Quote:
Originally Posted by Lisnaholic
I hope Trump's tweets about Corker and NFL won't distract from what is, as I understand it, a more important news story coming up this week: the supreme court looking at the practice of partisan gerrymandering.
This issue caught my attention when I watched a segment of the A.M. Joy tv programme yesterday, which showed this election result, for Wisconsin 2012:-
..................% of votes....Number of seats
Republican........47................60
Democrats........53................39
Pretty clear that democracy isn't working out too well in Wisconsin, and to hear the language used on the prog, the abuse of the system to produce undemocratic results is at a serious level:-
"voters permanently locked out......voter suppression......locking in minority rule.....inordinate power......we functionally become a country that has minority rule........nearly permanent party control by a single party....."
None of these are expressions you want to hear about any country that has reached that precious but fragile political goal; democracy.
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Gerrymandering is a huge problem that not enough people even think about because it's complicated and thinking is hard. Unfortunately, gerrymandering also isn't the only thing making the US a country that's not ruled by the people. Our whole political structure, from the electoral college to Congress—has always been set up to give a lot of additional weight to the votes of people in states with low populations. Put those two issues together and you have a system that is far removed from representing the will of the people.