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[Wisconsin] didn't mess it up for once

1909193959698

Posts

  • MillMill Registered User regular
    Probably the same thing that happened with Virginia. If the state can't produce an acceptable map by a set deadline, then the court will appoint a special district master that draws up an acceptable map. Like the GOP in Virginia kept putting forward maps that the democrats couldn't agree with and the democrats finally said "fuck it, we trust the courts to give a us fairer map than the shit the GOP keeps proposing." Granted, is was in context to maps the court ruled as unconstitutional on the grounds of being racially gerrymandered, but I'm pretty sure a similar process will kick in if Wisconsin doesn't create a new map in a timely manner; especially, if there no way to fall back on the old map.

  • kaidkaid Registered User regular
    I Zimbra wrote: »
    I guess I might take the "people will never abandon the GOP" more seriously if we weren't like 3 months out from an election where the GOP got shithoused in all the statewide races.

    And yet even with far more democratic votes cast still barely budged the state legislature. So basically we are in a position where things can't really get better our two options are stasis or things getting worse. I would like to believe that we manage to get a better redistricting plan after the next census but I am afraid the skewing is so bad that the best we can hope for is to keep the map we currently have. We can veto new attempts but have no real power to ditch the old one.

  • kaidkaid Registered User regular
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

  • emp123emp123 Registered User regular
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

  • PolaritiePolaritie Sleepy Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    Steam: Polaritie
    3DS: 0473-8507-2652
    Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
    PSN: AbEntropy
  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    Nope. More urban population means more urban voters concentrated in one district. This is packing, one of the two ways you gerrymander. The result is democrats winning urban districts by landslides and losing rural districts by much smaller margins. The number of voters per district is the same, but the number of democratic voters in your urban districts is much much higher as a percentage.

    shryke on
  • monikermoniker Registered User regular
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    You are assuming a relatively normative distribution in political support across the population that doesn't represent reality. 5 districts in Milwaukee that go 90-10 Dem have the same population as 5 suburban districts going 60-40 GOP. However, there are more 'wasted votes' because everyone is basically a Democrat in Milwaukee. Since Wisconsin has a relatively large population that resides outside of major cities, those wasted votes matter. (Cook County, ie Chicago, is 40% of the population for Illinois. Milwaukee County is ~17% of Wisconsin.)

  • Just_Bri_ThanksJust_Bri_Thanks Seething with rage from a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited March 2019
    shryke wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    Nope. More urban population means more urban voters concentrated in one district. This is packing, one of the two ways you gerrymander. The result is democrats winning urban districts by landslides and losing rural districts by much smaller margins. The number of voters per district is the same, but the number of democratic voters in your urban districts is much much higher as a percentage.
    What you describe is not a natural result of higher concentrations in urban areas. The district lines have to be drawn specifically to have that result for packing to happen.

    You can split a city so that each part is 40% urban, or 80% urban. With voting info at the precinct level it isn't hard.

    Just_Bri_Thanks on
    ...and when you are done with that; take a folding
    chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
  • VeeveeVeevee WisconsinRegistered User regular
    edited March 2019
    shryke wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    Nope. More urban population means more urban voters concentrated in one district. This is packing, one of the two ways you gerrymander. The result is democrats winning urban districts by landslides and losing rural districts by much smaller margins. The number of voters per district is the same, but the number of democratic voters in your urban districts is much much higher as a percentage.

    Or you take small slices of the urban area and incorporate it into larger mostly red districts.

    Right now Madison and Milwaukee are packed into their own D+18 and 25! districts, and republicans have R+13, 8, 8, 7, 5. There is one district in the state listed as even, and surprise surprise, it has democratic representation.

    Edit: got the actual numbers

    Veevee on
  • monikermoniker Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    Nope. More urban population means more urban voters concentrated in one district. This is packing, one of the two ways you gerrymander. The result is democrats winning urban districts by landslides and losing rural districts by much smaller margins. The number of voters per district is the same, but the number of democratic voters in your urban districts is much much higher as a percentage.
    What you describe is not a natural result of higher concentrations in urban areas. The district lines have to be drawn specifically to have that result for packing to happen.

    District lines have to be intentionally drawn to fragment city strongholds to counteract the natural packing of liberals living in dense urban areas.

  • SeñorAmorSeñorAmor !!! Registered User regular
    kaid wrote: »
    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Not all of us and I am seeing more D signs, which is nice.

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    Nope. More urban population means more urban voters concentrated in one district. This is packing, one of the two ways you gerrymander. The result is democrats winning urban districts by landslides and losing rural districts by much smaller margins. The number of voters per district is the same, but the number of democratic voters in your urban districts is much much higher as a percentage.
    What you describe is not a natural result of higher concentrations in urban areas. The district lines have to be drawn specifically to have that result for packing to happen.

    You can split a city so that each part is 40% urban, or 80% urban. With voting info at the precinct level it isn't hard.

    No, they don't. It's the opposite in fact. The only way to counter the natural packing of urban districts is to deliberately design your districts to slice chunks out of your urban area and pair them with suburban or rural areas. But not too much or you get cracking, the other way you gerrymander.

    The way you would most readily draw district lines, keeping urban areas together and rural areas together and such so that an elected official is representating a district that's generally coherent in makeup, results in packing just on it's own.

  • Just_Bri_ThanksJust_Bri_Thanks Seething with rage from a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPA regular
    moniker wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    Nope. More urban population means more urban voters concentrated in one district. This is packing, one of the two ways you gerrymander. The result is democrats winning urban districts by landslides and losing rural districts by much smaller margins. The number of voters per district is the same, but the number of democratic voters in your urban districts is much much higher as a percentage.
    What you describe is not a natural result of higher concentrations in urban areas. The district lines have to be drawn specifically to have that result for packing to happen.

    District lines have to be intentionally drawn to fragment city strongholds to counteract the natural packing of liberals living in dense urban areas.

    That's what I just said

    ...and when you are done with that; take a folding
    chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
  • monikermoniker Registered User regular
    moniker wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    Nope. More urban population means more urban voters concentrated in one district. This is packing, one of the two ways you gerrymander. The result is democrats winning urban districts by landslides and losing rural districts by much smaller margins. The number of voters per district is the same, but the number of democratic voters in your urban districts is much much higher as a percentage.
    What you describe is not a natural result of higher concentrations in urban areas. The district lines have to be drawn specifically to have that result for packing to happen.

    District lines have to be intentionally drawn to fragment city strongholds to counteract the natural packing of liberals living in dense urban areas.

    That's what I just said

    Districts are supposed to be compact, and doing that is the opposite. This is allowed to ensure civil rights are guaranteed, but otherwise it requires fighting the natural concentration of liberal voters in a way that is not necessarily best practices for mapping.

  • Just_Bri_ThanksJust_Bri_Thanks Seething with rage from a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPA regular
    'Supposed to be' is a different animal from 'required by law to be', but regardless; my point remains. Packing happens when people draw maps to make it happen. Most cities of any size are going to be split as a matter of nessessity regardless.

    We encourage nonpartisan redistricting commissions to defeat packing, which is a good thing. All I said was that more people moving to cities doesn't automatically result in packing, and the person that quoted me said the exact same thing.

    ...and when you are done with that; take a folding
    chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
  • monikermoniker Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    'Supposed to be' is a different animal from 'required by law to be', but regardless; my point remains. Packing happens when people draw maps to make it happen. Most cities of any size are going to be split as a matter of nessessity regardless.

    We encourage nonpartisan redistricting commissions to defeat packing, which is a good thing. All I said was that more people moving to cities doesn't automatically result in packing, and the person that quoted me said the exact same thing.

    Why are you referring to me and my post in the third person? And compactness is indeed a legal requirement. They are supposed to be compact by law. In order to combat cracking as a form of gerrymandering.

    Your proposed fix to secular packing is cracking, but not so much that it goes the other way to make districts noncompetitive. That's a challenging line to walk and not fall into gerrymandering again. Because Democrats living on top of themselves inherently makes it harder.

    moniker on
  • kaidkaid Registered User regular
    SeñorAmor wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Not all of us and I am seeing more D signs, which is nice.

    Fox cities are more purple than they used to be but in general they and green bay are the urban areas that still lean more GOP than Dem for the state. They went pretty hard for trump but we saw pull back during the 2018 cycle so we shall see how things go for the next cycle. We also had weird things like Tammy baldwin winning walking away from her opponent but evers barely squeaking past walker. So we have a lot of those rare breed these days of people voting a bit randomly for both parties.

  • Just_Bri_ThanksJust_Bri_Thanks Seething with rage from a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPA regular
    moniker wrote: »
    'Supposed to be' is a different animal from 'required by law to be', but regardless; my point remains. Packing happens when people draw maps to make it happen. Most cities of any size are going to be split as a matter of nessessity regardless.

    We encourage nonpartisan redistricting commissions to defeat packing, which is a good thing. All I said was that more people moving to cities doesn't automatically result in packing, and the person that quoted me said the exact same thing.

    Why are you referring to me and my post in the third person? And compactness is indeed a legal requirement. They are supposed to be compact by law. In order to combat cracking as a form of gerrymandering.

    Your proposed fix to secular packing is cracking, but not so much that it goes the other way to make districts noncompetitive. That's a challenging line to walk and not fall into gerrymandering again. Because Democrats living on top of themselves inherently makes it harder.

    Because I am on mobile and it is difficult to see all of a long post while typing a reply.

    ...and when you are done with that; take a folding
    chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
  • CalicaCalica Registered User regular
    moniker wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    You are assuming a relatively normative distribution in political support across the population that doesn't represent reality. 5 districts in Milwaukee that go 90-10 Dem have the same population as 5 suburban districts going 60-40 GOP. However, there are more 'wasted votes' because everyone is basically a Democrat in Milwaukee. Since Wisconsin has a relatively large population that resides outside of major cities, those wasted votes matter. (Cook County, ie Chicago, is 40% of the population for Illinois. Milwaukee County is ~17% of Wisconsin.)

    Unless I'm misunderstanding something, isn't that how districts are supposed to work, with majority Dem areas electing Dem reps, and majority GOP areas electing GOP reps? Otherwise, why have districts at all?

    In your example, it seems like the ideal outcome would be to have urban citizens represented by mostly Democrats, while rural citizens would have a 60/40 GOP/Dem split in their representation, to reflect the political makeup of rural voters as a whole. Even with the best of intentions, I don't see how that's possible to accomplish with geographical districts. At least, not without gerrymandering to hell and back to achieve that specific result.

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    You are assuming a relatively normative distribution in political support across the population that doesn't represent reality. 5 districts in Milwaukee that go 90-10 Dem have the same population as 5 suburban districts going 60-40 GOP. However, there are more 'wasted votes' because everyone is basically a Democrat in Milwaukee. Since Wisconsin has a relatively large population that resides outside of major cities, those wasted votes matter. (Cook County, ie Chicago, is 40% of the population for Illinois. Milwaukee County is ~17% of Wisconsin.)

    Unless I'm misunderstanding something, isn't that how districts are supposed to work, with majority Dem areas electing Dem reps, and majority GOP areas electing GOP reps? Otherwise, why have districts at all?

    In your example, it seems like the ideal outcome would be to have urban citizens represented by mostly Democrats, while rural citizens would have a 60/40 GOP/Dem split in their representation, to reflect the political makeup of rural voters as a whole. Even with the best of intentions, I don't see how that's possible to accomplish with geographical districts. At least, not without gerrymandering to hell and back to achieve that specific result.

    Districts aren't "supposed" to work any particular way but we in general dislike large discrepencies between overall vote totals and seats won. (hence the problem with gerrymandering, who's purpose is to secure those kind of results) The question is always how many people voted for the winning candidate in one district compared to another.

    A simple way to think of this is imagine you have only 3 districts. 1 urban, 2 rural. Urban district goes 90/10 Dem. Both Rural districts go 60/40 GOP. The GOP have only 43% of the vote and yet command 66% of the seats.

  • PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    Or more importantly land shouldn't have a bigger share of the vote than actual people.

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
  • CalicaCalica Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    You are assuming a relatively normative distribution in political support across the population that doesn't represent reality. 5 districts in Milwaukee that go 90-10 Dem have the same population as 5 suburban districts going 60-40 GOP. However, there are more 'wasted votes' because everyone is basically a Democrat in Milwaukee. Since Wisconsin has a relatively large population that resides outside of major cities, those wasted votes matter. (Cook County, ie Chicago, is 40% of the population for Illinois. Milwaukee County is ~17% of Wisconsin.)

    Unless I'm misunderstanding something, isn't that how districts are supposed to work, with majority Dem areas electing Dem reps, and majority GOP areas electing GOP reps? Otherwise, why have districts at all?

    In your example, it seems like the ideal outcome would be to have urban citizens represented by mostly Democrats, while rural citizens would have a 60/40 GOP/Dem split in their representation, to reflect the political makeup of rural voters as a whole. Even with the best of intentions, I don't see how that's possible to accomplish with geographical districts. At least, not without gerrymandering to hell and back to achieve that specific result.

    Districts aren't "supposed" to work any particular way but we in general dislike large discrepencies between overall vote totals and seats won. (hence the problem with gerrymandering, who's purpose is to secure those kind of results) The question is always how many people voted for the winning candidate in one district compared to another.

    A simple way to think of this is imagine you have only 3 districts. 1 urban, 2 rural. Urban district goes 90/10 Dem. Both Rural districts go 60/40 GOP. The GOP have only 43% of the vote and yet command 66% of the seats.

    Yes, but isn't that working as intended? I thought the point of districts was to combat tyranny of the majority, where one or two big cities dominate state government despite being a fraction of the inhabited land.

    I'm not saying it's necessarily good or bad, mind you; just that it's doing what it was designed to do, gerrymandering aside.

  • monikermoniker Registered User regular
    Calica wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    You are assuming a relatively normative distribution in political support across the population that doesn't represent reality. 5 districts in Milwaukee that go 90-10 Dem have the same population as 5 suburban districts going 60-40 GOP. However, there are more 'wasted votes' because everyone is basically a Democrat in Milwaukee. Since Wisconsin has a relatively large population that resides outside of major cities, those wasted votes matter. (Cook County, ie Chicago, is 40% of the population for Illinois. Milwaukee County is ~17% of Wisconsin.)

    Unless I'm misunderstanding something, isn't that how districts are supposed to work, with majority Dem areas electing Dem reps, and majority GOP areas electing GOP reps? Otherwise, why have districts at all?

    In your example, it seems like the ideal outcome would be to have urban citizens represented by mostly Democrats, while rural citizens would have a 60/40 GOP/Dem split in their representation, to reflect the political makeup of rural voters as a whole. Even with the best of intentions, I don't see how that's possible to accomplish with geographical districts. At least, not without gerrymandering to hell and back to achieve that specific result.

    Districts aren't "supposed" to work any particular way but we in general dislike large discrepencies between overall vote totals and seats won. (hence the problem with gerrymandering, who's purpose is to secure those kind of results) The question is always how many people voted for the winning candidate in one district compared to another.

    A simple way to think of this is imagine you have only 3 districts. 1 urban, 2 rural. Urban district goes 90/10 Dem. Both Rural districts go 60/40 GOP. The GOP have only 43% of the vote and yet command 66% of the seats.

    Yes, but isn't that working as intended? I thought the point of districts was to combat tyranny of the majority, where one or two big cities dominate state government despite being a fraction of the inhabited land.

    I'm not saying it's necessarily good or bad, mind you; just that it's doing what it was designed to do, gerrymandering aside.

    No, the point of districts is to have responsive Representation from your local community. Governments still derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. One person, one vote. If most people vote against you, you should not have a majority.

    Land doesn't come into it at all, other than it being much harder to draw lines through a building than through acreage. The Hancock Center in Chicago has more residents than dozens of counties. It takes up a single block.

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    Calica wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    You are assuming a relatively normative distribution in political support across the population that doesn't represent reality. 5 districts in Milwaukee that go 90-10 Dem have the same population as 5 suburban districts going 60-40 GOP. However, there are more 'wasted votes' because everyone is basically a Democrat in Milwaukee. Since Wisconsin has a relatively large population that resides outside of major cities, those wasted votes matter. (Cook County, ie Chicago, is 40% of the population for Illinois. Milwaukee County is ~17% of Wisconsin.)

    Unless I'm misunderstanding something, isn't that how districts are supposed to work, with majority Dem areas electing Dem reps, and majority GOP areas electing GOP reps? Otherwise, why have districts at all?

    In your example, it seems like the ideal outcome would be to have urban citizens represented by mostly Democrats, while rural citizens would have a 60/40 GOP/Dem split in their representation, to reflect the political makeup of rural voters as a whole. Even with the best of intentions, I don't see how that's possible to accomplish with geographical districts. At least, not without gerrymandering to hell and back to achieve that specific result.

    Districts aren't "supposed" to work any particular way but we in general dislike large discrepencies between overall vote totals and seats won. (hence the problem with gerrymandering, who's purpose is to secure those kind of results) The question is always how many people voted for the winning candidate in one district compared to another.

    A simple way to think of this is imagine you have only 3 districts. 1 urban, 2 rural. Urban district goes 90/10 Dem. Both Rural districts go 60/40 GOP. The GOP have only 43% of the vote and yet command 66% of the seats.

    Yes, but isn't that working as intended? I thought the point of districts was to combat tyranny of the majority, where one or two big cities dominate state government despite being a fraction of the inhabited land.

    I'm not saying it's necessarily good or bad, mind you; just that it's doing what it was designed to do, gerrymandering aside.

    No, it isn't. Not at all. The point is regional representation. That's why districts are still the same population per district.

  • CalicaCalica Registered User regular
    moniker wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    You are assuming a relatively normative distribution in political support across the population that doesn't represent reality. 5 districts in Milwaukee that go 90-10 Dem have the same population as 5 suburban districts going 60-40 GOP. However, there are more 'wasted votes' because everyone is basically a Democrat in Milwaukee. Since Wisconsin has a relatively large population that resides outside of major cities, those wasted votes matter. (Cook County, ie Chicago, is 40% of the population for Illinois. Milwaukee County is ~17% of Wisconsin.)

    Unless I'm misunderstanding something, isn't that how districts are supposed to work, with majority Dem areas electing Dem reps, and majority GOP areas electing GOP reps? Otherwise, why have districts at all?

    In your example, it seems like the ideal outcome would be to have urban citizens represented by mostly Democrats, while rural citizens would have a 60/40 GOP/Dem split in their representation, to reflect the political makeup of rural voters as a whole. Even with the best of intentions, I don't see how that's possible to accomplish with geographical districts. At least, not without gerrymandering to hell and back to achieve that specific result.

    Districts aren't "supposed" to work any particular way but we in general dislike large discrepencies between overall vote totals and seats won. (hence the problem with gerrymandering, who's purpose is to secure those kind of results) The question is always how many people voted for the winning candidate in one district compared to another.

    A simple way to think of this is imagine you have only 3 districts. 1 urban, 2 rural. Urban district goes 90/10 Dem. Both Rural districts go 60/40 GOP. The GOP have only 43% of the vote and yet command 66% of the seats.

    Yes, but isn't that working as intended? I thought the point of districts was to combat tyranny of the majority, where one or two big cities dominate state government despite being a fraction of the inhabited land.

    I'm not saying it's necessarily good or bad, mind you; just that it's doing what it was designed to do, gerrymandering aside.

    No, the point of districts is to have responsive Representation from your local community. Governments still derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. One person, one vote. If most people vote against you, you should not have a majority.

    Land doesn't come into it at all, other than it being much harder to draw lines through a building than through acreage. The Hancock Center in Chicago has more residents than dozens of counties. It takes up a single block.

    Land makes a difference in the sense that different geographical areas can have different issues that need addressing. Water rights come to mind.

    As to consent of the governed... you described a hypothetical scenario in which one party has fewer voters overall, yet has more seats - and this is a completely legitimate result. If you don't want that to happen ever, then you need a system that doesn't rely on dividing voters into geographical chunks. It sucks that Democrat voters don't distribute themselves optimally for winning elections, but it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the districts, necessarily.

    (I am aware that there's plenty wrong with Wisconsin's districts.)

  • monikermoniker Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    You are assuming a relatively normative distribution in political support across the population that doesn't represent reality. 5 districts in Milwaukee that go 90-10 Dem have the same population as 5 suburban districts going 60-40 GOP. However, there are more 'wasted votes' because everyone is basically a Democrat in Milwaukee. Since Wisconsin has a relatively large population that resides outside of major cities, those wasted votes matter. (Cook County, ie Chicago, is 40% of the population for Illinois. Milwaukee County is ~17% of Wisconsin.)

    Unless I'm misunderstanding something, isn't that how districts are supposed to work, with majority Dem areas electing Dem reps, and majority GOP areas electing GOP reps? Otherwise, why have districts at all?

    In your example, it seems like the ideal outcome would be to have urban citizens represented by mostly Democrats, while rural citizens would have a 60/40 GOP/Dem split in their representation, to reflect the political makeup of rural voters as a whole. Even with the best of intentions, I don't see how that's possible to accomplish with geographical districts. At least, not without gerrymandering to hell and back to achieve that specific result.

    Districts aren't "supposed" to work any particular way but we in general dislike large discrepencies between overall vote totals and seats won. (hence the problem with gerrymandering, who's purpose is to secure those kind of results) The question is always how many people voted for the winning candidate in one district compared to another.

    A simple way to think of this is imagine you have only 3 districts. 1 urban, 2 rural. Urban district goes 90/10 Dem. Both Rural districts go 60/40 GOP. The GOP have only 43% of the vote and yet command 66% of the seats.

    Yes, but isn't that working as intended? I thought the point of districts was to combat tyranny of the majority, where one or two big cities dominate state government despite being a fraction of the inhabited land.

    I'm not saying it's necessarily good or bad, mind you; just that it's doing what it was designed to do, gerrymandering aside.

    No, the point of districts is to have responsive Representation from your local community. Governments still derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. One person, one vote. If most people vote against you, you should not have a majority.

    Land doesn't come into it at all, other than it being much harder to draw lines through a building than through acreage. The Hancock Center in Chicago has more residents than dozens of counties. It takes up a single block.

    Land makes a difference in the sense that different geographical areas can have different issues that need addressing. Water rights come to mind.

    As to consent of the governed... you described a hypothetical scenario in which one party has fewer voters overall, yet has more seats - and this is a completely legitimate result. If you don't want that to happen ever, then you need a system that doesn't rely on dividing voters into geographical chunks. It sucks that Democrat voters don't distribute themselves optimally for winning elections, but it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the districts, necessarily.

    (I am aware that there's plenty wrong with Wisconsin's districts.)

    How is it a just result?

    moniker on
  • CalicaCalica Registered User regular
    moniker wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    You are assuming a relatively normative distribution in political support across the population that doesn't represent reality. 5 districts in Milwaukee that go 90-10 Dem have the same population as 5 suburban districts going 60-40 GOP. However, there are more 'wasted votes' because everyone is basically a Democrat in Milwaukee. Since Wisconsin has a relatively large population that resides outside of major cities, those wasted votes matter. (Cook County, ie Chicago, is 40% of the population for Illinois. Milwaukee County is ~17% of Wisconsin.)

    Unless I'm misunderstanding something, isn't that how districts are supposed to work, with majority Dem areas electing Dem reps, and majority GOP areas electing GOP reps? Otherwise, why have districts at all?

    In your example, it seems like the ideal outcome would be to have urban citizens represented by mostly Democrats, while rural citizens would have a 60/40 GOP/Dem split in their representation, to reflect the political makeup of rural voters as a whole. Even with the best of intentions, I don't see how that's possible to accomplish with geographical districts. At least, not without gerrymandering to hell and back to achieve that specific result.

    Districts aren't "supposed" to work any particular way but we in general dislike large discrepencies between overall vote totals and seats won. (hence the problem with gerrymandering, who's purpose is to secure those kind of results) The question is always how many people voted for the winning candidate in one district compared to another.

    A simple way to think of this is imagine you have only 3 districts. 1 urban, 2 rural. Urban district goes 90/10 Dem. Both Rural districts go 60/40 GOP. The GOP have only 43% of the vote and yet command 66% of the seats.

    Yes, but isn't that working as intended? I thought the point of districts was to combat tyranny of the majority, where one or two big cities dominate state government despite being a fraction of the inhabited land.

    I'm not saying it's necessarily good or bad, mind you; just that it's doing what it was designed to do, gerrymandering aside.

    No, the point of districts is to have responsive Representation from your local community. Governments still derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. One person, one vote. If most people vote against you, you should not have a majority.

    Land doesn't come into it at all, other than it being much harder to draw lines through a building than through acreage. The Hancock Center in Chicago has more residents than dozens of counties. It takes up a single block.

    Land makes a difference in the sense that different geographical areas can have different issues that need addressing. Water rights come to mind.

    As to consent of the governed... you described a hypothetical scenario in which one party has fewer voters overall, yet has more seats - and this is a completely legitimate result. If you don't want that to happen ever, then you need a system that doesn't rely on dividing voters into geographical chunks. It sucks that Democrat voters don't distribute themselves optimally for winning elections, but it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the districts, necessarily.

    (I am aware that there's plenty wrong with Wisconsin's districts.)

    How is it a just result?

    Justice is subjective. I mean that if every district elects their representative by majority vote, and the makeups of different districts are wildly different, then you can get this situation even if the districts are fairly drawn. That is a fact and a feature of local representation. If you don't like it, then you need a different system.

    To put it another way: in order for Democrats to have a majority of seats (without changing the voters), you'd have to have some districts represented by a Democrat, instead of by the Republican they voted for. How is that just?

  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    You are assuming a relatively normative distribution in political support across the population that doesn't represent reality. 5 districts in Milwaukee that go 90-10 Dem have the same population as 5 suburban districts going 60-40 GOP. However, there are more 'wasted votes' because everyone is basically a Democrat in Milwaukee. Since Wisconsin has a relatively large population that resides outside of major cities, those wasted votes matter. (Cook County, ie Chicago, is 40% of the population for Illinois. Milwaukee County is ~17% of Wisconsin.)

    Unless I'm misunderstanding something, isn't that how districts are supposed to work, with majority Dem areas electing Dem reps, and majority GOP areas electing GOP reps? Otherwise, why have districts at all?

    In your example, it seems like the ideal outcome would be to have urban citizens represented by mostly Democrats, while rural citizens would have a 60/40 GOP/Dem split in their representation, to reflect the political makeup of rural voters as a whole. Even with the best of intentions, I don't see how that's possible to accomplish with geographical districts. At least, not without gerrymandering to hell and back to achieve that specific result.

    Districts aren't "supposed" to work any particular way but we in general dislike large discrepencies between overall vote totals and seats won. (hence the problem with gerrymandering, who's purpose is to secure those kind of results) The question is always how many people voted for the winning candidate in one district compared to another.

    A simple way to think of this is imagine you have only 3 districts. 1 urban, 2 rural. Urban district goes 90/10 Dem. Both Rural districts go 60/40 GOP. The GOP have only 43% of the vote and yet command 66% of the seats.

    Yes, but isn't that working as intended? I thought the point of districts was to combat tyranny of the majority, where one or two big cities dominate state government despite being a fraction of the inhabited land.

    I'm not saying it's necessarily good or bad, mind you; just that it's doing what it was designed to do, gerrymandering aside.

    No, the point of districts is to have responsive Representation from your local community. Governments still derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. One person, one vote. If most people vote against you, you should not have a majority.

    Land doesn't come into it at all, other than it being much harder to draw lines through a building than through acreage. The Hancock Center in Chicago has more residents than dozens of counties. It takes up a single block.

    Land makes a difference in the sense that different geographical areas can have different issues that need addressing. Water rights come to mind.

    As to consent of the governed... you described a hypothetical scenario in which one party has fewer voters overall, yet has more seats - and this is a completely legitimate result. If you don't want that to happen ever, then you need a system that doesn't rely on dividing voters into geographical chunks. It sucks that Democrat voters don't distribute themselves optimally for winning elections, but it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the districts, necessarily.

    (I am aware that there's plenty wrong with Wisconsin's districts.)

    How is it a just result?

    Justice is subjective. I mean that if every district elects their representative by majority vote, and the makeups of different districts are wildly different, then you can get this situation even if the districts are fairly drawn. That is a fact and a feature of local representation. If you don't like it, then you need a different system.

    To put it another way: in order for Democrats to have a majority of seats (without changing the voters), you'd have to have some districts represented by a Democrat, instead of by the Republican they voted for. How is that just?

    The districts themselves are wrong, they should not be laid out the way they are, because it does not gives the most representative form of government to the most people.

    "That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    You are assuming a relatively normative distribution in political support across the population that doesn't represent reality. 5 districts in Milwaukee that go 90-10 Dem have the same population as 5 suburban districts going 60-40 GOP. However, there are more 'wasted votes' because everyone is basically a Democrat in Milwaukee. Since Wisconsin has a relatively large population that resides outside of major cities, those wasted votes matter. (Cook County, ie Chicago, is 40% of the population for Illinois. Milwaukee County is ~17% of Wisconsin.)

    Unless I'm misunderstanding something, isn't that how districts are supposed to work, with majority Dem areas electing Dem reps, and majority GOP areas electing GOP reps? Otherwise, why have districts at all?

    In your example, it seems like the ideal outcome would be to have urban citizens represented by mostly Democrats, while rural citizens would have a 60/40 GOP/Dem split in their representation, to reflect the political makeup of rural voters as a whole. Even with the best of intentions, I don't see how that's possible to accomplish with geographical districts. At least, not without gerrymandering to hell and back to achieve that specific result.

    Districts aren't "supposed" to work any particular way but we in general dislike large discrepencies between overall vote totals and seats won. (hence the problem with gerrymandering, who's purpose is to secure those kind of results) The question is always how many people voted for the winning candidate in one district compared to another.

    A simple way to think of this is imagine you have only 3 districts. 1 urban, 2 rural. Urban district goes 90/10 Dem. Both Rural districts go 60/40 GOP. The GOP have only 43% of the vote and yet command 66% of the seats.

    Yes, but isn't that working as intended? I thought the point of districts was to combat tyranny of the majority, where one or two big cities dominate state government despite being a fraction of the inhabited land.

    I'm not saying it's necessarily good or bad, mind you; just that it's doing what it was designed to do, gerrymandering aside.

    No, the point of districts is to have responsive Representation from your local community. Governments still derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. One person, one vote. If most people vote against you, you should not have a majority.

    Land doesn't come into it at all, other than it being much harder to draw lines through a building than through acreage. The Hancock Center in Chicago has more residents than dozens of counties. It takes up a single block.

    Land makes a difference in the sense that different geographical areas can have different issues that need addressing. Water rights come to mind.

    As to consent of the governed... you described a hypothetical scenario in which one party has fewer voters overall, yet has more seats - and this is a completely legitimate result. If you don't want that to happen ever, then you need a system that doesn't rely on dividing voters into geographical chunks. It sucks that Democrat voters don't distribute themselves optimally for winning elections, but it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the districts, necessarily.

    (I am aware that there's plenty wrong with Wisconsin's districts.)

    How is it a just result?

    Justice is subjective. I mean that if every district elects their representative by majority vote, and the makeups of different districts are wildly different, then you can get this situation even if the districts are fairly drawn. That is a fact and a feature of local representation. If you don't like it, then you need a different system.

    To put it another way: in order for Democrats to have a majority of seats (without changing the voters), you'd have to have some districts represented by a Democrat, instead of by the Republican they voted for. How is that just?

    Look at the example I gave you.

    Republicans represent 43% of voters but control 66% of the seats. What is remotely just about that? A group that can't even win a majority of votes gets a majority of the power.

    And this isn't a hypothetical. This is literally how Wisconsin functions right now. It's why democrats can't win control of the state legislature.

  • monikermoniker Registered User regular
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    You are assuming a relatively normative distribution in political support across the population that doesn't represent reality. 5 districts in Milwaukee that go 90-10 Dem have the same population as 5 suburban districts going 60-40 GOP. However, there are more 'wasted votes' because everyone is basically a Democrat in Milwaukee. Since Wisconsin has a relatively large population that resides outside of major cities, those wasted votes matter. (Cook County, ie Chicago, is 40% of the population for Illinois. Milwaukee County is ~17% of Wisconsin.)

    Unless I'm misunderstanding something, isn't that how districts are supposed to work, with majority Dem areas electing Dem reps, and majority GOP areas electing GOP reps? Otherwise, why have districts at all?

    In your example, it seems like the ideal outcome would be to have urban citizens represented by mostly Democrats, while rural citizens would have a 60/40 GOP/Dem split in their representation, to reflect the political makeup of rural voters as a whole. Even with the best of intentions, I don't see how that's possible to accomplish with geographical districts. At least, not without gerrymandering to hell and back to achieve that specific result.

    Districts aren't "supposed" to work any particular way but we in general dislike large discrepencies between overall vote totals and seats won. (hence the problem with gerrymandering, who's purpose is to secure those kind of results) The question is always how many people voted for the winning candidate in one district compared to another.

    A simple way to think of this is imagine you have only 3 districts. 1 urban, 2 rural. Urban district goes 90/10 Dem. Both Rural districts go 60/40 GOP. The GOP have only 43% of the vote and yet command 66% of the seats.

    Yes, but isn't that working as intended? I thought the point of districts was to combat tyranny of the majority, where one or two big cities dominate state government despite being a fraction of the inhabited land.

    I'm not saying it's necessarily good or bad, mind you; just that it's doing what it was designed to do, gerrymandering aside.

    No, the point of districts is to have responsive Representation from your local community. Governments still derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. One person, one vote. If most people vote against you, you should not have a majority.

    Land doesn't come into it at all, other than it being much harder to draw lines through a building than through acreage. The Hancock Center in Chicago has more residents than dozens of counties. It takes up a single block.

    Land makes a difference in the sense that different geographical areas can have different issues that need addressing. Water rights come to mind.

    As to consent of the governed... you described a hypothetical scenario in which one party has fewer voters overall, yet has more seats - and this is a completely legitimate result. If you don't want that to happen ever, then you need a system that doesn't rely on dividing voters into geographical chunks. It sucks that Democrat voters don't distribute themselves optimally for winning elections, but it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the districts, necessarily.

    (I am aware that there's plenty wrong with Wisconsin's districts.)

    How is it a just result?

    Justice is subjective. I mean that if every district elects their representative by majority vote, and the makeups of different districts are wildly different, then you can get this situation even if the districts are fairly drawn. That is a fact and a feature of local representation. If you don't like it, then you need a different system.

    To put it another way: in order for Democrats to have a majority of seats (without changing the voters), you'd have to have some districts represented by a Democrat, instead of by the Republican they voted for. How is that just?

    ...what?

  • BigJoeMBigJoeM Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    You are assuming a relatively normative distribution in political support across the population that doesn't represent reality. 5 districts in Milwaukee that go 90-10 Dem have the same population as 5 suburban districts going 60-40 GOP. However, there are more 'wasted votes' because everyone is basically a Democrat in Milwaukee. Since Wisconsin has a relatively large population that resides outside of major cities, those wasted votes matter. (Cook County, ie Chicago, is 40% of the population for Illinois. Milwaukee County is ~17% of Wisconsin.)

    Unless I'm misunderstanding something, isn't that how districts are supposed to work, with majority Dem areas electing Dem reps, and majority GOP areas electing GOP reps? Otherwise, why have districts at all?

    In your example, it seems like the ideal outcome would be to have urban citizens represented by mostly Democrats, while rural citizens would have a 60/40 GOP/Dem split in their representation, to reflect the political makeup of rural voters as a whole. Even with the best of intentions, I don't see how that's possible to accomplish with geographical districts. At least, not without gerrymandering to hell and back to achieve that specific result.

    Districts aren't "supposed" to work any particular way but we in general dislike large discrepencies between overall vote totals and seats won. (hence the problem with gerrymandering, who's purpose is to secure those kind of results) The question is always how many people voted for the winning candidate in one district compared to another.

    A simple way to think of this is imagine you have only 3 districts. 1 urban, 2 rural. Urban district goes 90/10 Dem. Both Rural districts go 60/40 GOP. The GOP have only 43% of the vote and yet command 66% of the seats.

    Yes, but isn't that working as intended? I thought the point of districts was to combat tyranny of the majority, where one or two big cities dominate state government despite being a fraction of the inhabited land.

    I'm not saying it's necessarily good or bad, mind you; just that it's doing what it was designed to do, gerrymandering aside.

    No, the point of districts is to have responsive Representation from your local community. Governments still derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. One person, one vote. If most people vote against you, you should not have a majority.

    Land doesn't come into it at all, other than it being much harder to draw lines through a building than through acreage. The Hancock Center in Chicago has more residents than dozens of counties. It takes up a single block.

    Land makes a difference in the sense that different geographical areas can have different issues that need addressing. Water rights come to mind.

    As to consent of the governed... you described a hypothetical scenario in which one party has fewer voters overall, yet has more seats - and this is a completely legitimate result. If you don't want that to happen ever, then you need a system that doesn't rely on dividing voters into geographical chunks. It sucks that Democrat voters don't distribute themselves optimally for winning elections, but it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the districts, necessarily.

    (I am aware that there's plenty wrong with Wisconsin's districts.)

    How is it a just result?

    Justice is subjective. I mean that if every district elects their representative by majority vote, and the makeups of different districts are wildly different, then you can get this situation even if the districts are fairly drawn. That is a fact and a feature of local representation. If you don't like it, then you need a different system.

    To put it another way: in order for Democrats to have a majority of seats (without changing the voters), you'd have to have some districts represented by a Democrat, instead of by the Republican they voted for. How is that just?

    Considering the Republican party is more of a criminal organization than a political party, they shouldn't be holding elected office any where in the country and I support any actions to prevent them from doing so.

    BigJoeM on
  • chrisnlchrisnl Registered User regular
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    moniker wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    emp123 wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Veevee wrote: »
    kaid wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.

    Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.

    Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.

    In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.

    Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.

    If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.

    Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?

    No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.

    Unfortunately in wisconsin I am not sure that is really the case. The dem votes are self segregating even more tightly into urban areas over time while the cows and chickens and handful of voters in rural areas are not getting any less red. The biggest change could potentially be would be the fox cities that are urbanizing more and more but are still very trumpy voters.

    Districts represent people not land though so if there's been a shift or comparative increase in urban/blue areas the districts would have to be redrawn to account for that.

    Only to a certain extent (since districts don't cross state boundaries) and concentrating more voters in one area is just a kind of self-gerrymandering, which is why urbanization is leading to an increase in the power of conservative regressive rural voters (a problem across basically most of the western world)

    No, the districts still have to be roughly equal by population - concentratiom in urban areas means there are more urban districts. Or should, but gerrymandering.

    You are assuming a relatively normative distribution in political support across the population that doesn't represent reality. 5 districts in Milwaukee that go 90-10 Dem have the same population as 5 suburban districts going 60-40 GOP. However, there are more 'wasted votes' because everyone is basically a Democrat in Milwaukee. Since Wisconsin has a relatively large population that resides outside of major cities, those wasted votes matter. (Cook County, ie Chicago, is 40% of the population for Illinois. Milwaukee County is ~17% of Wisconsin.)

    Unless I'm misunderstanding something, isn't that how districts are supposed to work, with majority Dem areas electing Dem reps, and majority GOP areas electing GOP reps? Otherwise, why have districts at all?

    In your example, it seems like the ideal outcome would be to have urban citizens represented by mostly Democrats, while rural citizens would have a 60/40 GOP/Dem split in their representation, to reflect the political makeup of rural voters as a whole. Even with the best of intentions, I don't see how that's possible to accomplish with geographical districts. At least, not without gerrymandering to hell and back to achieve that specific result.

    Districts aren't "supposed" to work any particular way but we in general dislike large discrepencies between overall vote totals and seats won. (hence the problem with gerrymandering, who's purpose is to secure those kind of results) The question is always how many people voted for the winning candidate in one district compared to another.

    A simple way to think of this is imagine you have only 3 districts. 1 urban, 2 rural. Urban district goes 90/10 Dem. Both Rural districts go 60/40 GOP. The GOP have only 43% of the vote and yet command 66% of the seats.

    Yes, but isn't that working as intended? I thought the point of districts was to combat tyranny of the majority, where one or two big cities dominate state government despite being a fraction of the inhabited land.

    I'm not saying it's necessarily good or bad, mind you; just that it's doing what it was designed to do, gerrymandering aside.

    No, the point of districts is to have responsive Representation from your local community. Governments still derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. One person, one vote. If most people vote against you, you should not have a majority.

    Land doesn't come into it at all, other than it being much harder to draw lines through a building than through acreage. The Hancock Center in Chicago has more residents than dozens of counties. It takes up a single block.

    Land makes a difference in the sense that different geographical areas can have different issues that need addressing. Water rights come to mind.

    As to consent of the governed... you described a hypothetical scenario in which one party has fewer voters overall, yet has more seats - and this is a completely legitimate result. If you don't want that to happen ever, then you need a system that doesn't rely on dividing voters into geographical chunks. It sucks that Democrat voters don't distribute themselves optimally for winning elections, but it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the districts, necessarily.

    (I am aware that there's plenty wrong with Wisconsin's districts.)

    How is it a just result?

    Justice is subjective. I mean that if every district elects their representative by majority vote, and the makeups of different districts are wildly different, then you can get this situation even if the districts are fairly drawn. That is a fact and a feature of local representation. If you don't like it, then you need a different system.

    To put it another way: in order for Democrats to have a majority of seats (without changing the voters), you'd have to have some districts represented by a Democrat, instead of by the Republican they voted for. How is that just?

    Just putting it out there that district lines are not static. The only way your last statement makes any sense is by assuming that the lines of the current districts are the only possible lines. What people here seem to be advocating is for the representation in the legislature to bear a passing resemblance to the overall split of votes, which is not currently possible with the lines as drawn, but could be with a different set of lines. I could be wrong, but I don't think anybody here is advocating for something like the opposite extreme, where it is setup such that the Democratic Party would have 57% of the vote and like 80% of the seats, which is also something that is theoretically possible with gerrymandering. Since we're stuck with a two party system for the foreseeable future, I for one would like to see the statewide result more or less reflected in the makeup of the legislature, not this current setup where a party can overall get 43% of the vote but still command a strong majority.

    steam_sig.png
  • CalicaCalica Registered User regular
    I live in Wisconsin; I know the districts are fucked.

    Obviously there's a disconnect here, and it's probably on my end. This is what I'm picturing: assume that the population of each district is equal and that the districts are as compact as possible. Further assume that urban voters tend to be 90% Democrat, while rural voters are 60% Republican, as in the simplified example upthread. Finally, assume, for simplicity's sake, that there are an equal number of urban and rural districts.

    In this scenario, Democrats get 65% of the total vote, but exactly half the seats. If you have, say, 5 urban districts and 6 rural districts - still with the same distributions of voters as above - then Democrats get about 60% of the total vote, but a minority of the seats.

    To fix this, you can either do away with local representation in favor of another system, or you can attempt to draw district lines to ensure that the balance of seats in the legislature matches the balance of voters in the state - at which point you're basically deciding in advance which districts will be Republican and which will be Democrat.

    What am I missing?

  • PolaritiePolaritie Sleepy Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    Calica wrote: »
    I live in Wisconsin; I know the districts are fucked.

    Obviously there's a disconnect here, and it's probably on my end. This is what I'm picturing: assume that the population of each district is equal and that the districts are as compact as possible. Further assume that urban voters tend to be 90% Democrat, while rural voters are 60% Republican, as in the simplified example upthread. Finally, assume, for simplicity's sake, that there are an equal number of urban and rural districts.

    In this scenario, Democrats get 65% of the total vote, but exactly half the seats. If you have, say, 5 urban districts and 6 rural districts - still with the same distributions of voters as above - then Democrats get about 60% of the total vote, but a minority of the seats.

    To fix this, you can either do away with local representation in favor of another system, or you can attempt to draw district lines to ensure that the balance of seats in the legislature matches the balance of voters in the state - at which point you're basically deciding in advance which districts will be Republican and which will be Democrat.

    What am I missing?

    For one, at least of few of your assumptions are clearly wrong.

    Edit:
    1) Urban/suburban regions probably account for much more of the population than rural. From next door, I'd expect roughly twice as many seats to be from cities/suburbs as rural areas.
    2) Cities don't lean that hard one way or the other overall (in general).

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  • kaidkaid Registered User regular
    Polaritie wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    I live in Wisconsin; I know the districts are fucked.

    Obviously there's a disconnect here, and it's probably on my end. This is what I'm picturing: assume that the population of each district is equal and that the districts are as compact as possible. Further assume that urban voters tend to be 90% Democrat, while rural voters are 60% Republican, as in the simplified example upthread. Finally, assume, for simplicity's sake, that there are an equal number of urban and rural districts.

    In this scenario, Democrats get 65% of the total vote, but exactly half the seats. If you have, say, 5 urban districts and 6 rural districts - still with the same distributions of voters as above - then Democrats get about 60% of the total vote, but a minority of the seats.

    To fix this, you can either do away with local representation in favor of another system, or you can attempt to draw district lines to ensure that the balance of seats in the legislature matches the balance of voters in the state - at which point you're basically deciding in advance which districts will be Republican and which will be Democrat.

    What am I missing?

    For one, at least of few of your assumptions are clearly wrong.

    Edit:
    1) Urban/suburban regions probably account for much more of the population than rural. From next door, I'd expect roughly twice as many seats to be from cities/suburbs as rural areas.
    2) Cities don't lean that hard one way or the other overall (in general).

    Milwaukee alone probably has population equal to 2/3 of the state but does not have nearly that much of a share of the voting power.

  • TaramoorTaramoor Storyteller Registered User regular
    Veagle wrote: »

    The difference here is that Evers waited until the ruling before taking action.

  • kaidkaid Registered User regular
    Veagle wrote: »

    I was hoping they would do that. The interesting question would be the law prevented them from pulling out but once they are already out if the case eventually gets turned over would they be forced to reenter that lawsuit? I don't think the lawsuit says anything about forcing the gov to actively enter back into that lawsuit so if he can legally pull out at this time then the law itself may be moot even if it gets overturned.

  • monikermoniker Registered User regular
    kaid wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    I live in Wisconsin; I know the districts are fucked.

    Obviously there's a disconnect here, and it's probably on my end. This is what I'm picturing: assume that the population of each district is equal and that the districts are as compact as possible. Further assume that urban voters tend to be 90% Democrat, while rural voters are 60% Republican, as in the simplified example upthread. Finally, assume, for simplicity's sake, that there are an equal number of urban and rural districts.

    In this scenario, Democrats get 65% of the total vote, but exactly half the seats. If you have, say, 5 urban districts and 6 rural districts - still with the same distributions of voters as above - then Democrats get about 60% of the total vote, but a minority of the seats.

    To fix this, you can either do away with local representation in favor of another system, or you can attempt to draw district lines to ensure that the balance of seats in the legislature matches the balance of voters in the state - at which point you're basically deciding in advance which districts will be Republican and which will be Democrat.

    What am I missing?

    For one, at least of few of your assumptions are clearly wrong.

    Edit:
    1) Urban/suburban regions probably account for much more of the population than rural. From next door, I'd expect roughly twice as many seats to be from cities/suburbs as rural areas.
    2) Cities don't lean that hard one way or the other overall (in general).

    Milwaukee alone probably has population equal to 2/3 of the state but does not have nearly that much of a share of the voting power.

    No, it doesn't.

    Milwaukee has a population of ~595k or ~10% of the State population. The Greater Milwaukee metro area is ~1.5m or ~27% of the State population. Suburban Milwaukee is also rather Republican leaning.

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