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Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

uglygerry.com

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Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#161

Post by dahdum »

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #145
Spivak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the arguments in favor of the electoral college is that it boosts the voice of people who are in areas with lower population density. This is to ensure that minority interests are respected and taken into account by presidential hopefuls. Without this protection the voices of people who live outside the 5 major metropolitan areas simply wouldn't matter and candidates would have no reason to listen to their iss…

>One of the arguments in favor of the electoral college is that it boosts the voice of people who are in areas with lower population density Why should people get more say because they live more spread out? Why do 100k people living across the countryside get more say than 100k people living in a city? If 5 million people live in a city and 2 million people live in the countryside, the people in the city should have…

The real answer is because we’re a union of states, many of which would not have joined under that representation scheme.

You need to amend the constitution to change that. It’s hard to do, but again that was intentional.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#162

Post by raldi »

harimau777 wrote: post #155
raldi wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be that as it may, it substantially undermines the premise of the work, which is presumably, "Gerrymandering is so rampant that you can make an entire alphabetic font out of gerrymandered districts".

I think that "Gerrymandering is so rampant that you can make 24 of the 26 letters out of gerrymandered districts" still demonstrates their point.

D, E, O, Q, T, X, Y, and half of Z all seem fine to me.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#163

Post by caf »

triceratops wrote: post #152
kelnos wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original point of having districts was because states are "too large" and you want people representing an even smaller geographical area so that truly local issues are represented. And in many places that's still the case, and is actually useful and important to get local issues surfaced properly. For states with heavily gerrymandered districts, though, I agree: might as well just do away with districts and have…

So instead of making a choice between 2-5 candidates (major 2 plus a few independents/smaller parties), every voter has to rank up to 50 candidates (assuming ranked choice voting)? How do you expect voters to know the policy positions of that many candidates? They may as well be picking at random. If not ranked choice voting, how would this even work?

If you're going to have a large multi-member district with proportional representation, it's not essential to use ranked-choice voting - you can get a reasonable result just by having people vote once for the ticket of candidates they prefer, then allocating the seats proportionally.

That said, ranked-choice voting in large multi-member districts is certainly possible: It is usual to require voters to rank only as many candidates as there are vacancies, though they can number more if they wish to (consequently they don't need to understand the detailed policy positions of the minor candidates that have no realistic chance of election). Voters in such systems tend to firstly order the parties based on the policy positions of those parties, then order the candidates within those parties if they have a strong opinion of the relative merits of those candidates.

Here's an example of a media summary of the candidates running in such an election: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-17/federal-election-2019...

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#164

Post by comex »

blackflame7000 wrote: post #158
memetomancer wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yours would best be described as the 'naive' take on the situation, and rests on a false premise. These minorities need 'help' in that a majority is going to be self-interested and lacking compassion or any sort of integrity at larger scope. In the U.S. this might take the form of tax loopholes for speedboats and golf memberships eating into funding for basic social services (infrastructure, law enforcement, educatio…

There will always be a majority and there will always be a minority. But the thought process behind, "they are a minority, therefore they need assistance" is elitism at best and racism at worst. Furthermore, the laws that we pass that give special treatment to one group over another make that divide all the more permanent.

It's not about giving anyone assistance or an advantage, it's about giving people representation. With single-member districts, if a group makes up, say, 20% of the population in each district, they don't get 20% of the representatives, but 0%. If we had proportional representation, they would get 20% of the representatives, but we don't, and majority-minority districts are basically a bandaid to simulate it in a subset of cases.

To be eligible for a majority-minority district, a minority group must be "politically cohesive" and "sufficiently numerous and compact to form a majority in a single-member district", while the majority group must "votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it [..] usually to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate". (Thornburg v. Gingles) In other words, there must be a political bloc that (a) is not receiving any representation in the area and (b) would have representation with a majority-minority district. Letting them have that in no way gives them an advantage over the majority, whose preferred candidates will still control all the other districts.

Why not apply this to political blocs that exist based on factors other than race – like plain old conservative versus liberal? Well, I think we should; again, I'd prefer proportional representation. But the current rule is enforcing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which specifically calls out discrimination based on race – something that was a huge problem in 1965, and is still a problem today. Compared to other types of political blocs, racial ones are disproportionately excluded from the political system. And morally speaking, although being discriminated against due to your political beliefs is bad, being discriminated against due to your race is somewhat worse, because you can choose one but not the other.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#165

Post by H8crilA »

zw123456 wrote: post #84

I think that a solution this problem as well as many others like undo influence, too much money needed and so on, could be solved by increasing the number of representatives. I believe that the only stipulations in the constitution is that each state must have at least one and that a representative cannot represent less than 30K citizens. The number was frozen 35 in 1911 by the house, but they could change that if th…

It seems that across countries the size of the parlament is proportional to the square root of the population size:

https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/364/is-there-an...

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#166

Post by roland35 »

bzbarsky wrote: post #64
roland35 wrote: post #12

I am not surprised to see Ohio is well represented here! We have a particularly egregious gerrymandered map with 75% Republican representatives in a state that leans slightly Republican. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio%27s_congressional_distric...

Sure, but note Illinois is also well-represented in the font, this time with significant Democratic party over-reprentation (13 out of 18, for a state that is not nearly that skewed in presidential elections, say). Turns out, gerrymandering gets done by whoever happens to be in power. :(

Yes, it does go both ways, I didn't mean to single out the RS!

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#167

Post by [deleted] »

agjm wrote: post #149
swebs wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's currently a push to take it to the supreme court so it can be stopped once and for all. Archive link because the Baltimore Sun doesn't like Europe: http://archive.is/a3mMR

I think the Baltimore Sun probably likes Europe just fine - what they don't like are self-contradictory rule sets that can cost them $20,000,000+ on top of the cost of achieving "compliance." 'Sarah Toporoff, a Massachusetts native who works in Paris for the Global Editors Network, which promotes newsroom innovation, raised similar questions. She said U.S. newsrooms “are a benchmark for digital innovation” — and it’s…

[deleted]

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#168

Post by macintux »

blackflame7000 wrote: post #158
memetomancer wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yours would best be described as the 'naive' take on the situation, and rests on a false premise. These minorities need 'help' in that a majority is going to be self-interested and lacking compassion or any sort of integrity at larger scope. In the U.S. this might take the form of tax loopholes for speedboats and golf memberships eating into funding for basic social services (infrastructure, law enforcement, educatio…

There will always be a majority and there will always be a minority. But the thought process behind, "they are a minority, therefore they need assistance" is elitism at best and racism at worst. Furthermore, the laws that we pass that give special treatment to one group over another make that divide all the more permanent.

How about “they’re a minority with a long history of being enslaved, impoverished, disparaged, denied basic rights, denied access, denied the ballot box, denied representation, denied life itself”? Would that make any difference in your judgment on the matter?

Although comex’s answer is, probably, more important.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#169

Post by uabstraction »

Spivak wrote: post #39
jascii wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not quite sure I follow you, could you elaborate?

One of the arguments in favor of the electoral college is that it boosts the voice of people who are in areas with lower population density. This is to ensure that minority interests are respected and taken into account by presidential hopefuls. Without this protection the voices of people who live outside the 5 major metropolitan areas simply wouldn't matter and candidates would have no reason to listen to their iss…

There is no justifiable reason why one person's vote should be worth more than another.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#170

Post by neotek »

blackflame7000 wrote: post #141
LocalPCGuy wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is because what you are referring to as "one particular subset of the population who aren't generally allowed specific representation" does not need any help in making sure they have representation. One, they are not (currently) a minority and two, they have the vast majority of the power in this country already. So no, it isn't interesting.

I'm confused about why being a minority means you need more help? Are they not as capable as the rest of us? Why do you think they are so disadvantaged as to require special education and assistance? I mean we're not talking case by case basis here, your sentiments were clearly blanketed statements.

>I'm confused about why being a minority means you need more help?

In simple terms, many minority groups in America have been forcefully and intentionally disadvantaged for generations through programs like redlining, segregation, the so-called war on drugs, gerrymandering, and hundreds of other racist schemes designed to deprive minority citizens of the same rights and privileges you and your ancestors were afforded solely based on the colour of their skin.

And I would hope that you can understand why centuries of systemic oppression would have a lasting effect that needs more than just words to address.

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