Why the US Supreme Court made this map illegal
Вставка
- Опубліковано 13 чер 2023
- And it could swing the 2024 elections.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: goo.gl/0bsAjO
In 2013, a divided Supreme Court gutted one of the major pillars of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In the 10 years since then, the court has moved even farther to the right. So when the Voting Rights Act came before the Supreme Court again in 2022, it didn’t look good for the law. But then something completely unexpected happened: in a 5-4 decision, two of the conservative justices voted with the 3 liberal justices to preserve the Voting Rights Act. And the effects could be huge.
At stake in the case was the way that Alabama divides up its Congressional districts. Alabama has seven districts, one of which is what’s called a “majority-minority district” in which Black Americans are the majority of the population. In 2022, a group of Black voters sued the state, saying that under the law, Alabama should actually have two majority-minority districts. And the Supreme Court agreed.
The reason this matters to the rest of the country is that Alabama’s not alone - several other states in the south are now vulnerable to similar challenges that would increase the number of majority-minority districts. And especially in a region of the country where voting is racially polarized - where white people overwhelmingly vote Republican and Black people vote Democrat - this decision has the potential to flip multiple Congressional seats in the next election. And in a US House of Representatives where Republicans only hold control by a margin of 10 votes or so, that’s a big deal.
Sources and further reading:
In 2021 every state in the US with more than one Congressional district redrew them. CNN has a great tool that looks at each state’s Congressional district map before and after that redistricting, and tracks how many majority-minority districts each state has: www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/...
FiveThirtyEight has a similar tool: projects.fivethirtyeight.com/...
Many of those new district maps are under legal challenge. The Brennan Center for Justice has a really thorough roundup of every legal case underway against those maps: www.brennancenter.org/our-wor...
The Brennan Center also has a great summary of the Alabama case: www.brennancenter.org/our-wor...
A big part of the Alabama case was determining whether drawing a second majority-black district would be easy. The mathematician Moon Duchin wrote a brief report for the court that demonstrates that really succinctly: www.brennancenter.org/sites/d...
The Guardian built a cool interactive that shows the gerrymandering in Alabama really well: www.theguardian.com/law/2023/...
Naturally I recommend reading Vox.com’s Ian Millhiser breaking down the Alabama decision: www.vox.com/scotus/2023/6/8/2...
And Vox’s Christian Paz on the political implications of the case: www.vox.com/voting-rights/237...
Subscribe to our channel! goo.gl/0bsAjO
Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out www.vox.com.
Watch our full video catalog: goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on Facebook: goo.gl/U2g06o
Or Twitter: goo.gl/XFrZ5H
I will never understand how the US doesn’t have impartial Supreme Court judges. How can they have an alliance to a party and be a judge? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of being a judge?
it does
It was initially a flaw in the system, but now it’s seen as a feature of the system.
@@AV57i thought only developers turn a bug into a feature, now politicians too?
@@julianbruns7459 politicians did it long before developers.
You couldn't enforce that under the current system where politicians get to choose judges.
Two conservative judges who actually care about conservative values and not, you know, just worshiping the Republican party? Thats… very nice actually.
Roberts has always been pretty center when it comes to rulings. He obviously leans right but definitely a lot less than the rest of the judges. Kavanaugh was definitely a surprise though.
They know what is best for their country, and adhere to and defend the rules of the constitution. They don't make a decision based on their own opinions, or what others want them to do.
@jacobgoodstone9674 I mean this is just factually incorrect but its nice you have hope they do what they're supposed to do.
Boof Kavenaugh cares about something other than beer, who would’ve thought
@@jacobgoodstone7572 That's rarely ever the case tbh.
The fact is that mathematically congressional districts are a terrible idea and we should move towards a proportional voting system.
100% we should move towards proportional representation. Anything that helps to break up the two party chokehold would be fantastic.
Proportional voting belittles smaller states, imagine you had a world election where every country could vote, literally every president would be asian because they have way more people, the usa wouldnt be big enough to do anything. So thats why you would divide the votes into points and give evry country 1 point at max so it isnt ruled by the amount of people
@@Romen_2 hence why the founding fathers decided on the electoral college over first past the post/proportional representation.
@@Romen_2it shouldn’t be about the state itself though, but on the people inside that state. If a state with, say, 3 million people, has the same amount of seats in congress (or senate, not really sure as I’m from Europe) as a state with 30 million people, then those 3 million people have a lot more power. Proportional representation really is the most democratic option.
@@Romen_2 And that results in a 2 party system. The US system is flawed. Its simple math.
I appreciate the fact that Vox had both district and demographic maps, and that they were overlayed.
I looked for those maps for ages when the news first broke, and was frustrated I couldn’t find it. Keep up the great work!
Yes, and remember, both “packing” members of a particular demographic into the same district AND “cracking” them into different districts can achieve a pre-selected effect on election outcomes.
Most of the data isn't accessible unless you pay for it. Which is why you can't find these maps
Can we hold out hope that at least some of the judges still believe on makeing decisions based upon the law and not partisan politics?
Depends on the topic obviously
Sure but then we would be acknowledging the fact that equal and fair representation has become a partisan issue which is really not a good look.
Considering one of those was Kavanaugh, I highly doubt it. There's something at play here, and we don't know what, but I'd keep an eye on where these people go with this.
@@bbastronaut4025 well what I’m saying is a hope at least equality and equity under the law hast become a partisan issue. Unfortunately it seems many do seem to think so, the Supreme Court is meant to be the most fair and unbasis institution so if they had gone to such extremes
@@kenyonsgirl415 can you please expand on your point I’m unsure what u mean
I can't remember the last time I heard about a US Supreme Court ruling upholding rights rather than removing them
You can still get abortions buddy
Every now and then toss us a pittance to maintain an illusion of non-partisanship.
"We don't know why these conservative justices decided to uphold justice." Honestly the state of the GOP right now.
Right?! Shocking.
This comment is nonsense. The last time the Supreme Court denied a Constitutionally defined right was Dred Scott in the 1850s.
Why do we still allow the two major parties to even redistrict the maps? You can't tell me that each state can't put together an impartial committee.
STATE officials draw the maps. That’s WHY who controls a state MATTERS! We have to vote out reTHUGliCONs on ALL LEVELS!
You could probably come up with a mathamatical algoritm that generates regions based on population with an emphasis on county lines and should not have race as a factor at all.
Gerrymandering is as old as voting districts. If there is one thing that binds the uniparty, it is that they want control. Neither will give up the chance to be the next to rig one of these maps, so the convention remains that the state majority party of the year gets the committee chair.
We should just give up on districts and go with good old fashioned voting.
We are a democratic republic, not a mob driven, pure democracy.
districts are areas apportioned from a larger area, you are still going to have to do voting, sadly the USA struggles with putting together fair districts.
It's a sad state of affairs when people are "surprised" that 2 Supreme Court justices did the right thing.
Actually, there were 5 Scotus who voted. But for some strange reasons, no one is surprised when the other 3 did the right thing.
Stop getting your news from Vox and you'll see there's plenty of decisions that the SCOTUS has made the last few years that you'd agree with.
@@eugenelim11because those 3 consistently choose to preserve civil liberties
@@eugenelim11 Not to try to give a major opinion on a subject I don't know much about, but it does quite seems like there is no surprise when the other 3 voted for something promoting equality because they are morally and legally fair
@@cact0s_ulion405 You mean 6.
The moment you can divide the judges of the highes court into members of political parties is the moment you should realise something is going horribly wrong.
You'd would already think that people will find it to be a bad idea that whoever is president at the time where a judge is appointed, that it is only based on this decision and not on a democratic majority vote.
You can’t divide the judges of the Supreme Court by political parties. The two major political parties in the US are the Democrats and the Republicans. This is not the same as the conservative and the liberal dichotomy shown in the video. And even this is a simplification, since there are many constitutional interpretations that any judge may fall into. And some of the justices could be considered legally moderate, which Vox doesn’t mention.
The closest you can get to “dividing the judges into members of political parties” is by picking the party of the president who appointed them. But justices are not members of political parties, and are not endorsed by political parties. They are agreed upon by a long and often bitter process in the legislature to vet out bad and overly political justice appointments through debate and hopefully bipartisan agreement.
What people don’t realize is that most Supreme Court cases are not split down the “party” line. In 2009 for example, almost half of Supreme Court cases were decided unanimously. So the court is not as politicized and divided as we tend to think. The only cases that we hear about are the controversial ones that get media attention.
While fears that the court has become too political are legitimate concerns, people tend to blow this issue out of proportion and it leads to a lot of pointless hatred toward the generally robust institution of the Judicial Branch.
(At least robust compared to any other judicial branch. But there could certainly be a better way to do things)
Great video from Vox, but it makes me sad to see that people are sort of missing the point of this video and basically ignoring the implications of the way the court voted on this decision.
Your right!!! It would be far better if they didn't have to declarer which side they lean to or affiliate with, to keep everyone guessing.
Less transparency in politics is good right??
@@CrydusYou don't want people voting on legal officials. They get too emotionally compromised and vote based on feelings instead of who is the best for the job.
Apolitical people don't tend to gravitate towards the judicial branch of the government or careers in politics, lol.
As somebody that lives in the sister state to Alabama I'm incredibly happy about this Supreme Court decision because there's so much of this that goes on.
Ahh, good old mississoury.
As someone who lives IN Alabama, I was happy to hear about it! I’ve been angry over the gerrymandering of our districts for a long. I knew they didn’t represent our population accurately
You do know that once states are liberally ran, they fall apart
@@MossEYE- The richest, most well educated and healthiest states are all run by progressives. New England, New York and California are powers in their own right among a sea of poor, backwards states run by republicans.
@@MossEYE- you mean like California and New York Vs Alabama? 😁
When Americans see a not politically divided choice: "We don't really know why these two conservative justices chose to preserve the Voting Rights Act."
When I saw the title my reaction was “oh god what did they do this time”
But turns out they did their job. I am genuinely surprised.
Same, I was a little nauseated before I realised what it was anoit
Well, _just_ over half of them did.
@@AlbertaGeek Well in the Supreme Court just over half is what counts
….
Which means whether or no rights get protected come down to the opinions of one person.
@@opalishmoth8591 Yes, as pilots say, "Any landing you can walk away from is a good one."
Their job would have been to point out that a statute demanding racial gerrymandering is obviously unconstitutional.
As a foreigner from a third world “flawed” democracy, where the Supreme Court judges regularly go against the President/Party that appointed them and uphold the constitution and rights, I don’t understand this partisanship in the US courts. How is this normal?
Conservatives are psychotic, corrupt, racist, evil.....
It’s a long story
That's because you only consume media from the liberal side of US politics. The Supreme Court makes 'nonpartisan' decisions all the time, but you only hear news about the court when they make decisions that liberals don't like.
the supreme court was meant to be politically neutral, but it didn’t really turn out that way
The US only has 2 parties, so it's a very "with us or against us" mentality across the whole country
Drawing election districts based on the race of the people living in a certain town or village is the 1st example of something that sounds like "systemic racism" in my dictionary. Thank you for this example.
Yeah, I get that, and gerrymandering has bothered me for decades, but to ask a hard, honest question - who's to say the line wasn't drawn based on dividing a political opponent's power, which, while while maybe unfair, seems less sinister, as it could have no relation to racial / racist ideology? I mean, if people in an area tend to vote for one party, and the other party has power, it's not surprising that there's some tension, lack of support, etc. no matter who's in control. It's probably a very hard thing to regulate - not that we shouldn't try our best, it's just maybe not a simple problem, which is why it's been around so long. I suspect oddly drawn maps exist in red and blue dominated states. Anyway, I wish all well, and hope all get fair representation.
@@stephenmontague6930 I'm quite sure that mathematicians will be able to prepare algorithm that will divide each state to districts with roughly equal population, using only population density, and administrative borders. You can test algorithms on maps from Europe or Africa and only later use it to the USA, so even the programmer won't know the final verdict.
But, there is at least one smarter and more fair system - the whole state is one district and N people who get the most votes get the electoral mandate. This will reduce the percentage of people who did not have any representation from 45-49% to roughly 5-9% (experimentally tested in Europe).
Even smarter? What if there is one popular guy in a state who gets e.g. 40% of votes in a state, that has 10 mandates? I will give him the cumulated power of 4 mandates in House/Senate/Parliament/whatever.
Theoretically you can allow him to share votes with his friends who were at 11th or 12th positions, so they can jump over those in 9th or 10th positions, but I will prefer to use those super popular people to reduce the number of members of parliament. You don't need many. This is also true for my country - Poland, and the European Union. The leader of the political party is telling others how to vote, so they are mostly not necessary...
Sooo how is this not Gerrymandering, redrawing lines based on race to give a greater chance for a political outcome? I get it might be trying to reverse that which was done before but, still weird. People have a tendency to “pack together” and urban sprawl could be why that district section got split. Mapping population growth over when those lines were drawn would make for a better argument, if they are trying to prove that it was a sinister thing.
The proposed solution is also drawing districts based on race which shouldn't be considered at all when drawing districts.
@@XDF745 This video promoted the cultivation of problems. The disagreement is only about the level of systemic racist influence in the election process. It reminds me of some socialists in Poland disputing an adequate level of labour tax. They are already sure that all workplaces should be invigilated and controlled by a state.
Great explanation Vox! This kind of thing can be super confusing for alot of people, we need more of these!
as an alabamian, i wholeheartedly feel it’s extremely important for every citizen to hold, and maintain representation, this ruling was a great step in the right direction
Alabaman W
Alabaman W
I guess the story repeat from the north Carolina history
Another Alabamian in Cullman and I wholeheartedly agree.
Americans would rather draw the most convoluted map possible than change their voting system.
Not really but for example, why not make a single large district out of Alabama and choose the 7 candidates with most votes as winners?
We need more journalism like this. Explaining things like gerrymandering rather than just saying it’s a thing and it’s bad.
@@rome13th I guess you want to stay ignorant. You can thank the constitution and those who fight for it for giving you your right to have an opinion. With the exclusion of the majority of republicans who want to take your rights away
People only complain gerrymandering and vote rigging etc is bad when it disadvantages their 'side'.....both sides are more than happy with it when its to their advantage
@@unhippy1 It is completely normal to complain about a rigged system yet feel compelled to participate in it in order to achieve progress. It is better to fight a cheater with their same tactics. The difference is, republicans are nobody’s without gerrymandering and voter suppression. Democrats and other independents don’t need to gerrymander maps and they don’t advocate for voter suppression because current Democratic candidates are more popular and supported by more people
Exactly, what's needed more explanations of how government systems are manipulated. Especially with two US presidential elections in recent memory where the winners had _fewer_ votes out of the population than their opponents.
This will help more 'minority' senators be elected at the expense of the overall contest-ability of other districts as the ruling only applies to cases where the minority population in concentrated. In addition, the speaker talks about how this might lead a flipping of the house, presumably on the basis that the 'black vote' is 85% democrat, but that is not a commitment set in stone.
It's pretty bad that we are surprised that 2 justices did the right thing. What does that say about our judicial system?
I think it says more about us as a people and how we define ourselves this way. Often times, seeing the other political side as horrific villains out to destroy America, as opposed to people. Just people, out there everyday putting work towards their ideals with the limited knowledge and resources that they have available to them. Fallible and often wrong, we all stumble through the darkness of our own lack of understanding, in an ever failing attempt to shine a light for others. A sad but beautiful kind of existence that the Supreme Court reflects in its own tumultuous lifetime, which is now as it was then in some ways, wildly incorrect, damaging, wrought with dilemma, and perhaps one of the best tools we have as a people, and often used against our very interests. Perhaps then, it is in the consolidation of its power that we've most gravely misstepped, and not in its political makeup.
I think it says that republicans aren’t trying to take away the rights of minorities nor are they trying to limit their right but that they are simply supporting a color blind viewpoint. Just because a person is black doesn’t mean that they will vote one way or another so i think assuming that is more racist of democrats to do.
@@realgabrielflandes More Republican judges dissented than supported, but nice try though. 😂
@@derekrequiem4359 nah what i said is exactly what’s going on. Colorblind approach is what MLK fought for. Republicans aren’t racist but that’s the narrative that is pushed to demonize them.
Just make the maps based on population and review the boundaries before each election. It’s what we do in Australia and it works pretty well. Each seat (district) has a similar population. This means remote/rural areas have a much larger area, whereas inner city/metropolitan areas are smaller and more dense.
Yep similiar in the UK they are based on a certain population getting 1 seat. Althought they are typically only redrawn when a majority party would gain seats as a result but still better than this american system.
That’s exactly what they do in the US. The problem is who gets to review the maps and how do they decide whether the maps are fair or not. A couple of years ago, the Supreme Court could have decided on some rules that would’ve banned gerrymandering, but they said that it wasn’t their business (because the court is controlled by conservatives and banning gerrymandering would’ve hurt conservatives). So they left the system how it is: a mess where the rules are different from state to state. In some states, the legislature draws the map, in some, it’s an independent body that does it. I’m pretty sure in Britain, Canada, and Australia, they have 1 independent body deciding the maps for the whole country instead of this mess.
One little caveat: gerrymandering doesn't just benefit "conservatives", it benefits whoever is in control and redrawing the maps. The classic conservative argument followed by the "conservative" (strict constructionist) justices is that according to the US constitution, how those maps are drawn is technically a state decision, not a national one.
(I am definitely NOT in favor of gerrymandering, by the way. I think it is inherently unjust--and that goes for creating gerrymandered majority minority districts as well as any others. A proportional voting system, as some European countries use, would actually reflect the ideologies and interests of the population better than our current system, but without major constitutional revision little will change.)
@@joshuaharper372 In the United States, gerrymandering benefits conservatives because the Republican Party has simply gerrymandered more seats in their favor than the Democrats have. This is partially because Republicans got huge wins in 2010 (a key redistricting year), but also because Democrats have sabotaged themselves by implementing good government reforms like independent redistricting commissions in the many of the states they control (a notable absence of these in solid red states...).
Like the post-2016 pro-electoral college attitude, the anti-anti-gerrymandering attitude of the modern Republican Party (and their 6 supreme court justices) is not really based on any "conservative" ideology - just pure partisan strategy.
PR would be far better, I agree. But when Republicans refuse to pass anti-gerrymandering legislation specifically because they're saying using proportionality as a criterion would be unfair ... we're not getting there for a long time.
@@riggsmarkham922 Texas is the only conservative state that is gerrymandered. This map is not gerrymandering.
Don't know what's crazier about American politics, the states redrawing maps as they please for vote majority or that race is somehow the determinant of the winner or the fact that judiciary is partisan-based !
What country do you live in?
Yea we hate it here
Yeah we stopped being good at making rules for democracy, like, +140 years ago
@@DoctorCyan yeh, I don't get that! We're going to be voting on a change to our constitution later this year in Australia, apparently that no longer happens in the US?? That makes no sense to me, democracy is dynamic & is supposed to represent people & society & people & society change over time, so obviously laws, constitutions etc should change along with that
Well it is a 2 party system. And jury meandering is one of the major factors that enforces that. This was simply 1 example. You should see the way California draws their maps. In fact every state does this to enforce their 1 party system while competing on the national level. Sadly what this means is that the 2 parties do a poor job of representing anyone. Most vote for 1 party based on a singular issue. For example you will see full liberal democrats vote republican solely because they want to keep their guns. And you will have Red hearded republicans vote democrat because they thing the republicans are racist. The reality is that its horrible system and every step needs to be made to remove the 2 party program.
We do know why they voted that way. Roberts was upholding his earlier decision that struck down section 5, because in that decision he purposefully said it would not impact section 2. This is a section 2 case. And Kavanaugh was upholding precedent. Surprising, yes. But not unknown.
At least they are principled
Sorry, I still don't get the point on how the map/Black majority subdistrict is a problem. Can you help me to explain again in a simple way?
@@Gilang-Ramadhan Imagine that 1/3 of the population of a state is black, and that it should be divided into 6 districts of equal population. Ideally, 2 of those districts will have a majority of black people, so that they have a proportionate political power.
However, if you pack half of the black population into one district, and then spread the other half equally into the other 5 districts, the only black people who have any political power are the ones in that one district, meaning the political power of black people in the state was cut in half by the person who drew district boundaries.
This is not a big deal when race is not politically relevant, but that’s very much not the case right now.
@@felipevasconcelos6736 Okay I understand. But, is this case only happen in the state of Alabama? I watched the video and they showed us one district that is Black majority and the other Black majority people were cut in half into two districts. Is there any protest that coming from the Black people in that district about this?
@@Gilang-RamadhanIt's definitely not just a problem in Alabama, it's an issue in many culturally diverse states, the South or otherwise.
Im glad some Supreme Court justices don’t always go with their party lines when it’s undemocratic.
Sad it’s not all, though.
Drawing maps to favor your own political party is disgusting. And people wanna tell me the US is a decent democracy lol. It is very simple, total votes should count and that's it. Nothing else. No drawing districts or anything like that. The person that gets the most votes becomes president or senator or whatever. Simple
I can understand Chief Justice Roberts siding with the Dem-appointed Justices, but Kavanaugh really surprised me. This may be shocking to a lot of us, but not to the legal teams that were working hard behind the scenes to help make this happen. Thank you Marc Elias!
It’s not super surprising kavanaugh is the second most moderate conservative on the court. He often votes with roberts.
As a leftie I would say I’m not surprised. They have their convictions but they are not monsters as the media depicts them.
When you act overall in good faith you are bound to find common ground d with the other side
Don't get me wrong, I don't think Kavanaugh is qualified or a good supreme court appointment but he has sided with Roberts a few times that were "surprising" and he is moderate compared to the other Republican appointments. I've read some of his statements and they are shockingly literate.
Still don't think he deserves to be a Supreme Court Justice but if asked which two sided with Democratic Appointments I'd have guessed Roberts & Kavanaugh.
Had the same thought, did not expect Kavanaugh.
You shouldve listened to Conservatives who said all along that he was too moderate.
We were right of course.
Shoutout to Roberts and Kavanaugh for choosing democracy over their personal beliefs
But of course you mean constitutional republic.❤️
Shoutout to boofing
What about other minorities, other than African American? Don't they deserve their own district too?
@@WantToGoHomeSoon The United States is a democracy and a republic. The fundamentals of the constitution relies on both regardless of interpretation.
@@hightechjoe1 If there is a minority with enough population density in a state to warrant one, sure.
This was a very well-done video. The animation, script, etc. Thank you.
This is a terrific video. Very well done. So digestible, and great use of visuals/maps. The one area of improvement I would suggest is digging more into the law itself. Obviously, you all have to make the decision if a video with that level detail (I.e. eating your vegetables) can succeed with Social audiences, but I think it can. Keep it up.
When deciding this decision, Kavannaugh made clear that this was decided based off principles of statutory interpretation NOT constitutionality. Section 2 of the voting rights act can still be attacked on constitutional grounds. So it’s really a temporary win. However, the future of the voting rights act is still undecided.
Good, voting rights act should be struck down along with 1990 cra.
Can you explain principles of statutory interpretation vs constitutionality in a nut shell fam? Not a poli-sci major over here
@@stoonookw The decision is about the maps being illegal under the statute (i.e., the voting rights act), it is not about whether the statute itself is constitutional
@@krystal7958 why
@@adora_was_taken it's bad.
“This map has a problem…”
Yeah it’s the map of Alabama, get me tf outta here.
You're not wrong
Sweet home Alabama!
I can hear the banjos playing already
Cleatus and his sisterwife are coming watch out!
Alabama is beautiful and it's people are generally very kind-hearted. It does NOT deserve the reputation it has, especially from people who've never set foot there.
Thank you for this!
As European the Americans parties' ability to turn their political system into a mini civil war never fails to amaze me
Some people never got over the civil war, is the issue. 😒
It is quite strange that they acknowledge the importance of proportionality, without questioning that FPTP voting system is definitionally anti-proportional. Why not just switch to MMP (mixed-member proportional), STV (single-transferable vote), or party-list?
The best possible solution would have been to make Alabama a single 7-member district, make Louisiana a single 5-member district, and make Georgia two 7-member districts, and run elections under Single Transferable Vote. Then pretty much everyone in those states would have at least one representative that actually represents them.
STV has been proposed in the house, but MMP or party list will never ever happen. Americans will never ever accept a system that gives more power to political parties and defeats the idea of "running for office".
New Zealand adopted MMP because a decade of austerity caused the public to reject both major parties. Australia adopted ranked voting because a second conservative party threatened to split the vote. What crisis will cause the USA to change?
@@tfaethe latter
MMP and party list would be unconstitutional. House reps directly represents their own districts, getting rid of districts would dilute those local concerns.
The core problem is First Past The Post voting.
That system needs replacing with Proportional Representation for the House. Either state by state or even on a national level. If done state by state that would mean Alabama's 7 seats would be assigned so that those 7 seats are filled with politicians from each party so that the % of seats they get as close as possible matches the % of votes they got. If done on a national level it'd mean smaller parties would get some seats as well, breaking the duopoloy.
agreed & additionally it also prevents vote splitting, so for elections like the president, people could vote for, say Bernie 1, Hillary 2, Trump 3, rather than having to choose between voting for Bernie or Hillary & being forced to vote for Hillary, knowing Bernie was otherwise just going to split the vote & give the win to trump
I think that is one part, but the big thing is to tear down the 2 party system. This video seems to be highly favoring the deomocrats, but they are just as if not more evil than the republican party. Just look at California and the craziness they to to hold their super-majority using similar tactics. And how they manipulate their voting bases with aspects of the policy that only serves to actually keep people down so that they have reasons to vote for them. I personally do not want to only vote for 1 person. i would prefer a ranking system. The largest issue is that people cannot vote for who they want because they would then not be voting for the person who could beat their opponent. It means you have to choose between trump or biden. And that aint a choice anyone wants to make. I mean even if you like one of those candidates, I know everyone has someone in mind that they would like to choose first but can't.
Why not make it so voting for the person you want doesn't mean not voting for the person you think will win. Think about it rank the candidates and use a point system based on that. Then you can vote for both the person you like and the person who has more clout. And then you may have some supprising results. 3rd parties actually have a chance of getting people in office. Right now the Democrats and republicans do not represent anyone. This case outlined in this video shows that. Just because republicans put someone in office does not mean they agree with each other.
Proportional voting system has its own defects. Why not plural FPTP with two or three elected representatives per constituency. The number of constituencies will have to be reduced accordingly
@Blank not gonna be a problem in the uk for long hopefully; big up labour 🌹🌹
@@varoonnone7159 I prefer the defects of party-list voting compared to alternatives.
In Australia these electoral districts are determined by population number typically 100k per district. They are defined from the centre of the state capital out to state borders. The laws that govern this are controlled by an independent public service organisation called the Australian Electoral Commission. It is an organisation whos whole remit is independence from the government and fair accurate elections.
Perhaps America needs something similar to take politics out of voting itself?
Excellent video! Thank you very much.
I still can’t believe that Clarence Thomas a black man himself, would vote to end black voter representation in the south.
And the rights try to paint him as a victim of racism when Thomas himself is a racist against his very own disenfranchised people.
It's very simple he voted for his party not for what's logical rational or fair
@@josephgibson4250yeah probably was influenced by those who helped him get the position
He is of the belief that racial blindness is the only way to be equal. Any overt mention of race is inequality. Even if the result is equality.
Harlan Crowe
As an Australian, it seems wild to me that race is a strong determining factor in how people vote. I know that Race can be a major factor in people's socio economic status due to various structural advantages and afforded to some, but it feels so alien for a video like this to be discussed in terms of race rather than something like income.
Americans are obsessed with race. The idea that a person might judge politicians on their merits doesn't ever seem to occur to them.
@@omp199 blacks always vote dem. whites show differing opinions.
as Joe Biden said, "If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black"
They call Black voters race traitors if they vote for republicans. That is how racist American Politics are.
@@omp199t’s not that we’re obsessed with race, it’s that racism is still so prevalent that it’s impossible not to talk about. one example, just look up our incarceration rate. black ppl spend 19% longer in jail than white ppl who commit the same crime. black communities are pushed into riskier environments and given lower quality housing, education, and healthcare.
The operative words here are "majority minority". And whether we should interpret the VRA to mean that it would be nice to nudge congressional representation to a degree that it closer matches the demographics of that state. It's more of a justification for battling gerrymandering than it is adhering to settled law.
Great video! Thanks!
"We are all the same, part of the human race"
*Cries when black population isnt in the same electoral district*
In the Alabama case, the Supreme Court just tossed the argument that Ron DeSantis gave for his gerrymander in Florida, so that one will be interesting to watch in the lower courts, and in state courts.
Florida has a constitutional amendment that outlaws gerrymandering, but the republican legislature continues to gerrymander. The last map was basically created by Ron DeSantis, the governor.
@@swinde yes. They don’t care. When the amendment passed in 2010 (I think it was 2010), they gerrymandered IMMEDIATELY after. The state supreme court forced them to change some parts of the map.
The state court judge, who was appointed to the bench by Ron DeSantis, blocked Ron DeSantis’ map only to have the appellate court reverse his decision and keep the gerrymandered map in place for the 2022 election.
As a person who grew up with a proportional representation voting system, where people vote instead of land, this kind of stuff never fails to amaze me
the idea is that constituancies or districts allow local issues to be adressed candidates are encourged to focus on local issues as well as national ones
@@kingthomasthehun8408 so a single, state-wide district that totally avoids gerrymandering would not be local enough for... a federal job?
@@M69392 It is already bad enough when one representative has several hundred thousand constituents. Do you really be better if one person represented the tens of millions of people in California or Texas?
@@donkeysaurusrex7881 No. Google "proportional representation" to understand what most other countries do.
@@M69392 I don’t care what most other countries do. Having lived in several the near absolute monarchies were the only ones as good as the US.
Conservatives justices occasionally vote liberal, liberal judges NEVER swing conservative.
The thing is, it doesn’t just affect Southern states. It affects every state, including California, Illinois, New York, etc.
If this has a 'cascade effect' in California it could be very good for the state's future.
The video didn't talk about California AT ALL. Wonder why...
@@HuntingTarg Because it's not an issue in California. California has a non-partisan redistricting commission, or more accurately a bipartisan one, where they don't have to deal with this nonsense. No political party can gain control and gerrymander.
@@arnoldschwarzenegger8005 Yeah, New York would have been a better example.
@@HuntingTarg You didn’t mention California’s legislature doesn’t draw its own maps AT ALL. I wonder why…
Gerrymandering is the single greatest political cause of most of our most pressing problems as a nation. Gerrymandering causes extreme candidates to win primaries hence the current GOP.
And our current president
Do you not realize that gerrymandering is essentially a constant in a democracy? There is no beating it.
@@9forMortalMen I understand that gerrymandering by either party creates extreme positions and candidates. Gerrymandering is at the root of most of our political turmoil. Balanced congressional districts would produce moderate candidates and not dilute anyone's vote.
@@pax2758 what’s a “balanced district”?
@@9forMortalMen yes there is. you make gerrymandering illegal. politicians should not be able to redistrict. districts should be determined using mathematical formulae and rough square shapes (as close to squares as they can get)
Let us not forget gerrymandering isn't just racial divided. They also cut it up on voting, registered voting and possibly of other factors
Gerrymandering just needs to be replaced entirely imo we need to cut up the districts in a way that does not pool whatever groups forcefully into someone's ideal situation
This is a really good explainer. Well-done.
Very well done!
It's unfortunate that this doesn't go nearly far enough and outlaw gerrymandering altogether. Instead it seems they used an opportunity to pander to (or "virtue signal") race as a convenient means to limit damage that could have been much greater. Gerrymandering being yet another of the myriad tools the "two" parties use to maintain hegemony over the entire political process.
It mandates gerrymandering.
The problem is the supreme court can't outlaw gerrymandering because states have the right to draw the districts how they want. Racial gerrymandering is illegal because it denies voters of a specific race equal protection under the law which violates the 14th amendment. Partisan gerrymandering doesn't deny anyone equal protection so it's not unconstitutional. Because it's a state right congress can do nothing, therefore it would take a constitutional amendment to end gerrymandering.
I live in South Carolina where, surprise surprise, we face the same issue.
As an African American voter, however, I don’t want majority-minority districts; such schemes allow incumbents to remain in office for indefinite amounts of time where they often become unaccountable and re-elected based on name recognition, breeding a corruption that’s hard to shake.
Rather, I want districts to simply become competitive. Take SC district 1 for example. We need healthy, democratic competition that will allow more moderate, SANE politicians to emerge.
The problem Blk people have is we expect the system to have a heart and “give” us an opportunity. Everything in this world has been TAKEN. If you want something, you take it. We need to just TAKE what is ours. Legally, of course.
yea it enables safe districts where you only get elected because you know people who ensure you don't get competition from your own party and the other party has no competition.
There's no reason why SC couldn't be a single 7-member district that elects using Single Transferrable Vote. That way, everyone would have at least one representative that actually represents them and there are no uncompetitive seats.
Not surprisingly the current representative of this district is rumored to be quite unhappy with the ruling. She grew up in Selma and lived in Birmingham as an adult which gave her two power bases in this district. Now the two will almost certainly be in different districts, and she’ll be voted out of whichever one she runs in by someone more authentically local.
I think (IANAL) the issue here is that SCOTUS has declared political gerrymandering fair game. So while we would want to fight gerrymandering as a political issue, we cannot.
Relying on the VRA and majority-minority districts is a flawed vessel, but at least it is something to check the 'to the winner go the spoils' we see all around this country.
And obligatory note: Many states have started to restrict gerrymandering on the state level. While that sounds great in a vacuum or for your state house, it has very strange results in the US house. We would need a federal solution here for the federal elections. I'm still disappointed last congress got close but didn't manage to pull through because of the GOP mounting a filibuster in the Senate.
We Appreciate You
I'm looking at this from abroad and 1: Why is gerrymandering still a thing? And 2, the racism inherent in the system is outrageous. Drawing electoral districts so a minority can be a majority inside that district? It's basically the same as saying "go to the back of the bus, so you can be a majority over there". Just bring on statewide proportional representation already...
That analogy doesn’t make sense. And gerrymandering was literally made to dilute the voting power of groups like African Americans, which is why there is a system in place to counter that where states need a a majority minority district. You actually have to learn about the history of this by going back like 150 years
some states are so large that they may favor certain parts of the states if it was just proportional, we have the senate for that anyhow.
Justice Roberts is known to slide left from time to time. Often the constitution just simply cant be interpreted in any other way. Justice Gorscuch just wrote a huge opinion acknowledging the history of abuse of Native Americans' rights. Justices are supposed to be above politics, but these days, its newsworthy when they actually do.
He is the new Sandra Day O'Connor
Seems like this should’ve been done a while ago
I learned about this discrepancy in High School, granted I live in Alabama. But we've known about this for many years.
If I had a penny for every time that phrase could be validly used...
@@austincolyer1977 I live in michigan and my econ/American history class also taught us about Gerrymandering. I graduated in 2022
@@Mokuteke no way. I have the exact same story, even graduated 2022 lol. Where you go to school?
It would be nice if we could also see a map of the total population, and see how lines with the district map
Excellent piece.
Tennessee is Gerrymandered big time. Wonder if they'll have to redraw lines now?
Ohio rejected 3 reworks of their gerrymandered mess and still had to use a horrible map for the last election even though we voted for a fair redrawing with each new census
This is on racial gerrymandering, not gerrymandering in general so it wouldn't apply to Tennessee.
@@CakeofPixels Yeah, supporting one party over another is considered a legit factor in drawing up districts according to previous SCOTUS rulings. It's a weird distinction, since you want to represent the people, not a party. A party shouldn't be factor at all, but right now, it's a factor that's considered more important than everything else in most states.
@@Tabbystripes102And a state constitutional amendment to do so, correct?
@@CakeofPixels Memphis is packed and Nashville is cracked along racial and voting lines.
Will this do anything to change future gerrymandering across the country though? I am glad the Supreme Court is challenging this corrupt electoral system, but we need policies that ensure fairness in the future, like requiring the shortest splitline algorithm be used to draw districts.
Well, the real solution to America's political issues is a single-voter system. Sort of like a point system rather than the whole "winner takes it all". Add in a multi party government and you get a pretty good system. Each party gets representation based on the percentage of votes they received. With a minimum amount, of course. This allows for more nuances and compromises.
Of course, the very first step would be to heavily regulate lobbying and making it illegal to receive money from individuals or corporations. As that is fertile ground for corruption. In general, less money in the process.
Proportional representation is a better solution.
@@Ikajo do you mean the single transferable vote?
or no districts in states. RCV is a an better option
@@humanistwriting5477 I 100% agree ranked-choice voting is one of the best electoral reforms we could implement, especially coupled with other policy improvements.
Thank you for explaining in a way that's understandable 😊 .
Excellent explanation. Thank you.
Ok. I'm immediately confused by the idea that the court is ALSO split politically . I thought a court should be a politically neutral one
Impossible when they are appointed by partisans.
There are people arguing that the US isn't a real democracy because they don't have separation of power ongoing which is considered a staple of a healthy democracy.
Read up on the Federalist Society. That will explain everything you need to know.
Keyword: "should."
Yes and no. The "split" is spun up based on who appointed the judges. There are general trends on how judges rule but it's moreso on a spectrum than a hard left vs right.
Cant believe anyone can be anti fair-voting. It should be a crime when goverments do this and voters should never touch the party again
But that's exactly what conservatives are, it's their entire being. Conservatives can justify ANY action they take, because they are right, and by being right nothing they do can ever be wrong.
There are only two parties (effectively) in this country. They both do it, so now you can't vote for either of them. Now what.
Because this isn't fair voting. This simply makes a particular kind of gerrymandering legal. In a district based system, there will always be inequality, inaccuracies, and non-representation. It doesn't matter how you draw the lines, once you draw them, you've put the game in someone's favor. What this decision does, is pretty much ensure that any sufficiently litigious political group and cry to the courts it's not representative enough.
It's fairer but it isn't fair. The problem with majority-minority districts is that they deny representation to minorities living outside of the minority districts as well as denying representation to the members of the majority who live within the minority districts.
A far better solution would be multi-member districts elected under the STV voting system. Then pretty much everyone would have at least one representative that looks like them.
Fair voting? You're the type of person that thinks that everyone deserves a participation trophy.
The fact that judge Thomas voted in favor of distributions that hurt African American representation blows my mind 🤯 🤢🤮
"This map has a problem, it's a map of Alabama...."
STOP RIGHT THERE BUD..... enough said.
We have a similar problem in the UK where there is a dispute over suggested changes to Constituency boundaries based on historical voting patterns. It's a problem inherent in a FPTP voting system.
Apart from that issue. You had the possibility for Australian style preferential voting system or a plural first past the post system. In my home country, Mauritius, we elect three MPs per constituency
The system is flawed. And was inherited by the US. Interestingly the assembly in Northern Ireland has proportional representation with transferable vote, like Ireland instead of being like Westminster.
@@TheAlchaemist
Proportional voting is jumbo mumbo. It's based on percentages so you don't elect people but vote for a list
@varoonnone7159 there are many variants in different countries. Sometimes you vote for an individual rep for a constituency and a party for the proportional part and you can even vote multiple preferences. One might say that if you are clever you can come up with a solution that does not wipe representation. Clearly the FPTP with single rep per constituency is by far the worse. By simply having 50% +1 in every constituency effectively ends up with 100% of party A and 0% for party B. And with gerrymandering you can achieve that with even less than 50%. I have to assume you see the problem there, right? Because if not then there isn't much else that I can say...
I have grown up in the two black counties in East Alabama that are currently split between two districts (Macon and Bullock County). Macon is the location of Tuskegee, Alabama...a very historic majority all-black town that has one of the highest democratic percentage votes for years for a county. Thank you for covering this VOX and for thinking of us!!!
The Tuskegee Airmen! Heroes. American Patriots that will never be forgotten 🇺🇸
very informative!
This is such an awesome explanation video
The fact that you can have court decisions where the Justices don't vote unanimously, and are split somewhat evenly, is kind of wild to me. It means that either a) our laws are not written objectively, and are open to interpretation or b) Justices don't cast their vote aligned with the law roughly half of the time. It seems like at least one of those must be true in order to get split decisions in the supreme court.
The thing is, the first one has some wild implications for the foundational belief that the law applies equally to everyone, because of it's open to interpretation I don't see how that could be true. And if the second thing is true then what's the point of Justices in the first place? Might as well have the House or Senate give rulings.
The Constitution is very open to interpretation, and law isn't all that objective in many cases. As for your 2nd concern, there's a lot of that too!
Every single law is open to interpretation depending on situations or new needs of society. That's why there are nine judges and not only one. If it had just one, then it would be autocracy. They place nine to try to give democratic rulings.
Talk about separation of the political forces or whatever the term is…
the law being open to interpretation is one of the first things you learn in law. they are made by and for humans, and so they are interpretable. equity under law is (generally, but not really) sought after, but isn’t an inherent trait.
... laws are always open to interpretation. Some things might be generally agreed upon that they're wrong, but "how" wrong they are is always up to a judge and/or a jury (depending on the country). E.g. the difference between different degrees of murder. Or if you murder someone in self-defence. Some might even say the latter (depending on the situation) is not wrong. This is really not so shocking, the shocking part is is that the highest court in the US is still a two-party system
I am astonished this happened. This is such good news for basic human rights.
all states are gerrymandering and it is one sided which states they’re changing b4 the election. They need to change every state instead of changing ones in favor for one political party
US doesn't have what UN considers as "human rights". However term "human rights" gets a lot of synonymoussuch as Civil Rights, Natural Rights, Fundamental Rights and so forth. To my knowledge what you have is very tiny set of rights, called Civil Rights, and Civil Rights could be disposable according to lawmakers interest. Also I guess you as citizens are invested with a set of individual guarantees by you Constitution. But no more
May I Be wrong, because the correct definitions of the human rights are sometimes difuse.
Lines on a map have nothing to do with basic human rights.
@@MRM00M0066Why would whites do that to themselves 😂
@@omp199 but voting is a human right, and only being able to elect 1 out of the supposed 2 representatives due to gerrymandering is an act against your right to vote.
What a great video to explain complicated terms and details from US. Thanks Vox.
Thanks VOX for all you guys do. I learn something every-time I watch a video especially pertaining to US politics.
Thanks for the explanation. Will be sharing this, especially since it’s only 5 min long. Great for my independent voting friends in CA to know what’s going on elsewhere.
👍👍🇺🇸❤️
Good. Hopefully new representative districts help improve the standard of living in said districts.
Gerrymandering exists because the single representative per constituency is utterly MATHEMATICALLY undemocratic. It totally wipes out representation. If every constituency has 50% + 1 for party you end up with a 100% of the legislature for party A and ZERO for party B effectively wiping out representation for almost HALF of the population. And with "clever" Gerrymandering over half... the fact that no one ever mentions that is baffling! The system design is fatally flawed.
Perhaps Roberts and Kavanaugh see the long term democracy of our nation more important than the autocratic desires of the party they are affiliated with.
I hope you're right 🙏
They always make decisions based on their philosophy and interpretation of the constitution. You just thinks it's partisan politics when their interpretation doesn't go your way.
Good thing we don’t have democracy, huh?
You know, given we never have been and are a republic. Representative republic.
A Representative Republic Still falls under the same blanket term of a democracy though...
As a Canadian watching this, i have nothing but more confusion on how elections in the US work.
I get it's a foreign country but setting up voting areas based on skin colour just seems to promote differences.
We have the same problem up here, except it’s not race based. In the states, each district is drawn by each state. Up here, our ridings (voter districts) are drawn federally. But we still have the problem, Trudeau came second in the popular vote, but still won because he had the most seats.
@@konstantinosnikolakakis8125 true but our prime minister is not elected by popular vote. They're elected by seat count which is why the federal agency decides the boundaries and it is not a political party that makes those decisions.
when they draw districts they should have no data on the peoples that make up the state, the only data they should have is the map of different population centers, as you want to keep population centers together as much as possible, and make districts as compact as possible.
@@konstantinosnikolakakis8125 To add to this, explicit gerrymandering is much harder here because all of our ridings are drawn by Elections Canada, but we still get results like this due to the inherent issues of First Past The Post. The Conservatives' support is concentrated in a few provinces that are heavily conservative, so even an independent agency like EC can't possibly draw reasonable borders that give the Tories their rightful representation. Only implementing a new voting system that either doesn't need these borders (like nationwide proportional representation) or renders them unimportant (like MMPR) could totally fix the riding problem.
@@A.Martin I believe that is what Canada does. It's an independent federal agency that does it so it's non political.
Very well covered.
It’s very hard to keep up with things like this because none of it is transparent and they keep the masses uninformed and distracted
Gerrymandering should be illegal for every single state, everyone does this democrats and republican and it’s annoying, just let the people speak and stop being controlling.
We wouldnt have this issue if they combined the senate and house of rep. under one entity.
Republicans do it more on account of the aggregate
Various states have removed the ability of Legislatures to gerrymander to varying degrees. California and Arizona were the first states to eliminate it completely (well, as completely as we can at the moment), followed by other states, such as Colorado. These states have ended gerrymandering by taking redistricting out of the Legislative process completely, moving it directly to average citizens. It's still technically a partisan processes, but the power to do weird things with districts is effectively gone. The greatest effect of this can be seen in California because of its huge population, where district shapes have drastically simplified and follow multi-dimensional population characteristics.
Someone has to draw districts. "Gerrymandering" usually means only that the speaker prefers it favor one side more.
@@ShankarSivarajan This isn't true at all. The term has a very specific history and is used to describe very obvious results.
*Points at map* “My lord, is that legal?”
The Supreme Court: “I will make it illegal.”
the "i like beer but not bud light" guy came thru on this
They should just have the sum votes of the state instead of using districts. If you want to you can just split up the electoral votes by the percent that won that party, like 6 and 4 if the state has 10 electoral votes (in between percentages go to the party who is almost at that vote like 57% vs 43% would be 6 to 4 since 57 is closer to the next 10% than 43). If everyone is supposed to have equal vote districts and electoral votes shouldn't exist. This would also stop candidates from ignoring states they would just lose and pandering to states with higher per-person votes + states they might be able to swing, since they would have to appeal to the majority of people.
And here I thought the Supreme Court made knowledge of the map illegal. Good thing I stayed on to listen.
End gerrymandering
This should've been gone a long time ago.
I hear jury meandering is super common in my area (mostly east coast) and I’m glad to have it banned, but in general I think we could just do it better, we don’t really need districts like we used to..
Gerrymandering is unfair, so lets gerrymander until its fair
Very well explained for us viewers. Thank you!
The fact that a court is another political tool makes the US basically a banana republic.
Gerrymandering will ultimately lead to the destruction of the party. That's how we have gotten extremist, unqualified representatives who have created dysfunction in the house.
At 4:34 I almost expected you to bring Levar Burton as a speaker.
Thanks for making this vid, I usually don’t care much for politics but this was really eye-opening.
It’s important to stay informed, so happy to see Vox content reaching the masses :)
I don’t honestly think people should be surprised by Roberts here - despite being a Bush appointee, he’s voted with the liberal justices quite a few times, and his judgements rarely come across as especially partisan. Kavanagh is more of a surprise.
This is absolutely true. Roberts is one of the VERY few moderate Republicans left in the public eye (politician or not), but Kavanaugh is apparently more of a wild card than was expected.
All the supreme court justices shouldn't automatically cast a vote that benefits their party anyway. They are supposed to interpret the law not parrot their party.
Im an indian and I do not understand how you could drag the judiciary into being a political party battlefield
As long as we have single member districts, we will still have one group of Americans feeling represented and the other group feeling under represented. The solution is moving away from single member district and adopting proportional representation where we elect representatives from multi-member districts; so parties level of public support accurately reflects the number of seats they get in the legislature.
The solution is to have federal elections be set by the federal level, not caring about state boundaries.
Because obviously, they are being elected for the FEDERAL government.
Single vote system. Meaning all votes are pooled together and every vote counts individually. Regardless of the district. Those with the most votes, wins a seat.
@Sinaeb But then your representative doesn’t actually represent your territory, which is the point of the state level divisions. I think reps should be proportionally elected at the state level.
@@konstantinosnikolakakis8125 And? The goal of the federal government is to rule at a federal level, if you want local representations there are more local governments that you need to vote for
@@Sinaeb If you are in a state like New York where the majority of the population live in 1 city, then if everyone is elected from a single pool, then the people outside of the city, have no say at all.
Very, very enlightening...and sneaky too. Great segment from Vox!
That short video is disturbingly good! I can't stop, I need more of this simple truth!!! 🤓
What shocks me is the 2 conservative justices voting with the liberals, ESPECIALLY the Trump appointed judge. What a couple of legends!
Gives me hope for our democracy.
Great visual explanation of this case. Can you please do a video on the gutting of the clean water act too?