And I would agree that most of the gerrymandering comes from Republicans right now… simply because they control the largest number of state legislatures:
If most of the state legislatures were controlled by Democrats, we’d get more Democratic gerrymandering.
I think it depends on the law.
My suggestion is crowd-sourcing with machine ranking.
Any small group of humans is going to be biased or accused of bias.
I feel like you and dagget are both looking past my points.
Is that because Republicans control most state legislatures?
Yes.
This could all be summarized by saying “whichever party has more power will be the party that does it more.”
Republicans aren’t doing it more because they are less averse to gerrymandering. They are doing it more for the very simple reason that they have more opportunity.
I completely agree with you. Except it’s very hard to get legislation against gerrymandering, because it typically hurts whoever has the most power.
At the moment, since democrats have less power locally, they might be willing to enact it, however. So there’s potentially a window of opportunity to get something done.
but my understanding of the recent SCOTUS decision is that SCOTUS believes the state (not the federal) legislative branches of government only have the power to legislate the redistricting process. SCOTUS ruled that redistricting is not reviewable in federal courts.
Roberts has been anti voting rights since the 1980s
Might be time to roll up the sleeves, put pen to paper, and draft a constitution. The old girl lasted 250 years, so she doesn’t owe us anything.
It’s getting a little silly to keep trying to guess what James Madison might have thought about the internet and freedom of speech.
And that’s probably the right call as gerrymandering violates no federal law, nor does it violate the Constitution. That said, if there was a federal law pertaining to redistricting…
I can just imagine what a mess that would be…
Never ever gonna happen. At least, short of a nuclear holocaust or something.
Make a change that favors the Democrats? No Republicans will support it.
Make a change that favors the Republicans? No Democrats will support it
I’m not even sure we’ll ever be able to pass another Constitutional amendment. It would, obviously, have to be something broadly bipartisan. Maybe term limits, which wouldn’t particularly favor one party over the other.
13 states is all it takes to block a change to the Constitution, so neither party can feel like it’s getting hurt.
It’s kind of ironic if you think about. The American mythology is one of perseverance, ingenuity, and “git er done” hard work. But you guys seem to think ( and I agree), that those days are gone - if they ever existed at all.
It seems to me that’s it is either adapt or go extinct. Sad.
Read a good article about constitutional change a few days ago, they argued that when it most looked like constitutional amendments couldn’t happen was precisely when change most often happened with the US constitution. That it went through long stretches of no amendments, a deeply divided population then a spurt of amendments over a short period. In cycles of 50 to 70 years.
Well the 27th Amendment is sort of a unique case with a, what, 202 year ratification period? (That’s from memory; I didn’t check, so apologies if I’m remembering wrong.)
But it’s now been 50 years since the ratification of the 26th amendment.
So are you saying that Amendment 28 is coming in the next 20 years? If it does, I think it will be term limits. I can’t imagine any other issue that would find 38+ states in agreement. But we do all agree that we hate Congress.
Oh, the other one I can think of, which is actually badly needed, would be expanding the order of succession of the President.
If a nuke hits DC, it is quite likely that every single person on the existing list would be taken out. We need a long list that includes people who do NOT reside in DC.
My suggestion is add: Chief Justice, Associate Justices in order of confirmation, Appeals Court judges in order of confirmation, district court judges in order of confirmation.
Some of them will survive, so there will be a POTUS during what would obviously be a national crisis. And all of those folks were confirmed by congress, which seems to be a thing for the existing order of succession.
Oh, and I realize that the justices live in DC, but it seems wrong to go straight to federal judges and skip over the SCOTUS.
I have a theory that if Thomas Jefferson had been at the Constitutional Convention, Article V would have mandated a convention every 50 years or so.
That would have been a good addition.