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🤣LOL! They really did Eve Washington dirty with this one!
Imagine being a highly skilled Black woman with a degree in CompSci from the top journalism university in the US. You write code to debunk the myth that the VRA gave Black people an unfair advantage.♥️👍🏿
And they frame it like this?🤡
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/upshot/redistricting-race-court-gerrymanders-elections.html
@mekkaokereke Am I reading that summary right -- i.e. "the act wouldn't be needed if the problem it is intended to solve didn't exist".
@mekkaokereke If it didn’t rain in the South, no one would need the Umbrella Act
This new screenshot you’re sharing is so much worse. “If partisan gerrymandering were checked”?!? It isn’t, that’s the entire point. But I would never expect better from Nate Cohn.
@mekkaokereke Ooof, yeah, that really reads like "We don't need the Voting Rights Act, because the results would be the same without it!"
Instead, it should be "The districts created under the Voting Rights Act were fair & balanced, very similar to those generated with a colour-blind, non-partisan algorithm."
And the article is completely missing the comparison of how distorted things *could* get with an unhampered partisan districting process.
The simplest explanation of gerrymandering for non-Americans:
And yes, you do need to know this, even if you are not American. Because yes, the majority of white Americans really do want to vote for people that really, genuinely, want to start a new World War. They really do want to invade your country. Yes, including Europe. No, they are not joking.
Every state gets a number of Congress people based on population. Imagine a hypothetical square state divided into 9 districts. Most people in the state are white. Imagine that there is one majority Black city in the center of the state. The candidate that white candidates prefer, will win in 8 districts, and the candidate that Black voters prefer might win in that 1 district. 8 to 1.
A racist person might decide to redraw the district maps, so that the state is instead divided into 16 pizza slice shaped districts. In this scenario, the candidate that white Americans prefer will win 16 times, and the candidate that Black Americans prefer, will not win any districts. 16 to 0.
Racist people try to draw the racist version of the map every chance they get. Every. Chance.
The only thing stopping them from doing that, was a law called the "Voting Rights Act." White people like MLK jr. because his speeches make them feel warm and fuzzy inside. Black people like MLK, because he got the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act passed.
The Voting Rights Act is now neutered by the Supreme Court. Which means Black voters can't use their congressional votes to stop racist white Americans from getting everyone killed. 🤷🏿♂️
Gerrymandering for both political and racial purposes should be banned. If you allow one, you need the other, because the first is a stand-in for the second.
@mekkaokereke Non-Americans also need to know about gerrymandering in case local right-wing politicians try to import the practice!
Canada has a long tradition of non-partisan committees generating electoral maps. But when the committee this year in the province of Alberta recommended fewer seats in rural areas & more in fast-growing cities, the government decided to
a) increase total # of seats (OK)
b) assign politicians to make a new map (not OK), saying they can use AI to replace research!
@mekkaokereke One day I'd love for some state in the US to adopt Ireland's representational voting method: https://www.electoralcommission.ie/irelands-voting-system/
IIRC, it means that the districts can be drawn in any fashion anyone wants -- each district elects multiple members to the legislature. Everyone's vote gets represented. Every group gets representation.
"Main features of the Irish electoral system:
Several candidates are elected to represent each constituency"
@mdm @mekkaokereke Ireland definitely has one of the best electoral systems. There's a slight complexity argument, it leads to comparatively long ballot papers, but that's kinda the price of getting the system right in other ways.
Multi-member districts have been used historically in the United States to disenfranchise Black Americans: Racist white Americans would deliberately dissolve state Congressional districts so that they could elect white supremacists for every Representative from a state.
Congress had to pass a law to stop that practice very shortly after the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Congressional_District_Act .
Unless fair elections need to be specifically enforced.
@mekkaokereke
Thank you for this explanation.
When I searched for videos about gerrymandering, I liked this one by John Oliver:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-4dIImaodQ
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