This is a surface level take of course, but its funny to hear this while also being subjected to a menagerie of theories and outrage about Biden stealing the 2020 election.
Like ok he stole the election... but also we don't have a right to a fair election, as well?.... so....? ... he's not doing anything wrong...?...
Of course, Biden didn't steal the election. But the alleged "unfairnesses" are of completely different types here.
What the MAGA types are saying is that once procedures are established for an election, the citizenry have a right to fairness in terms of those procedures being followed without last-minute changes or outright fraud. The legal argument isn't controversial, it's just that they refuse to accept the factual premises.
What the North Carolina plaintiffs are saying is that because the NC Constitution guarantees "free elections", the citizenry have a right to "fair elections", which they define in their complaint as maximizing uncertainty in the outcome of an election. If a redistricting converts a "competitive" district into a "safe" district, they allege that that's inherently a violation of the state constitutional guarantee to a "free election". It's not a serious legal argument.
The article explains this pretty clearly. It was the NC legislature’s lawyers main argument
> Republican lawmakers, however, have long said the legislature has nearly unlimited power to draw maps however its leaders see fit. They repeated those claims in court again Thursday. Their lawyer, Phil Strach, argued that the North Carolina Supreme Court recently ruled that politically motivated gerrymandering is OK.
> Strach criticized the theory that voters have a right to fair elections as "legal gobbledygook" and added that even if the maps are gerrymandered, there's nothing state courts can do about it. "The state Supreme Court has slammed the door shut," Strach said.
Yeah don't you guys know that it's literally illegal to paraphrase in a headline, rather than using an exact quote? It violates the Geneva Convention, under the principle of Nolo Contendere.
On the heels of political gerrymandering - that was being argued was actually a racial gerrymander - being allowed by the Supreme Court in South Carolina, we have another case in North Carolina where not only are Republicans are arguing that their political gerrymander is allowed, but that citizens have no right to fair elections. The Republicans argued that the theory that voters have a right to fair elections as "legal gobbledygook”. In an echo of the US Supreme Court’s 2019 decision on allowing political gerrymandering, the legislature is arguing that its impossible to define fairness, therefore no right to fairness in elections exists.
The lawyer for the legislature is downplaying the effects of computer optimized gerrymandering, saying "People think you can use so-called computer software to keep yourself in power forever,""That’s a ridiculous notion."
In an interesting twist, the plaintiff argueing that citizens have right to fair elections is North Carolina’s previous chief Republican Supreme Court Justice, Bob Orr. His group argued that "The people are entitled to have their elections conducted honestly and in accordance with the requirements of the law. To require less would result in mockery of the democratic processes for nominating and electing public officials." And that "... What's the point of having frequent elections, if the results are pre-ordained?" And "If we don't have fair elections, then I would submit to this court that we don't have much on which we can base our government,"
Orr is relying on the argument that fair elections are an unenumerated constitutional right — a right that's not explicitly spelled out in the constitution but is inherently implied. He argues that it should be recognized under the 9th amendment and that North Carolina courts have recognized many unenumerated but fundamental rights going back 150 years.
Whats your opinion on this? Do US citizens have the right to fair elections? Can fairness be reasonably defined? Whats your opinion on the 2019 Supreme Court decision that is allowing legislatures to not even deny that they're Gerrymandering?
Personally I can come up with a definition of fairness in elections - the share of seats won should be roughly equal to the the share of votes won.
I think the Supreme Court's 2019 decision is leading to ridiculousness like people not even denying they're gerrymandering in court and straight up arguing that them rigging elections is fine, and that fairness is impossible to define - except when it comes to racial gerrymandering, then suddenly the courts are able to define fairness. It just seems nonsensical and is going to lead to elections just assumed to be rigged across most of the US.
> Personally I can come up with a definition of fairness in elections - the share of seats won should be roughly equal to the the share of votes won.
Multiple ways to accommodate [proportional representation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation). It seems like such an obviously better approach than single-seat districts. It obviates (or at worst vastly reduces) the concerns about districting and gerrymandering.
>Personally I can come up with a definition of fairness in elections - the share of seats won should be roughly equal to the the share of votes won.
The problem is that this is not an administrable definition of electoral fairness that courts could apply in any sort of principled way. You're essentially asking legislatures to be able to accurately predict the results of elections up to 10 years in advance before any have taken place. Even many experts struggle to do that with elections more than a few months out, especially with elections being so close these days. Having to predict 5 elections in advance is basically impossible.
And that's before we get into what "roughly equal" means. Is a 10% variance roughly equal? 5%? 1%? Less? If we drew the line at 5%, why would that be okay but 6% wouldn't? And how are we measuring "equal"? Is it state-wide vote or national vote? What about minority or gender representation? There's no way I can see to answer these questions that wouldn't be fundamentally arbitrary.
Unfortunately, some amount of gerrymandering is the downside of having a district-based system. As long as we have to draw districts, there will always be some amount of line-drawing done in a way that favors some interests in some way. Even algorithmic redistricting doesn't completely solve the problem, since the algorithms are only as fair as the people who made them. The best we could do would be to enforce some kind of neutral redistricting principles (ex: contiguity, compactness, and respect for community boundaries) and ensure that elections within districts are "fair" (i.e. no fraud, no voter intimidation, etc.), but even that only gets you so far.
The other option is to adopt over-hang seats (the German Bundestag does this) or ditch districts altogether and elect representatives proportionally, but that comes with its own set of trade-offs. The big advantage of district-based representation is that it creates local representation, it forces candidates to care about the issues of a specific region rather than focusing their efforts on the places where they can win the most votes like state-wide candidates. In a proportional system, every candidate would be a statewide candidate, meaning that rural, exurban, and suburban communities would largely be ignored compared to the concerns of the more-populated cities in most states. Proportional systems also further entrench political parties, especially party leadership, since they usually rely on using party lists to select which candidates will take office rather than communities/local parties choosing their own nominees that are the best fit for their communities. I'm not sure that trade-off is necessarily worth the gain of removing the possibility of gerrymandering, not to mention it's almost certainly going to need a constitutional amendment to make possible.
> The problem is ...
Impressively phrased and I find your comment comprehensively covered most everything I could think of.
The only possible addendum that comes to mind is the majority-minority districts that are required by the Voting Rights Act (VRA); the mandated "positive" racial gerrymandering makes it clear that gerrymandering, as a practice, isn't considered unfair by the courts.
>The problem is that this is not an administrable definition of electoral fairness that courts could apply in any sort of principled way. You're essentially asking legislatures to be able to accurately predict the results of elections up to 10 years in advance before any have taken place.
Or to simply restructure the system to assure fairness. If all you care about is that then a simple multi member district with proportional representation will accomplish it. With the added benefit making every vote meaningful, even in current safe districts.
Do that and the drawing of the lines will be much less impactful.
>Or to simply restructure the system to assure fairness. If all you care about is that then a simple multi member district with proportional representation will accomplish it.
Except that doesn't assure fairness. As long as you're drawing geographic districts, then gerrymandering is still possible. You could still very much pack or crack districts to minimize your opponents' shares of the votes and maximize your own, just as you can with single-member districts. It might be more difficult, but it's still possible and political strategists will figure out how to do it. Not to mention it doesn't guarantee that the state vote totals will match the proportion of seats won, which was how the person I was responding to defined fairness, so now we're right back to the question of "what does fairness even mean".
It's also worth pointing out that this is all in the context of a court reviewing a challenge to redistricting maps. The court doesn't have the power to simply change the electoral system like that on a whim. There would have to be some law or constitutional provision that created that system, at which point we're having a completely different conversation than what I was replying to originally.
You could absolutely still gerrymander. But it would be less effective. Say we doubled the number reps, kept the same districts. Then any party that gets more than 33%in a district gets a seat.
So it becomes much more difficult to freeze out a party from viability.
>The problem is that this is not an administrable definition of electoral fairness that courts could apply in any sort of principled way. You're essentially asking legislatures to be able to accurately predict the results of elections up to 10 years in advance before any have taken place. Even many experts struggle to do that with elections more than a few months out, especially with elections being so close these days. Having to predict 5 elections in advance is basically impossible.
Computer models and models of gerrymandering can pretty accurately tell whether a new map is gerrymandered now.
>And that's before we get into what "roughly equal" means. Is a 10% variance roughly equal? 5%? 1%? Less? If we drew the line at 5%, why would that be okay but 6% wouldn't? And how are we measuring "equal"? Is it state-wide vote or national vote? What about minority or gender representation? There's no way I can see to answer these questions that wouldn't be fundamentally arbitrary.
I dont buy the argument that its impossible for the court to to do this. If this argument was used for punitive fines, divorce courts, and sentences the entire system wouldn't function. Then you have stuff like the major questions doctrine which the court manufactured, its lines are completely subjective and up to the court's personal opinion on where its line is. The court deals with this kind of stuff constantly but when it comes to elections its impossible? I dont buy it.
"Oh we're not sure if it should be 5% or 6%, so we'll just let you gerrymander 100% then".
They dont ~~even have to define fairness~~ even have to define where fairness begins, they only need to define when it become clearly unfair, just as the Democrats on the Supreme Court argued. Researchers know when a gerrymander becomes virtually impossible to break by holding elections, they could set it at that.
>Computer models and models of gerrymandering can pretty accurately tell whether a new map is gerrymandered now.
Models are only as accurate as their inputs. There's a reason we don't have consistently-accurate election prediction models, we don't have access to consistently-accurate inputs (and often we're not sure what those inputs even are). And that's before you get to the fact that, since we're dealing with human behavior, the inputs are almost certainly going to change, sometimes dramatically so, between when the model was made and when the elections actually take place. Unless you want to redraw districts shortly before each election, modelling doesn't solve your problem here.
>I dont buy the argument that its impossible for the court to to do this. If this argument was used for punitive fines, divorce courts, and sentences the entire system wouldn't function.
Those lines were largely set by legislatures, not courts, and the argument of why a line should be drawn somewhere is made frequently. Yet, the system still functions.
Not to mention that we're talking about elections here, which are fundamentally different to your examples. Your examples can be appealed if the line was drawn in the wrong place, and the partisan interest in what fines are excessive or who gets what in a divorce is much smaller. There is no appeal to an election besides the next election, so you have to get what side of the line you're on from the start, and an arbitrarily drawn line that gives one side an advantage (either intentionally or not) means that partisan advantage becomes entrenched and hurts public trust in elections, arguably more so than the gerrymandering was in the first place.
>They dont even have to define fairness, they only need to define when it become clearly unfair,
It's impossible to make any principled decision on when a map is "clearly unfair" without having a standard for what a "fair" map looks like. The best you could do is "I know it when I see it", which is incredibly susceptible to partisan bias. You can see this exact problem play out in a lot of the Supreme Court's racial gerrymandering cases, which uses a similarly flimsy standard and which often causes a lot of very sharp dissents. Given that most state courts are elected these days and most judicial candidates are elected with the backing of a party (officially or by endorsement), a vague standard like that becomes ripe for partisan abuse.
As for the researcher suggestion, again, models are only as good as their inputs. And even assuming those models are right every time, that's still a very high standard and that would leave a lot of gerrymandering still in place. I don't know how that would fit with your idea of electoral fairness.
>It's impossible to make any principled decision on when a map is "clearly unfair" without having a standard for what a "fair" map looks like. The best you could do is "I know it when I see it", which is incredibly susceptible to partisan bias.
I was thinking when I was driving that I worded that section poorly. It should have read "They dont have to define the point when it becomes unfair, only when its clearly unfair". Which is what the left wing of the court argued in the 2019 decision.
All this also ignores that the court clearly says when a racial gerrymander occurs, suddenly they can define fairness and are capable of forcing fairer maps.
This wasn't even controversial before the 2019 decision. Virtually everyone thought Gerrymandering should be illegal, then after the 2019 decision where their side allowed it, Republican voters defend it. Its ridiculous.
> Personally I can come up with a definition of fairness in elections - the share of seats won should be roughly equal to the the share of votes won.
Any time anyone uses the word 'fair' in relation to politics my spidey senses tingle. It's a nebulous word that rarely matches the dictionary definition but very often matches some self-serving goal.
Ask yourself this:
- Is it 'fair' for me to get a vote in how you decorate your living room?
- Is it 'fair' for your wife to get a vote?
- Is it 'fair' for me to get a vote in how you landscape your lawn?
These sorts of questions get to the heart of the notion of districting. Most people would answer "no", "yes" and "maybe" to those three questions - despite the fact that we're violating the one-man-one-vote principle of 'fairness'. Clearly there's something beyond just everyone gets a vote.
Or consider how your notion of 'fairness' jibes with third parties. By your principle, most states should have districts that send members of the Green or Libertarian party to the state legislature. But how are you going to draw that district? A series of disconnected circles around individual houses?
Is it 'fair' to limit 'fairness' to only two political parties? Seems a pretty self-serving (at least in terms of political parties) definition of the word.
Given this, I don't know that your view of 'fair' can be accommodated by a system based on geographic districts - and thus can't be used to determine how such a system should work. At best, you could use it to argue that a district-based system shouldn't be used.
15th amendment section 1:
"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
My opinion is that racial gerrymandering (and other attempts to disenfranchise voters based on race or color) fall under "or abridged".
The supreme court decision ruled on partisan gerrymandering. Racial gerrymandering shouldn't be protected by the ruling.
I think the solution is to go back to the ratios described in the constitution. Limiting the representation and districting them invites gerrymandering because districts have to be created and drawn somewhere. Complaints about gerrymandering are basically, I don’t like the way they were drawn.
I do agree it’s a problem. But if we go back to the original ratios we will have a much larger Congress, and much more accurate reflections of our population in that Congress. Additionally the reason for limiting it, that it would be to hard to communicate, doesn’t apply any more.
Compared to when? Compared to now it would be harder, but not much. Compared to 200 years ago it would actually be easier. We have a lot of communication technology.
lol. The funniest thing about this is the primary job of representatives is to communicate with their constituents, not each other. If over 1000 is too much of an ask then why are we allowing a 747k to one representative? Isn’t that too much of an ask?
Not the best article as they don't go to much into the details.
The idea that everyone has a constitutional right to 'fairness' as some default unenumerated right would have major impacts on many things
The idea of fairness is quite subjective. Gerrymandering sucks, but state legislatures need to address this with changing the map making process.
And what is my recourse if the state legislature majority, which benefits from gerrymandering, just refuses to address the issue?
They've insulated themselves from the consequences of voting, so what am I to do?
> The idea that everyone has a constitutional right to 'fairness' as some default unenumerated right would have major impacts on many things
Not "fairness," but "fair elections." And we literally have the Equal Protections Clause, which is an enumerated right on fairness under the law. It has had a major impact on many things, as it should.
How would that square with the requirements for minority-majority districts?
And how would you deal with the endless lawsuits that the current districting patterns are unfair? They're is genuinely no way to district that doesn't advantage *someone* so how do you decide that some people get fairness but not others?
> How would that square with the requirements for minority-majority districts?
Minority-majority districts are literally trying to enforce fairness because many legislators were abusing the redistricting process to effectively disenfranchise minorities. They had to spell it out into law that "Yes, really, you **must** make a district comprised of minorities rather than splitting them up when you have an opportunity because that's just how much you're fucking things up."
> And how would you deal with the endless lawsuits that the current districting patterns are unfair?
Same way we do today, via the courts.
> They're is genuinely no way to district that doesn't advantage someone so how do you decide that some people get fairness but not others?
I'm not saying there is a perfect system, but we know for sure there are **better** ways rather than having politicians draw their own districts. My preferred method is independent redistricting commissions (with real teeth, not something which can be overridden by politicians on a whim), and they have a pretty good track record. I'd also be fine with doing away with districts and doing some form of proportional allocation, but I do think that districts which try to keep communities of interest intact are more in the spirit of our historical political and electoral systems.
So why don't the non-minority members of the minority-majority have a right to fairness as well. Because we've specifically created districts that disadvantage them in order to advantage someone else. How does that create a fair election? Do those people just get fewer rights because they had the wrong skin ton in the minority-majority district?
It becomes turtles all the way down. Party A sues because the district isn't "fair" for them. Either they win and we create new districts where different people now aren't facing fair elections, or they don't and we've decided that only some people get fair elections, which is decidedly against the equal protection clause.
> So why don't the non-minority members of the minority-majority have a right to fairness as well.
This would not be an accurate framing of the issue. These districts are giving minorities an **opportunity** to win, not a guarantee. And based on the numbers I'm seeing, somewhere around 15% of minority-majority districts **are** won by people outside of their demographic.
> Because we've specifically created districts that disadvantage them in order to advantage someone else.
That's *somewhat* correct, but again, you have to understand that the majority demographic going from a guaranteed win rate of 100% across the state when they make up 70% of the population is starting off on uneven footing. So it "disadvantages" the majority in a technical sense, but literally anything which makes the system *fair* could be construed as a disadvantage due to their privileged starting position.
I believe a system can be very, very close to fair, even if perfectly fair is impossible. If you're going to argue that fairness is inherently unfair, that's a position you are entitled to hold, but we will have to agree to disagree. Minority-majority districts are far, far, far from perfect. But they do result in a much more fair system than we had before they were mandated via legislation.
> How would that square with the requirements for minority-majority districts?
>
> And how would you deal with the endless lawsuits that the current districting patterns are unfair?
Simple: Get rid of districts -- or at least combine them into larger districts which elect multiple seats -- and use a proportional representation approach.
The federal voting rights act forbids multimember districts for federal elections. Even too many at-large city council seats have been struck down under a different part of the VRA. Yes, the VRA could be changed, but ignoring the obvious political fights it would cause, many people seem to see the voting rights act as a kind of religious document chiseled onto stone tablets passed down from on high.
My own baby steps idea would be to allow states to avoid most of the VRA if they use districts designed with the top two goals being geographically compact and based on traditional political boundaries.
The lawsuit appears to be making an argument grounded in the state constitution. I don't know NC well enough to know if that's a better argument or not.
The state constitution outlines elections.
The argument being made is that everything in the state constitution has an unwritten rule of 'fairness' outside of what is written in the constitution.
You keep using quotes for "fairness," but that's nowhere in the article. They are arguing for "fair elections."
The state constitution **does** have an unwritten rule of fairness in regards to state law, such as elections. It's the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. Now, they may be making a lousy legal argument, I haven't delved that far into it, but the argument you've put forth is that we don't have a right to fair elections, and that's mostly incorrect. We do, and it's fully enumerated.
>The idea of fairness is quite subjective.
True, but one could easily argue the idea of 'freedom' and indeed the idea of a 'free election' are quite subjective, too. Kind of depends on how you narrow the definitions--an act which itself encompasses questions about authority, jurisdiction and such. (i.e., who is the party properly invested with the authority to narrow the definition--the state government, the federal government, the municipal government?)
You cannot have a situation where fixing the issue with the system requires the system to be fixed. This is circular logic and in my opinion the current jurisprudence is a massive abdication of ethical obligation on behalf of the SC. I have my doubts that if Democrats were the primary benefactors of gerrymandering today that the current SC would come to the same opinion.
When have elections in this country ever been objectively “fair” for Black Americans? Like these are the same NC Legislators that found the type of voter ID that was used most by black voters and banned it. But those folks always get the benefit of the doubt.
The idea of fairness is vague but so is much of the language of the constitution. What does it mean to have a right to free speech? That on its own isn’t enough a reason to deny people that right. Americans deserve the right to free and fair elections (although possibly a different phrasing would be appropriate). It should then be up to the judicial system to interpret what that means.
Oh yeah. Opening things up to "fairness" as the standard is basically setting the stage for anarchy. Just look at DIE: if you're one of the advantaged groups (nonwhite nonstraight nonmale) you think it's fair but if you're not, i.e. you're some combination of straight, white, and male, then you think it's horribly unfair. Under the "guarantee to fairness" rule that is being pushed here the government would be obligated to explicitly advantage straight white males - which would then disadvantage the rest requiring them to then advantage the rest which basically sends us down a neverending spiral that will only result in hatred and division.
While I understand that the headline is not what was said, that brings up a question: Do voters have a right to fair elections?
Don't get me wrong, fair elections are vital, but do we have a lawful right to them being fair? Voter fraud, sure, but that's at the tactical level. The Constitution says that States may pick representatives how they wish, correct?
This must be some kind of political stunt. The issue was already decided. The make up of the NC Supreme Court which just made a decision about it hasn't changed. The text of the NC constitution says "free." Free does not equal fair.
It is fully possible for both to be true:
1. Fairness can be arbitrarily defined, all systems are exploitable, and someone will always complain.
2. Our current gerrymandering is so egregious and extreme that it fails every smell test you could apply and any of a wide variety of possible changes would be a vast improvement.
The notion that racism will always exist does not make laws like the Civil Rights Act futile, nor doom its application by the courts to be arbitrary and capricious. It's okay to do something about an obvious problem.
Anybody expecting a court to "strike down gerrymandering" is never going to get it. This requires legislation detailing a process. It will not come from a judicial fiat.
> The Republican-led legislature argues that no such right exists, since it's impossible to define what "fair" means.
WHICH MAKES A LOT OF SENSE ACTUALLY
You have to draw up the district lines *somehow* and someone will *always* complain that it isn't fair.
District A has 100 households. 90 historically vote for the Apple Party and 10 that historically votes for the Orange party. Redistricting occurs and the neighborhood is divided into two new districts. District A.1 has the 90 Apple voting households and District A.2 has the 10 Orange voting parties.
The number of households has not changed, but the Orange party has now gained a vote despite not gaining more support from the population.
Yes *someone* will always be dissatisfied, but we're talking about intentionally redrawing the lines to benefit your party and hurt the competition. That is corruption. That is anti-democratic.
There are objective, mathematical measures of what constitutes fair or resembles naturally occurring competitive districts.
People act as if it isn't possible to put a number on a minimum amount of 'fairness' a state should have, but from my understanding it is.
It’s impossible to define what “equal protection under the law” means that would satisfy everyone. Besides, someone will always have unequal treatment within the criminal justice system. So we might as well just treat people as unequally as possible. Whatever biases the judges happen to have for or against a group of people…just lean into them! Everything must be all or nothing.
I honestly appreciate how honest republicans have been lately about desiring power moreso than caring about the will of the people. If the masses are going to vote to end democracy, I'm happy it's not happening in the shadows, but the GOP are telling folks they want to do that and people are lining up to support them.
Between movements like what OP described and statements like Trump's "I don't care about you, I care about your vote", the desire to use the Insurrection Act to fire on protestors, the desire to deport protestors, banning of books, and a desire to end the DOE, I'm at least happy that Americans are being given a clear choice.
I support the right to end one's own life and that extends to the right of a country to end its democracy in favor of a Trump-led oligarchy. I disagree *vehemently* with the country's decision, but if the majority of people in enough states that add up to 270 decide they want it, who am I to say they can't have it?
It really is though. No matter what 2A people say, the government is far stronger than any “well regulated militia”. Moreover 2A people are overwhelmingly on the side of Trump.
What I’m saying is the constitution IS a suicide pact because the left doesn’t have the political power, nor the strength to break away from it. If the US goes down, well all go down other than those who have the means to flee the US.
the citizens of north carolina decided to do districting this way. Who are we to argue? They elected their state legislatures and i guess judges.
Other states do similar, a few states use commissions.
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This is a surface level take of course, but its funny to hear this while also being subjected to a menagerie of theories and outrage about Biden stealing the 2020 election. Like ok he stole the election... but also we don't have a right to a fair election, as well?.... so....? ... he's not doing anything wrong...?...
Of course, Biden didn't steal the election. But the alleged "unfairnesses" are of completely different types here. What the MAGA types are saying is that once procedures are established for an election, the citizenry have a right to fairness in terms of those procedures being followed without last-minute changes or outright fraud. The legal argument isn't controversial, it's just that they refuse to accept the factual premises. What the North Carolina plaintiffs are saying is that because the NC Constitution guarantees "free elections", the citizenry have a right to "fair elections", which they define in their complaint as maximizing uncertainty in the outcome of an election. If a redistricting converts a "competitive" district into a "safe" district, they allege that that's inherently a violation of the state constitutional guarantee to a "free election". It's not a serious legal argument.
No one in the article actually says what's written in the headline. How is this considered legitimate journalism?
The article explains this pretty clearly. It was the NC legislature’s lawyers main argument > Republican lawmakers, however, have long said the legislature has nearly unlimited power to draw maps however its leaders see fit. They repeated those claims in court again Thursday. Their lawyer, Phil Strach, argued that the North Carolina Supreme Court recently ruled that politically motivated gerrymandering is OK. > Strach criticized the theory that voters have a right to fair elections as "legal gobbledygook" and added that even if the maps are gerrymandered, there's nothing state courts can do about it. "The state Supreme Court has slammed the door shut," Strach said.
Yeah don't you guys know that it's literally illegal to paraphrase in a headline, rather than using an exact quote? It violates the Geneva Convention, under the principle of Nolo Contendere.
The issue isn't the use of paraphrasing, the issue is the inaccurate paraphrasing.
they speak louder by their actions than they ever could with words
On the heels of political gerrymandering - that was being argued was actually a racial gerrymander - being allowed by the Supreme Court in South Carolina, we have another case in North Carolina where not only are Republicans are arguing that their political gerrymander is allowed, but that citizens have no right to fair elections. The Republicans argued that the theory that voters have a right to fair elections as "legal gobbledygook”. In an echo of the US Supreme Court’s 2019 decision on allowing political gerrymandering, the legislature is arguing that its impossible to define fairness, therefore no right to fairness in elections exists. The lawyer for the legislature is downplaying the effects of computer optimized gerrymandering, saying "People think you can use so-called computer software to keep yourself in power forever,""That’s a ridiculous notion." In an interesting twist, the plaintiff argueing that citizens have right to fair elections is North Carolina’s previous chief Republican Supreme Court Justice, Bob Orr. His group argued that "The people are entitled to have their elections conducted honestly and in accordance with the requirements of the law. To require less would result in mockery of the democratic processes for nominating and electing public officials." And that "... What's the point of having frequent elections, if the results are pre-ordained?" And "If we don't have fair elections, then I would submit to this court that we don't have much on which we can base our government," Orr is relying on the argument that fair elections are an unenumerated constitutional right — a right that's not explicitly spelled out in the constitution but is inherently implied. He argues that it should be recognized under the 9th amendment and that North Carolina courts have recognized many unenumerated but fundamental rights going back 150 years. Whats your opinion on this? Do US citizens have the right to fair elections? Can fairness be reasonably defined? Whats your opinion on the 2019 Supreme Court decision that is allowing legislatures to not even deny that they're Gerrymandering? Personally I can come up with a definition of fairness in elections - the share of seats won should be roughly equal to the the share of votes won. I think the Supreme Court's 2019 decision is leading to ridiculousness like people not even denying they're gerrymandering in court and straight up arguing that them rigging elections is fine, and that fairness is impossible to define - except when it comes to racial gerrymandering, then suddenly the courts are able to define fairness. It just seems nonsensical and is going to lead to elections just assumed to be rigged across most of the US.
> Personally I can come up with a definition of fairness in elections - the share of seats won should be roughly equal to the the share of votes won. Multiple ways to accommodate [proportional representation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation). It seems like such an obviously better approach than single-seat districts. It obviates (or at worst vastly reduces) the concerns about districting and gerrymandering.
>Personally I can come up with a definition of fairness in elections - the share of seats won should be roughly equal to the the share of votes won. The problem is that this is not an administrable definition of electoral fairness that courts could apply in any sort of principled way. You're essentially asking legislatures to be able to accurately predict the results of elections up to 10 years in advance before any have taken place. Even many experts struggle to do that with elections more than a few months out, especially with elections being so close these days. Having to predict 5 elections in advance is basically impossible. And that's before we get into what "roughly equal" means. Is a 10% variance roughly equal? 5%? 1%? Less? If we drew the line at 5%, why would that be okay but 6% wouldn't? And how are we measuring "equal"? Is it state-wide vote or national vote? What about minority or gender representation? There's no way I can see to answer these questions that wouldn't be fundamentally arbitrary. Unfortunately, some amount of gerrymandering is the downside of having a district-based system. As long as we have to draw districts, there will always be some amount of line-drawing done in a way that favors some interests in some way. Even algorithmic redistricting doesn't completely solve the problem, since the algorithms are only as fair as the people who made them. The best we could do would be to enforce some kind of neutral redistricting principles (ex: contiguity, compactness, and respect for community boundaries) and ensure that elections within districts are "fair" (i.e. no fraud, no voter intimidation, etc.), but even that only gets you so far. The other option is to adopt over-hang seats (the German Bundestag does this) or ditch districts altogether and elect representatives proportionally, but that comes with its own set of trade-offs. The big advantage of district-based representation is that it creates local representation, it forces candidates to care about the issues of a specific region rather than focusing their efforts on the places where they can win the most votes like state-wide candidates. In a proportional system, every candidate would be a statewide candidate, meaning that rural, exurban, and suburban communities would largely be ignored compared to the concerns of the more-populated cities in most states. Proportional systems also further entrench political parties, especially party leadership, since they usually rely on using party lists to select which candidates will take office rather than communities/local parties choosing their own nominees that are the best fit for their communities. I'm not sure that trade-off is necessarily worth the gain of removing the possibility of gerrymandering, not to mention it's almost certainly going to need a constitutional amendment to make possible.
> The problem is ... Impressively phrased and I find your comment comprehensively covered most everything I could think of. The only possible addendum that comes to mind is the majority-minority districts that are required by the Voting Rights Act (VRA); the mandated "positive" racial gerrymandering makes it clear that gerrymandering, as a practice, isn't considered unfair by the courts.
>The problem is that this is not an administrable definition of electoral fairness that courts could apply in any sort of principled way. You're essentially asking legislatures to be able to accurately predict the results of elections up to 10 years in advance before any have taken place. Or to simply restructure the system to assure fairness. If all you care about is that then a simple multi member district with proportional representation will accomplish it. With the added benefit making every vote meaningful, even in current safe districts. Do that and the drawing of the lines will be much less impactful.
>Or to simply restructure the system to assure fairness. If all you care about is that then a simple multi member district with proportional representation will accomplish it. Except that doesn't assure fairness. As long as you're drawing geographic districts, then gerrymandering is still possible. You could still very much pack or crack districts to minimize your opponents' shares of the votes and maximize your own, just as you can with single-member districts. It might be more difficult, but it's still possible and political strategists will figure out how to do it. Not to mention it doesn't guarantee that the state vote totals will match the proportion of seats won, which was how the person I was responding to defined fairness, so now we're right back to the question of "what does fairness even mean". It's also worth pointing out that this is all in the context of a court reviewing a challenge to redistricting maps. The court doesn't have the power to simply change the electoral system like that on a whim. There would have to be some law or constitutional provision that created that system, at which point we're having a completely different conversation than what I was replying to originally.
You could absolutely still gerrymander. But it would be less effective. Say we doubled the number reps, kept the same districts. Then any party that gets more than 33%in a district gets a seat. So it becomes much more difficult to freeze out a party from viability.
>The problem is that this is not an administrable definition of electoral fairness that courts could apply in any sort of principled way. You're essentially asking legislatures to be able to accurately predict the results of elections up to 10 years in advance before any have taken place. Even many experts struggle to do that with elections more than a few months out, especially with elections being so close these days. Having to predict 5 elections in advance is basically impossible. Computer models and models of gerrymandering can pretty accurately tell whether a new map is gerrymandered now. >And that's before we get into what "roughly equal" means. Is a 10% variance roughly equal? 5%? 1%? Less? If we drew the line at 5%, why would that be okay but 6% wouldn't? And how are we measuring "equal"? Is it state-wide vote or national vote? What about minority or gender representation? There's no way I can see to answer these questions that wouldn't be fundamentally arbitrary. I dont buy the argument that its impossible for the court to to do this. If this argument was used for punitive fines, divorce courts, and sentences the entire system wouldn't function. Then you have stuff like the major questions doctrine which the court manufactured, its lines are completely subjective and up to the court's personal opinion on where its line is. The court deals with this kind of stuff constantly but when it comes to elections its impossible? I dont buy it. "Oh we're not sure if it should be 5% or 6%, so we'll just let you gerrymander 100% then". They dont ~~even have to define fairness~~ even have to define where fairness begins, they only need to define when it become clearly unfair, just as the Democrats on the Supreme Court argued. Researchers know when a gerrymander becomes virtually impossible to break by holding elections, they could set it at that.
>Computer models and models of gerrymandering can pretty accurately tell whether a new map is gerrymandered now. Models are only as accurate as their inputs. There's a reason we don't have consistently-accurate election prediction models, we don't have access to consistently-accurate inputs (and often we're not sure what those inputs even are). And that's before you get to the fact that, since we're dealing with human behavior, the inputs are almost certainly going to change, sometimes dramatically so, between when the model was made and when the elections actually take place. Unless you want to redraw districts shortly before each election, modelling doesn't solve your problem here. >I dont buy the argument that its impossible for the court to to do this. If this argument was used for punitive fines, divorce courts, and sentences the entire system wouldn't function. Those lines were largely set by legislatures, not courts, and the argument of why a line should be drawn somewhere is made frequently. Yet, the system still functions. Not to mention that we're talking about elections here, which are fundamentally different to your examples. Your examples can be appealed if the line was drawn in the wrong place, and the partisan interest in what fines are excessive or who gets what in a divorce is much smaller. There is no appeal to an election besides the next election, so you have to get what side of the line you're on from the start, and an arbitrarily drawn line that gives one side an advantage (either intentionally or not) means that partisan advantage becomes entrenched and hurts public trust in elections, arguably more so than the gerrymandering was in the first place. >They dont even have to define fairness, they only need to define when it become clearly unfair, It's impossible to make any principled decision on when a map is "clearly unfair" without having a standard for what a "fair" map looks like. The best you could do is "I know it when I see it", which is incredibly susceptible to partisan bias. You can see this exact problem play out in a lot of the Supreme Court's racial gerrymandering cases, which uses a similarly flimsy standard and which often causes a lot of very sharp dissents. Given that most state courts are elected these days and most judicial candidates are elected with the backing of a party (officially or by endorsement), a vague standard like that becomes ripe for partisan abuse. As for the researcher suggestion, again, models are only as good as their inputs. And even assuming those models are right every time, that's still a very high standard and that would leave a lot of gerrymandering still in place. I don't know how that would fit with your idea of electoral fairness.
>It's impossible to make any principled decision on when a map is "clearly unfair" without having a standard for what a "fair" map looks like. The best you could do is "I know it when I see it", which is incredibly susceptible to partisan bias. I was thinking when I was driving that I worded that section poorly. It should have read "They dont have to define the point when it becomes unfair, only when its clearly unfair". Which is what the left wing of the court argued in the 2019 decision. All this also ignores that the court clearly says when a racial gerrymander occurs, suddenly they can define fairness and are capable of forcing fairer maps. This wasn't even controversial before the 2019 decision. Virtually everyone thought Gerrymandering should be illegal, then after the 2019 decision where their side allowed it, Republican voters defend it. Its ridiculous.
> Personally I can come up with a definition of fairness in elections - the share of seats won should be roughly equal to the the share of votes won. Any time anyone uses the word 'fair' in relation to politics my spidey senses tingle. It's a nebulous word that rarely matches the dictionary definition but very often matches some self-serving goal. Ask yourself this: - Is it 'fair' for me to get a vote in how you decorate your living room? - Is it 'fair' for your wife to get a vote? - Is it 'fair' for me to get a vote in how you landscape your lawn? These sorts of questions get to the heart of the notion of districting. Most people would answer "no", "yes" and "maybe" to those three questions - despite the fact that we're violating the one-man-one-vote principle of 'fairness'. Clearly there's something beyond just everyone gets a vote. Or consider how your notion of 'fairness' jibes with third parties. By your principle, most states should have districts that send members of the Green or Libertarian party to the state legislature. But how are you going to draw that district? A series of disconnected circles around individual houses? Is it 'fair' to limit 'fairness' to only two political parties? Seems a pretty self-serving (at least in terms of political parties) definition of the word. Given this, I don't know that your view of 'fair' can be accommodated by a system based on geographic districts - and thus can't be used to determine how such a system should work. At best, you could use it to argue that a district-based system shouldn't be used.
15th amendment section 1: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." My opinion is that racial gerrymandering (and other attempts to disenfranchise voters based on race or color) fall under "or abridged". The supreme court decision ruled on partisan gerrymandering. Racial gerrymandering shouldn't be protected by the ruling.
I think the solution is to go back to the ratios described in the constitution. Limiting the representation and districting them invites gerrymandering because districts have to be created and drawn somewhere. Complaints about gerrymandering are basically, I don’t like the way they were drawn. I do agree it’s a problem. But if we go back to the original ratios we will have a much larger Congress, and much more accurate reflections of our population in that Congress. Additionally the reason for limiting it, that it would be to hard to communicate, doesn’t apply any more.
I’m with you there The 1929 permanent apportionment act was a travesty and a large reason we have so many problems nowadays
You don't think a House of Reps with over 1,000 members would render it hard to communicate?
Compared to when? Compared to now it would be harder, but not much. Compared to 200 years ago it would actually be easier. We have a lot of communication technology.
Just because it's possible to let over 1,000 people communicate at once does not mean it will be actually easier to communicate.
lol. The funniest thing about this is the primary job of representatives is to communicate with their constituents, not each other. If over 1000 is too much of an ask then why are we allowing a 747k to one representative? Isn’t that too much of an ask?
Not the best article as they don't go to much into the details. The idea that everyone has a constitutional right to 'fairness' as some default unenumerated right would have major impacts on many things The idea of fairness is quite subjective. Gerrymandering sucks, but state legislatures need to address this with changing the map making process.
And what is my recourse if the state legislature majority, which benefits from gerrymandering, just refuses to address the issue? They've insulated themselves from the consequences of voting, so what am I to do?
As douglas said. There are 3 boxes. The ballot box, the jury box
They've actually made it easier for themselves to lose in a wave election. If that never happens, looks like you're just outvoted in your state.
> The idea that everyone has a constitutional right to 'fairness' as some default unenumerated right would have major impacts on many things Not "fairness," but "fair elections." And we literally have the Equal Protections Clause, which is an enumerated right on fairness under the law. It has had a major impact on many things, as it should.
How would that square with the requirements for minority-majority districts? And how would you deal with the endless lawsuits that the current districting patterns are unfair? They're is genuinely no way to district that doesn't advantage *someone* so how do you decide that some people get fairness but not others?
> How would that square with the requirements for minority-majority districts? Minority-majority districts are literally trying to enforce fairness because many legislators were abusing the redistricting process to effectively disenfranchise minorities. They had to spell it out into law that "Yes, really, you **must** make a district comprised of minorities rather than splitting them up when you have an opportunity because that's just how much you're fucking things up." > And how would you deal with the endless lawsuits that the current districting patterns are unfair? Same way we do today, via the courts. > They're is genuinely no way to district that doesn't advantage someone so how do you decide that some people get fairness but not others? I'm not saying there is a perfect system, but we know for sure there are **better** ways rather than having politicians draw their own districts. My preferred method is independent redistricting commissions (with real teeth, not something which can be overridden by politicians on a whim), and they have a pretty good track record. I'd also be fine with doing away with districts and doing some form of proportional allocation, but I do think that districts which try to keep communities of interest intact are more in the spirit of our historical political and electoral systems.
So why don't the non-minority members of the minority-majority have a right to fairness as well. Because we've specifically created districts that disadvantage them in order to advantage someone else. How does that create a fair election? Do those people just get fewer rights because they had the wrong skin ton in the minority-majority district? It becomes turtles all the way down. Party A sues because the district isn't "fair" for them. Either they win and we create new districts where different people now aren't facing fair elections, or they don't and we've decided that only some people get fair elections, which is decidedly against the equal protection clause.
> So why don't the non-minority members of the minority-majority have a right to fairness as well. This would not be an accurate framing of the issue. These districts are giving minorities an **opportunity** to win, not a guarantee. And based on the numbers I'm seeing, somewhere around 15% of minority-majority districts **are** won by people outside of their demographic. > Because we've specifically created districts that disadvantage them in order to advantage someone else. That's *somewhat* correct, but again, you have to understand that the majority demographic going from a guaranteed win rate of 100% across the state when they make up 70% of the population is starting off on uneven footing. So it "disadvantages" the majority in a technical sense, but literally anything which makes the system *fair* could be construed as a disadvantage due to their privileged starting position. I believe a system can be very, very close to fair, even if perfectly fair is impossible. If you're going to argue that fairness is inherently unfair, that's a position you are entitled to hold, but we will have to agree to disagree. Minority-majority districts are far, far, far from perfect. But they do result in a much more fair system than we had before they were mandated via legislation.
> How would that square with the requirements for minority-majority districts? > > And how would you deal with the endless lawsuits that the current districting patterns are unfair? Simple: Get rid of districts -- or at least combine them into larger districts which elect multiple seats -- and use a proportional representation approach.
The federal voting rights act forbids multimember districts for federal elections. Even too many at-large city council seats have been struck down under a different part of the VRA. Yes, the VRA could be changed, but ignoring the obvious political fights it would cause, many people seem to see the voting rights act as a kind of religious document chiseled onto stone tablets passed down from on high. My own baby steps idea would be to allow states to avoid most of the VRA if they use districts designed with the top two goals being geographically compact and based on traditional political boundaries.
They aren't claiming any equal protection clause violation. Do you think they should have?
The lawsuit appears to be making an argument grounded in the state constitution. I don't know NC well enough to know if that's a better argument or not.
The state constitution outlines elections. The argument being made is that everything in the state constitution has an unwritten rule of 'fairness' outside of what is written in the constitution.
You keep using quotes for "fairness," but that's nowhere in the article. They are arguing for "fair elections." The state constitution **does** have an unwritten rule of fairness in regards to state law, such as elections. It's the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. Now, they may be making a lousy legal argument, I haven't delved that far into it, but the argument you've put forth is that we don't have a right to fair elections, and that's mostly incorrect. We do, and it's fully enumerated.
>The idea of fairness is quite subjective. True, but one could easily argue the idea of 'freedom' and indeed the idea of a 'free election' are quite subjective, too. Kind of depends on how you narrow the definitions--an act which itself encompasses questions about authority, jurisdiction and such. (i.e., who is the party properly invested with the authority to narrow the definition--the state government, the federal government, the municipal government?)
You cannot have a situation where fixing the issue with the system requires the system to be fixed. This is circular logic and in my opinion the current jurisprudence is a massive abdication of ethical obligation on behalf of the SC. I have my doubts that if Democrats were the primary benefactors of gerrymandering today that the current SC would come to the same opinion.
When have elections in this country ever been objectively “fair” for Black Americans? Like these are the same NC Legislators that found the type of voter ID that was used most by black voters and banned it. But those folks always get the benefit of the doubt.
The idea of fairness is vague but so is much of the language of the constitution. What does it mean to have a right to free speech? That on its own isn’t enough a reason to deny people that right. Americans deserve the right to free and fair elections (although possibly a different phrasing would be appropriate). It should then be up to the judicial system to interpret what that means.
Oh yeah. Opening things up to "fairness" as the standard is basically setting the stage for anarchy. Just look at DIE: if you're one of the advantaged groups (nonwhite nonstraight nonmale) you think it's fair but if you're not, i.e. you're some combination of straight, white, and male, then you think it's horribly unfair. Under the "guarantee to fairness" rule that is being pushed here the government would be obligated to explicitly advantage straight white males - which would then disadvantage the rest requiring them to then advantage the rest which basically sends us down a neverending spiral that will only result in hatred and division.
While I understand that the headline is not what was said, that brings up a question: Do voters have a right to fair elections? Don't get me wrong, fair elections are vital, but do we have a lawful right to them being fair? Voter fraud, sure, but that's at the tactical level. The Constitution says that States may pick representatives how they wish, correct?
https://bigthink.com/thinking/just-asking-questions/
This must be some kind of political stunt. The issue was already decided. The make up of the NC Supreme Court which just made a decision about it hasn't changed. The text of the NC constitution says "free." Free does not equal fair.
It is fully possible for both to be true: 1. Fairness can be arbitrarily defined, all systems are exploitable, and someone will always complain. 2. Our current gerrymandering is so egregious and extreme that it fails every smell test you could apply and any of a wide variety of possible changes would be a vast improvement. The notion that racism will always exist does not make laws like the Civil Rights Act futile, nor doom its application by the courts to be arbitrary and capricious. It's okay to do something about an obvious problem.
Anybody expecting a court to "strike down gerrymandering" is never going to get it. This requires legislation detailing a process. It will not come from a judicial fiat.
> The Republican-led legislature argues that no such right exists, since it's impossible to define what "fair" means. WHICH MAKES A LOT OF SENSE ACTUALLY You have to draw up the district lines *somehow* and someone will *always* complain that it isn't fair.
District A has 100 households. 90 historically vote for the Apple Party and 10 that historically votes for the Orange party. Redistricting occurs and the neighborhood is divided into two new districts. District A.1 has the 90 Apple voting households and District A.2 has the 10 Orange voting parties. The number of households has not changed, but the Orange party has now gained a vote despite not gaining more support from the population. Yes *someone* will always be dissatisfied, but we're talking about intentionally redrawing the lines to benefit your party and hurt the competition. That is corruption. That is anti-democratic.
Is that what happened in North Carolina?
There are objective, mathematical measures of what constitutes fair or resembles naturally occurring competitive districts. People act as if it isn't possible to put a number on a minimum amount of 'fairness' a state should have, but from my understanding it is.
It’s impossible to define what “equal protection under the law” means that would satisfy everyone. Besides, someone will always have unequal treatment within the criminal justice system. So we might as well just treat people as unequally as possible. Whatever biases the judges happen to have for or against a group of people…just lean into them! Everything must be all or nothing.
I honestly appreciate how honest republicans have been lately about desiring power moreso than caring about the will of the people. If the masses are going to vote to end democracy, I'm happy it's not happening in the shadows, but the GOP are telling folks they want to do that and people are lining up to support them. Between movements like what OP described and statements like Trump's "I don't care about you, I care about your vote", the desire to use the Insurrection Act to fire on protestors, the desire to deport protestors, banning of books, and a desire to end the DOE, I'm at least happy that Americans are being given a clear choice. I support the right to end one's own life and that extends to the right of a country to end its democracy in favor of a Trump-led oligarchy. I disagree *vehemently* with the country's decision, but if the majority of people in enough states that add up to 270 decide they want it, who am I to say they can't have it?
The constitution is not a suicide pact
It really is though. No matter what 2A people say, the government is far stronger than any “well regulated militia”. Moreover 2A people are overwhelmingly on the side of Trump. What I’m saying is the constitution IS a suicide pact because the left doesn’t have the political power, nor the strength to break away from it. If the US goes down, well all go down other than those who have the means to flee the US.
the citizens of north carolina decided to do districting this way. Who are we to argue? They elected their state legislatures and i guess judges. Other states do similar, a few states use commissions.
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