On the evening of September 11, Alabama filed this request with the U.S. Supreme Court. Allen v Milligan, 23A231. The state wants the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the order of the lower court for new U.S. House districts.
The other side must respond by September 19.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/09/alabama-returns-to-the-supreme-court-over-allegedly-discriminatory-voting-map/
SB STORY
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PR IN ALL REGIMES
Anybody who wants to end gerrymandering should consider that it is entirely a side-effect of winner-take-all elections, where winning 90% of the vote is as good as 60% of the vote in winning 100% of the one seat.
With multi-member seats allocated proportionally (ProRep), 90% wins 90% of the seats and 60% wins 60% of the seats. That means there is no longer much of anything to gain from redrawing the lines!
https://thefulcrum.us/redistricting/how-multimember-districts-could-end-partisan-gerrymandering
Sorry, that should have read, “With multi-member *districts* where seats are allocated proportionally…”
What about the representative’s job of speaking for his district ?
Representatives will still have a district, and constituents will still have representatives.
The problem with single-seat districts is that a representative faces strong incentives to ignore the constituents whose vote they have no hope of winning (e.g., different party). With multi-seat districts, citizens are far more likely to have a representative similar to them likely to actually pay attention to what they have to say.
With multi seats, the bigger the district, the less of a personal “this is my representative” and the smaller the district the less likely a voter is to have a representative matching their ideology, especially if it’s not one of the biggest ones. There’s also more opportunity for politicians to pass the buck for having failed to serve their district.
Yes, there’s a tradeoff between size and responsiveness. Smaller districts haven’t stopped politicians from passing the buck now because such failure never costs them elections as long as they can spin it as being their opponent’s fault. Such negative campaigning doesn’t work as well when you have multiple opponents you’d need to smear.
Do you get better customer service and accountability from companies in industries with more competitors or fewer competitors?
I have better accountability when I have a personal account representative. There are a lot of constituent services that representatives perform which are not controversial bills and can’t be reasonably blamed on anyone except the representative if they don’t happen. If the district has additional rep(s) they can blame each other.
Is a business more likely to assign a personal account representative to you when they have more competitors or fewer competitors?
A one district representative is like a personal account representative. Unless you have whole competing legislatures in the same state or competing congresses there’s no enterprise level competition. The closest you get to a personal account representative is your personal one legislator per district.
Perfectlygoodlink is a spammer just like Ogle.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/judges-refuse-pause-order-alabama-195052290.html
AP STORY
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WHEN WILL **MEDIA** DETECT —
1/2 X 1/2 = 1/4 — SINCE 1776 [ACTUALLY SINCE LATE 1200S – OLDE ENGLISH H C ]
https://www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-won-t-intervene-194442326.html
Supreme Court won’t intervene in Pennsylvania dispute over access to voting equipment after 2020 election
Ariane de Vogue and Zachary Cohen, CNN
Tue, September 12, 2023 at 3:44 PM EDT
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an emergency bid from Republican election officials in a Pennsylvania county to freeze sanctions related to a dispute about voting equipment and the 2020 election.
The case involves actions taken by two of three Fulton County, Pennsylvania, Commissioners – Stuart Ulsh and Randy Bunch – who sought to have Dominion voting equipment examined by a third party after the 2020 election. They claimed they did so to consider whether to continue to use the voting machines.
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VERY BUSY TUESDAY ON MANY FRONTS
Mostly on the AZ posting fake news front, though.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/wisconsin-gop-pursue-nonpartisan-redistricting-210037165.html
Wisconsin GOP to pursue nonpartisan redistricting to avoid having state justices toss maps
SCOTT BAUER
Tue, September 12, 2023 at 5:00 PM EDT·
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Republican lawmakers, in a surprise move on Tuesday, reversed their long-held position and proposed a nonpartisan redistricting plan they want to enact ahead of the 2024 election to preempt the liberal-controlled state Supreme Court from tossing the current GOP-drawn maps.
The move comes as Wisconsin justices are considering two Democratic-backed lawsuits seeking to toss the Republican maps, first enacted in 2011, that are among the most gerrymandered in the country and have helped Republicans increase their majority.
Republicans have long opposed plans put forward by Democrats to enact a nonpartisan redistricting process. But now, faced with the likelihood that the state Supreme Court was going to throw out their maps ahead of the 2024 election, Republicans are proposing enacting a new system modeled after neighboring Iowa.
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PR IN ALL LEGIS BODIES
Are you going to post every fake story you read here now?
“A one district representative is like a personal account representative. Unless you have whole competing legislatures in the same state or competing congresses there’s no enterprise level competition. The closest you get to a personal account representative is your personal one legislator per district.”
Representatives compete with each other in every election. With single-seat districts, they will face only one competitor. In multi-member districts, they face multiple competitors (see Duverger’s Law or the work of political scientists like Gary Cox and Matthew Shugart).
As I see it, more competitors generally means a higher level of accountability, much like the difference between a monopoly/oligopoly (e.g., utility companies, Internet providers) versus a competitive market (e.g., restaurants, supermarkets). One of the biggest differences between the two is the barrier of entry, how easy it is to enter the market.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/perfectcompetition.asp
Note that both strict ballot access laws as well as single-seat districts pose high barriers to entry. The latter increases the threshold a candidate/party has to exceed to win a seat.
By the way, I’m a volunteer at ProRep Coalition. Nobody pays me to write anything that I write. One has to wonder if the same is true for all the Republicans and Democrats. The main reason the duopoly is interested in ballot access is to *increase* the barriers to entry to shut out their competition (not unlike how taxi companies used medallion requirements before Uber and Lyft ran an end-around behind that business model).
Single seat districts, one competitor: not true. They can face multiple competitors in the primaries, and conceivably locally strong independent or third party in the general. In some states they could face a recall. There’s such a thing as pressure to resign, etc.
It’s not necessarily true that proportional representation increases ideological diversity. Unless a district is very large it’s easy to draw it in s way that is still not ideologically diverse in many places. Candidate or party access barriers could be increased to compensate for any ideological diversity increase it does provide. If you add in government election financing, which has been used as an excuse to increase ballot access barriers in some places, it can easily make things worse. Districts would have to be statewide, an and only in the biggest states, for third parties to win seats. Even assuming a lot of hidden third party supporters they would have to be very large.
By the way, who accused you of being paid? Is there any reason you are denying it preemptively, if no one did? You seem to be denying it very strongly, which means you’re probably telling the truth. Is there someone else here you suspect is paid? If someone is in fact being paid, which is not the case with anyone here to my knowledge, does it necessarily mean they are any less honest in whatever they advocate?
FOR NON TROLL MORONS –
IN A REAL DEMOCRACY —
A LEGISLATIVE BODY EXISTS ONLY BECAUSE A-L-L VOTERS CAN NOT ASSEMBLE IN PERSON AND VOTE ON BILLS.
HOW SECURE IS THE 2023 INTER-NET ??? —-
BUILT FOR LIFE OR DEATH WAR ORDERS — SUPER-LIKELY TO FAIL ON MINUTE 1 OF ANY TOTAL WAR.
BACK TO STONE AGE COMMUNICATIONS OR WORSE.
NON PLAYER CHARACTERS ONLY REPEAT SLOGANS. AZ IS A NPC.
NOOOOO REAL REPRESENTATION FOR 49.99 PCT MINORITIES IN BOTH SMD AND AT LARGE SYSTEMS.
BUT SMD ARE MUCH WORSE —
1/2 X 1/2 = 1/4
WRT AZ IITBP.
FEMA: “who accused you of being paid?”
Tom called me a spammer above. On the one hand, the best evidence that an idea threatens the duopoly is when its supporters attack the messenger instead of the message (and I salute you for being above that kind of behavior). On the other hand, me serving on the board of directors of ProRep Coalition does naturally bring to mind questions about motives that I thought was worth addressing (in case it wasn’t already obvious from the variety of different policy proposals I support as well as how infrequently I post).
FEMA: “Single seat districts, one competitor: not true. They can face multiple competitors in the primaries, and conceivably locally strong independent or third party in the general.”
Yes, it’s theoretically possible to face multiple competitors, but single seat districts tend to a two party system because voters, donors, and endorsements face incentives to only support likely winners. With a single seat, that means the leader and the strongest challenger. The rest tend to be also-rans that generate little attention. You generally also don’t see very much variety in primaries, with candidates generally running very similar platforms with only slight deviations.
FEMA: “It’s not necessarily true that proportional representation increases ideological diversity. Unless a district is very large it’s easy to draw it in s way that is still not ideologically diverse in many places.”
The other big benefit from ProRep is that gerrymandering becomes practically useless, so it thus becomes unlikely that parties will try to redraw boundaries to their benefit. Gerrymandering works because winning with 60% of the vote wins exactly as many seats (all one of them) as a 90% win, which means parties can gain an advantage by redrawing lines to maximize 60% wins and minimize 90% wins.
Under ProRep, 60% wins 60% of the seats and 90% wins 90% of the seats, so this game doesn’t work anymore.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/11/16453512/gerrymandering-proportional-representation
And because each district sees the top 3 or 5 finishers gaining seats (depending on the size of the district), the result is almost assuredly more diverse. Libertarians actually win seats in such countries like Germany and New Zealand.
Only under a definition of libertarian that’s quite different from the US, among many other differences. Gerrymandering can still be an issue as long as you have any districts.
The definition of spammer varies and doesn’t always involve financial gain. I see no evidence that you would financially benefit from your political expression. You seem to be earnest about your beliefs, as far as I can tell.