Hacker News Reader

Comment by penneyd | Hacker News Reader

There is no political will to do anything whatsoever about gerrymandering. Sad state of affairs.

Of course not. Both parties use it at all levels of government. Getting rid of it only helps non-politicians, ergo politicians will never support it (unless they are losing).

Assuming you're talking an an American context, is is absolutely not true that "both parties use [gerrymandering] at all levels of government".

The US Democratic party has a national policy of non-gerrymandering at all levels of government. Maryland had a Democratic gerrymander in the 00s, but it was exchanged for a fair map in 2011.

The US Republican party, on the other hand, has a national policy of gerrymandering as much as possible. The national committee hired gerrymandering consultant Thomas Hofeller to draw Republican-maximizing maps for every state in 2009, and used those maps as the backbone of their REDMAP plan to seize permanent control of every state through extreme gerrymandering.

An independent council just rejected New York states proposed congressional map because it was so obviously gerrymandered. Democrats do it too.

The independent council that rejected the map was set up in law by Democrats. If they hadn't passed that law recently (or just undid it), then there would be no legal problem. So it's actually their own check that stopped them.

Similar to how only companies with an ethics hotline get ethics complaints.

You have it all wrong, just read this article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/10/nyregion/primary-election...

They’ve tried to take it to multiple courts that have all found it unconstitutional. They are still trying to hold elections with it.

The commission was set up on 2014 (this is the first time it's been in place). My point was that the Democrats put the amendment on the ballot in the first place. If they had decided otherwise, it never would have left the state legislature.

They were, in a very real sense, the people who instituted the independent commission. A commission that deadlocked itself before the state legislature decided it failed and they needed to draw the lines.

Had they not voluntarily limited their own power, there would be no legal case at all.

How does that explain the new NY map that was recently tossed because it was so obviously gerrymandered in favor of Democrats? I believe the same happened in Maryland a couple months ago as well.

Believe it or not but parties don't always follow their policies.

When the party in power gets to decide how the lines are drawn, there is zero incentive to do anything to fix it.

I think the solution is really, really easy. Treat politicians like kids.

One gets to draw the lines, but they have to draw several different versions, that are at least XX% different, in terms of voter groupings. Then the other gets to pick which one gets used.

And when they can't get along, I get to send them to the naughty step.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com