mostly its the problem that we have a republican governor and democratic congressmen/house representatives. It doesn't work out that well and leads to problems such as this. Baltimore is even trying to open schools but started school late because of partisan divide.
As a Marylander ashamed of our gerrymandering, I know we can do better. However, this likely will change in 2021 with the new data from Census2020... at least that’s my prayer to God. Here’s why. Another commenter wrongly said the reason for the foolish district lines comes from our Republican governor and Democratic legislature. Actually, back in 2010-11, both of these govt. branches were fully run by Democrats. They saw how Texas and North Carolina, etc.’s district lines were drawn to create easy reelection for Republicans. So, they fought fire with a blazing conflagration even Jackson Pollack would call a hot mess. Next year, the governor and legislature may horse-trade with the lines. Yet, that system will refrain from stuffing almost all conservatives into one district and likely will go back to more geographically pleasing lines. Like I said, that’s my prayer!
It’s not about geography, it’s about population. Populations change and that’s why they aren’t straight lines and why they shouldn’t be straight lines. 🤦♂️🤦♂️
@@salcoscino4272 The field of geography encompasses more than just lines along physical topography. Social geographers are capable of crafting sensible maps based on populations and their changes, and could arguably do a better job based on objective reasoning rather than political motivations.
@@GuamGuy I absolutely agree. I don't think that means we shouldn't try to minimize its influence, though. (Also, because power is at stake, it could strengthen the argument that politics should be removed from the redistricting process.) Iowa has come pretty close to having a (relatively) non-partisan map, providing a sample and starting-off point of what is possible.
@@toobeast5485 I live in NC and let me tell you I wouldnt want to live anywhere else... if you want the beach it's not a far drive if you want the mountains not a far drive either well maybe you just want some flat grassland well theres a lot here maybe you want a big city not to far either ok well maybe you want to live in the middle of no where and dont want anyone bothering you geuss what lmao theres a ton of land here for sale all the time
Virginia is gerrymandered to hell and back to. During the last election Virginia passed a constitutional amendment banning gerrymandering. I'm really interested in seeing how the new non partisan committee is going to clean up this mess.
@@toobeast5485 don't let gerrymandering deter y'all from moving to North Carolina. As a fellow North Carolinian, I can tell you that the state is incredibly beautiful and well worth living in. Not only do you have easy access to the beach and mountains, but you also have ample job opportunities in areas like Charlotte, the Triad, and the Triangle. If you are someone who intends to or already has a career in medicine, technology, engineering, energy management, banking, or agriculture, North Carolina is the perfect state for it.
*shows Maryland* “Look at this abomination to democracy” haha Kyle I laughed pretty hard on that note. I always enjoy watching your videos. Always Informative and entertaining.
I moved to MD in 2003. My apartment was in MD4... i moved 2 miles and was in MD3... i then moved south and was in Md5. I have friends all around the country, and some mention their gerrymandering... and I laugh and say, how cute. MD districts are as disgusting as politics itself. Your map would grant Republicans 3 maybe even 4 districts. MD will never grant more than 1 Rep. Disrict...butbif they have to, it is nearly 80% red.
@Angelo River nah, the Maryland gerrymandering was done by the Democrats, (or at the very least they are complicit in it otherwise it would have been redrawn already), and I'm a marylander who usually votes democratic myself.
@@vuchaser99 His map would really only give Republicans one more safe seat, and that one would be even redder than the existing one. The purple and yellow districts would be reasonably competitive, though.
as someone who lives in that chaotic mess of districts in the center of MD, i appreciate your map. if this was how it was actually divided maybe i wouldn't forget what district i live in so much lol. at one point in government class, we all had to figure out what district we lived in and WOW it was an ordeal. there were probably at least three districts being represented in that room alone, which is just crazy considering we all go to the same school.
I realize you were looking at it from more of a geographic analysis point than political, but it should be noted that the new North Carolina map that was drawn for 2020 was not a bi-partisan map. It was drawn by the NC State Legislature and was actually the third map they had. The initial map got thrown out in 2016 for racial gerrymandering, the Legislature drew a new map that got thrown out for partisan gerrymandering and they finally came up with the map you showed for 2020. That map was still a bit of a gerrymander, but subtle enough for it to get past the courts.
@@Itsmattz what is disaster for democracy is gerrymandering just to give the other party more votes when they should not deserve it. Just because you support the party who is benefiting from gerrymandering that doesn't make it right or justify it.
@@Itsmattz The supposed issue with proportional allocation is that it would be hard for minority groups to elect a member of their race/ethnicity. Whereas in a majority minority district they can select the party nominee and then vote for the nominee, in a proportional system they'd likely have to hope the parties select members of the race to be on the list, etc. But it's not unfeasible the minority group could band together to vote for a party of their own (e.g. a Black Interest party in Alabama or something).
In James Gelvin’s book, A History of the Modern Middle East, he tells us first, that the Sykes-Picot agreement never came to fruition and, second, that “there is no such thing as primordial attachments. At all. Tribal, ethnic, and sectarian affiliations...are neither permanent nor inflexible, and should be viewed as the product of history, not its driving force.”
Joseph Bonney why are you randomly quoting a book like that? Speak for yourself instead of just taking the words of James gelvin. Also Sykes picot absolutely came to fruition, to deny that basic fact is ridiculous. The agreement said Britain and France would split the Middle East along an arbitrary line and that’s exactly what happened.
@@Ash-zm1vx Idk why I quoted. I was taking a break from history homework to watch this video and I was studying that chapter so I was like, what the heck, no one will care if I give it a shot. Apparently, they did. oh well
Tbh every state has wayyy too much gerrymandering, just look at Ohio or New Jersey, he should continue till he’s done with almost every state with over 1 district.
This is interesting, and I am definitely in favor of ungerrymandering districts. I do have to say however, the main problem with just going by geographical-only districts is that it doesn't account for population or communities and can negatively impact underrepresented communities and minorities. For example, the 4th district in Illinois - It has a weird shape and has been ridiculed because of it. But, it was created that way to ensure that the Latino population in Illinois can actually have a representative and a voice in Congress. Otherwise, they would be split and absorbed into majority white districts and not have any representation or voice in state and national politics. So yes, we need to address the gerrymandering problem we have in this country, but how can we make it fair and assure everyone can be heard and represented?
Yea I’ve used DRA a lot But I use it for the exact opposite: making maps that are as ridiculously gerrymandered as possible About the ca map though, the commission is actually alright, but suburban trends in the state have made the map accidentally favor Democrats And CA honestly probably should do gerrymandering, if only to counteract the gerrymandering in places like Wisconsin and Texas that aren’t going away anytime soon
Political districts rely on more than geography for definition. Homogeneity of constituents is also important. Your redraw of California seems to take that into account, no matter how coincidentally. Yes, Norrg Carolina, Maryland, Illinois and other states need redistricting, but dont expect new lines to follow political boundaries or geological structures discretely.
Homogeneity also leads to safe elections, which can suffocate political discussion. If there is low diversity within a district that district is probably going to be a landslide for whichever party best represents the majority population every time. Good for politicians, bad for the people.
@@KnufWons The flip side of that is that too much diversity can lead to a homogeneous population being “cracked” between multiple districts and end up being unrepresented minorities in each of those districts. This is why single-member districts are undemocratic/anti-fair representation in general.
Your redistricting, in spite of being intended as non-partisan, would fix a lot of what is wrong with politics as they stand. It would also clearly tip the balance back away from the large, urban areas, which would make the House more representative of the people in different geographic regions. Great work and great video!
Honestly, just from a European perspective, having congressional districts at all seems silly. It means that congress will never represent how the people voted. If you have districts, the percentage of votes each party gets will never match the seats they hold in congress. Why not just have state wide congressional elections. Then each state has a certain number of seats in congress, and they will be divided up based on the percentage of the vote that each party got in that state. Then the people ACTUALLY elect congress.
That is (sort of) how the US Senate works, each state has 2 Senators, elected in statewide elections. But compared to European countries, the US is huge in geography and population with a lot bigger variety of interests. Even within some states you have the same issue. Historically, in the US people like to vote for an individual over a Party. With only 2 major Parties to choose from, its tough to agree with one on everything. There are some issues I prefer the Democrats’ position, and others I prefer the Republicans’. I’ve voted lots of times but can’t remember the last time, if ever, I’ve voted an entire ballot exclusively for one Party or the other. Your proposal forces people to pick a Party, and the individuals can only be chosen once each Party knows how many seats they won. An Illinois farmer simply voting for a Party because he likes their agriculture platform, then that Party later appointing a Chicago lawyer who wants to focus on inner city problems and has nothing in common with him other than Party affiliation to “represent” him, just wouldn’t fly here. Having districts, in theory at least (if they’re drawn properly which is the subject of this video) makes it much more likely that the representation of a state accounts for the variety of people instead of, using Illinois again, the largest city completely dominating everything.
@RubberDuck hit it exactly right. The founders divided the government in this way so that in theory, the Senate would be voice for the State and the House of Representatives would be voice for the individual people. For instance, water access is a big deal in my district. My congressman is in theory, more accessible and knowledgeable about the water issues here than my senator who lives and works 300 miles away, but my senator is probably more knowledgeable on the water issues the entire State faces. Both of these voices being represented in Congress is valuable. As mentioned, in the video there has been a lot of manipulation over the years and it's definitely imperfect. I would argue that the imperfections are more a result of shady politicians and reliance on the two party system, but I can also see how the system allows for such things to occur
@@OnTheBrink444 I honestly don't quite see how it makes real sense though. Like in the senate Wyoming literally has as much of a say as California. And the Senate has A LOT of power! That seems ridiculous. Even more so than the congressional districts which at least diverge from the actual vote by less.. The way the senate works makes it so a vote in Wyoming is worth 70 times more than a vote in California. The electoral college also seems quite weird to me. It makes it so the 40% of New Yorkers and 34% of Californians that vote republican don't matter AT ALL. They literally might as well not have voted. Millions of people. Almost exactly as many people voted for Trump in California as in Texas. But republicans basically never campaign in California, because those voters don't matter thanks to the electoral college. Same goes for the democratic voters in Texas and many southern states of course. If popular vote decided the presidency it would make sense for democrats to campaign all over the south and middle of the country. And for republicans to campaign in New York and California. Because both sides could gain a lot of votes in those regions. We honestly don't know if this would just benefit democrats, because turnout in usually safe states would be a lot higher for the under-dog in that state I imagine. Since people would be less disenfranchised to vote now that their vote matters. But even if it does benefit one party more, isn't that just how democracy is supposed to work? The party with more votes wins. Not the party with fewer votes.
Your redrawing of congressional districts is so much better than what we have now. One intelligent human being is better than a hundred self-serving fools.
Thank you for showing a better Maryland districting. It hurt my eyes to see my beautiful Maryland be so wonky closer to DC, Baltimore, and Annapolis (which I jokingly call “The Triumvirate”). MD’s 1 and 6 look much better and maintain their original geographic borders. Also, WE NEED YOU HERE IN MARYLAND!
I agree 100%! That has been my pet project for a long time. Each district is an existing county. The only thing that changes is the numbers of reps in each county.
Issue with just using geography isn't doesn't take into account the racial makeup of geography, so you can accidentally break up minority populations and dilute their voting power.
The race and political affiliation of voters should NOT influence redistricting... Minorities shouldn't be undemocratically given an advantage, just like white people shouldn't. The point is to be non-partisan.
Late to the party, but I worked on proposals for the 2020 Congressional maps for the state of Utah. A truly unaligned group of individuals. As Geographers, we spent months working on several maps for the state to use that were as fair as possible. By a 2018 law, one of our proposals was required to be used, however, just before our conclusion, the state amended the law to state that we were now merely recommended proposals. After presenting the proposals, they drew up their own map and passed it. Absolutely terrible. Utah has 4 Congressional districts and Salt Lake City is now split between all 4. No matter which corner of the state you live in, you share a Representative with people in the states capital! An 11 minute walking route was immediately found as a method of walking through all 4 districts. I spent so much time with the team over several months only to be tossed aside immediately. The thing that piss me off still is the passing and amending of their non partisan laws to make it look like they are being fair but in no way intending to be.
The *precise* boundaries are another interesting topic. Oftentimes, it's easier to run the boundary (for example) right down the middle of a street; easier just because it's easy to describe. But this means that neighbors across the street are in different districts. Much harder to describe is running the boundary through the empty forests outside the neighborhoods; but it keeps the neighborhoods (and streets) together. Once upon a time, we were reallocated to an odd parliamentary riding, and the issue was the exact street-splitting approach mentioned here. I wrote a suggestion to the thankfully non-political commission, and ten years later they took my suggestion and arrived at much more complicated descriptions for the boundaries (twice the words), but running through forested areas, not splitting streets. For this video, the County allocation method is pretty good; so my point about street splitting may only apply in limited instances.
Gerrymandering is such a mess, I loved seeing how you cleaned it up. I'm glad I live in a state with only two districts, they could still use some work, but there's less opportunity to have districts like those crazy maryland and north carolina ones.
So I know one of the tricky things about ungerrymandering is that there are some laws such as the Civil Rights act that stated that certain underrepresented groups need to have representation in congress which in turns causes some weird districts in Chicago and so forth. This seems to go only on nice clean lines which would break the law as currently written federally (also, the reason why non-partisan maps seem funky).
Why did the Wisconsin districts/counties extend into Lake Michigan? Does a Wisconsin sheriff respond to waterbourne calls? I would've guessed that would all be state jurisdiction, or even Coast Guard. What would be the ideals of a totally non-political district mapping? Keeping all the citizens close to their representative's office? Keeping the state's population divided equally among all the distrticts? Right off, I don't understand the advantage of targeting district lines to keep all races, lifestyles, affluences, etc., together.
The problem in many cases is that states get sued for civil rights violations if they don't create a "majority minority" district. Yet the minorities aren't necessarily in one area in sufficient numbers to have a compact district, so you get some of the odd ones you see in order to avoid lawsuits.
I'm glad you brought up Wisconsin. I live district and clearly we got gerrymandered out some of the counties that probably should belong in our district but they weren't.
Hey, I think a way we could reform the electoral college is to have independent electoral districts with equal populations. That can vote however they want. So Cali would have 55 electoral districts all with the same population. Could you do a video like this for that idea? Making the electoral districts with equal populations with some states?
In California, the coast is not the same as the mountains in the northeast. Using geography would be using terrain, watersheds, major geographic features. The county lines in the west were not drawn this way. So County lines are not a good representation of “geography”
I live in NC and it’s pretty nice here I live in the middle of the state so it’s a perfect balance with a 2 hr drive to the beach and a 3 hour drive too the mountains
Partisan advantage and bipartisan protection of incumbents aren't the only factors compelling the current weird maps. Some districts are designed to gather ethnic populations together, to avoid court challenges based on the Voting Rights Act.
Geography King: These are the most gerrymandered states. Illinois Congressional districts 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 11: That's cute. Chicago Wards 1, 2, 16, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, and 32: Amateurs.
A mention of _voting efficiency gap_ which quantifies votes wasted by gerrymandering would have been helpful. The concept is to be used by the Michigan Non-partisan Redistricting Commission to draw new districts next year.
California's independent redistricting commission is required to take into account geography but also "common economic and social interests." Having been up north, I would argue that the current map with its coastal District 2 and its more valley/mountain-oriented District 1 is more sensical from a representation perspective than having a monolithic block that just spans across all those northern counties. I also would echo some other comments that say that trying to pack cities into one district as much as possible would frequently amount to an ideal republican gerrymander, since that's where a lot of democratic votes are and that kind of "packing" is one strategy for gerrymander. Real un-gerrymandering is more than just about what makes geographic sense (though that should also be a very important datapoint), and should also strive to make political offices as representative and competitive as possible. That's the only way you'll get politicians who care more about listening to their constituents than their own job security.
As someone raised in Maryland this is pretty epic, but as a Western Marylander I am obligated to say that Western MD ends at Washington County and may go no further lol. Culturally we are just not the same as the rest of MD but pop wise, I guess we have to take some o' those other counties...
Congressional districts should be drawn to represent the will of the voters, not mountains and rivers. The downside of gerrymandering is how it disenfranchises voters. Your maps do nothing to alleviate that. Great work generally. thanks, Kyle
The fairest way to do it is to take it totally out of human hands. Write a program that puts a dot where each person lives. No data about the person just a dot. Then have the program divide the map up into the most compact areas with equal dots. Allowance made for township or county lines.
When putting up a comparison map it would make more sense to overlay your data with the current data. If you need to do side by side then don't include data on one map that isn't on the other. Both maps should have the same information represented, it will make side by side comparison easier. Also adding in city point data (pop > 200,000) will help people orient the data they are looking at. Cartography is a science and artform, the viewer should be able to look at the information and interpret it without any outside explination.
As a Marylander I appreciate what you did! I'm about as far left as you can get but I hate our congressional districts that were drawn up under Gov. O'Malley and the other Dem Big Wigs here in the state some years back. Due to the nature of where most of the population is, Maryland would have a Dem majority either way, but the gerrymandering essentially gets rid of any possibility of competitive elections and is a disaster for democracy. And yes there can never be clean Maryland districts haha - we have a weird shape and our population is centered in 4 counties and 1 city, so it's kinda weird.
The problem is that geographically clean and neat maps can still wind up being pretty unfair on a partisan basis. You almost have to split larger cities up into separate districts to undo the effects of the "Democrats = clustered in cities, Republicans = spread out in rural/exurban areas" phenomenon, just to make the number of seats won resemble the vote share. Illinois (with Democratic control of districting) somewhat achieves this by splitting up Chicago among districts that include more rural areas. Some of Illinois' districts, like IL-04, are still pretty weird, but some of that serves to draw federally-mandated majority-minority districts. IL-04 infamously joins two Latino areas by running a line down the I-294 freeway, but it surrounds some heavily-Black areas in IL-07 -- making those districts more compact or saner-looking wouldn't change the partisan balance. With Maryland, Democrats arguably sniped one seat in MD-06 by joining the conservative rural western part of the state with some DC suburbs, but one analysis I saw showed that they could've been even more aggressive by splitting up the Eastern Shore (MD-01) and potentially achieving an 8D-0R delegation.
I concern with lumping single cities into a voting district is that it effectively does what gerrymandering does to a less subtle degree. There is also the troublesome state of difference between city sectors. It isn't likely possible that a fair portioning can be done and it may be that a fuller representative democracy will slowly overtake on the state houses in the form of proposals. There is still a poor job of informing the voters on the purpose of individual proposals, but the reversal is likely true in representatives not discovering the issues of much of their voting district.
I wrote a letter to my state legislator asking them to gerrymander our state. Edit: California has a state commission that does the districts. Also, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Ohio are also extremely gerrymandered
I always find your videos informative and interesting. I especially appreciate that you included California too. I hope that people from other states realize how populous and diverse the state really is. I think that the right wing Republicans benefit greatly from the gerrymandering most. I am with you. I would like to see redistricting that makes more sense.
One problem with saying that redistricting is purely geographical is that there are federal requirements that the states include minority majority districts in their redistricting plans. This way it becomes harder to deny the political rights based on race.
Area codes are gerrymandered as well. My area code 609 in NJ goes from the very southeast point of the state to the Delaware River north of Trenton on a slant. Of the 8 counties it serves only 3 are exclusively in the 609 while the other 5 are bits and pieces of other counties
I’m actually a fan of California’s redistricting map, I think that somewhere like Humboldt country would much rather be grouped with Mendocino and Marin, rather than the inland areas with Redding or Modoc county- culturally and politically speaking- I know this was an issue when I lived in Humboldt county, when they were redrawing the maps people did not want to be lumped with Redding 😂 Also, what I don’t think you touched on, is that districts still need to be drawn so various minority groups are not drawn out of representation. So, if 40% of California’s population is Hispanic, then about 40% of the districts need to be drawn with majority Hispanic population. I think I’ve heard that as to why there are still some strange looking gerrymanders in there. I’m a fan of greatly increasing the seats in Congress so we have much smaller districts and a more representative democracy!
Great work! I can absolutely understand that you don't want to get too much into the politics in your videos, espacially these days. It'd be really interesting though to see how your new borders would change the results. From what I know - or believe to know - it's mainly Republicans who implement and profit from gerrymandering. Can anybody confirm or rebut this? Did anybody go through the numbers to compare gerrymandered and "just" results?
As of now gerrymandering benefits Republicans. If every state were ungerrymandered Democrats would gain about 10 seats nationwide. However everything changes after the Census. There's no reason to think that the party benefit will stay the same. Democrats do a lot of gerrymandering as well- it's just not working in their favor right now.
Did you review after you drew the districts to check if your districts inadvertently promote racial segregation? And, in some cases you may have - without your knowing it - drawn districts that are overwhelmingly of one party. Drawing districts that appear weird or unwieldy may therefore have a proper rationale. [But I certainly prefer the appearance of the districts you drew.]
Districts that are overwhelmingly of one party aren't inherently a bad thing If anything, they might be better, because then the rep has an easier time accurately promoting the ideals of the districts, if everyone mostly agrees
@@SuperSMT Yes/no. That's what we have now in most States: politicians draw districts whose residents agree with their viewpoints. What I have read is that the intentional (or unintentional) clustering of like-minded folks has been a major factor in our increasingly divided population. The politicians move more and more to one side or the other to remain in office and thus do not care about the opinions of the minority in their district. On the surface, that argument makes sense to me but I don't know if it's true. What do you think about that point of view?
Those districts definitely look better, but I feel they would only work if some kind of proportional representation system were in use (say MMP). Otherwise the results could be quite horrifying
The Map in North Carolina wouldn’t work because NC is expected to gain an elector and therefore it will have 16 Electoral Votes. On your map there is only 12 districts. You would need to add two more.
Both parties partake in this, but there were a lot more republican governorships than democratic ones in swing states (Until 2018), and the gerrymandering tends to favor Republicans.
@@SuperSMT I think it depends on the case and nature of the redrawing. Nevertheless, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania all have Republican state legislatures but Democratic governors. This all too common skew between statewide and district races is a direct result of a history of Gerrymandering.
If the citizens of a state continuously vote for one party on a statewide level but their legislature reflects the opposite, almost always gerrymandering. It's not like Gretchen Whitmer or Ralph Northam are super charismatic eminences that won the hearts of republicans lol.
It should be geographical only. However with humans being counted by ethnic background instead you get these crazy lines. Until recently one of the most egregious was in Florida where a district ran from Jacksonville to Orlando using only train tracks to keep it contiguous to achieve the outcome.
A website called Dave's Redistricting. It's a really detailed and fun website to mess around with. It's primarily for political stuff, but can be used for other making other types of maps too.
I don't know if following county or city boundaries is the best test. The best test would be districts with the fewest wasted votes for each party. You don't want any party "cracked' into a district it can't win, or "packed" into a district where it has lots of wasted votes. I think in NC 48% of voters voted Democratic but they ended up with more than 2/3rds Republican representation, so you'd want something that came pretty close to 48% D and 52% R for that state. The example I'd use for why municipally drawn boundaries aren't a good test is school districts. School districts are often drawn around community boundaries but can end up completely segregated by race or class. That's considered legal because of a SCOTUS case in the 1980s, but it's pretty egregious in terms of actually getting just school district boundaries.
Slay the Gerrymander! I hate gerrymandering and have for a long time. It seems so unrighteousness. I figured that I could solve gerrymandering in my state (Pennsylvania) in about ten minutes with a map, a pen and a ruler. You did a much better job than I would have. But mine would be better than what we have now!🤣
Problem with trying to make a city their own district. This in itself is gerrymandering urban vs rural. There's cracking and packing. What you're doing is a classic gerrymander "packing"
There are several problems with drawing boundaries. Counties and state boundaries don’t always follow geography. Demographics and politics don’t follow boundaries, and they change. What is actually fair? Then there are several goals you have to choose between. Compact is not necessarily representative or competitive. Representative is often not compact or competitive. Competitive is not representative nor compact. It is easy to give your favorite party more, or secure districts, much harder to be fair.
I live in the same area as you (maybe even the same town) it was confusing to get served ads from all three congregational races. My congregants also complain about how gerrymandered the central valley is.
I would love a Part 2 of this video, comparing 5 more states. Florida is pretty bad too. Like California, there are a lot of congressional districts and due to politics there are many very strange shaped districts. One party has controlled the state for many years, so there has been little incentive to make any changes.
So I know that you use nonpartisan data how would you go about making a district designed to be competitive or is that just balancing urban and rural communities to have it be a 50/50 district?
Thanks for commenting. It's really hard to see, but the purplish blue district around Raleigh is actually two districts (the smaller one is a tiny bit more purple). The app I used to create these maps is very limited in the colors you can use and it made that part of the state tough to see.
I think the people drawing the Maryland districts were trying their best to break the four color theorem.
I live in Maryland, can confirm.
mostly its the problem that we have a republican governor and democratic congressmen/house representatives. It doesn't work out that well and leads to problems such as this. Baltimore is even trying to open schools but started school late because of partisan divide.
@@umariqbal7557 same
As a Marylander ashamed of our gerrymandering, I know we can do better. However, this likely will change in 2021 with the new data from Census2020... at least that’s my prayer to God.
Here’s why. Another commenter wrongly said the reason for the foolish district lines comes from our Republican governor and Democratic legislature. Actually, back in 2010-11, both of these govt. branches were fully run by Democrats. They saw how Texas and North Carolina, etc.’s district lines were drawn to create easy reelection for Republicans. So, they fought fire with a blazing conflagration even Jackson Pollack would call a hot mess.
Next year, the governor and legislature may horse-trade with the lines. Yet, that system will refrain from stuffing almost all conservatives into one district and likely will go back to more geographically pleasing lines. Like I said, that’s my prayer!
@@erichatch912 The marryland legislature has a supermajority of Democrats, which will override The Republican governor's veto...
"Let geographers handle this stuff, not politicians."
Amen to that!
It’s not about geography, it’s about population. Populations change and that’s why they aren’t straight lines and why they shouldn’t be straight lines. 🤦♂️🤦♂️
@@salcoscino4272 The field of geography encompasses more than just lines along physical topography. Social geographers are capable of crafting sensible maps based on populations and their changes, and could arguably do a better job based on objective reasoning rather than political motivations.
@@Bobert4Real when power is at stake, it is inherently political.
@@GuamGuy I absolutely agree. I don't think that means we shouldn't try to minimize its influence, though. (Also, because power is at stake, it could strengthen the argument that politics should be removed from the redistricting process.)
Iowa has come pretty close to having a (relatively) non-partisan map, providing a sample and starting-off point of what is possible.
In Iowa the districts are generated by a computer ever 10 years.
Coming from someone who lives in NC, I'm really happy you explained these atrocious maps. I always forget which district I live in. 🤣
My gf keeps telling me she wants to move there one day. These maps telling me otherwise
@@toobeast5485 I live in NC and let me tell you I wouldnt want to live anywhere else... if you want the beach it's not a far drive if you want the mountains not a far drive either well maybe you just want some flat grassland well theres a lot here maybe you want a big city not to far either ok well maybe you want to live in the middle of no where and dont want anyone bothering you geuss what lmao theres a ton of land here for sale all the time
@Alexander Taylor I live in a small town so I really don't know what gerrymandering is
Virginia is gerrymandered to hell and back to. During the last election Virginia passed a constitutional amendment banning gerrymandering. I'm really interested in seeing how the new non partisan committee is going to clean up this mess.
@@toobeast5485 don't let gerrymandering deter y'all from moving to North Carolina. As a fellow North Carolinian, I can tell you that the state is incredibly beautiful and well worth living in. Not only do you have easy access to the beach and mountains, but you also have ample job opportunities in areas like Charlotte, the Triad, and the Triangle. If you are someone who intends to or already has a career in medicine, technology, engineering, energy management, banking, or agriculture, North Carolina is the perfect state for it.
*shows Maryland* “Look at this abomination to democracy” haha Kyle I laughed pretty hard on that note. I always enjoy watching your videos. Always Informative and entertaining.
Thank you! I'm glad you like the videos and thanks for the support.
I moved to MD in 2003. My apartment was in MD4... i moved 2 miles and was in MD3... i then moved south and was in Md5. I have friends all around the country, and some mention their gerrymandering... and I laugh and say, how cute. MD districts are as disgusting as politics itself. Your map would grant Republicans 3 maybe even 4 districts. MD will never grant more than 1 Rep. Disrict...butbif they have to, it is nearly 80% red.
@@vuchaser99 Maryland is very blue though over 60% one of the highest in the country
@Angelo River nah, the Maryland gerrymandering was done by the Democrats, (or at the very least they are complicit in it otherwise it would have been redrawn already), and I'm a marylander who usually votes democratic myself.
@@vuchaser99 His map would really only give Republicans one more safe seat, and that one would be even redder than the existing one. The purple and yellow districts would be reasonably competitive, though.
I'd be curious to see an estimate of what impact these suggested districts would have on the parties' share of representatives.
It would provide a more clear representation of the people voting.
as someone who lives in that chaotic mess of districts in the center of MD, i appreciate your map.
if this was how it was actually divided maybe i wouldn't forget what district i live in so much lol.
at one point in government class, we all had to figure out what district we lived in and WOW it was an ordeal. there were probably at least three districts being represented in that room alone, which is just crazy considering we all go to the same school.
Exactly!! Maryland is horrible. Kyle's map would be so easy because my district would be almost entirely within my county borders.
At Wilkinson, the correct answer was Anna Eshoo, which...not in my case.
I realize you were looking at it from more of a geographic analysis point than political, but it should be noted that the new North Carolina map that was drawn for 2020 was not a bi-partisan map. It was drawn by the NC State Legislature and was actually the third map they had. The initial map got thrown out in 2016 for racial gerrymandering, the Legislature drew a new map that got thrown out for partisan gerrymandering and they finally came up with the map you showed for 2020. That map was still a bit of a gerrymander, but subtle enough for it to get past the courts.
@@Itsmattz what is disaster for democracy is gerrymandering just to give the other party more votes when they should not deserve it. Just because you support the party who is benefiting from gerrymandering that doesn't make it right or justify it.
@@Itsmattz in that i agree with you.
@@Itsmattz The supposed issue with proportional allocation is that it would be hard for minority groups to elect a member of their race/ethnicity. Whereas in a majority minority district they can select the party nominee and then vote for the nominee, in a proportional system they'd likely have to hope the parties select members of the race to be on the list, etc. But it's not unfeasible the minority group could band together to vote for a party of their own (e.g. a Black Interest party in Alabama or something).
The lesson of Mr. Skye and Picot is to doubt straight lines on maps as representations of peoples.
In James Gelvin’s book, A History of the Modern Middle East, he tells us first, that the Sykes-Picot agreement never came to fruition and, second, that “there is no such thing as primordial attachments. At all. Tribal, ethnic, and sectarian affiliations...are neither permanent nor inflexible, and should be viewed as the product of history, not its driving force.”
@@josephbonney7255 so yeah let’s just group together ethnicities that hate each other because ethnicity is temporary. Right.
Joseph Bonney why are you randomly quoting a book like that? Speak for yourself instead of just taking the words of James gelvin. Also Sykes picot absolutely came to fruition, to deny that basic fact is ridiculous. The agreement said Britain and France would split the Middle East along an arbitrary line and that’s exactly what happened.
@@Ash-zm1vx Idk why I quoted. I was taking a break from history homework to watch this video and I was studying that chapter so I was like, what the heck, no one will care if I give it a shot. Apparently, they did. oh well
There is no way such a move could ever have repercussions years down the line...
This needs a part 2, texas has some awful examples of gerrymandering
Tbh every state has wayyy too much gerrymandering, just look at Ohio or New Jersey, he should continue till he’s done with almost every state with over 1 district.
And Michigan, too, especially around the Detroit Metro Area.
So true. I want to see a fantasy where I’m not lumped into a district that stretches from Austin to the Houston suburbs
If politicians are drawing them it will be biased.
Is two democrats running for mayor of chicago an example of over gerrymandering
This is interesting, and I am definitely in favor of ungerrymandering districts. I do have to say however, the main problem with just going by geographical-only districts is that it doesn't account for population or communities and can negatively impact underrepresented communities and minorities. For example, the 4th district in Illinois - It has a weird shape and has been ridiculed because of it. But, it was created that way to ensure that the Latino population in Illinois can actually have a representative and a voice in Congress. Otherwise, they would be split and absorbed into majority white districts and not have any representation or voice in state and national politics.
So yes, we need to address the gerrymandering problem we have in this country, but how can we make it fair and assure everyone can be heard and represented?
Meanwhile I’m over here from ND that is only has one representative...
Well...at least it's not gerrymandered.
abgeordnete good point
Do they still have to submit paperwork for it?
And I'm from RI who's most likely going to lose one of our two after this census!
Do you like Kelly Armstrong?😂
Hey Kyle, how did you make the “ungerrymandered” maps? Thanks in advance.
Yes. It's from a website anyone can use called Dave's Redistricting. It's a lot of fun if you're into maps and population data.
@@GeographyKing Wow Kyle, thank you! I’ve been having a lot of fun with this website right now. Thank you for replying so quick.
Yea I’ve used DRA a lot
But I use it for the exact opposite: making maps that are as ridiculously gerrymandered as possible
About the ca map though, the commission is actually alright, but suburban trends in the state have made the map accidentally favor Democrats
And CA honestly probably should do gerrymandering, if only to counteract the gerrymandering in places like Wisconsin and Texas that aren’t going away anytime soon
This is my new favorite channel. Really great stuff
Thank you!
Political districts rely on more than geography for definition. Homogeneity of constituents is also important. Your redraw of California seems to take that into account, no matter how coincidentally. Yes, Norrg Carolina, Maryland, Illinois and other states need redistricting, but dont expect new lines to follow political boundaries or geological structures discretely.
Bruh- “Norrg” Carolina wow
@@Red-pt6rs fat fingers. The swedish word for "north". Take your pick.😁
Homogeneity also leads to safe elections, which can suffocate political discussion. If there is low diversity within a district that district is probably going to be a landslide for whichever party best represents the majority population every time. Good for politicians, bad for the people.
@@KnufWons The flip side of that is that too much diversity can lead to a homogeneous population being “cracked” between multiple districts and end up being unrepresented minorities in each of those districts. This is why single-member districts are undemocratic/anti-fair representation in general.
I love your videos because you can make great content related to the US and politics but you still keep nonpartisan and just geography-oriented.
Your redistricting, in spite of being intended as non-partisan, would fix a lot of what is wrong with politics as they stand. It would also clearly tip the balance back away from the large, urban areas, which would make the House more representative of the people in different geographic regions. Great work and great video!
Honestly, just from a European perspective, having congressional districts at all seems silly. It means that congress will never represent how the people voted. If you have districts, the percentage of votes each party gets will never match the seats they hold in congress.
Why not just have state wide congressional elections. Then each state has a certain number of seats in congress, and they will be divided up based on the percentage of the vote that each party got in that state. Then the people ACTUALLY elect congress.
That is (sort of) how the US Senate works, each state has 2 Senators, elected in statewide elections. But compared to European countries, the US is huge in geography and population with a lot bigger variety of interests. Even within some states you have the same issue. Historically, in the US people like to vote for an individual over a Party. With only 2 major Parties to choose from, its tough to agree with one on everything. There are some issues I prefer the Democrats’ position, and others I prefer the Republicans’. I’ve voted lots of times but can’t remember the last time, if ever, I’ve voted an entire ballot exclusively for one Party or the other. Your proposal forces people to pick a Party, and the individuals can only be chosen once each Party knows how many seats they won. An Illinois farmer simply voting for a Party because he likes their agriculture platform, then that Party later appointing a Chicago lawyer who wants to focus on inner city problems and has nothing in common with him other than Party affiliation to “represent” him, just wouldn’t fly here. Having districts, in theory at least (if they’re drawn properly which is the subject of this video) makes it much more likely that the representation of a state accounts for the variety of people instead of, using Illinois again, the largest city completely dominating everything.
Because that makes too much sense
@RubberDuck hit it exactly right. The founders divided the government in this way so that in theory, the Senate would be voice for the State and the House of Representatives would be voice for the individual people.
For instance, water access is a big deal in my district. My congressman is in theory, more accessible and knowledgeable about the water issues here than my senator who lives and works 300 miles away, but my senator is probably more knowledgeable on the water issues the entire State faces. Both of these voices being represented in Congress is valuable.
As mentioned, in the video there has been a lot of manipulation over the years and it's definitely imperfect. I would argue that the imperfections are more a result of shady politicians and reliance on the two party system, but I can also see how the system allows for such things to occur
YES!
@@OnTheBrink444 I honestly don't quite see how it makes real sense though. Like in the senate Wyoming literally has as much of a say as California. And the Senate has A LOT of power! That seems ridiculous. Even more so than the congressional districts which at least diverge from the actual vote by less.. The way the senate works makes it so a vote in Wyoming is worth 70 times more than a vote in California.
The electoral college also seems quite weird to me. It makes it so the 40% of New Yorkers and 34% of Californians that vote republican don't matter AT ALL. They literally might as well not have voted. Millions of people. Almost exactly as many people voted for Trump in California as in Texas. But republicans basically never campaign in California, because those voters don't matter thanks to the electoral college. Same goes for the democratic voters in Texas and many southern states of course.
If popular vote decided the presidency it would make sense for democrats to campaign all over the south and middle of the country. And for republicans to campaign in New York and California. Because both sides could gain a lot of votes in those regions. We honestly don't know if this would just benefit democrats, because turnout in usually safe states would be a lot higher for the under-dog in that state I imagine. Since people would be less disenfranchised to vote now that their vote matters. But even if it does benefit one party more, isn't that just how democracy is supposed to work? The party with more votes wins. Not the party with fewer votes.
Your redrawing of congressional districts is so much better than what we have now. One intelligent human being is better than a hundred self-serving fools.
Thank you for showing a better Maryland districting. It hurt my eyes to see my beautiful Maryland be so wonky closer to DC, Baltimore, and Annapolis (which I jokingly call “The Triumvirate”). MD’s 1 and 6 look much better and maintain their original geographic borders. Also, WE NEED YOU HERE IN MARYLAND!
As a resident of Maryland I very much like your map. I have a hard time figuring out what my district is anyways.
Interesting! I favour an algorithm trying to follow county boundaries (not perfect but fast and no arguing)
I agree 100%! That has been my pet project for a long time. Each district is an existing county. The only thing that changes is the numbers of reps in each county.
Issue with just using geography isn't doesn't take into account the racial makeup of geography, so you can accidentally break up minority populations and dilute their voting power.
@@b.w.9244 Isn't that just a state electoral college
The race and political affiliation of voters should NOT influence redistricting... Minorities shouldn't be undemocratically given an advantage, just like white people shouldn't. The point is to be non-partisan.
Late to the party, but I worked on proposals for the 2020 Congressional maps for the state of Utah. A truly unaligned group of individuals. As Geographers, we spent months working on several maps for the state to use that were as fair as possible. By a 2018 law, one of our proposals was required to be used, however, just before our conclusion, the state amended the law to state that we were now merely recommended proposals. After presenting the proposals, they drew up their own map and passed it. Absolutely terrible. Utah has 4 Congressional districts and Salt Lake City is now split between all 4. No matter which corner of the state you live in, you share a Representative with people in the states capital! An 11 minute walking route was immediately found as a method of walking through all 4 districts. I spent so much time with the team over several months only to be tossed aside immediately. The thing that piss me off still is the passing and amending of their non partisan laws to make it look like they are being fair but in no way intending to be.
I moved to MD a few years ago, and I want to thank you for highlighting how ridiculous these districts are.
Excellent video as always! Were your maps drawn in DRA 2020?
Thanks! Yes I used Dave's Redistricting to generate these maps.
I personally feel like gerrymandering is one of the greatest problems in this countries political system
It is the biggest. It’s a joke that we allow the controlling party to draw the districts.
The *precise* boundaries are another interesting topic. Oftentimes, it's easier to run the boundary (for example) right down the middle of a street; easier just because it's easy to describe. But this means that neighbors across the street are in different districts. Much harder to describe is running the boundary through the empty forests outside the neighborhoods; but it keeps the neighborhoods (and streets) together. Once upon a time, we were reallocated to an odd parliamentary riding, and the issue was the exact street-splitting approach mentioned here. I wrote a suggestion to the thankfully non-political commission, and ten years later they took my suggestion and arrived at much more complicated descriptions for the boundaries (twice the words), but running through forested areas, not splitting streets. For this video, the County allocation method is pretty good; so my point about street splitting may only apply in limited instances.
Gerrymandering is such a mess, I loved seeing how you cleaned it up. I'm glad I live in a state with only two districts, they could still use some work, but there's less opportunity to have districts like those crazy maryland and north carolina ones.
So I know one of the tricky things about ungerrymandering is that there are some laws such as the Civil Rights act that stated that certain underrepresented groups need to have representation in congress which in turns causes some weird districts in Chicago and so forth. This seems to go only on nice clean lines which would break the law as currently written federally (also, the reason why non-partisan maps seem funky).
Why did the Wisconsin districts/counties extend into Lake Michigan? Does a Wisconsin sheriff respond to waterbourne calls? I would've guessed that would all be state jurisdiction, or even Coast Guard.
What would be the ideals of a totally non-political district mapping? Keeping all the citizens close to their representative's office? Keeping the state's population divided equally among all the distrticts? Right off, I don't understand the advantage of targeting district lines to keep all races, lifestyles, affluences, etc., together.
can you continue to make more of these? this is super awesome thanks for doing this!
In Michigan we approved a ballot measure to make the districts drawn by a bipartisan committee.
Most excellent, Kyle! Really cool!!
The problem in many cases is that states get sued for civil rights violations if they don't create a "majority minority" district. Yet the minorities aren't necessarily in one area in sufficient numbers to have a compact district, so you get some of the odd ones you see in order to avoid lawsuits.
There's a solution to that: proportional representation.
I'm glad you brought up Wisconsin. I live district and clearly we got gerrymandered out some of the counties that probably should belong in our district but they weren't.
I'm pretty surprised New Jersey didn't make it. Those are some cool maps. What site did you use if you don't mind?
Dave's Redistricting. It's really fun to use and it's great for more than just redistricting.
If I’m ever elected President, I’m hiring you and other geographers to redo the districts.
The president has no authority over redistricting in fact no one in federal office has that power , its a states mstter
This needs to be a series.
Hey, I think a way we could reform the electoral college is to have independent electoral districts with equal populations. That can vote however they want. So Cali would have 55 electoral districts all with the same population. Could you do a video like this for that idea? Making the electoral districts with equal populations with some states?
In California, the coast is not the same as the mountains in the northeast. Using geography would be using terrain, watersheds, major geographic features. The county lines in the west were not drawn this way. So County lines are not a good representation of “geography”
I wish we had flowerpetal districts which included urban, suburban, and rural to force politicians to consider a wide range of concerns
North Carolina might be my favorite state
I’ve lived here for 15 years (I’m 27) and although it’s decent, I want to live somewhere else now... thinking about the Pacific Northwest.
I live in NC and it’s pretty nice here I live in the middle of the state so it’s a perfect balance with a 2 hr drive to the beach and a 3 hour drive too the mountains
Partisan advantage and bipartisan protection of incumbents aren't the only factors compelling the current weird maps. Some districts are designed to gather ethnic populations together, to avoid court challenges based on the Voting Rights Act.
Houston is the perfect example. Thanks for the insightful comment!
Geography King: These are the most gerrymandered states.
Illinois Congressional districts 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 11: That's cute.
Chicago Wards 1, 2, 16, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, and 32: Amateurs.
I'm surprised you didn't do Texas. Its second congressional district is literally a snake shape and would take about four days to go through on foot.
Doesn't help that you have cities like Houston and Dallas that are way too big for one or two districts.
At the other extreme, did you look at Indiana's federal House map? Pretty much all districts break on county or township lines. Best map in the US.
Indiana has pretty clean district drawing. It's not only about looking good ocd-wise but also regional representation.
Does the geography king think that geography is just a county line??
The like-dislike ratio speaks volumes, how could anyone*cough half of the senate*cough* be against ending this practice….
A mention of _voting efficiency gap_ which quantifies votes wasted by gerrymandering would have been helpful. The concept is to be used by the Michigan Non-partisan Redistricting Commission to draw new districts next year.
California's independent redistricting commission is required to take into account geography but also "common economic and social interests." Having been up north, I would argue that the current map with its coastal District 2 and its more valley/mountain-oriented District 1 is more sensical from a representation perspective than having a monolithic block that just spans across all those northern counties.
I also would echo some other comments that say that trying to pack cities into one district as much as possible would frequently amount to an ideal republican gerrymander, since that's where a lot of democratic votes are and that kind of "packing" is one strategy for gerrymander.
Real un-gerrymandering is more than just about what makes geographic sense (though that should also be a very important datapoint), and should also strive to make political offices as representative and competitive as possible. That's the only way you'll get politicians who care more about listening to their constituents than their own job security.
My favorite video yet king
As someone raised in Maryland this is pretty epic, but as a Western Marylander I am obligated to say that Western MD ends at Washington County and may go no further lol. Culturally we are just not the same as the rest of MD but pop wise, I guess we have to take some o' those other counties...
Congressional districts should be drawn to represent the will of the voters, not mountains and rivers. The downside of gerrymandering is how it disenfranchises voters. Your maps do nothing to alleviate that. Great work generally. thanks, Kyle
The fairest way to do it is to take it totally out of human hands. Write a program that puts a dot where each person lives. No data about the person just a dot. Then have the program divide the map up into the most compact areas with equal dots. Allowance made for township or county lines.
What about the Voting Rights Act? Doesn't it obligate states to create as many "Majority Minority" districts as possible?
When putting up a comparison map it would make more sense to overlay your data with the current data. If you need to do side by side then don't include data on one map that isn't on the other. Both maps should have the same information represented, it will make side by side comparison easier. Also adding in city point data (pop > 200,000) will help people orient the data they are looking at. Cartography is a science and artform, the viewer should be able to look at the information and interpret it without any outside explination.
As a Marylander I appreciate what you did! I'm about as far left as you can get but I hate our congressional districts that were drawn up under Gov. O'Malley and the other Dem Big Wigs here in the state some years back. Due to the nature of where most of the population is, Maryland would have a Dem majority either way, but the gerrymandering essentially gets rid of any possibility of competitive elections and is a disaster for democracy. And yes there can never be clean Maryland districts haha - we have a weird shape and our population is centered in 4 counties and 1 city, so it's kinda weird.
what program did you use to find and color the congressional districts?
It's a site called Dave's Redistricting. It's a great geography tool in general, not just for congressional stuff.
The problem is that geographically clean and neat maps can still wind up being pretty unfair on a partisan basis. You almost have to split larger cities up into separate districts to undo the effects of the "Democrats = clustered in cities, Republicans = spread out in rural/exurban areas" phenomenon, just to make the number of seats won resemble the vote share. Illinois (with Democratic control of districting) somewhat achieves this by splitting up Chicago among districts that include more rural areas. Some of Illinois' districts, like IL-04, are still pretty weird, but some of that serves to draw federally-mandated majority-minority districts. IL-04 infamously joins two Latino areas by running a line down the I-294 freeway, but it surrounds some heavily-Black areas in IL-07 -- making those districts more compact or saner-looking wouldn't change the partisan balance.
With Maryland, Democrats arguably sniped one seat in MD-06 by joining the conservative rural western part of the state with some DC suburbs, but one analysis I saw showed that they could've been even more aggressive by splitting up the Eastern Shore (MD-01) and potentially achieving an 8D-0R delegation.
I concern with lumping single cities into a voting district is that it effectively does what gerrymandering does to a less subtle degree. There is also the troublesome state of difference between city sectors. It isn't likely possible that a fair portioning can be done and it may be that a fuller representative democracy will slowly overtake on the state houses in the form of proposals. There is still a poor job of informing the voters on the purpose of individual proposals, but the reversal is likely true in representatives not discovering the issues of much of their voting district.
I’d love to see your take on IL, TX, and OH.
We need the Geography King to do it. An independent (At least I think) person to do the districts. Ofc a whole committee but you get the idea.
I wrote a letter to my state legislator asking them to gerrymander our state.
Edit: California has a state commission that does the districts. Also, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Ohio are also extremely gerrymandered
I always find your videos informative and interesting. I especially appreciate that you included California too. I hope that people from other states realize how populous and diverse the state really is. I think that the right wing Republicans benefit greatly from the gerrymandering most. I am with you. I would like to see redistricting that makes more sense.
As a Western Maryland resident, I can confirm that we have no say in politics.
One problem with saying that redistricting is purely geographical is that there are federal requirements that the states include minority majority districts in their redistricting plans. This way it becomes harder to deny the political rights based on race.
Area codes are gerrymandered as well. My area code 609 in NJ goes from the very southeast point of the state to the Delaware River north of Trenton on a slant. Of the 8 counties it serves only 3 are exclusively in the 609 while the other 5 are bits and pieces of other counties
Area Codes don't have political benefit so no it's not gerrymandered
@@joshuaalfaro4781 Simpsons my friend. Everything involving regional geography is gerrymandered.
@@alexe1707 You're using the definition of gerrymandering wrong
How about Texas districts 34, 28, 15, 10, and 20? Just to name a few of our messed up districts.
The simplest rule would require that the border between any two Congressional districts within a state must be a straight line.
You should do a video on the difference between Metes and Bounds vs Northwest Ordinance.
There shouldn't be a committee at all. There should be a mathematical algorithm for drawing these borders.
Would love to see how you would re-do Ohio's gerrymandered districts
I have Ohio included in a Part two I'll be doing for this video. Also Illinois and Texas.
I’m actually a fan of California’s redistricting map, I think that somewhere like Humboldt country would much rather be grouped with Mendocino and Marin, rather than the inland areas with Redding or Modoc county- culturally and politically speaking- I know this was an issue when I lived in Humboldt county, when they were redrawing the maps people did not want to be lumped with Redding 😂 Also, what I don’t think you touched on, is that districts still need to be drawn so various minority groups are not drawn out of representation. So, if 40% of California’s population is Hispanic, then about 40% of the districts need to be drawn with majority Hispanic population. I think I’ve heard that as to why there are still some strange looking gerrymanders in there. I’m a fan of greatly increasing the seats in Congress so we have much smaller districts and a more representative democracy!
Where did you get the Voting Precincts map from?
Dave's Redistricting website. It is a really fun website to use and it can be used for a lot more than redrawing congressional districts.
@@GeographyKing Thanks, I'll check it out!
Great work!
I can absolutely understand that you don't want to get too much into the politics in your videos, espacially these days. It'd be really interesting though to see how your new borders would change the results. From what I know - or believe to know - it's mainly Republicans who implement and profit from gerrymandering.
Can anybody confirm or rebut this? Did anybody go through the numbers to compare gerrymandered and "just" results?
As of now gerrymandering benefits Republicans. If every state were ungerrymandered Democrats would gain about 10 seats nationwide. However everything changes after the Census. There's no reason to think that the party benefit will stay the same. Democrats do a lot of gerrymandering as well- it's just not working in their favor right now.
@@GeographyKing Thanks for the info! :-)
Did you review after you drew the districts to check if your districts inadvertently promote racial segregation? And, in some cases you may have - without your knowing it - drawn districts that are overwhelmingly of one party. Drawing districts that appear weird or unwieldy may therefore have a proper rationale. [But I certainly prefer the appearance of the districts you drew.]
Districts that are overwhelmingly of one party aren't inherently a bad thing
If anything, they might be better, because then the rep has an easier time accurately promoting the ideals of the districts, if everyone mostly agrees
@@SuperSMT Yes/no. That's what we have now in most States: politicians draw districts whose residents agree with their viewpoints. What I have read is that the intentional (or unintentional) clustering of like-minded folks has been a major factor in our increasingly divided population. The politicians move more and more to one side or the other to remain in office and thus do not care about the opinions of the minority in their district. On the surface, that argument makes sense to me but I don't know if it's true. What do you think about that point of view?
Those districts definitely look better, but I feel they would only work if some kind of proportional representation system were in use (say MMP). Otherwise the results could be quite horrifying
Nice Carolina university license plate in the back!
I think you should do Connecticut, most people don’t realize how badly gerrymandered it is because it’s so small
Maryland proposed 2 district maps that look almost exactly like yours, but wouldn’t ya know it, they shot it down
Who wants to start a petition to make Kyle the head of drawing congressional districts?
The Map in North Carolina wouldn’t work because NC is expected to gain an elector and therefore it will have 16 Electoral Votes. On your map there is only 12 districts. You would need to add two more.
Yeah, after the 2020 census is done, we should be up to 14 total districts.
I'm from Ohio. Our map is pretty bad too. And I'm part of the party that drew the lines.
Both parties partake in this, but there were a lot more republican governorships than democratic ones in swing states (Until 2018), and the gerrymandering tends to favor Republicans.
@@skylarmcgee6517 though it's state legislatures not governors that draw the lines
@@SuperSMT I think it depends on the case and nature of the redrawing. Nevertheless, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania all have Republican state legislatures but Democratic governors. This all too common skew between statewide and district races is a direct result of a history of Gerrymandering.
If the citizens of a state continuously vote for one party on a statewide level but their legislature reflects the opposite, almost always gerrymandering. It's not like Gretchen Whitmer or Ralph Northam are super charismatic eminences that won the hearts of republicans lol.
WHY DO I FIND YOUR VIDEOS SO INCREDIBLY INTERESTING FUCK I LOVE IT
Can you do more of these.
It should be geographical only. However with humans being counted by ethnic background instead you get these crazy lines. Until recently one of the most egregious was in Florida where a district ran from Jacksonville to Orlando using only train tracks to keep it contiguous to achieve the outcome.
It's better to make a district of of half of a city and that half of its suburbs, than to have a U-shaped district that wraps around the city.
What did you use to make these maps with the precincts counties etc?
A website called Dave's Redistricting. It's a really detailed and fun website to mess around with. It's primarily for political stuff, but can be used for other making other types of maps too.
@@GeographyKing Ok, thanks so much!
Getting rid of border gore 101
I don't know if following county or city boundaries is the best test. The best test would be districts with the fewest wasted votes for each party. You don't want any party "cracked' into a district it can't win, or "packed" into a district where it has lots of wasted votes. I think in NC 48% of voters voted Democratic but they ended up with more than 2/3rds Republican representation, so you'd want something that came pretty close to 48% D and 52% R for that state.
The example I'd use for why municipally drawn boundaries aren't a good test is school districts. School districts are often drawn around community boundaries but can end up completely segregated by race or class. That's considered legal because of a SCOTUS case in the 1980s, but it's pretty egregious in terms of actually getting just school district boundaries.
Did you take the VRA into account?
Where's New Zealand in the map over your shoulder?
Slay the Gerrymander! I hate gerrymandering and have for a long time. It seems so unrighteousness. I figured that I could solve gerrymandering in my state (Pennsylvania) in about ten minutes with a map, a pen and a ruler. You did a much better job than I would have. But mine would be better than what we have now!🤣
Really good work here
Problem with trying to make a city their own district. This in itself is gerrymandering urban vs rural. There's cracking and packing. What you're doing is a classic gerrymander "packing"
Do Florida next!
There are several problems with drawing boundaries.
Counties and state boundaries don’t always follow geography.
Demographics and politics don’t follow boundaries, and they change.
What is actually fair?
Then there are several goals you have to choose between.
Compact is not necessarily representative or competitive.
Representative is often not compact or competitive.
Competitive is not representative nor compact.
It is easy to give your favorite party more, or secure districts, much harder to be fair.
I live in the same area as you (maybe even the same town) it was confusing to get served ads from all three congregational races. My congregants also complain about how gerrymandered the central valley is.
I would love a Part 2 of this video, comparing 5 more states. Florida is pretty bad too. Like California, there are a lot of congressional districts and due to politics there are many very strange shaped districts. One party has controlled the state for many years, so there has been little incentive to make any changes.
So I know that you use nonpartisan data how would you go about making a district designed to be competitive or is that just balancing urban and rural communities to have it be a 50/50 district?
Being from North Carolina I looked at that one closely. You're one district short in your solution as there are 13 districts, but you only have 12.
Thanks for commenting. It's really hard to see, but the purplish blue district around Raleigh is actually two districts (the smaller one is a tiny bit more purple). The app I used to create these maps is very limited in the colors you can use and it made that part of the state tough to see.
There is a good chance that we may get one more district after the 2020 census.