I'm not sure how to feel about this, TBH.
I wish it were federally mandated that districts could only be redrawn after a new US Census, and to me, that gerrymandering has been overtly and publicly normalized and made legally permissible this year is an eminently bad thing.
But at least one state very publicly fought back.
Its justification that red states can do whatever the fuck they want.
Do you honestly think they lacked the justification already?
Do you not remember this is a response to Texas gerrymandering all on their own?
Please explain what you mean
The Supreme Court is authorizing it because they want the Texas gerrymandering to be legit, and pave the way for all the red states to do it.
Gerrymandering is legal in America already you just can’t do it by race
The Supreme Court confirmed Texas and California didn’t do it by race it has nothing to do with whether or not other red states can gerrymander
You could always gerrymander you just can’t do it by race
Exactly, and the Supreme Court could have stopped that in its decision, but it didn’t, because it served the conservative party’s ends.
Stopped it how?
There’s no constitutional or federal law against gerrymandering except you can’t do it by race…
States have to make gerrymandering illegal at the state level which many have otherwise it’s only illegal if you gerrymandered by race
If you think the Supreme Court needs a specific law to rule on something, you’ve sadly ignored much history of Supreme Court decisions. A large percentage of their work is handwavey opinions based on biased interpretations of obscure and irrelevant documents.
Yes, it’s supposed to work the way you described it, but it hasn’t for some time now.
Ok but we don’t like the Supreme Court decisions that are made up and not based in law or logic
They also obviously couldn’t have given who sits on it
What you’re really asking for is a united progressive Democratic Party that passes actual legislation ensuring fair elections
If it's right, it's right. If it's wrong, it's wrong. It doesn't matter what color state and for what political shift it is trying to achieve.
This is not the first time California (and other states before Texas) have redistricted. Sadly it probably won't be the last.
But it's an erroneous stance to say it's okay because hey other guy did it.
No the reason it’s ok is because it helps stop actual deranged fascists from gaining further control
Your principles are a luxury borne of false notions and propaganda
I'm prone to think that one group having rights and another group not having them solely based on who they are is more of a fascist belief than the opposite view.
But I'm not here to argue with you, I was just trying to give a perspective because you asked for an explanation.
And apparently blue states too.
Welcome to America, where everything is made up, and the votes don't matter!
Right, they are making a gamble that red states are going to abuse it faster and harder than blue states.
It's not a gamble. The red states outnumber blue states.
The fun thing, though, is when an unpopular leader realizes that they are so unpopular that they can't even gerrymander because it may backfire.
But the blue states have more voters and more districts.
I mean, yes, but it takes a fuck ton of those red states to make up the same impact as a NY or CA. There are a significant number of nearly empty red states.
It’s 100% legal to gerrymander based on political party
It’s 0% legal to gerrymander based on race
This is the normal law in America
The fact that it's legal at all is absolutely unhinged.
States are free to make it illegal for themselves otherwise the federal government only prevents serious discriminations like race (there’s a few more basic voting rights too)
It may not be perfect but federalism gives states their own rights and that’s also why Trump can’t just take them over so you get the good with the bad
He can't?
No he can’t
Ah yes, giving states their own rights...the thing that has totally never been used as cover for something else that's completely unjustifiable.
It goes both ways
My state is quite nice for it and I’m glad Trump can’t make my state pass laws or do whatever he wants
In all seriousness though, gerrymandering is an incredibly open and shameless form of corruption, and it's wild that you guys give it any kind of legitimacy.
You really gotta understand America as 50 different countries in a union for stuff like this 🤷♀️
Some states have made it effectively nonexistent through mathematically neutral and independent districting commissions
But this is a tragedy of the commons so if republicans win in and then gerrymander enough states without a national solution in place then they will slowly gain a disproportionate and non representative minority government which is what we have right now and why everything that’s happening is happening
It’s created red states with essentially impossible to challenge legislatures so the only way out is for Dems to win again and create a national voting rights act again that makes gerrymandering more difficult, less effective, or impossible altogether
Right, so it's a huge problem, regardless of how you understand America.
Good for the states that have made it effectively nonexistent, but because the issue is left up the individual states, the more corrupt ones are able drag the rest into fascism. Great job, y'all.
Not sure what to tell you other than we’ve been fighting for now centuries to correct these problems and we still are
What point are you making exactly?
Do you have a magic solution?
My point was simply to remind Americans who might be reading that gerrymandering is indeed just regular old corruption, and should not be thought of as "just the way things are" or some such.
I know a lot of Americans have been tricked into thinking that the country is some sort of model democracy, although most of those probably aren't on lemmy, and the orange pedophile has done a marvelous job of demolishing what was left of the USA's reputation...but anyway, just hoping to nudge people in the direction of helping with that fight.
I think they may have signaled to Trump that they were going to rule this way and that's why the regime is talking about federalizing elections in blue states.
Could be.
I don't think it's clear to Donald because he is constitutionally incapable of confronting bad polling data, and Republicans assuredly have an abundance of negative internal polling data, but he's managed to make himself so unpopular that not even gerrymandering is looking like it can save his majority. (Which is why they stopped doing it.)
His musings on federalizing blue state elections are just that, though: Musings. If they can't get Minnesota to buckle, they can't get California or New York to buckle. And dialing up the aggression will only make that more true, not less, and aggression is all Donald knows.
I think it far more likely he'll try to get a Trump check out to voters before the elections, personally. It would be a whole lot easier to tack another trillion in debt onto the national debt to accomplish the goal of keeping his majority.
Yeah he'll send out a check and say it's paid for by the tariffs or something.
I also think sending ICE to intimidate voters is likely. Might even be seizing voter registration data to make a list of enemies that need to be harassed and intimidated into not voting.
I also think sending ICE to intimidate voters is likely.
He can try, but there's no reason to think the 2026 elections won't be a repeat of the 2025 elections, where two dozen red districts flipped in several states, many of which Donald won by double digits in 2024. ICE doesn't have the manpower to handle that level of unpopularity, and dialing up the violence will only exacerbate Donald's unpopularity further.
I think there's reason to believe that voter intimidation works; that's how Reconstruction was defeated and how the white minority dominated minority-majority districts for nearly a century. White terrorism was basically the norm through most of US history.
The regime is acting like popularity is irrelevant, and that only approval from their base matters. I think that tells us their plans.
The regime is acting like popularity is irrelevant, and that only approval from their base matters.
The key word here is 'acting'.
And, at the same time, ignoring all evidence to the contrary, resulting in the recent bloodbaths at the polls. I'm fine with them shooting themselves in the foot in their refusal to approach electoral politics like grownups.
Voter intimidation only works if you know who to intimidate, and clearly, they do not. It's why they stopped with the crazy overt gerrymandering.
The recent bloodbaths at the polls are happening without voter intimidation, hence, they're going to start employing it.
Why do you think Tulsi Gabbard just raided Georgia? They want a list of the people they need to intimidate.
without voter intimidation
I don't follow. Their entire campaign of aggression has been against Democrats and Democratic areas.
It is voter intimidation, and not only did it backfire, it destroyed their own coalition. They're losing by double digits in both red and blue districts, and I don't see how voter intimidation works when both sides have turned on you.
Yes, the Georgia thing looks bad now, just like all the EO's that took weeks and months for the courts to invalidate. Checks and balances are working, they just don't work instantaneously.