I don't get why it's even possible to draw maps with these disjointed sections. It's completely arbitrary and doesn't do democracy or the population any favours
Republicans have being doing this exact thing for a long time. Both parties are shameful, undemocratic lumps of shit, and 90% of Congress don't deserve to be there and don't represent our interests. The U.S. Government is so fucked it's unbelievable.
Until the general population cares about gerrymandering (and voting reform in general) to a similar degree as other issues, progress will continue to be agonizingly slow
Population changes, therefore its necessary to redraw districts to make sure each district is represents an equal population. Thats in a perfect uncorrupt world, though. Both parties participate in ridiculous gerrymandering which is why its never truly punished. Only lazy shouting at the other for doing it.
I don't get it honestly. I'm a Kiwi myself and we have some odd electoral boundaries here but my god. Being able to change them so many times as well is just ludicrous
Republicans do this everywhere in red states and some blue states. Good for Illinois Dems for being willing to play the game. This is a serious flaw in our process here and ain't changing anytime soon.
They're only changed every ten years, after each census, but the process takes a bit of time. Years, in some cases, as new maps are contested in court.
You could just do what most democratic countries do and have a proportional democracy, this wouldn't be a problem, and there wouldn't be any incumbency advantage.
@@raghudurina2354 the electoral college gives the minority of people in rural areas more power than they would have in a purely representative system. why is is this the minority that must be given more power on an institutional level, and not say, muslims, or jews, or chinese immigrants, or the disabled, or left handed people?
@@terdragontra8900 the power is not given to anyone currently the voter base is split roughly in half along rural/urban lines but this wasn't always the case in the early days the two main parties in the USA were the federalist and the anti federalist who argued over how much power the federal government should have over states in the 1860 election Lincoln ran on a abolitionist platform he won the election with only 40 percent of the popular vote the Republicans won in 2016 because they had appealed to voters in swing states not because rural voters are privileged by the electoral college
@@raghudurina2354 The Republicans won in 2016 because they appealled to swing states, *and* states with smaller populations are given an advantage in the electoral college to the extent that it changed the victor compared to simple first past the post (which sucks as a voting method also, ranked choice or approval or STAR voting please). Those aren't mutually exclusive.
What they do is just pack together all the areas that are secularly red into one district than take a few bluer cities and put them in a district where together they can beat the smaller red communities, and since the cities pop is a lot, there doesn’t have to be much space inbetween cities so that there isn’t much red competition, while the big red districts take up a lot of area but are just a ton of heavily red areas with small populations. It’s pretty well represented in the little blue strip down the middle of Illinois. It’s just a combination of a handful of blue cities that are cut out from the red districts, that always are able to pull enough votes together to beat the red areas every year
Us in Colorado voted in an independent commission for redistricting and they generally kept the same demographics in each district so likely the current legislators are safe, but put our new district in a very competitive area so no one is really sure what will happen with that
Competitive districts are a good thing, because it encourages people to VOTE. That's why I support the relative fairness in Colorado's districts. Same thing with Michigan and Nevada
@@Distress. Yes. Colorado is a blue state with a significant republican minority. The new district encompasses areas where significant amounts of Republicans and Democrats live. Both have a fighting chance of winning.
1:!4 Not exactly. You don't need gerrymandering to have wasted votes, it's an inherent feature of single winner election systems like our own. The UK and Canada frequently have high degrees of wasted votes despite having no gerrymandering whatsoever.
The UK absolutely has gerrymandering, Northern Ireland was literally designed for the purpose of keeping Unionists in power. Probably one of the blatant uses of gerrymandering ever.
I can't reconstruct which years they were, but I remember a time Georgia Republicans thought they could minimize the number of Atlanta area Dem districts by pulling the edges of metro Atlanta into more Republican districts, which backfired and led to a large number of Dem representatives that never went away. And a time when Dems in control in Texas tried to divvy up the growing then-Republican suburbs into rural Democrat and urban Democrat seats. Instead, they created powerhouse rural-suburban districts that tipped to the Republicans more or less forever. Two examples is not a trend, but wouldn't it be great to see greed punished yet again?
Like a "federal city" or something like that? That's an interesting idea, though I'm not sure how many states will acquiesce to losing a good chunk of their tax base from their biggest cities leaving.
@@satyakisil9711 That would basically be the same idea as a federal city. We already have federal districts - DC is one. The problem with this idea is that the Constitution wasn't designed to handle federal districts and can't properly account for them. DC has no voting representation in Congress and only gained three electoral votes due to the 23rd Amendment. A new federal district being created out of Chicago would leave the people of that city without congressional representation or electoral votes, severely compromising the state of democracy in the country on principle alone. There's no chance an amendment can be passed in the current political climate, so honestly, while the idea of major cities being federal districts is interesting, it's ultimately untenable as a result of the current political system.
@@EscapeVelocity11186 well, a federal city can also mean a city which is managed directly by the federal government and the city has no local government of its own. Also why would Chicago have no representation in Congress if the constitution mandates every state including Chicago to send members to the Senate?
I say get rid of districts and just have parties send representatives based on proportion of votes. Illinois has 18 districts, in 2020 roughly 60% of voters voted Democrat. 60% of 18 is (rounded up) 11 democrats and 7 republicans. This will reflect the state's actual alignment and give every voting block proportionate say.
but the problem with that is each district is supposed to represent ~740k people. there are some counties that have way way way more than that. take Los Angeles County just under 10 million, cook county (chicago area) just over 5 million people. now look at the large sections that are republican hold, like the 12th district. total population is like 800k and takes up roughly 32 counties. honestly what we should have is an AI system put districts together. all you have to put in is population numbers, voting numbers and total seats needed. the computer can draw the districts so each district has roughly the same number of people, and the total vote for the state looks like the national election. so if your state voted 60% R 40% D, then 60% of the seats would be republican. hell you could even make it a little more accurate, and put in votes by county.
@@thedebate4836 I think what they means is that the districts don't cross county lines, not that large counties can't be divided into multiple districts. Of course, what of the very rural counties that can't constitute a district alone? Those have to be lumped together.
@@jamesdinius7769 but the problem with that is again, roughly 740k pop per district. what if that county doesnt have a pop divisible by ~740k? the lines would have to run through counties. personally i think we could increase the number of seats in the house to be closer to ~500k pop per district (659 house members), but that wont ever happen because then republicans will never hold the house again. but at current numbers, each house member (by average) has 757k pop they represent which i think doesnt work well for the american people. just to give some more info. the 435 members we currently have was introduced in 1911. when the us population was 93 million, or ~214k pop per house member. and seeing every state has at least 500k population, everyone gets at least 1 seat. and every 10 years we increase or decrease seats by the census. also we can return back to the Webster method, which gave a rep above .5 so if you had 750k-1.24mil population then you would have 2 house members. but again, it would never happen because republicans would never win the house again and we all know that isnt going to work for them.
If it's the "worst gerrymander in the country drawn my Democrats," then why does the very next graphic show that California is worse by 0.6 seats? And let's not ignore the fact that the 2 worst Republican-drawn maps are literally more than twice as bad
Ehh I don’t mind gerrymandering. Republicans and democrats both do it. And it’s not like other shady political games won’t be played if they get rid of it. I mean look at the Democrats new “ministry of truth”
Californi has more seats in total, so the ratio is lower. Also, no they're not. You cannot draw democratic districts into those maps without gerrymandering. This is the reason why Massachusetts has 9/9 democratic districts but everybody is okay with it. You would have to gerrymander to draw a republican district there.
California is technically drawn up by an "independent" commission, though it's an open secret that Dems just deregister from the party to get appointed to the commission.
All gerrymandering should be outlawed, but until all states or the country outlawed it then no gerrymandering should be outlawed because we see very few democratic gerrymandering states vs. republican states. All or nothing.
@@kevinwoolley7960 New York’s map was struck down in court for partisan gerrymandering. Not only that but the court ruled they didn’t have the authority to draw the map because the Independent Redistricting Commission never reached an agreement on a map. Now a special master is in charge of picking a new map.
How would you even define gerrymandering in a non biased way? Should there be measures to reduce it based on parameters, yeah sure. But it isn't possible to outlaw it directly.
So there's really no advantage to gerrymandering then, if your opponent does slightly better than expected, you lose more seats than if you had done so by creating fairer, deeper districts? Then the question becomes, what is the most change we will see in the next 10 years, and how do we protect ourselves from the worst possible outcome? That explains why they just gerrymander all republican representatives out of the state; Illinois is blue enough.
The advantage is a shot at winning a bunch of seats you shouldn't normally win. With this bullshit map, democrats have a chance of dominating illinois when under a healthy voting system they'd struggle to get halvsies.
I mean I wouldn't say that. Gerrymandering gives you the ability to make calculated risks in order to gain more seats than you should have the votes for. Sure you might be wrong sometimes, but if you do it well, you can take a 10% edge in the popular vote and expand it to a 20% edge in the number of seats
Looking from the UK, I see that the problem is with your electoral system but you also seem to put up with the idea that seats are Gerrymandered. You guys shouldn’t put up with it. Switzerland uses proportional representation where each district is a whole canton (the Swiss version of states) and they elect multiple members per canton, this ensures that the cantons still remain a part of the process without allowing them to do things like this.
Switzerland chanced to proportional representation at the National Council Elections in the year 1919. Before that, there were some heavily manipulized constiuencies in Switzerland as well !
I'm from Switzerland and I can confirm that. I'm happy to see that people from other countries are interested by our system and our politics, because I feel the same towards countries such as the UK or the USA !
@@fcbarcelona-clashroyale4778 I find swiss politics and political system very interesting, Perhaps it isn't perfect but I find that the direct democracy and collegial system is something to look at, also the federalism!
@@ivanmaldonado2602 Not really. If an Act of Congress was passed that required districts be drawn systematically, it would implicitly repeal any section of a law that prescribes any other requirements on how the districts be drawn that is incompatible with the new redistricting scheme.
@@csharp3884 that’s why we need to stop playing the game of having single-member constituencies. You cannot gerrymander with proportional representation of three or more legislators per district.
This personally annoyed me since Kinzinger was one of my favorite politician and a great representative for the Rockford area, but got squeezed out because of this.
To be fair, it's not wise to unilaterally disarm during an arms race. Just like with war, neither party should be gerrymandering, but if one won't stop doing so the other must fight back.
Dammit Nathaniel, you kept us waiting till the end for the prop comedy?! Why you holding out on us? All kidding aside, good explanation wrapped in a bun
With all this crime going on in the Chicago Metro region, and economic depressions, I feel it's likely light blue districts will unconsciously be competitive. Just watch it backfire during the midterms.
It’s also fair to note that that is effectively what it always will be. The greater Chicago area (ie the area of Chicago plus the suburbs that are part of the Chicago economy) make up roughly 75% of the states population if not more.
As it is with many states. Colorado, California, New York, Pennsylvania, the list goes on (some of those have multiple major cities, but together they rule and are often broadly on the same page).
It isn't land based; Its population based. Each district must have near identical amount of individuals representing it reflective of the state's population as a whole.
@@joespice785 I believe they're talking about having electoral districts in general as opposed to something like party-list proportional representation
I think what’s sad is that in 8th grade for a math project I corrected the gerrymandering of North Carolina. Basically any 8th grader could fix gerrymandering in the country but politicians are to scared to draw even lines
@@covfefe1787 republicans gerrymander a lot so I think it's ok for democrats to gerrymander in only a few states and is not fair that NY was struck down while Florida not
@@covfefe1787I mean Democrats gerrymanders get actually challenged and redrawn, New York for example, but does Florida, Texas, Kansas, Alabama Wisconsin etc get redrawn? No… so fight fire with fire.
personally id rather a conpetive map thats jerrymandered than a non conpetive map any day, as thats the only real way change gets made in this dam contry is when theres a threat of being voted out
Abolish districts and do elections on state level, then the majority vote wins and gerrymandering instantly impossible. In Europe most democratic states most don't use districts unlike Great Britain.
In Finland, we have 13 constituencies and each constituency gets representatives to the parliament relative to the population and the parties are determined by the D'Hondt method. Much more simple and fair.
This is to gain some ground against the gerrymandered Republican maps in Texas and Florida. I'm not sure why this video was necessary unless FiveThirtyEight has been accused of bias.
This is a dumb take imo, Democratic gerrymandering in response to republican gerrymandering only serves to make the practice more common and accepted, leading to both sides refusing to give up their map and just in general causing more problems
@@shawnchuang1101 Yea but would you expect a political party to just concede to the other side and not gerrymander? It's hopeful thinking, but there's no easy way out of it without both sides coming to some sort of agreement.
@@shawnchuang1101 THIS is a dumb take, why would you ever expect democrats to just lie down and lose dozen of house seats to republicans as they continue to gerrymander half the country? Republicans steal seats undemocratically, and now democrats have to take the high road and allow republicans to hold onto the house indefinitely? This is completely unreasonable, the ball is in the court of the GOP to stop this as 1) They started it back in 2010, and 2) Democrats passed voting reform last to ban partisan gerrymandering and every single House and Senate GOP member voted it down. Until republicans stop, democrats have every right to gerrymander as fiercely as they want.
@@darienmiller1032 “until republicans stop” and why would they? Republicans won’t stop because democrats won’t stop, and democrats won’t stop because republicans won’t stop. It’s just an endless loop. And even in the status quo republicans have shown to be better at gerrymandering so if neither side stops, it’s the republicans that win.
@@thegentleman8987 leading by example is great and all but worth absolutely squat. If the democrats want to change gerrymandering they will need the votes to do it.
Nate points out that Dems have drawn six districts they think are rather narrowly Democratic. With voters souring on Dem performance, if the Rs run good candidates you could have a rather exceptional 6 of 17 districts competitive. 35.29%! That's my favorite kind of gerrymander, the kind that bites the drawers in the butt.
Abolishing gerrymandering would by no means create more 'competitive districts'. Drawing districts that actually accurately represent whole towns, counties and communities would often create very 1-sided districts. But so what? If the people of a given area have certain views then that is what should be reflected in their congressman.
Districts aren't meant to be competitive. In fact, ideally they wouldn't be unless the community is undergoing turmoil or a ideological shift. Districts are meant to be small enough that there is broad agreement in them about politics and policy. Then they field a representative that holds those broadly accepted views to Congress so their local voice is heard on the national level. That's the idea of federalism.
The lack of competitive districts is a geography problem, not a gerrymandering problem. Democrats really only exist in large numbers in large urban areas while Republicans exist everywhere else, not really in large numbers. So in order to make a district "competitive" you would have to create districts that contain only part of a large city but also contain parts of the suburbs and sweeping regions of the countryside. I.e. gerrymander the shit out of it.
Good! As long as Republicans refuse to not only not support anti-gerrymandering legislation from Democrats but actively encourage it in states where they have all the power, I fully support any and all Democrat gerrymanders.
Yep. I’d love to say “don’t stoop to their level,” but at this point that’s just playing into their hands. Take a look at the Texas and Florida maps - they’re shameless about it.
@@Kedai610 and by the bias, democrats need to do twice as much in Illinois to equal the gerrymandering if Florida/Texas. So not enough democratic gerrymandering to be equally bad yet.
Most of the distorted map designs could be avoided if you went based on county rather than politics. Some counties would get split up anyways, but the vast majority could be kept intact. I see no need for a perfect population balance, just reasonably close.
Illinois has 103 counties, and you could easily design a map that keeps all but two of these intact. The population size might not be perfectly equal, but it would be close enough.
What I'm getting from these videos is that a) both parties Gerrymander, b) Gerrymandering takes place in every state and c) nobody can really define what a redistricted map is actually Gerrymandered. It's all subjective and a matter of personal opinion.
What's the solution to the "wasted votes" problem? Because "fair" districts, e.g. ones drawn with the shortest splitline algorithm, could still wind up being safe enough that votes are considered wasted. I think you'd have to eliminate districts entirely, have the whole state voting for everyone and the top X number of candidates win. But even then, we'd probably start talking about wasted votes in safe states. Would we have to gerrymander specifically for as many competitive districts as possible?
@@alphonsos7307 At least Florida’s districts are cleanly drawn (spare Fl-20). Texas, Illinois, and New York had a lot of really crazy looking districts that could only have been done with the intent to gerrymander. Florida ended up being one because the Democratic votes are concentrated in Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, not spread evenly throughout the state.
@@joeycrittenden I would agree with that but the Ohio map have some odd shapes especially the 15th and 7th Congressional district.the republican could probably draw a clean looking 9to 6 or 10 to 5 map for sure.but that Florida district 20 and 24 is fifty plus points democrat that so loop sides.that at least took 2democrats districts away.hopefully the court will at least correct that part of the map in Florida.disantos don't have the two thirds majority in the legislature to impeached the supreme court justices if they were to throw the map out.he would definitely impeached them if he could .if they were to throw the map out.but he don't have the numbers to do so.actually the state legislative districts in Florida is kind of fair.the mistake the Democrats made in Florida was they should have voted with the republicans to override the governor vetoe on the earlier map which was much better than this map
@@alphonsos7307 I forgot about Ohio. It’s also quite egregious. Not much can be done about Florida except for the Fort Lauderdale district because of how the population is spread out in the state. You’d have to gerrymander it aggressively to make it proportional to the state vote. I’m not familiar with the population breakdown in the other four. (Lived in Florida for a few years).
Only when both parties have gerrymandered the USA to the nth degree will there be bipartisan effort to stop gerrymandering. As it stands, Republicans have nothing to gain to try to stop gerrymandering, so I sadistically applaud every Democrat-led effort to squeeze out some extra districts
I don’t think so. As long as we only have two competitive parties, both of them are going to do whatever it takes to keep themselves in power; and as long as we have single-seat districts and plurality voting, we’re stuck with a two-party system. Single-seat districts are entrenched in federal law, and there’s little hope that either Democrats or Republicans will do anything to change that because it would risk them losing power.
@@joespice785 Exactly. But Dems have been whining about it for the past few cycles because the Republicans were better at it (using better computer programs) from 1990-2010. But now Dems have caught up.
@@joespice785 Republicans put it into full gear in 2010, so the fault overwhelmingly falls on them. This isn't a both sides issue, dems passed legislation to ban partisan gerrymandering, and every house and senate republican voted it down. In a vacuum, dems don't need to gerrymander at all, but The GOP would never win the house again with gerrymandering as they will never have the numbers, so they have no incentive to stop it.
So maybe the US should set up an independent commission to draw geographically sound, competitive districts nationwide. Eh? (Better yet, adopt some kind of proportional representation or at least ranked choice voting so people have more choices...)
In the US it's largely impossible to create districts that are both geographically sound and competitive. You've got to pick one or the other just because of geography.
I´d feel sorry for you if not every single state did this no matter the party. How about you guys get your sh** together and introduce a proportional voting system like any other first world country..... That and the strange electoral colllege, can´t beleive that 18th century necessity survived till the modern days
A very simple solution in my opinion would be to have proportional representation. It would give liberals in conservative states more of a voice, and conservatives more of a voice in liberal states.
If you did that democrats would win every single election in the county the last 3 republican president were elected whit a minority of popular vote and a majority of now red state would be competitive for democrats if it wasn't for your broken sistem
@@theblue5224 So you're saying that the votes of democrats are worth less because the republican party gets less votes? That doesn't sound very democratic. Yeah yeah, I know we're not technically a democracy, but the country was founded on democratic principles. To deny the votes of a certain demographic because they vote a certain way is, in my opinion, wrong. It would make elections more competitive in a way because the politicians would have to care about every state, including California, which is largely ignored by the democratic party as it gets a majority democratic votes every election. The politicians have grown complaisant, which is not very good.
@@ackvon9081 i do agree but personally I don't think it's possible for Americans to switch vote sistem you are to anchored to the past and the original constitution
It's really not a thing in the UK. First past the post will always produce outcomes that are poorly correlated with the popular vote, but that's not the same thing as gerrymandered constituencies, which is when lines are drawn with intent to favour or disfavour a particular group and is not a phenomenon in the UK at the moment - though of course it was in Northern Ireland until the Northern Irish Parliament was dissolved in 1973
@@adammaclabhrainn That's not entirely threw the commissions in the UK clearly have slight partisan bias, the current maps were drawn to favor Labour, and the new maps will likely favor the Conservatives
I don't get why it's even possible to draw maps with these disjointed sections. It's completely arbitrary and doesn't do democracy or the population any favours
Republicans have being doing this exact thing for a long time. Both parties are shameful, undemocratic lumps of shit, and 90% of Congress don't deserve to be there and don't represent our interests. The U.S. Government is so fucked it's unbelievable.
Until the general population cares about gerrymandering (and voting reform in general) to a similar degree as other issues, progress will continue to be agonizingly slow
Liberal democracy is a sham
That seems like a general tendency in the US Government...
Population changes, therefore its necessary to redraw districts to make sure each district is represents an equal population. Thats in a perfect uncorrupt world, though. Both parties participate in ridiculous gerrymandering which is why its never truly punished. Only lazy shouting at the other for doing it.
The federal government really needs to make gerrymandering illegal in all states, and just use shortest splitlines to draw districts.
It'll never happen, because while blue gerrymanders like this exist, there are far, FAR more red ones and it would absolutely wreck Republican power.
@SavageGreywolf You beat me too it.
I strongly like rural favored gerry mandering, so I'd prefer that to continue.
@@SavageGreywolfMaryland, Mass, Illinois say otherwise, but regardless it is bad no matter who it favors
Even better: get rid of districts and just use proportional voting in each state. No borders needed, and you get a more democratic system
"By that measure Illinois is the worst gerrymander in the country *long pause drawn by democrats."
I'm sure that framing was unintentional.
not really a "long pause"
@@charlesmiv3842 that pause was long enough to put Ron Jeremy to shame.
@@amandasmith1920 I mean, Texas and Florida have way worse gerrymandering lol
@@charlesmiv3842 bullshit
@@charlesmiv3842 he just said it's worst
I don't get it honestly. I'm a Kiwi myself and we have some odd electoral boundaries here but my god. Being able to change them so many times as well is just ludicrous
Republicans do this everywhere in red states and some blue states. Good for Illinois Dems for being willing to play the game. This is a serious flaw in our process here and ain't changing anytime soon.
They're only changed every ten years, after each census, but the process takes a bit of time. Years, in some cases, as new maps are contested in court.
You could just do what most democratic countries do and have a proportional democracy, this wouldn't be a problem, and there wouldn't be any incumbency advantage.
Yes, yes you could. Tell everyone you know about it. Voting reform needs to be a bigger issue in the public consciousness.
No gerrymandering is a problem but the electoral college is not gerrymandering it fights against tyranny of the majority and I support it
@@raghudurina2354 the electoral college gives the minority of people in rural areas more power than they would have in a purely representative system. why is is this the minority that must be given more power on an institutional level, and not say, muslims, or jews, or chinese immigrants, or the disabled, or left handed people?
@@terdragontra8900 the power is not given to anyone currently the voter base is split roughly in half along rural/urban lines but this wasn't always the case in the early days the two main parties in the USA were the federalist and the anti federalist who argued over how much power the federal government should have over states in the 1860 election Lincoln ran on a abolitionist platform he won the election with only 40 percent of the popular vote the Republicans won in 2016 because they had appealed to voters in swing states not because rural voters are privileged by the electoral college
@@raghudurina2354 The Republicans won in 2016 because they appealled to swing states, *and* states with smaller populations are given an advantage in the electoral college to the extent that it changed the victor compared to simple first past the post (which sucks as a voting method also, ranked choice or approval or STAR voting please). Those aren't mutually exclusive.
Getting anything south of Joliet to be competitive for the Democrats is actually highly impressive.
What they do is just pack together all the areas that are secularly red into one district than take a few bluer cities and put them in a district where together they can beat the smaller red communities, and since the cities pop is a lot, there doesn’t have to be much space inbetween cities so that there isn’t much red competition, while the big red districts take up a lot of area but are just a ton of heavily red areas with small populations. It’s pretty well represented in the little blue strip down the middle of Illinois. It’s just a combination of a handful of blue cities that are cut out from the red districts, that always are able to pull enough votes together to beat the red areas every year
Us in Colorado voted in an independent commission for redistricting and they generally kept the same demographics in each district so likely the current legislators are safe, but put our new district in a very competitive area so no one is really sure what will happen with that
Competitive districts are a good thing, because it encourages people to VOTE. That's why I support the relative fairness in Colorado's districts. Same thing with Michigan and Nevada
But is it actually independent or is it like California or New York's Independent commissions.
@@Distress. Yes. Colorado is a blue state with a significant republican minority. The new district encompasses areas where significant amounts of Republicans and Democrats live. Both have a fighting chance of winning.
@@mooseears9849 nevada? there is little room for anything other than 4-0 R or 3-1 D. and its a gerrymander.
@@tolkima The only real Dem gerrymanders are in New York and Illinois
1:!4 Not exactly. You don't need gerrymandering to have wasted votes, it's an inherent feature of single winner election systems like our own. The UK and Canada frequently have high degrees of wasted votes despite having no gerrymandering whatsoever.
I would not say the uk has NO gerrymandering, a lot less but certainly its not a completely nonexistent
The UK absolutely has gerrymandering, Northern Ireland was literally designed for the purpose of keeping Unionists in power. Probably one of the blatant uses of gerrymandering ever.
This is why STV is so much better
Two things let’s make all political parties illegal and use the jungle primary system Louisiana uses.
I can't reconstruct which years they were, but I remember a time Georgia Republicans thought they could minimize the number of Atlanta area Dem districts by pulling the edges of metro Atlanta into more Republican districts, which backfired and led to a large number of Dem representatives that never went away. And a time when Dems in control in Texas tried to divvy up the growing then-Republican suburbs into rural Democrat and urban Democrat seats. Instead, they created powerhouse rural-suburban districts that tipped to the Republicans more or less forever. Two examples is not a trend, but wouldn't it be great to see greed punished yet again?
This map might come back to bite democrats but over 10 years it’s probably still their best draw
At this point we need to allow cities like Chicago to be city states.
Not surprised. Most people I talk to from Chicago identify more with the city than the state.
Like a "federal city" or something like that? That's an interesting idea, though I'm not sure how many states will acquiesce to losing a good chunk of their tax base from their biggest cities leaving.
@@EscapeVelocity11186 or maybe Chicago can become a new state which has a single city in it.
@@satyakisil9711 That would basically be the same idea as a federal city. We already have federal districts - DC is one. The problem with this idea is that the Constitution wasn't designed to handle federal districts and can't properly account for them. DC has no voting representation in Congress and only gained three electoral votes due to the 23rd Amendment. A new federal district being created out of Chicago would leave the people of that city without congressional representation or electoral votes, severely compromising the state of democracy in the country on principle alone. There's no chance an amendment can be passed in the current political climate, so honestly, while the idea of major cities being federal districts is interesting, it's ultimately untenable as a result of the current political system.
@@EscapeVelocity11186 well, a federal city can also mean a city which is managed directly by the federal government and the city has no local government of its own. Also why would Chicago have no representation in Congress if the constitution mandates every state including Chicago to send members to the Senate?
I say get rid of districts and just have parties send representatives based on proportion of votes. Illinois has 18 districts, in 2020 roughly 60% of voters voted Democrat. 60% of 18 is (rounded up) 11 democrats and 7 republicans. This will reflect the state's actual alignment and give every voting block proportionate say.
I strongly agree. It's not like they're required by law to live in their district anyway
This is the most simplistic way of doing things yet would be 10x better than the steaming pile of garbage we call our current voting system
@@benson5296 Hell it's the system they already have in the Netherlands
@@_TehTJ_ and in Germany and in Sweden.
Many countries have proportional democracy which is better than district democracy
I disagree, I want a law making all political parties illegal
Gerrymandering could be controlled if county lines were required to be taken into account when drawing congressional districts.
but the problem with that is each district is supposed to represent ~740k people. there are some counties that have way way way more than that. take Los Angeles County just under 10 million, cook county (chicago area) just over 5 million people. now look at the large sections that are republican hold, like the 12th district. total population is like 800k and takes up roughly 32 counties. honestly what we should have is an AI system put districts together. all you have to put in is population numbers, voting numbers and total seats needed. the computer can draw the districts so each district has roughly the same number of people, and the total vote for the state looks like the national election. so if your state voted 60% R 40% D, then 60% of the seats would be republican. hell you could even make it a little more accurate, and put in votes by county.
There's at least half a dozen districts in my country.
@@thedebate4836 I think what they means is that the districts don't cross county lines, not that large counties can't be divided into multiple districts. Of course, what of the very rural counties that can't constitute a district alone? Those have to be lumped together.
@@jamesdinius7769 but the problem with that is again, roughly 740k pop per district. what if that county doesnt have a pop divisible by ~740k? the lines would have to run through counties. personally i think we could increase the number of seats in the house to be closer to ~500k pop per district (659 house members), but that wont ever happen because then republicans will never hold the house again. but at current numbers, each house member (by average) has 757k pop they represent which i think doesnt work well for the american people. just to give some more info. the 435 members we currently have was introduced in 1911. when the us population was 93 million, or ~214k pop per house member. and seeing every state has at least 500k population, everyone gets at least 1 seat. and every 10 years we increase or decrease seats by the census. also we can return back to the Webster method, which gave a rep above .5 so if you had 750k-1.24mil population then you would have 2 house members. but again, it would never happen because republicans would never win the house again and we all know that isnt going to work for them.
If it's the "worst gerrymander in the country drawn my Democrats," then why does the very next graphic show that California is worse by 0.6 seats? And let's not ignore the fact that the 2 worst Republican-drawn maps are literally more than twice as bad
I think it means proportional to population; there are WAY more congressional districts in California than Illinois
Ehh I don’t mind gerrymandering. Republicans and democrats both do it. And it’s not like other shady political games won’t be played if they get rid of it. I mean look at the Democrats new “ministry of truth”
Theres a whole series on this my guy. He attacks Republicans when they do the same thing. Relax.
Californi has more seats in total, so the ratio is lower.
Also, no they're not. You cannot draw democratic districts into those maps without gerrymandering. This is the reason why Massachusetts has 9/9 democratic districts but everybody is okay with it. You would have to gerrymander to draw a republican district there.
California is technically drawn up by an "independent" commission, though it's an open secret that Dems just deregister from the party to get appointed to the commission.
All gerrymandering should be outlawed, but until all states or the country outlawed it then no gerrymandering should be outlawed because we see very few democratic gerrymandering states vs. republican states. All or nothing.
CA, MD, NY, IL all pretty substantially gerrymandered (supposedly independent commission in CA nonetheless). It's pretty bipartisan.
@@kevinwoolley7960 New York’s map was struck down in court for partisan gerrymandering. Not only that but the court ruled they didn’t have the authority to draw the map because the Independent Redistricting Commission never reached an agreement on a map. Now a special master is in charge of picking a new map.
@@kevinwoolley7960 Not to mention New Mexico and New Jersey.
How would you even define gerrymandering in a non biased way? Should there be measures to reduce it based on parameters, yeah sure. But it isn't possible to outlaw it directly.
So there's really no advantage to gerrymandering then, if your opponent does slightly better than expected, you lose more seats than if you had done so by creating fairer, deeper districts? Then the question becomes, what is the most change we will see in the next 10 years, and how do we protect ourselves from the worst possible outcome? That explains why they just gerrymander all republican representatives out of the state; Illinois is blue enough.
The advantage is a shot at winning a bunch of seats you shouldn't normally win. With this bullshit map, democrats have a chance of dominating illinois when under a healthy voting system they'd struggle to get halvsies.
I mean I wouldn't say that. Gerrymandering gives you the ability to make calculated risks in order to gain more seats than you should have the votes for. Sure you might be wrong sometimes, but if you do it well, you can take a 10% edge in the popular vote and expand it to a 20% edge in the number of seats
Looking from the UK, I see that the problem is with your electoral system but you also seem to put up with the idea that seats are Gerrymandered. You guys shouldn’t put up with it. Switzerland uses proportional representation where each district is a whole canton (the Swiss version of states) and they elect multiple members per canton, this ensures that the cantons still remain a part of the process without allowing them to do things like this.
Switzerland chanced to proportional representation at the National Council Elections in the year 1919.
Before that, there were some heavily manipulized constiuencies in Switzerland as well !
I'm from Switzerland and I can confirm that. I'm happy to see that people from other countries are interested by our system and our politics, because I feel the same towards countries such as the UK or the USA !
@@fcbarcelona-clashroyale4778 I find swiss politics and political system very interesting, Perhaps it isn't perfect but I find that the direct democracy and collegial system is something to look at, also the federalism!
We need a federal law drawing districts by mathematical formulae. Independent commissions can't be trusted, and our current system is just a mess.
You can Gerrymander with compact districts
We could do that but the voting rights act that guarantees black districts kind of gets in the way of that.
@@ivanmaldonado2602 Not really. If an Act of Congress was passed that required districts be drawn systematically, it would implicitly repeal any section of a law that prescribes any other requirements on how the districts be drawn that is incompatible with the new redistricting scheme.
And what would that mathematical formula be? It would clearly be biased or one party or the other. It’s a zero sum game.
@@csharp3884 that’s why we need to stop playing the game of having single-member constituencies. You cannot gerrymander with proportional representation of three or more legislators per district.
This personally annoyed me since Kinzinger was one of my favorite politician and a great representative for the Rockford area, but got squeezed out because of this.
But according to the mainstream media it’s only republicans that gerrymander. Rheeee
To be fair, it's not wise to unilaterally disarm during an arms race. Just like with war, neither party should be gerrymandering, but if one won't stop doing so the other must fight back.
@@Megacooltommydee you’re missing my point.
Dammit Nathaniel, you kept us waiting till the end for the prop comedy?! Why you holding out on us? All kidding aside, good explanation wrapped in a bun
At least he used a Chicago dog instead of one of those cheese-and-tomato pies that I and Antonin Scalia refuse to call pizza!
I appreciate you not pretending like republicans in Florida are the only ones who use gerrymandering. Both parties do this and do it well.
With all this crime going on in the Chicago Metro region, and economic depressions, I feel it's likely light blue districts will unconsciously be competitive.
Just watch it backfire during the midterms.
Chicago failed the entire state of Illinois… 🤦🏽♂️🥹 God help us 🙏🏾🙏🏾
East St. Louis
Its good to see you cover this map and be fair with your assessments.
Wouldnt it be fair to mention that vast majority of gerrymandering is in the favor of republicans?
It's basically a city state with farmland attached and Chicago wants to keep it that way it seems like.
It’s also fair to note that that is effectively what it always will be. The greater Chicago area (ie the area of Chicago plus the suburbs that are part of the Chicago economy) make up roughly 75% of the states population if not more.
As it is with many states. Colorado, California, New York, Pennsylvania, the list goes on (some of those have multiple major cities, but together they rule and are often broadly on the same page).
What is that district that they draw on the very left side?
I live 100 yards into the eight district. Within a mile of my apartment building there are four other districts.
Hate when both parties do this. Disgusting abuse of power
It's literally objectively better than only one party doing it. and well,
There's a reason Australia has an independent electoral commission to draw the boundaries...
Canada too, citizens can apply to help as well.
Given the new information age and national-wide, if not global chain supply, the practice of land based representation is seriously outdated.
It isn't land based; Its population based. Each district must have near identical amount of individuals representing it reflective of the state's population as a whole.
@@joespice785 I believe they're talking about having electoral districts in general as opposed to something like party-list proportional representation
LOL! That bite tho!
I am against gerrymandering for both democrats and republicans. It’s fucked up to the voters
I think what’s sad is that in 8th grade for a math project I corrected the gerrymandering of North Carolina. Basically any 8th grader could fix gerrymandering in the country but politicians are to scared to draw even lines
I'm amazed they haven't filed a lawsuit yet to undo this map.
They shouldn't. Florida should be struck down instead, I felt sick when NY was struck down
@@chiaraventura8384 looks like a judge just did. And they were right to strike down New York, along with Ohio, Maryland and North Carolina
@@chiaraventura8384 ITS OKAY WHEN WE DO IT!!!!!!!
@@covfefe1787 republicans gerrymander a lot so I think it's ok for democrats to gerrymander in only a few states and is not fair that NY was struck down while Florida not
@@covfefe1787I mean Democrats gerrymanders get actually challenged and redrawn, New York for example, but does Florida, Texas, Kansas, Alabama Wisconsin etc get redrawn? No… so fight fire with fire.
Independent redistricting commission for all states! State legislatures (of both parties) shouldn’t draw lines!
personally id rather a conpetive map thats jerrymandered than a non conpetive map any day, as thats the only real way change gets made in this dam contry is when theres a threat of being voted out
Abolish districts and do elections on state level, then the majority vote wins and gerrymandering instantly impossible.
In Europe most democratic states most don't use districts unlike Great Britain.
In Finland, we have 13 constituencies and each constituency gets representatives to the parliament relative to the population and the parties are determined by the D'Hondt method. Much more simple and fair.
This is to gain some ground against the gerrymandered Republican maps in Texas and Florida. I'm not sure why this video was necessary unless FiveThirtyEight has been accused of bias.
This is a dumb take imo, Democratic gerrymandering in response to republican gerrymandering only serves to make the practice more common and accepted, leading to both sides refusing to give up their map and just in general causing more problems
@@shawnchuang1101 Yea but would you expect a political party to just concede to the other side and not gerrymander? It's hopeful thinking, but there's no easy way out of it without both sides coming to some sort of agreement.
Bad take
@@shawnchuang1101 THIS is a dumb take, why would you ever expect democrats to just lie down and lose dozen of house seats to republicans as they continue to gerrymander half the country? Republicans steal seats undemocratically, and now democrats have to take the high road and allow republicans to hold onto the house indefinitely? This is completely unreasonable, the ball is in the court of the GOP to stop this as 1) They started it back in 2010, and 2) Democrats passed voting reform last to ban partisan gerrymandering and every single House and Senate GOP member voted it down. Until republicans stop, democrats have every right to gerrymander as fiercely as they want.
@@darienmiller1032 “until republicans stop” and why would they? Republicans won’t stop because democrats won’t stop, and democrats won’t stop because republicans won’t stop. It’s just an endless loop. And even in the status quo republicans have shown to be better at gerrymandering so if neither side stops, it’s the republicans that win.
While Democrats just to the north in Wisconsin say that it is the most gerrymandered in the state when this exist right next door.
*Laughs in Maryland*
Democrats in Illinois really guzzled some glizzies to make a map this undemocratic.
It is Republicans who gerrymander more however. The Republican Party of Trump is a threat to Democracy, James Mattis said so.
My county is split right down the middle, there should at least be something outlawing splitting counties for maps like this right
But I thought only the Republicans engaged in gerrymandering.
At least that’s what the media and the Squad would us believe.
I mean you did see how much more gerrymandered the republican states were right. It was literally in the video
@@georgigeorgiev891 true but I feel like if Democrats want to end gerrymandering they should at least lead by example or stop being so hypocritical
@@thegentleman8987 leading by example is great and all but worth absolutely squat. If the democrats want to change gerrymandering they will need the votes to do it.
You can go down playing it safe or you can go down being aggressive. It's a no-brainer.
That’s why a non partisan board should be hired to create a fair map in every state.
I officially certify you as apolitical in this topic. Idk why but i like it
Districts should be drawn using city limits and community boundaries in mind, not these jagged, arbitrary monstrosities.
Lol, Wait until you see Illinois municipal borders. Seriously, go look some up.
Good, until Republicans give It up, then keep on going.
Can confirm. I grew up outside Chicago and it was bad even then
What percent of people live in a competitive district? Gerrymandering is such a great way to disenfranchise voters.
Nate points out that Dems have drawn six districts they think are rather narrowly Democratic. With voters souring on Dem performance, if the Rs run good candidates you could have a rather exceptional 6 of 17 districts competitive. 35.29%! That's my favorite kind of gerrymander, the kind that bites the drawers in the butt.
Abolishing gerrymandering would by no means create more 'competitive districts'. Drawing districts that actually accurately represent whole towns, counties and communities would often create very 1-sided districts. But so what? If the people of a given area have certain views then that is what should be reflected in their congressman.
Districts aren't meant to be competitive. In fact, ideally they wouldn't be unless the community is undergoing turmoil or a ideological shift. Districts are meant to be small enough that there is broad agreement in them about politics and policy. Then they field a representative that holds those broadly accepted views to Congress so their local voice is heard on the national level. That's the idea of federalism.
@@jamesdinius7769 A well-turned post. I like your argument.
The lack of competitive districts is a geography problem, not a gerrymandering problem. Democrats really only exist in large numbers in large urban areas while Republicans exist everywhere else, not really in large numbers. So in order to make a district "competitive" you would have to create districts that contain only part of a large city but also contain parts of the suburbs and sweeping regions of the countryside. I.e. gerrymander the shit out of it.
Good! As long as Republicans refuse to not only not support anti-gerrymandering legislation from Democrats but actively encourage it in states where they have all the power, I fully support any and all Democrat gerrymanders.
Dems should get rid of thier anti gerrymandering legislation. I want as few republicans in Congress as possible.
Yep. I’d love to say “don’t stoop to their level,” but at this point that’s just playing into their hands. Take a look at the Texas and Florida maps - they’re shameless about it.
@@Kedai610 and by the bias, democrats need to do twice as much in Illinois to equal the gerrymandering if Florida/Texas. So not enough democratic gerrymandering to be equally bad yet.
Really wish yet didn’t hide dislikes on comments, ape brain take
@@Kedai610 Florida is gerrymandered lol Texas I would agree though
The state level districts are abysmal too.
Number of House seats from Illinois in 1985: 24
in 2020: 17 The state is dying.
One thing Gerrymandering explained videos ignore is that they only talk about one party
Great series, well done
Most of the distorted map designs could be avoided if you went based on county rather than politics. Some counties would get split up anyways, but the vast majority could be kept intact. I see no need for a perfect population balance, just reasonably close.
Illinois has 103 counties, and you could easily design a map that keeps all but two of these intact. The population size might not be perfectly equal, but it would be close enough.
I recently fled Blue state Illinois... for Red state Texas!
Anything democrat turns to 💩.
Every district in America needs to be competitive.
This guy Gerry needs to stop trolling humans for his own benifit
also nice hot dpg bite brother
END THE TWO PARTY SYSTEM
1:49 Ohio, Cali, and IL are pretty bad but c'mon, Florida and Texas really need a non-partisan redistricting committee
The Illinois Gerrymander is bad, Florida’s and Texas’s should get people thrown in jail….
What I'm getting from these videos is that a) both parties Gerrymander, b) Gerrymandering takes place in every state and c) nobody can really define what a redistricted map is actually Gerrymandered. It's all subjective and a matter of personal opinion.
lincoln was born in kentucky, so he was technically a carpetbagger in illinois, not 'from' illinois
I live in Illinois. It’s garbage. Save your money and Don’t move here.
Glad I just found your channel. Subscribed! Please do Idaho, we used to be a swing state until the districts cut Boise in half.
Idaho has a very small population with only two districts.
@@solomon1995able and your point is?
What's the solution to the "wasted votes" problem? Because "fair" districts, e.g. ones drawn with the shortest splitline algorithm, could still wind up being safe enough that votes are considered wasted. I think you'd have to eliminate districts entirely, have the whole state voting for everyone and the top X number of candidates win. But even then, we'd probably start talking about wasted votes in safe states.
Would we have to gerrymander specifically for as many competitive districts as possible?
The easiest fix is proportional representation.
They have to do that, if they don’t then the GOP Gerrymandering would crush them
I wonder how it would look if it were strict square plots
Well, my congressional district was gerrymandered to favor republicans. So there.
Pritzker also said in 2018 he would veto any gerrymander.
Can someone explain to me why gerrymandering *ISNT* the root of America's political problems?
Feels like Illinois will always be blue. It’s permanently blue like California.
You may wanna look at Florida.
New Jersey and Tennessee too
There shouldn`t even wasted votes.
America needs to completely rework its democracy and nothing can change my mind
Nathaniel looks like a less grizzled Edward Snowden.
It is amazing the extent to which Democrats are two-faced on the gerrymandering issue
its shocking how fucked americas politics are
Both parties is two faced republicans complain in new York.democrats complaint in Florida .so there you have it both sides is hypocrites
@@alphonsos7307 At least Florida’s districts are cleanly drawn (spare Fl-20). Texas, Illinois, and New York had a lot of really crazy looking districts that could only have been done with the intent to gerrymander. Florida ended up being one because the Democratic votes are concentrated in Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, not spread evenly throughout the state.
@@joeycrittenden I would agree with that but the Ohio map have some odd shapes especially the 15th and 7th Congressional district.the republican could probably draw a clean looking 9to 6 or 10 to 5 map for sure.but that Florida district 20 and 24 is fifty plus points democrat that so loop sides.that at least took 2democrats districts away.hopefully the court will at least correct that part of the map in Florida.disantos don't have the two thirds majority in the legislature to impeached the supreme court justices if they were to throw the map out.he would definitely impeached them if he could .if they were to throw the map out.but he don't have the numbers to do so.actually the state legislative districts in Florida is kind of fair.the mistake the Democrats made in Florida was they should have voted with the republicans to override the governor vetoe on the earlier map which was much better than this map
@@alphonsos7307 I forgot about Ohio. It’s also quite egregious. Not much can be done about Florida except for the Fort Lauderdale district because of how the population is spread out in the state. You’d have to gerrymander it aggressively to make it proportional to the state vote. I’m not familiar with the population breakdown in the other four. (Lived in Florida for a few years).
Shocker
Only when both parties have gerrymandered the USA to the nth degree will there be bipartisan effort to stop gerrymandering. As it stands, Republicans have nothing to gain to try to stop gerrymandering, so I sadistically applaud every Democrat-led effort to squeeze out some extra districts
u talkin like marlyand, illinois, new york, and california have not been gerrymandering at all?
@@yoloking777 Maryland and new York maps was thrown out so nice try
@@alphonsos7307 um look at their maps for the 2010s?
I don’t think so. As long as we only have two competitive parties, both of them are going to do whatever it takes to keep themselves in power; and as long as we have single-seat districts and plurality voting, we’re stuck with a two-party system. Single-seat districts are entrenched in federal law, and there’s little hope that either Democrats or Republicans will do anything to change that because it would risk them losing power.
Yep that’s why my vote counts for nothing
Until the GOP stops playing games with redistricting, it's open season.
Both parties have "played games" with redistricting for 200 years.
Both have done it. Don't blame one party.
@@joespice785 Exactly. But Dems have been whining about it for the past few cycles because the Republicans were better at it (using better computer programs) from 1990-2010. But now Dems have caught up.
You sound like a partisan hack. It's bad regardless who does this
@@joespice785 Republicans put it into full gear in 2010, so the fault overwhelmingly falls on them. This isn't a both sides issue, dems passed legislation to ban partisan gerrymandering, and every house and senate republican voted it down.
In a vacuum, dems don't need to gerrymander at all, but The GOP would never win the house again with gerrymandering as they will never have the numbers, so they have no incentive to stop it.
My eyes, they're burning!
Welcome to every state in the union, one way or the other
Republican living in Chicago, I don’t know if I’ll ever see this state go red lol
I’m surprised this video isn’t flagged for misinformation.
So maybe the US should set up an independent commission to draw geographically sound, competitive districts nationwide. Eh?
(Better yet, adopt some kind of proportional representation or at least ranked choice voting so people have more choices...)
In the US it's largely impossible to create districts that are both geographically sound and competitive. You've got to pick one or the other just because of geography.
@@jektonoporkins5025 so make the best compromise. Or do some kind of proportional voting that would sidestep the issue.
"Far right" lol
Not accurate that hot dog isn't in a poppyseed bun
Both parties do this it has to stop
I´d feel sorry for you if not every single state did this no matter the party. How about you guys get your sh** together and introduce a proportional voting system like any other first world country..... That and the strange electoral colllege, can´t beleive that 18th century necessity survived till the modern days
We're only playing by the RepubliCONS rules.
A very simple solution in my opinion would be to have proportional representation. It would give liberals in conservative states more of a voice, and conservatives more of a voice in liberal states.
If you did that democrats would win every single election in the county the last 3 republican president were elected whit a minority of popular vote and a majority of now red state would be competitive for democrats if it wasn't for your broken sistem
@@theblue5224 So you're saying that the votes of democrats are worth less because the republican party gets less votes? That doesn't sound very democratic. Yeah yeah, I know we're not technically a democracy, but the country was founded on democratic principles. To deny the votes of a certain demographic because they vote a certain way is, in my opinion, wrong. It would make elections more competitive in a way because the politicians would have to care about every state, including California, which is largely ignored by the democratic party as it gets a majority democratic votes every election. The politicians have grown complaisant, which is not very good.
@@ackvon9081 i do agree but personally I don't think it's possible for Americans to switch vote sistem you are to anchored to the past and the original constitution
Isn't that Peter Parker?
Key word democratic
Why are you concerned about this? The SCOTUS isnt. 😮
Good for the Democrats 🔵💙🇺🇲😎
People put too much emphasis on this crap. I understand it's bending the rules but it's minor changes. Much more important things to discuss.
That this is even a thing. But it is still at thing in the U.K., too. Whatever it takes to get around democratic ideas I guess...
It's really not a thing in the UK. First past the post will always produce outcomes that are poorly correlated with the popular vote, but that's not the same thing as gerrymandered constituencies, which is when lines are drawn with intent to favour or disfavour a particular group and is not a phenomenon in the UK at the moment - though of course it was in Northern Ireland until the Northern Irish Parliament was dissolved in 1973
@@adammaclabhrainn That's not entirely threw the commissions in the UK clearly have slight partisan bias, the current maps were drawn to favor Labour, and the new maps will likely favor the Conservatives