[yholio]

In case it's not entirely clear, the font ridicules the practice of gerrymandering: toying with electoral district borders so that the results favor the incumbent while corralling the voters of the adversaries.

So extensive is this practice that the resulting shapes can approximate any letter of the alphabet. Quite readable too.

[labster]

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.

[the-pigeon]

Also district shaping is more complex than you might think.

For instance some distracts were purposely built around a minority groups neighborhoods so that they would have a representative. If you made the districts purely based on grids then the group would be too small to have any representative.

Which maybe is the wrong solution. But you get funky district shapes for all sorts of reasons that are not the corruption people typically think of.

[projektfu]

A lot of times they do this to isolate voters in one district. You make 1-2 compact districts like GA-5, that contains a large number of Democratic voters (and black people), like 90% margin. Then you surround it with gerrymandered districts and make them nearly but not quite competitive, like 55% Republican white suburban. Thus the same population of Republicans can have 4 or 5 districts while the Democrats get 1 or 2.

[core-questions]

Isn't it interesting that folks will justify gerrymandering when it's built to support a minority group, unless that minority group is the one particular subset of the population who aren't generally allowed specific representation?

[InTheArena]

This is exactly how the current wave of gerrymandering began. The mandate to create "majority-minority" districts led to the concentration of districts that favored minorities (Democrats) but at the same time created two or three districts with sizable (but not insanely so) Republican districts.

From the Atlantic:

"But just in time for the redistricting in 1990, some enterprising Republicans began noticing a rather curious fact: The drawing of majority-minority districts not only elected more minorities, it also had the effect of bleeding minority voters out of all the surrounding districts. Given that minority voters were the most reliably Democratic voters, that made all of the neighboring districts more Republican. The black, Latino, and Asian representatives mostly were replacing white Democrats, and the increase in minority representation was coming at the expense of electing fewer Democrats. "

[LocalPCGuy]

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.

[blackflame7000]

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.

[neotek]

>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.

[memetomancer]

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, education resources and such) on the other side of town.

If you can unpack the above and place yourself in the shoes of the people on the bad end of that deal, you might start to get the idea.

[chimeracoder]

> Except that it uses non-gerrymandered districts from California, where elected officials are not allowed to draw the lines.

Just because the districts are drawn by unelected people doesn't mean the districts aren't gerrymandered.

[EForEndeavour]

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."

[raldi]

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.

[thephyber]

I think it was a dig at Texas, especially since the gp didn't mention the third CA letter.

[raldi]

There isn't a third. There are two, T (made up of one district) and X (made of two).

If the point of this project was to call attention to ridiculously-shaped gerrymandered districts, these are some of the last districts that should ever be considered for inclusion.

[undersuit]

>these are some of the last districts that should ever be considered for inclusion.

Maybe there were, and the author had to use them for their relatively sane shapes compared to calling Maryland's 3rd District the X.

[nsxwolf]

Districts look idiosyncratic no matter how they are drawn, so I’m not sure this works as a statement. Perhaps if the font were updated over time to match the changes due to gerrymandering, the font would become less and less readable, and that would seemingly be some sort of statement.

[AlanSE]

It's not even a very good T. Some letters are more impressive than others. Q is totally worthless for the political point.

But N, D, U, and a few others are real gems.

[furyofantares]

I’m imagining this debate playing out in my head.

I’m not sure if gerrymandering is all that bad. Wait, what’s this, a font made out of gerrymandered districts? It must be really bad, we should do something about it. Except the T doesn’t look that great, and it’s from California anyway. Maybe this isn’t such a big deal after all. And the Q! The Q is barely even gerrymandered. Fuck it, I’m gonna go play some video games.

[aqme28]

What's wrong with D? That looks like a pretty reasonable district. B is the worst one I think.

[caf]

K and H are pretty egregious at first glance.

[mikeash]

The contrast just serves to further emphasize just how fucked up some of these districts are.

[jypepin]

Thanks for clarifying! Was not aware of the practice and didn't even notice the states represented the alphabet! (Non US resident here).

[schoen]

Note that these are Congressional districts (a sub-state district used for electoral purposes). The states' shapes themselves exist for other historical reasons that are probably not mainly related to gerrymandering.

[swebs]

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

[GavinMcG]

That's an article from several months ago. The Supreme Court already ruled, and said that federal courts couldn't do anything about it, so state governments that are controlled by one party can continue to entrench their power.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/06/gerrymandering-symposium-...

[hsnewman]

If I'm not mistaken, there is nothing in the constitution about doing this. It is unfortunately completely legal.

[agjm]

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 important that their content be available in Europe.'

'It is naive and wholly irresponsible to think that U.S. news holds no relevance beyond U.S. borders...'

Perhaps, then, Europe should've had some international discussion about their hyper-aggressive legislation, to try and prevent this situation. I am dumbfounded that anyone thinks the U.S. corporations are to blame for not spending millions to comply with a foreign law from countries where they have no legal representation.

Preventing that sort of 'taxation without representation' is something of a popular idea over here.

https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/08/more-than-1000-u-s-news-si...

[zimpenfish]

> on top of the cost of achieving "compliance."

Compliance with GDPR is easy though - don't aggressively track and monitor European visitors. If you've stuffed your website that full with invasive trackers et al that you can't show it to Europeans for fear of broaching personal privacy legislation, you should probably have a good long think about where you've gone wrong.

[erik_seaberg]

GDPR is not merely a list of bad things to avoid, it adds a lot of ongoing burdens to every company active in the region. Hire more people. Actively investigate your own compliance. Wait months for government permission to deliver features.

There are people who aren't doing anything wrong, who did the math and decided they can't clear a profit on proving they aren't doing anything wrong.

[dmitriid]

The ongoing burden is minuscule.

What’s wrong with actively investigating your own compliance?

What government permissions are you even talking about?

[erik_seaberg]

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-36-gdpr/

[non-entity]

> There's currently a push to take it to the supreme court so it can be stopped once and for all.

I may be mistaken, but I thought I read the court ruled it constitutional

[Delmania]

Their ruling was that the Supreme Court is not the decider here, this has to be done at a state level.

[sergiotapia]

If they do this doesn't this mean 5 cities will dictate who is in charge of the country?

[munk-a]

I think you're referring to national elections which ends up being in the court of the electoral college which is a terribly broken system but separate from the habit of gerrymandering, only a few states will divide their electoral votes - and the rest simply give all their votes to whoever won a plurality of the vote.

(And, to clarify, I believe you're referring to a false talking point that's often thrown about to spread F.U.D.)

[sagichmal]

It makes sense that the majority of the population should be able to “dictate” (really: have majority influence on) policy, doesn’t it?

[jascii]

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

[Spivak]

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 issues and have no repercussions for hurting them to favor city-dwellers.

This would be bad. Very bad. A straight population vote ends up being a scheduling algorithm for issues where rural interests have unbounded wait time.

One could say that the solution of weighting rural votes higher is a clunky system but any replacement voting system needs to take this into account as those small towns are where almost all of our primary industry is.

[TheBranca18]

If this is the issue, the electoral college doesn't solve this. Because what happens is the campaigning for the general election is usually dictated by swing state status and when the caucus or primary takes place in the election calendar. If you look at the distribution of states visited during the campaigning for the general election, it backs this up.

Also, the Senate is supposed to combat the House in this instance. That's what it's there for, and frankly, because of the importance of the Senate, a voter in Wyoming has more voting power than a voter in California. This isn't good either as you mention in your last statement.

[andrekandre]

yep, and i would posit that hanging everything off of swing states gyrates the presidential debates into wild swings in extreme directions which possibly further divide the population against each other over time

[jethro_tell]

This is why we have the senate, two votes per state even though alaska has less people than the city of Seattle.

The point of the electoral college was that news travels slowly so voting for a rep to vote for you to represent your district was the right thing to do. Now, everyone can vote for themselves and probably should and we can have it counted in a day or two.

[mattbk1]

The original intent of the two chambers of congress was that the Senate would represent the state (government) itself, and the House would represent the people living in the state. It wasn't until later that senators were elected by the people rather than appointed by the governor.

If the electoral college was apportioned correctly and the size of the house not artificially capped, there wouldn't be any reason to compare "voting power" of low-population vs high-population states.

[WaitWaitWha]

I am not sure I agree with you on this. Although the Senate indeed has two per State, the House seats is by population. Correct me if I am wrong, but the US House the exclusive power to "initiate revenue bills, impeach federal officials, and elect the President in the case of an electoral college tie".

Because bills are _always_ full of pork (Gov funded projects that are specific to the representative's district), there is nothing that would stop a highly populated region representatives to divert all funds to their district, while taxing an other region higher. In essence, diverting not only shared funds, but levy punitive taxes on other regions.

[runarberg]

Why are people so keen on evening out geographical representation, why not age, or gender, or sexual orientation, able bodiedness or some other arbitrary measure like left handedness?

I think if any measure should be focused on getting equal representation its class. But guess which class is both by far the largest, but still has the least representation. Perhaps it is the purpose of arbitrary drawing of districts to keep it that way.

[UncleMeat]

Except this is blatantly not supported by evidence.

Presidential candidates want to win Florida. Badly. The state has a popular vote for the presidential candidate. If "popular vote encourages candidates to ignore everything except for population centers" then we'd see candidates campaigning in Florida exclusively target major cities. But we don't. The candidates themselves show up in small towns in Florida as part of their campaign efforts.

If we don't see this behavior at the state level, then why would we expect to see if at the national level?

[jellicle]

Can't we make the exact opposite argument?

In the unbalanced system which currently exists in the USA, rural voters are given huge, disproportionate advantage in electoral power, leading to national decisions being made that favor them (have some more farm subsidies!) and ignoring the voices of the millions of citizens who happen to live in large cities and populous states.

Why are rural people better than city people? Shouldn't it be.. equal?

[RhysU]

It is interesting to read one significant thread here discussing gerrymandering starting as an effort to increase minority representation. Otherwise, minority blocs can be overridden by a majority and diluted into have no representation.

Then another thread discussing rural voters being given excessive representation. Why shouldn't the cities dominate, they ask?

Rural voters comprise a minority.

How consistent should these threads be in terms of the arguments and what is seen as good? How consistent are they in practice?

[dahdum]

If you look at educational attainment, health, poverty rates, and other factors it doesn’t seem to biased towards rural communities. They fall behind in all those measures.

[zhoujianfu]

This is untrue, in a national popular vote scenario, politicians would spend an equal amount of time and effort on winning each vote, regardless of location. And each person’s vote would be worth the same, regardless of location, as every other election in the U.S. works.

[BookmarkSaver]

>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 5 reps to the rural 2.

Density is a completely arbitrary metric to use. Why not use race? Why not income levels? Why does density demand electoral privilege but no other metric?

The only actual answer is "status quo". They are overrepresented now, so there is a retroactive justification that somehow balanced representation is "unfair", when in fact it is only "unfair" because it is less than they already have.

[harimau777]

I think that the idea is that as much as possible everyone's preferences should be heard and allowed for. The preferences and priorities of people living in cities tends to be dramatically different than those of people living in rural areas. The concern is that a scenario where cities have enough higher population that their preferences are advanced to the exclusion of the priorities of people in rural areas, while more democratic, would undermine ideals of freedom, equality, self determination, etc.

[dahdum]

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.

[jascii]

I thought that the electoral college and gerrymandering were to separate issues, how are they related?

[zhoujianfu]

They are, although you could consider the electoral college as an unintended gerrymander for president...

[marcus_holmes]

To be fair, Western Australia has this problem. 10% of the population but 15-20% (depending on boom status) of the export revenue. Politically irrelevant, but the source of all the mining royalties. It causes problems.

[dfbrown]

All but two state's electoral votes are decided by the result of the popular vote in that state, congressional districts have no effect on that.

Local and proportional representation is the main reason for having the house of representatives, while the reason for Gerrymandering is to disproportionately favor one party or another.

[uabstraction]

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

[taude]

How accurate are the rest of the districts? Or were there some tweaks to make it work out as the alphabet a little better?

Pretty amazing, though.