:frogon:

Insanely classist tirades aside, so, actually the urban-rural divide is really kind of a myth. Regions matter more -- certain regions whether they be urban and rich or rural and poor tend to vote reliably for one side or another. Proportional representation would more fairly represent everyone, the true diversity of a country, without the need to resort to something as terrifying as mass disenfranchisement based on one's geographic location.

Pretty sure they were mocking your opposition to letting 16+ year olds vote due to their brains not being properly functioning yet.

Kobayashi
Aug 13, 2004

by Nyc_Tattoo

evilweasel posted:

There are existing laws on the books to ban multi-member districts which were permitted before that law and nobody has ever raised a peep about them, plus past laws have banned gerrymandering but those expired and were not renewed. Plus, the reference to banning altering the "place of choosing senators" makes it clear that's a very broad power, one that without that restriction would allow Congress to mandate Senate direct elections instead of legislatures selecting Senators (until the 17th amendment was passed requiring direct election).

Sure, a lawless court could ignore two centuries of precedent but they can do that no matter what hook you use.

Can you say more about the expired gerrymandering laws?

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

Clochette posted:

Pretty sure they were mocking your opposition to letting 16+ year olds vote due to their brains not being properly functioning yet.

I don't see how that's a fair comparison. I mean, statutory rape laws exist because teenage children can't consent or make decisions informed at adult levels. 16 year old children can't legally serve on juries, or in the army, or work full-time. Voting should work the same way. It's that or lower the age of majority for everything to 16. 16 year olds should absolutely get the chance to participate in government in other ways, like through internships at the local level, volunteering, student government, and so on, but I am not sold on voting.

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evilweasel
Aug 24, 2002

Kobayashi posted:

Can you say more about the expired gerrymandering laws?

It's mentioned in the last Supreme Court decision on partisan gerrymandering (which goes so far as to say that Congress has the power to write its own drat districts, apparently).

quote:

The power bestowed on Congress to regulate elections, and in particular to restrain the practice of political gerrymandering, has not lain dormant. In the Apportionment Act of 1842, 5 Stat. 491, Congress provided that Representatives must be elected from single-member districts “composed of contiguous territory.” See Griffith 12 (noting that the law was “an attempt to forbid the practice of the gerrymander”). Congress again imposed these requirements in the Apportionment Act of 1862, 12 Stat. 572, and in 1872 further required that districts “contai[n] as nearly as practicable an equal number of inhabitants,” 17 Stat. 28, §2. In the Apportionment Act of 1901, Congress imposed a compactness requirement. 31 Stat. 733. The requirements of contiguity, compactness, and equality of population were repeated in the 1911 apportionment legislation, 37 Stat. 13, but were not thereafter continued.
.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/03pdf/02-1580.pdf

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