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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

#61

Post by jandrese »

Spivak wrote: post #41
jandrese wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is so hilariously misguided it might be taken as a form of racism. By lumping minorities into a single candidate they create a token representative who has a very safe seat but no power in the state senate and allow all other candidates to effectively ignore that minority entirely. They don't have to worry about angering 5% of their electorate and losing the next election by a 2% margin.

Now let's take the other extreme. You split the minority population among 10 different seats where their population in each district is so small that their interests are ignored entirely in each one.

If your population is relatively balanced then you need to worry about everybody because every vote might count. Sure a minority might only be 5% of the population, but if you anger them and they vote for your opponent that could absolutely change the outcome of an otherwise close race.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#62

Post by kelnos »

pergadad wrote: post #56
toddsiegel wrote: post #24

It says tweet your reps. To be clear, you should probably contact your state rep about this (and send an email, not a tweet). They have the power to do something about it. This is very important, esp. in light the recent US Supreme Court decision on this subject[1]. Gerrymandering creates safe districts that make primaries hold increasingly more weight then general elections, which is leading, in a significant way, t…

Or you could drop the whole issue by turning to a representative democracy with proportional voting, where it's about policy not individuals raising money.

If we can't even get our Supreme Court to agree that gerrymandering is bad enough to believe that it should be involved, I'm pretty sure fundamentally changing how the entire government works is a bit unlikely, to put it mildly.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#63

Post by tialaramex »

tunesmith wrote: post #40
toddsiegel wrote: post #24

It says tweet your reps. To be clear, you should probably contact your state rep about this (and send an email, not a tweet). They have the power to do something about it. This is very important, esp. in light the recent US Supreme Court decision on this subject[1]. Gerrymandering creates safe districts that make primaries hold increasingly more weight then general elections, which is leading, in a significant way, t…

More competitive? Or more representative of the overall population? Because those two things are at odds. Say you have a state that is split 55/44, and has nine districts. Do you want nine districts each at 55/44, meaning 9-0? That's more competitive, but less representative of the state. Or do you want five districts for one, and four for the other? That's more representative of the state, but less competitive. Redi…

If you worry about this, the reform you want is multi-member districts. Instead of voting for one representative people are picking several and the districts are bigger. This is how EU parliamentary elections work for example, a region gets say 5 slots and it needs to send 5 representatives to fill those slots, elected democratically but the EU doesn't tightly constrain the method used.

There are a few ways you can do this, Jefferson developed one of them so that's got a nice pedigree. It is also a good way for any third party to start to get some attention. Getting 20% of votes together to have your candidate as the fifth member for a district with 2 Dems and 2 Republicans is going to be easier than finding a plurality of voters for a single rep when the two big parties are both saying that's a wasted vote.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#64

Post by bzbarsky »

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. :(

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#65

Post by meddlepal »

pergadad wrote: post #56
toddsiegel wrote: post #24

It says tweet your reps. To be clear, you should probably contact your state rep about this (and send an email, not a tweet). They have the power to do something about it. This is very important, esp. in light the recent US Supreme Court decision on this subject[1]. Gerrymandering creates safe districts that make primaries hold increasingly more weight then general elections, which is leading, in a significant way, t…

Or you could drop the whole issue by turning to a representative democracy with proportional voting, where it's about policy not individuals raising money.

Yes and the barrier to do that is so much higher than OP's suggestion. It's so high that it's nearly impossible.

Idealism is great and all, but you gotta have a practical plan to achieve something.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#66

Post by tombert »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #50
legitster wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was exactly the point discussed in one of the episodes. Artificially create a black delegation? Or have no black delegation at all.

...just do away with districts entirely? why are they needed?

I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Individual districts are going to have problems the the rest of the state or country don't know/care about. Having a representative for these districts makes sense.

For example, in my district (Brownsville in Brooklyn), we have an almost tragically poorly-ranked school system, due largely to bad funding and high crime rates in the area. I don't expect someone from Midtown Manhattan to care a whole lot about these specific problems (I know I certainly didn't when I lived in Washington Heights).

In an ideal world I guess I'd agree, everyone would care about everything at the exact appropriate weight, but that's not the world we live in. Certain problems will go ignored if we don't have fairly-granular representation for an area.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#67

Post by bzbarsky »

moate wrote: post #28

NJ Resident here: I'd like to point out that the "V" shape is basically just the southern border of the state along the coast. It could be considered a Gerrymander (I haven't invested the time to look at district representation) but I will say it could also just be a weird geographical feature. Fun project none the less.

For what it's worth, a bunch of the things in this font are weird-shaped because of coastlines...

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#68

Post by vkou »

TomK32 wrote: post #14

This needs to be coloured in shades of Blue and Red.

No, it doesn't. Because what the district votes for isn't necessarily the party that drew the lines. The goal of gerrymandering is to create safe districts for yourself, and your opponents (But more safe districts for yourself).

Just because a district that looks like a dragon riding a spaceship votes blue doesn't mean that it was created by a Democrat. It could have been a Republican, who attached all the areas that were likely to vote D to that district. (And ended up turning the neighbouring 3 districts, which look a little less insane into solid R blocks.) Or vice versa.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#69

Post by kelnos »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #50
legitster wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was exactly the point discussed in one of the episodes. Artificially create a black delegation? Or have no black delegation at all.

...just do away with districts entirely? why are they needed?

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 the entire state vote for their entire roster of representatives.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#70

Post by raldi »

EForEndeavour wrote: post #26
labster wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that it uses non-gerrymandered districts from California, where elected officials are not allowed to draw the lines. So any statement is lost, but I guess it’s a fun art project.

Only three letters in this project include California; only the letters T and X are represented exclusively by California. The statement is powerful and hilarious, not "lost."

The T district doesn't even look problematic to me. Nor does the other California letter, X, which is made up of a combination of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_8th_congression...

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_14th_congressio...

...both of which seem like textbook examples of what a good, non-gerrymandered district should look like.

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