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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I would personally rule that all ridings have to fall within a range for population density, determined by the population density of the state. If this results in dozens of thin spaghetti noodle ridings that start in a downtown core and stretch out to the boonies, so be it.
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.Ridings is the Canadian term for constituencies which is the British term for electoral districts.
Boonies also means "way way way out of where it should really be".
I do find the US redistricting process rather bizarre, but then again, ours is done by a non-partisan commission.
Nonetheless, that abortion bill is... horrid. That's... stupid. What is that? Ah, federalism.
edited 24th Jan '13 1:46:31 PM by Inhopelessguy
I was just wondering if abortion provision was the preserve of the States, and thus Central cannot act to strike it down because it's a bit silly. Granted, I'm working on the European federalism (as practised in Canada and Germany) which allows that sort of thing.
@ Maxx. Yes! Hello! I have been revising solidly for exams for the past month, but I return back to a life of laziness, now that I have finished them for this term.
I concur with that idea, of course. America is a continent-nation-state, and federalism evolved to accomodate that. This law is a misuse of that federalism.
edited 24th Jan '13 1:52:54 PM by Inhopelessguy
I still think we should do away with districts altogether and elect a state legislature that's proportionally equal to the party affiliations of the state. Here's an example. A state has 10 representatives. The popular vote is split into 60% Democratic and 40% Republican.
This means that of the state's ten representatives 6 will be Democrats and 4 will be Republicans. There will still have to be another election to determine who the representatives will be but I feel like this system would at least allow the state's population to be represented more fairly. We certainly won't get bullshit like the Democrats winning the majority of the votes but only getting about a quarter of the seats.
edited 24th Jan '13 1:55:15 PM by Kostya
"Revising"? You mean 'studying' don't you, you English git, you?
Okay, guys, turns out that abortion bill was just a case of bad grammar. Rep. Cathrynn Brown explains what she was really gunning for.
She had the right idea, I think.
It was an honor@ Triv. My mistake then. We are currently learning about the nature of American federalism and the Constitution in class.
@ Kos. You mean you want to move to a proportional system rather than FPTP. Not only would that be better representative, but it would allow third parties to gain a foothold into politics. America's split-powers system is perfect for a proportional system.
@ Maxx. No, I mean 'revising'. I use real Anglais.
edited 24th Jan '13 1:58:31 PM by Inhopelessguy
@Kostya: The process of separately voting for the representatives seems like it's putting the primary after the general election. You're almost encouraging the parties to run candidates that appeal only to those voters who show up at the nominating process.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Inhopelessguy, Lascoden: Is it? I'm not very knowledgeable about other political systems. It's just an idea I had on a way to distribute seats in a fairer manner.
True. Do you have a suggestion? Perhaps you can pick who your first, second, etc. choice is to represent your party.
edited 24th Jan '13 2:00:56 PM by Kostya
Well, if you choose List Proportional or Single-Transferable Vote, the candidates are chosen before the election. In fact, this pretty much does away with a primary.
STV is a Ranked Proportional system. ie if there are ten seats, you pick ten candidates - from any party - and rank them 1 to 10.
LP is a single-vote system, ie if there are ten seats, you can only vote for ONE PARTY (and their overall share of the vote dictates how many seats they get), as opposed to one candidate.
edited 24th Jan '13 2:02:34 PM by Inhopelessguy
@ Triv. It depends what system you use. If you use STV, you can vote ordinally (ie rank) as per the number of seats in your constituency.
Using List-Proportional means that although you vote for a party (which is what you do under FPTP, you just happen to chose an individual person for a party), that party's share of the votes allocates it a certain amount of seats.
STV (the ranked system) has a Deviation of Proportionality of seven percent. FPTP, meanwhile, has a DOP of over forty percent.
edited 24th Jan '13 2:10:29 PM by Inhopelessguy

Okay, I'm probably the loudest, most obnoxious, anti-abortion activist on these threads. And I can say this with utter certainty, that New Mexico bill is the most flagrantly stupid thing I've seen in the past 3 years.
Are they intentionally trying to invoke Jumping the Shark????
It was an honor