The California Supreme Court will not prevent Democrats from moving forward Thursday with a plan to redraw congressional districts.
Republicans in the Golden State had asked the state’s high court to step in and temporarily block the redistricting efforts, arguing that Democrats — who are racing to put the plan on the ballot later this year — had skirted a rule requiring state lawmakers to wait at least 30 days before passing newly introduced legislation.
But in a ruling late Wednesday, the court declined to act, writing that the Republican state lawmakers who filed the suit had “failed to meet their burden of establishing a basis for relief at this time.”
Abolish arbitrary districts. Towards Proportional Representation.
This is either the beginning or the end of democracy.
Well, they did it in Texas so now we’ll all loose more control with our votes. I know its retaliatory and probably necessary for blue states, but in the long run it will get worse for votes to count. Easy to say and but hard to do, but we need to get rid of land having the power to vote and have the vote of the people count. Rich people own more land anyways and shouldn’t have more control.
I know its retaliatory and probably necessary for blue states, but in the long run it will get worse for votes to count.
You have determined why this is such a big deal that our grandkids or grandroids will look back at this moment as pivotal in American history, and the beginning of the end. It’s fucking sad and nobody really gets it.
This is the beginning of a power struggle between states that will eventually, effectively dissolve the union. Democracy on the national stage dies when the states just start inventing their own power structures in order to stay on the stage at all. After a point, federal government in states will become more of a liability than a benefit, particularly for states or coalitions of states who make more money than they receive from the federal government, and they will start making their own decisions how to use their tax money. And we should all have a pretty good idea where it goes from there.
And it’s not even the wrong choice either, it HAS to be done, it’s just the outcome of what happens when you have a democracy-destroying dictator take over a nation. We didn’t think it could happen, and broadly, the country still doesn’t think it could happen… even as it’s happening.
California knows it’s not ideal, which is why it has an expiration date when it would have to be voted in again by the people (unlike in Texas). Have to fight fire with fire or you lose before you even start.
The supreme court denied the republican’s claim that democrats didn’t wait 30 days before passing the legislation.
Democrats used the technique of “editing” an existing bill by replacing all the text. Its not technically new legislation, its an edit, which doesn’t require 30 days before passage. Clearly against the spirit but not letter of that rule.
Courts can only rule on things they are asked to rule on. The court declined to stop the bill based on the specific procedural issue in this case. The court did not rule on the merits of the redistricting law itself. There will surely be more judgments in future
Clearly against the spirit but not letter of that rule.
MAGAs have been playing this game for a long time. It’s about time the Dems demonstrated that it’s a two-edged sword that can be welded against them as well.
Seriously, are we going to take the high road straight to our graves?
No more “When they go low, we go high” bullshit. When they go low, step on their fucking throats and make them regret it.
I always say that when they go low, kick them in the teeth, real hard.
Weld that sword into their asshole. I will bring the blowtorch.
They won’t understand the rules that get ignored by them can be ignored by others too. It’s a cult of control freaks.
I really appreciate commentors like yourself that add value to posts with clarifying details. Thank you!
Often called “zombie bills”… Georgia Republicans do it all the time.
Democrats used the technique of “editing” an existing bill by replacing all the text. Its not technically new legislation, its an edit, which doesn’t require 30 days before passage. Clearly against the spirit but not letter of that rule.
The national Congress pulls this trick regularly, also in order to get around rules limiting the speed at which legislation can be introduced. I believe the PPACA was passed out of the body of another bill, after Republicans tried to use calendaring rules to obstruct the legislation, back in 2010. One of the bigger tax bills - either Trump’s or Bush’s, I can’t recall - was passed in a similar manner.
Maybe we’ll see a federal court block this on a technicality, but if they do it would be a huge shift in how legislation is moved in the face of minority obstruction.
The federal legislature is one of the worst. They do a ton of awful shenanigans. I would support a constitutional amendment to ban all of those practices.
Bills can have only one subject. The subject needs to be the title. The title cannot be changed.
Those three rules block at least 90% of federal legislative nonsense.
Bills can have only one subject. The subject needs to be the title. The title cannot be changed.
And perhaps the title should be what the bill actually is
For example something like “Freedom for American Internet Choice”
Which likely removes regulation or restriction on a company being a monopoly because the “Freedom” is who can bribe the most and lobby against possible commercial or municipal competition.
There’s plenty of bills like that where the title is incredibly misleading, on purpose, to get people who don’t care to do any research to wonder “why would anybody be against freedom?”
Yes, that is what that line means. Washington has very similar language in their constitution and it blocks a lot of shenanigans.
This particular strain of nonsense, certainly.
But, at some level, the legislature governs as it wills. You can’t constrain people with rules when they write and interpret and enforce the rules internally. All the judiciary can do is object to the actions and hope the bureaucracy responds in kind. Judges have no enforcement capacity (partially by design).
The only real way to block legislative nonsense is to grant Judges a hand in selecting/promoting/recalling executive and legislative bureaucrats. And given the current state of the federal judiciary, I can imagine a lot of reasons why liberals would hate that idea.
Letter of the law has effectively (and unfortunately) been the law of the land for some time now, the only time judges try to consider the “spirit” of the law these days is when they are corrupt and trying to skew their decisions a certain way while claiming to be impartial.
I have no qualms with people trying to use that fact to maintain the power of the people when we are up against fascists thugs who disregard all laws, spirit or written, whenever it suits them. Fuck them.
Good.
We are headed for another civil war.
LONG LIVE WESTERN FORCES
I’ve been calling Trump’s administration the Confederate victory 160 years later. They played the long game and people got cozy with the racists around.
It will take a lot longer than our generation.
This will indeed result in the dissolution of the United States, but before it becomes armed conflict, a lot of things have to happen.
Once every state has “restructured” their representational maps to whatever the fuck they want and it becomes an ongoing stalemate, eventually many states or coalitions of states who bring in more money than they receive from the federal government are going to start withholding their tax money and making their own decisions how to spend their funding. This will start slow so it doesn’t immediately get squashed by the army or national guard, it will be a bill here or there, some will get stopped by courts, some won’t.
Eventually, enough of a region’s money will stay within-region that the whole idea of belonging to a union will seem arbitrary and pointless. People will still elect clowns to speak and vote on bills and such, but it will slowly become both more performative and more contentious.
When the country starts to resemble power-blocs with bold lines between alliances of states representing different ideals or values, that’s when a soft form of segregation begins. The Southern Alliance will have beef with the Cascadian Union, the Northern Heartland will have corn disputes with the nation-state of Neo York. The Eastern Pedophile Coalition will get in fights with the small province of RaytheonDisneyTimeWarnerJohnsonAndJohnson, and as these tensions heat up over years, it will become cultural divides, languages will start to drift, accents will become stronger.
Once we have the clear dividing lines between groups of people, THAT is when all-out war is far more likely than ever. It may take a long time to come to that, but there may also be a lot of “spats” leading up to it. For the immediate future it’s more likely to be civil unrest, riots, national guard crackdowns and protests and counter protests until the violence just starts to feel normal.
Remember the billionaires are trying to speed run this so they can buy people.
What’s better, civil war or Fourth Reich?
Can someone explain to me how this matters? Do republicans really think they will take California? Many of the reds there already moved to Texas.
It means fewer Republican representatives from California in Congress. They’re doing it to match the number of Democratic seats Texas is going to gerrymander out of their state.
But congress doesn’t actually do anything anymore. King Trump holds all the power and as it stands now, congress is mostly ceremonial.
Because the Democrats are the minority. If they pick up 3 or 4 seats in the midterms, they can actually do something about it
Reminds me of 2018
That dem majority really turned things around…
Surely giving up and trying nothing will turn things around!
/s
Lol
Even blocking his agenda is something.
Congress doesn’t do anything right now because the Republicans have so little of a majority they can’t afford to lose votes.
If they go full majority it further legitimizes Trump’s agenda when laws are written specifically for him.
And your counter suggestion is what, rolling over?
Hypocracy abound if the California Supreme Court did that. Coming off as “impartial” would mean turning an eye as only sanctioning Republicans while denying Democrats clearly is hypocracy at its finest.
The courts probably fear their legitimacy being unrecognized fully if they go this route.
Actually, the supreme courts of Texas and California are separate and distinct from each other.
Texas courts failing to stop partisan gerrymandering aimed at political parties choosing their voters rather than the other way around wouldn’t make it hypocritical for those in California to protect the concept of “one person, one vote”.
If anyone is being hypocritical here, it’s Mike Johnson (for being against California doing it but for Texas doing it) and zero sum Democrats (for being against Texas doing it but not against California doing it) with no regard for the damage to representative democracy and any third party or independent candidates trying to take on the Neoliberal behemoth that is the California DNC from the left.
Im one of the zero sum democrats. Once due process was out the window we are now essentially in a civil war that has not went to physical violence (mostly, ie ice) and these things are the only things that might stop that by keeping some semblance of overall fairness in play.
It’s the California state court, stacked with California liberal judges, who are all aligned with the majority Democratic Party. I’m not shocked to see them rule in the state legislature’s favor.
More interested in seeing if a federal court, stacked with more conservative judges, chooses to intervene.
Autocrat, Democrat, Hypocrat?
Semiautocrat, Meercrat, Turbocrat, Abomocrat.
Thanks, Obamacrat
This is sad that america is being shown how little voting matters when district manipulation occurs. If both dems and repubs do it equally then it might be a wash but it sure exposes a shaky, questionable system.
Exposes? Everybody that pays attention has known about the bullshit that is gerrymandering forever.
It’s literally en par with election fraud. Just because it’s done beforehand using statistics doesn’t make the resulting elections any less of a sham.
It is essentially the highest crime that can be committed against a democracy, and it has been treated as “dirty politics” for decades; with the Supreme court of clowns approval.
This is one of countless examples that already proved America was a failed state, long before Trump appeared.
Yes it’s at the top of the list with citizens united and first past the post… Everyone knows it’s bullshit.
All these first past the post countries have the same problem, that the only people who could change the broken system are the people who benefit most from its brokenness. This suggests it’s a mistake to put the management of electoral systems under the control of elected politicians. The alternative I guess would be some kind of independent, non-partisan body, but then there is always the question of who runs that body and how you prevent its capture by people with a specific political agenda. It’s always going to be an ongoing process of review and change, but giving management of the whole thing to the same parties that stand to be elected seems particularly risky.
It is essentially the highest crime that can be committed against a democracy
America isn’t really a democracy…
We keep saying it is, but it’s not
In order to get the numbers in the current system to replace it with a more democratic system, shit like this needs to happen.
That’s the only way to “fix” the current system, to replace it
Last year I heard a story or two of people who didn’t even know that Biden wasn’t running anymore and that was within a week of the election. Informed US citizens are rarer than you’d think.
Too bad the vast majority of the people don’t.
Oh it won’t be a wash. Republican gerrymandering is basically all in place. gerrymandering becomes less effective/ more risky the more extreme you do it, to when you take it to it’s extreme or go past it, it backfires.
Blue states have largely kept their powder dry is what’s really going on. So there was little benefit and much to lose with Trump picking this fight.
So there was little benefit and much to lose with Trump picking this fight.
When you combine gerrymandering with targeted disenfranchisement, it works great. Dems haven’t been “keeping their powder dry”, they’ve just been lazy and apathetic in the face of a conservative power grab.
In Texas, we’re going to see Abbot crack down hard on liberal leaning corners of Republican staked races. Mass disenfranchisement of students - particularly those in the poorer dorms - plus crackdowns on voting on minority-majority campuses (Texas Southern University in Houston, for instance) go a long way towards strangling Dem turnout. Crackdowns on mail-in voting in liberal leaning elderly suburbs can depress turnout. Deliberate meddling with the certification process for voting machines, harassment of poll workers, and constraints on early voting in big liberal districts can bloat the wait times to vote and discourage participation among liberal voters.
I fully expect to see ICE agents all over polling locations, with a particular eye for anyone who looks illegally colored or otherwise ethnic, in the 2025 municipal cycle
gerrymandering becomes less effective/ more risky the more extreme you do it, to when you take it to it’s extreme or go past it, it backfires.
[Citation needed]
Blue states have largely kept their powder dry
Nope. They may not have been anywhere near as blatant about it as the fascist party, but Dem leadership around the country haven’t been shy about giving themselves bigger incumbent advantages via redistricting when allowed to either.
gerrymandering becomes less effective/ more risky the more extreme you do it, to when you take it to it’s extreme or go past it, it backfires.[Citation needed]
Absolutely fair. But first, packing and cracking algorithm. Gerrymandering works by manipulating district lines to maximize one party’s advantage through packing (shoving the other party’s voters into a few districts they win overwhelmingly) and cracking (splitting the rest across many districts so they lose narrowly). In packed districts votes are “wasted”: all votes for losing candidates, plus surplus votes beyond 50% in winning districts.
Here’s a toy example. Suppose there are 100 voters split evenly: 50 Party A, 50 Party B, across 5 districts of 20 voters each. If districts are drawn fairly, each district is about 10-10, so the outcome is 2-3 or 3-2 seats either way depending on swing. Now imagine a gerrymander. Party A packs 18 of Party B’s voters into one district (B wins 18-2) and cracks the remaining 32 B voters across the other four districts (so each of those is A=13, B=8). Party A now wins 4–1 despite an even statewide vote. But notice the fragility: if just 3 voters per cracked district switch or turn out differently (so A=10, B=11), Party B flips all four of those districts at once. That’s the backfire. Create razor-thin margins, and extreme gerrymanders make the system highly sensitive to small shifts.
Slight or moderate gerrymandering wont create this effect necessarily, but extreme gerrymandering in purplish places inherently mean you are spreading the butter over too much bread.
More on the matter: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.09381
deleted by creator
I was skeptical of your assertion, so I peppered Copilot with a few prompts and it seems to confirm your point.
—-
States with the Greatest Untapped Gerrymandering Potential
Below are the key one-party trifecta states whose current congressional maps rate as relatively fair (Princeton A or B). These jurisdictions have the structural guardrails of independent or bipartisan commissions in place—but if those were overridden or relaxed, the controlling party could pick up a small handful of extra seats.
- A-Grade Maps under Unitary Control
State Controlling Party 2021 Map Grade Current House Seats Estimated Additional Seats Source Arizona Republican A 9 +1 A Colorado Democratic A 8 +1 A Washington Democratic A 10 +1 A
Arizona’s independent commission maps gave Republicans a near-proportional 5–4 split on a 50-50 statewide vote; stripping or subverting that commission could flip one more GOP seat. Colorado and Washington delivered Democrats fair shares of 4–4 and 8–2 respectively; each could see one extra Democratic district if guardrails were weakened.
- B-Grade Maps under Unitary Control
State Controlling Party 2021 Map Grade Current House Seats Estimated Additional Seats Source California Democratic B 52 +5 B New York Democratic B 26 +2–3 C
California Democrats are already eyeing mid-cycle tweaks that would boost their delegation from 82.7% of seats to over 92.3%, a net gain of about five seats relative to a 58.5% vote share. New York’s Democrats hold 25 of 26 seats with roughly 58% of the vote; abandoning the independent commission could net them an additional two or three safe districts.
Each of these states demonstrates that even jurisdictions with top-graded, commission-drawn maps can swing several seats if the party in power decides to scrap or weaken those commissions. Turning a single “fair” seat-voter curve into a heavily tilted map typically yields roughly one extra seat per ten districts—a small change with an outsized impact in a razor-thin U.S. House majority.
Reported as “AI Slop Post”
but a) we don’t have a rule against that.
and 2) OP clearly noted the used Co-Pilot to generate it, they aren’t trying to pass it off as their own.
I’m actually OK with this. Obviously we’ll remove AI generated ARTICLES that get posted, same as we’d remove videos and such, but in a comment? Clearly noted as AI? I think I’m OK with that.
If y’all WANT a rule about it, hit me up. I’ll bring it up with the other mods and admins.
Peak
I can't think by myself so let's see what brainrot the "AI" gives mekinda deal. So cooked I can smell it’s well-done all the way over here.If you couldn’t be bothered to think or write for yourself, why would you think anyone would be bothered to read that?? It’s literally just pollution.
Now I know how liberal gun owners feel. Very rarely do I not agree with the left platform, but y’all opting to dismiss one of the most powerful tools ever given to mankind is going to be at your peril.
It has its faults just like humans do, but it is literally the culmination of all human knowledge. It’s Wikipedia for nearly everything at your fingertips.
Perhaps the way y’all use it is wrong. It’s not meant to make the decisions for you, it’s a tool to get you 80% there quickly then you do the last mile of work.
Anywho, the premise stands. Democrats have more leverage to use gerrymandering if they do chose it, though I wish we weren’t in a place where they had to go with a nuclear option that threatens US democracy even more.
The issue is you didn’t confirm anything the text prediction machine told you before posting it as a confirmation of someone else’s point, and then slid into a victimized, self-righteous position when pushed back upon. One of the worst things about how we treat LLMs is comparing their output to humans – they are not, figuratively or literally, the culmination of all human knowledge, and the only fault they have comparable to humans is a lack of checking the validity of its answers. In order to use an LLM responsibly, you have to already know the answer to what you’re requesting a response to and be able to fact-check it. If you don’t do that, then the way you use it is wrong. It’s good for programming where correctness is a small set of rules, or discovering patterns where we are limited, but don’t treat it like a source of knowledge when it constantly crosses its wires.
Your premise is incorrect - you are inferring that I did not confirm the output.
You have yet to suggest or confirm otherwise, so my point stands that your original post is unhelpful and non-contributive
People just don’t like reading slop from lying machines. It’s really just that simple.
Polluting a chat thread with slop is just a rude thing to do. Nobody like sloppers.
Please define slop. Please provide examples of LLM generated text that you do not consider as slop.
I mean, I would appreciate not just reposting AI output, but I appreciate the support.
it also extends just as a conclusion from the algorithm for gerrymandering. It’s founded in the math used in packing and cracking when you have limited numbers of districts. In republican Gerrymandering you are necessary making red districts closer to a toss up and blue districts safe. If you push it too far and in a wave election it has the potential to fail catastrophically.
The easiest way to find states at the greatest risk for this is to identify states where the presidential margin was close, but almost all the reps are red or blue.
This is sad that america is being shown how little voting matters when district manipulation occurs.
Single representative geographically constrained districts are already a bad system. The fact that these districts have swollen from 15-20k (at the nation’s founding) to 600k+ (in the modern day) have only escalated the degree to which politicians (and their donors) get to pick their voters.
If you want to talk about fixing our broken political system, we need to consider uncapping the total number of House Reps (an artificial limit imposed back in the 1920s to benefit incumbents) and shrink district sizes and afford voters the freedom to select representatives outside the constraint of voting districts.
Bemoaning the gamesmanship over district shapes, at this stage, is just arguing over how you want the game to be rigged. But the idea that districts which are more swing-y are somehow “more fair” than ones that are entrenched by a particular party ignores the dynamics that swing a district to begin with (money, media access, internal party politics). People outside the party duopoly are still wholly unrepresented. People on the losing end of an election are also unrepresented. And people who can’t access their elected representative (because they can’t afford a $2000/plate fund raising lunch) are also unrepresented.
If you want to talk about fixing our broken political system, we need to consider uncapping the total number of House Reps
The US came very close to having a first amendment that had a low cap for the number of people one house rep could represent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment
