• @kmartburrito@lemmy.world
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    155 days ago

    They’re going to make the maps look like absolute spaghetti

    In many places they already do look that way.

    I read a good article about it yesterday that gave me at least a tiny sliver of hope. Apologies, on mobile as I type this and don’t have it handy.

    It basically said that some places are already so gerrymandered to death that it will be difficult to do more than they already are. One pitfall is that if they gerrymander TOO much, then there is a risk of losing seats because they spread themselves too thin.

    I’m sure this is still going to suck, but imagine if districts were all fair across the nation and they decided that now gerrymandering is okay and implemented it as a new thing, the consequences would be MUCH more severe and impactful.

    • @theneverfox@pawb.social
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      64 days ago

      I mean, yeah. Aside from Maryland and I think one other, the blue states aren’t very gerrymandered. This is one of the main tools that kept the Republicans relevant… They’ve just been cheating for decades, pushing further and further

      If we strip fair election laws in places like California and cheat as well, they never get a majority in Congress again. If we pass national districting laws to make them all fair, same deal.

      As far as gerrymandering too much… Tech giants are hoovering up all this data in part to share with groups like Cambridge analytica, which gives ungodly levels of granular data. They got very good at predicting elections

      And that’s why Democrats are freaking out about Mumdani and Republicans are freaking out in general - progressive populists are out performing the models by double digit percentage points. And that’s well past the 10 point lead they used to consider a done deal