Gerrymandering

wee 162

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Jun 29, 2002
Just been having a look at some US election results for the House Of Representatives and started looking at the maps of the states.

Here's the results from North Carolina which I've looked at pretty much at random.

Overall votes in the House races in North Carolina for Democrats are 2,216,294, for Republicans 2,092,957. So a fractionally higher amount of people voted for Democrats. The results of who got elected? 3 Democrats, 10 Republicans. Look at the map on the right of the districts. They've basically gave Democrats 3 huge seats which make zero geographical sense and which Democrats are winning by over 50% of the vote, and giving Republicans much smaller but still safe majorities.

Why on earth are states allowed to run elections this way without oversight by the federal government? Combine this with vote suppression efforts and the Republicans are looking like people with zero interest in democracy (and I'm quite aware that Democratic led state legislatures probably do the same thing, although it didn't look that obvious in Illinois which I checked to compare to North Carolina by either geography or results).
 
No need for the micro analysis when your point is made by the macro picture and the extent of obamas electoral college majority.
 
No need for the micro analysis when your point is made by the macro picture and the extent of obamas electoral college majority.

Really? The electoral college system isn't gerrymandered. The number of electoral college votes in each state is the amount of Representatives (which is changed depending on the population of states every election iirc) & Senators combined.

Now whether the Electoral college system is fair is another argument (it isn't imo) but it isn't gerrymandered. FWIW the Electoral College favours Republicans slightly since historically they do better in small population states. That's one of the reasons why no Republican governors have signed the national popular vote pledge which suggests changing to an overall popular vote mechanism for electing a president.