How Alabama’s Gerrymander Could Hurt Black Political Power Across The Country | FiveThirtyEight
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- Опубліковано 30 бер 2022
- Alabama’s contested congressional map is now in the hands of the Supreme Court. But regardless of how the case shakes out, it will change voting rights across the South.
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I’m just so disheartened at the rampant injustice in this country
Go touch grass.
When I was learning about the Civil Rights movement when I was in Elementary School I thought that America was a fine place for all people to live but since the murder of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter Movement, and now Congressional Gerrymandering?!? This is so sad that America isn't moving on from its past mistakes.
@@Ivan-gk8br there is nothing wrong with gerrymandering.
@@petyrbaelish1216 How would you like it if you had little representation in you're state. It wouldn't be fair.
@@Ivan-gk8br I don't have any representation in my state. I'm a blue vote in a red state. Dems don't even run in the local elections most of the time and when they do they normally lose. If they want to win then they need to do better canvassing, and find some issues that republicans aren't addressing. Will they ever do that, probably not.
I see a lot of people complaining about supposed "bias" on this channel when in fact, 538 does a great job discussing both Democratic and Republican Gerrymandering. Kudos to 538 for trying to be nobly balanced even when Republican Gerrymandering is actually more common than Democratic Gerrymandering.
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@@supershadowan ^
Reality has a well known liberal bias
Is it more common? It seems like now both parties attempt to gerrymandering equally. Maybe historically republicans did so more. But now it seems both parties play game
@@hs5312 I’d even say Democrats are going much harsher on Republicans. Kentucky and Nebraska didn’t need to make districts that Democrats have a chance but they did. Compared that to New York or Illinois where they showed no mercy to Republicans.
THE SUPREME COURT UPHELD THAT THE MAP WAS IN VIOLATION OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT TODAY JUNE 8, 2023.
This video showed up in my recommendations and I clicked on it before I noticed it was a year old. Thank goodness the Supreme Court DIDN'T gut the Voting Rights Act in this case. I'm posting this on June 14th, 2023, and SCOTUS made its decision, and it struck down the gerrymandered Alabama map. The Court must have been worried about its bad reputation.
Something I think about is how the first-past-the-post system is most definitely the root of the problem. Let's say if the black population is evenly distributed across a state, in that case even a 40% black population will end up with ZERO black-majority district, no matter how you draw the maps.
As long as FPTP is here, there's no easy way to fix things.
Look at Massachusetts and Oklahoma they are the best examples of what you are talking about
Also easy, outlaw political parties and use the jungle primary system Louisiana uses to conduct elections
The US needs to massively update its electoral system. A mixed member proportional representation system would basically eliminate Gerrymandering and make politics a lot healthier
The Single Transferable Vote is better. The problem with MMP is there are still single-member constituencies, so gerrymandering is still possible.
@Ace Spades Stop quoting MLK to make a point he never said that the US where a place where you could be judged only by the content of one's character, far from it in fact, he strived for such a society and thought that we should use any mean to get there, so yeah even quotas for black people if that's the only way.
@@holdenennis yes! it should be introduced in most systems IMHO
@@paolorubenmastretta Sounds like there's a new narrative in town about MLK Jr which you could explain to me some day. But, why do you jump to that when STV actually lets the voter decide on what grounds to sort candidates? The usual best answer to a "so you're saying" question starts with "no" because it's almost always an intentional twist.
@@johnyoung1761 In which way is mine a new narrative about MLK? He made it vert clear that he thought the US still discriminate on the base of color, trying to fight in any way possible this tendency is not being racist as he suggested. On STV the only thing I'll say to keep it short is that having the possibility to express one's opinion is also a way to inform politicians on what people actually want, i.e. discouraging certain moderate behaviour on some matters and encouraging dialogue on others.
About the response to the first comment I won't engage in a rhetoric question posed in bad faith just because that's what people expect me to do.
Unfortunately the voting rights act of 1965 isn't in the U.S. constitution so the supreme court has a high likely hood of upholding the status quo of racial gerrymandering. Also just out of curiosity do you guys think racial gerrymandering should apply to all races including whites if they become the minority like in New Mexico where there is not majority white district despite making up like 48% of the states population?
The 15th, 19th, and 26th amendments ARE in the constitution. And those amendments gave Congress the right to pass laws such as the Voting Rights Act
A consideration for majority minority districts is that they vote cohesively as a bloc. That could be difficult in some cases. Perhaps with the self sorting of white people it might be possible since they vote dem and republican.
Should it apply to them? Perhaps it would be appropriate when they have suffered the same history of discrimination as minorities who still had to wait centuries to get protections.
@@kaiseramadeus233 The problem is the VRA was passed, reauthorized and expanded on a bipartisan basis many times even in the 60s. In 2006, a republican trifecta led the effort to reauthorize and expand it. It got almost 90% votes in the house, unanimous in the senate. Now it can't get a single republican vote in the senate so it can't pass due to filibuster. So while congress has a right to pass such laws, can you get them to agree to pass it?
The new bill would add CA & NY to preclearance, not even that seems to interest republicans enough.
@Brandon C. Ha! Yeah, this is very sadly true
Laws deemed constitution are part of the constitution lol
You can't just violate them, though they're far easier to change than anything actually written into the document
There are plenty of examples where black candidates win office with white support in majority white districts. Tim Scott from South Carolina is just one example. The barrier to black progress is not in the skin color of the candidate or the district. It's in political ideology. Whites will vote for black candidates who represent their interests and concerns.
disgraceful
Make Alabama a seven-member constituency with STV and let the voters choose their own bases for voting.
That requires congress to chance the system. There was a dem bill that barely even got dem co-sponsors nvm getting republicans.
@@theuglykwan Mm, I don't know that that is correct. What it requires is public support and a relative absence of beggar-thy-neighbor attitude. Bills proposed in Congress are generally (and reasonably) considered more as cudgels for partisan advantage than something good overall. Top-down approaches have their weaknesses. Thanks for your reply.
Unfortunately states cannot switch from single-seat districts to multi-member representation unless the federal government repeals the 1967 district mandate, and as that would dilute the power of those congress people currently in power, I don’t see that happening. :(
@@trevinbeattie4888 I'm not counting the days . . . I should think its best shot would be to work up slowly from local and statewide usage proving itself to be a valuable way of organizing ourselves, to open up the national conversation. Thanks for the law cite.
Then you would send 7 Republicans to DC?
Not good
You guys going to do a video on Maryland or Massachusetts and how unfair those maps are to those state republican voters?
They won't, 538 has a Democrat agenda
They already did one on Illinois. Massachusetts isn’t gerrymandered, the state has 9 districts and Republicans are 10% of registered voters.
@@MultiMagniGladii Interesting that you were deceptive with your response. In Massachusetts 1/3 of the State voted for Trump and yet not a single district will go to a republican? Crazy gerrymander.
@@TheJake452 once again, this is because Republicans are literally 10% of registered voters. There is no reasonable map that gives them a majority in any district because they are nowhere close to a majority in any part of the state.
@@TheJake452 theres is no way you could draw a district that favors republicans via cook pvi without butchering the lines. literally every county leans democrats by atleast +7
I don’t think gerrymandering will ever stop so long as they can say “what about them” so long as Illinois and massacheussets gerrymander, so will Texas and Alabama, as long as New Jersey gerrymanders, so will North Carolina.
To the contrary. Everybody would make deliberate choices about districting to their own advantage even if there was only one state. Yes you have some pressure from the national parties to break up any happy compromises among legislators, but it's contrary to human nature to expect people to be completely self-effacing.
I'm from MA. We're D+32 across the state. If you were to try a Republican gerrymander of Massachusetts, you'd get ONE district where Republicans have a 65% chance of getting their candidate in. MA is NOT gerrymandered, we're just that blue.
@@coreyeverett5500 Yes, you would have to deliberately draw it to get even one R-leaning district. But it's still gerrymandered. The potential central Mass R district is sliced up diagonally between the Springfield and the Worcester districts. And both the Lowell and Newton/Fall River districts soak up pieces of this area. The map is also not as compact as it could be. Every map is drawn for purpose, and Mass' is no exception. Nice MA name. Cheers.
@@coreyeverett5500 Moreover, with Ethan's working definition of a gerrymander being anything that does not as much as possible bring parties into proportionality (which mind you isn't my def'n), MA is definitely a gerrymander.
Bamas. Ofc
Not to mention one of the people I n supreme court is for it justice clearance Thomas. It doesn't do what you are interrupting it to do as always. Spin things around and spew lies makes for good headlines but you have common sense right?
I wonder how black voters in Alabama feel about this and what they are doing about it and how much of the voting process are black people involved in states like AL, MS, and LA. In my mind, I see an interviewer asking this question, and the person being like "b!+(# I got bills."
MS actually has a high number of black elected officials. It's just they are at the tier below the state level as white people ceded the former but not the latter.
@Ace Spades I mean, if that's their choice, then it's fine. I feel most don't care about the D versus R drama. Correcting the issues and problems in their counties should be the priority. A voter who has no representation will never see (what they care about) problems handled.
@Brandon C. 100% agree. I also feel there is also a learning curve to understanding how local governments function. I wish organizations focused more on educating voters on why a particular vote matters from a non-biased perspective. It seems that key issues are hidden until voters reach the ballot. By then it's too late to learn and the vote is cast on conjecture.
I think you are little bit hypocrite . You talk about states that have republican in power and has gerrymandering . But you never talk about the democratic states which have have the worst gerrymandering in the country . example :-
Massachusetts :- where 32 percent of the population voted for republican and have zero ( yes absolutely zero ) congressional seats . and there is not even a single competitive district
New Mexico :- where 37 percent of the population voted for republican and have just four congressional district ( the democratic controlled legislature cut the republican seats in absolutely half )
New Mexico :- where 43 percent of the population voted for republican and have zero congressional leaning district ( the democratic legislature have dissolved the only republican seat and turned all the four seats in democratic leaning)
Common FiveThirthEight show these also and make a video for these state also.
You all claimed that texas has the worst gerrymandering , but think at least once about what would have happened if they have followed the Massachusetts way and gave zero seats to the democrates .
The series only started (from what I've seen there are only 4 episodes), 2 about republican gerrymanders (Texas/Alabama) and 2 about democratic gerrymanders (New York/Nevada).
I would imagine they'll eventually make videos on all 50 states.
Here are the democrat videos : ua-cam.com/video/SjWhSK4fAxM/v-deo.html , ua-cam.com/video/bAbuxFJuFnY/v-deo.html
you didnt even mention illinois which is the absolute worst one besides new yorks
Believe it or not, but it's extremely difficult to create even a single reliably Republican district because of how much the Republican vote is spread out across the state. Not a single county in Massachusetts has voted Republican in a presidential election since 1988.
I'm not sure what you are referring to in your third example, because you mislabeled it as New Mexico and off the top of my head there isn't a 4/4 Democratic gerrymander in a state with four districts.
FiveThirtyEight has made other videos on Democratic gerrymanders, there are simply less Democratic states where the state boundaries were drawn by an actual legislature.
@@polandballofspace4226 i am a kraut and i can see that those "independent commitys" produced highly gerrymandered maps
Use me as a dislike button. Just because a state is 1/4 black, doesn’t mean they need to draw these weird and disjointed districts just to make it be majority black
If representatives were allocated proportionally to the votes they received in the state you would be right but given the fact that districts have a straight majority rule and that the vote is very much racially divided a gerrymandering such as this literally means that you're stripping away representation from some people
The districts are not weird and disjointed, they showed maps of what they looked like earlier.
@@holdenennis As a foreigner even the best of districts seems very undemocratic an non representative of the will of the people, it doesn't make sense that a minority party can have the presidency, the Senate and the House of representatives.
@@holdenennis go to 0:59 in the video and look at the light blue district. They purposely stretch it to mobile and it even makes it to where that bottom Republican district isn’t even connected. That is pretty disjointed if u ask me
@@paolorubenmastretta Like in Canada? The minority party has 40 more seats in the House of Commons and the prime minister is of the minority party.
two 7ths 😆 ? maybe a third. but yes my state is racist that's why most youngsters leave
look at the scale of that graph... yikes
A comment on Nate Cohens assessment that the new district maps nationwide created roughly the same number of leaning seats for both parties would be nice. Does 538 agree? Or would that, if true, destroy the topic for you? Might want to keep that quiet! lol
That's not a contradiction. Democrats have fought back with gerrymandering of their own, as they should because unilateral disarmament is suicide. 538's own redistricting tracker on the front page shows that the redrawing is has given Dems +11 so far and GOP -6. I'm not sure which are left to be done I would imagine it will balance out, but regardless, it's a gerrymandering war which is fucked up but started by the Republicans.
@@BrendanBeckett Weird. There was no Republican Party when the term Gerrymander was created.
But I suppose gerrymandering is ok as long as your side gains the advantage!
There is no contradiction. But recognizing that the maps ended up balanced is interesting gerrymandering news!
A comment would be useful to the audience.
@@lindseyreese1124 I didn't say Republicans invented Gerrymandering bud, but they've weaponized and escalated it to unprecedented levels in recent times, forcing a mutual escalation
@@BrendanBeckett the democrats invented it used it to ther best to get an advantage and now complain that the republicans do the same ........
First?
Dislike 👎🏻
ok
The problem here is the definition of gerrymander. If the 7 seats were conducted over the entire state then you would have 7 Republicans. You have to really contort the map to get one Minority Majority district. Two would look even more gerrymandered.
Gerrymandered no longer means "insanely drawn districts" it means "outcome progressives don't like".
Gerrymandered never meant that a district is bad 'cause is weirdly shaped, you could have some legitimate geographical reasons for a weird shape, the problem is and always will be one of representation it's absurd that the politician is chosing his/hers electorate and it's worse and straight up illegal when it's done to suppress the vote of racial minorities.
Paolo! I can tell you're smarter than the talking points you're running. Your first statement is wrong. Gerrymandering got its name from a particular district that looked like a salamander. Also all district drawing has motivations. All district drawing HAS to be by motivated people. The congresspeople are NOT picking their districts, but somebody is. Packing and hacking goes on primarily by party; when the result is visible by skin color, some judges get uncomfortable. But some also get uncomfortable when you gerrymander hard based on race, like here. Legal or illegal is what a judge wants out of a morass of conflicting desires. Tim is almost right.
@@johnyoung1761 Compact districts should be the goal.
@@johnyoung1761 To be clear I'm running no one's talking points, I'm an outsider to US politics and tough I clearly care about US politics I don't follow anyone's position, that being said in any definition of gerrymandering you can find it says that it isn't enough for a district to be weird to be gerrymandered it has to give a partisan advantage to someone be gerrymandered. Also it's not that difficult to see if a district is actually gerrymandered for political or racial reasons, if a state with 25% of black has no black majority district that's an illegal racial gerrymandering, that's what was always upheld by the courts, having 7 white and republican districts in such a state wouldn't represent how the state actually is and votes having some 36% democratic vote
Paulo, the word gerrymander is compiled of the name Gerry, who was a governor of my state involved in partisan district-drawing, and salamander, for the shape. Every mis-shapen district - and pretty much every compact district - is designed to protect an incumbent, as a designer district for an ambitious lower-tier politician, to chase out an incumbent, to give partisans or moderates or some other group an upper hand, or to soak up excess votes for advantage elsewhere. In my state, you could go out of your way and draw two odd-shaped districts where Rs would have a decent chance. That would be a gerrymander, too. As it is, the 30-40 percent Rs and R-trending independents have lost something like the last 80 congressional seat elections in my state. The controlling party does not draw lines to promote such competition.