Gregory Samuel Teo Yes, that is a problem. That's why there are two federal legislative bodies, like you mentioned. There are state senates and representatives, but unfortunately that can lead to more gerrymandering among precincts. (Correct me if I'm wrong. Some of this is speculation.)
California, New Jersey, Arizona and 3 other states have an independent commission to draw the districts instead of politicians. More states need to adapt this method.
i think population (people) is more important than land mass. If 80% of the people in your state lives in cities, it should make sense that the cities get laws that benefit them, as opposed to the other way around.
@@derekfurst6233 That would put the 20% of people who live in rural areas, like farmers, at a severe disadvantage. If there were an issue that city dwellers liked that would hurt the farmers' agriculture industry, the farmers would have no way to prevent it. The point of taking land area into consideration in forming districts is to ensure that the farmers and other rural residents get a voice, too, so that issues that are important to them can be addressed. The 80% that live in the city are not more important than the 20% that live in the country. Majority rule is a bad idea in many cases. It hurts minorities.
@@jlhill17 the best solution is to allow cities and rural areas to make their own laws. And then have the overarching government only pass what laws it needs to. We could call it: federalism.
+RoboTekno and choose the country weasely. in countries like russia, if the weasel is not cautious enough and upsets the wrong people, it ends up in alleys...
So we've had these resources on the internet now for over five years to educate the populous and yet still nothing has even began to be done about it...
we've had dictionaries on the internet for a lot longer than that, and you still use "populous" wrong. some problems are not as easy to solve as they seem
lunarul Fair enough, but this one guy on the internet misunderstanding and misusing a word this one time on this one page isn't nearly as detrimental as an entire nation's (the world's largest power no less) faulty voting system for over two centuries.
If spelling words correctly would improve the world as much as abolishing gerrymandering would, I'm sure OroCrimson would be just as surprised and/or disappointed
@@captainyolowaffle3160 I feel like that's super young, I'm a 13 year old boy, they think I'm an immature dumb boy that could never understand politics. While I may still be a (sometimes) immature and dumb boy, I manage to understand this super easily
I'm going through a rewatch, and I'm intentionally liking and leaving comments on all of them so that more people might see these. I rarely do this, that's how important I think your videos are, thank you so much!
We just went through another round of gerrymandering here in North Carolina and I've been using this video series to explain the problem and possible solutions to friends. Thanks for the good work!
Well, I think I fixed gerrymandering. Just force the politicians to play the honeycomb round of Squid Game - with the shapes of the districts they've drawn.
*Eagle shows up and says* Don't list to that scumbag, i have the solution! *hands the Queen two books, one is called 'Mein Kampf' and the other is called 'The protocols of the elders of snakes.'*
my AP Gov teacher showed us this video and your two party video years ago. they really helped me understand these concepts, thank you so much for making these videos!!
I've been taught this probably 5+ times throughout middle school and highschool and its never sunk in. Thanks for being a better teacher than the entire History division of the Kaneland Board of Education
At 1:14 the Jackalope says: We can't bust heads like we used to but we have our ways. One trick is to tell em stories that don't go anywhere- like the time I caught the ferry over to shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe so I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickle, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on em. "Give me five bees a quarter," you'd say. Now where were we? Oh yeah:the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. Only thing you could get were those big yellow ones. Wow what a great use of my time. shameless self advertising setamina ytreaz ot bus
@@basilbiscuit2735 S4E17 "Last Exit to Springfield" the one where the nuclear plant workers strike, so Mr. Burns gets Homer's dad and his "ol' union busting" friends, whose plan is to tell boring stories at them to get them to go away.
Here in Australia we do have legislative districts for the House (just like in the US), but we also have a truly independent commission (the Australian Electoral Commission, AEC), which is completely apolitical and its integrity has never been put into question. It can work, you just need to give it a go.
The original Gerry mander was done by Elmbridge Gerry (pronounces Gerry not Jerry) on the state of Massachusetts and when people noticed the unfair redrawing on districts they said “that looks like a salamander” “Not a salamander, a Gerrymander” The reason we call the process Gerrymandering is because of a bad pun that mispronounced the name
The reason that gerrymandering is a problem is because people vote not for issues but for a particular group. That group happens to be either Republican or Democrat. The rest are insignificant. The voter, when confronted with an unknown, will vote party lines. Now suppose that the ballot did not mention party? The voting public will be stumped. The second problem is the media. Lets suppose I am super rich and i have super rich friends. I tell six of my super rich friends to buy all the media giants. They agree. Now when election comes around they sit around a round table and agree who they want to allow to compete. They approach the possible candidates and make a deal with them. We will get you into office and you will have to make sure that these listed things are taken care off, They agree and the comes the media blitz. They use psychological techniques to get the public enthusiastic. In the end the super rich have who they want.
I am SHOCKED that after 5 years, you only have 25 likes because you nail it. People who are not politicly savvy will just vote for a party rather than an actual candidate. Hence the devolution of USA politics into the reality tv fiasco we have today.
I voted for the first time a couple months ago,locally. All were "non partisan" positions. And guess what? I had no idea what policies anyone supported. If there were no political parties, do you think politicians would just be more open about what they supported?
@@louisryan5815 that might be true. I just have anecdotal evidence. But I barely had any idea what my local candidates stood for, and at least with parties you have a party platform.
I obsessively go back and pause these videos to read the flavor quotes, so I saw that, and had a good laugh when I immediately recognized it, being a big Simpsons fan.
BRILLIANT VIDEO. I used to think I was the only person who wanted a "preferential voting" system. I never hear anyone talking about it. This video restores my faith in humanity a little bit. Cheers!
California dealt with this by removing the legislature from the districting process "turns it over to a mixed panel of unelected designates (members of the two largest parties in the state, currently the Democratic and Republican Parties, and unaffiliated voters) whose composition is determined by a complex multi-step nomination, selection, and rejection process (Proposition 11 was passed in the November 2008 election). "
For a single official election (e.g. the President) it's totally sufficient to just not have representatives. You don't need to "travel to Washington" anymore to cast your state's vote. An overall total from all voters is the easiest and most logical way. For congress this doesn't work obviously, but you can still do what germany and austria do: They have twice as many seats as there are districts. Every winner gets a seat (to ensure local representation), but then the other half is filled in a way to make the parliament as a whole represent the overall percentages. (Example: Party A gets 30% of the vote, but wins 30 districts, and Party B gets 70% of the vote, winning "only" 20 districts - then Party A has only their 30 local reps and Party B has their 20 local reps plus another 50 members of their "list". [This is assuming, there are 50 districts, which makes for 100 seats.])
I'm sorry, yes ofcourse. I thought this goes without saying, but apparently in some countries everyone who just shows up at the booth on election day can vote °_° Blew my mind to be honest... How do you prevent double-voting?!?
@@QemeH You use your national identity card, which prevent anyone from double voting. And yes you can scan the card meaning you cannot you fake (P.S some country even require more than Identity card like driving license for example) I mean come on we live in modern time not ye olde time
@@hoseadavit3422 Well, since the comment I replied to was apparently deleted, I'm not 100% sure, but... I could vote with my actual real ID card several times, if it weren't for voting registers. Or how does an election helper in New York check weather you already voted in Texas? (If the state is printed on the ID card in the US, just pretend I named different congressional districts instead of different states!) You need to keep track of who votes where anyway, so why not use that for local representation - is, I believe, the point the (now missing) comment was trying to address...
@@QemeH Here in the Netherlands voters are sent a voting card by mail. This has to be handed in at the polling place and cannot be returned. We also require the presentation of an ID that is at most 5 years expired (can be a national ID, Passport or driver's license), but this of course does not prevent double voting. Without the voting card one could simply go to another polling place and vote a second time.
When you live in a country where some states are as large or larger than many countries in the world, you need to relegate some power to those states. When subdivisions need to be made for such large areas, you will always have issues of gerrymandering
@@blubberdust as if decentralisation is a uniquely American phenomenon. Most EU countries have provinces and or states, with similar autonomy/legal competences as US states and a similar amount of citizens as an average state. Most of them have zero issues with gerrymandering.
@@michielvangorp9608 A quick google search will show that there are examples from all over the world, from countries in every populated continent, including countries in the EU.
wanted to say thanks for all of these videos, i know they are olds but they are my starting foundation for my non profit organisation. thank you for leading me to the things i want/needs to research more of
It's official. I'm addicted to your videos. I LOVE education and learning even if the facts are extremely random. I think this generation could really benefit from these videos. Please don't stop posting.
here is an idea: get rid of districts all together and simply divide representatives by the percentage of votes, like delegates. Example: 30% vote democrat 70% vote republican so then we have 3 democrats and 7 republican representatives.
+aroseland1 That is (sorta) how most countries do it, although they just add "at large" reps to make sure the percentage of reps matches the percentage of voters for each party.
This is one of the reasons that I never voted until the craziest of the two parties put forth a candidate was truly, and completely, a piece of human garbage.
Part one is not direct voting. Your vote in part 1 is part of an existing system that has representatives choose for you. i.e. Districts-->States. An example of direct voting is literally "everyone go to this URL, cast your vote by this date" Results are published for each canididate. It's still a FPTP system, and all the flaws of FPTP are still in effect (Such as the spoiler effect) but you are taking the indirect representation middlemen out (i.e. Electoral College) and taking a literal count. I don't believe it would be as expensive as viper claims. It's a system that once it's setup is rather easy to maintain, but it would create a level of transparency that the two major parties do not want. The problem with these needed changes, is you would essentially need someone to somehow get the support of their party, then while in office, go against their party; which becomes a problem as their own party can essentially force them out of office (whatever position they held, regardless if it's president or a lowly state seat)
+Sykomyke needing to coordinate a complete vote, on every contested issue, extended to every member of the Canadian electorate, possibly multiple times a month... yeah, can't see that getting expensive at all... -campaigning -data/paper usage -paid hours for ballot counters and monitors -time off work to vote -preventing methods of voter fraud... There would be FAR too much involved to make direct democracy a realistic system... especially since laws are written in 'legalese' which the layperson has no idea how to interpret
Where did I say getting a complete vote on every contested issue? We are talking about electing candidates to office. Not voting on every bill, amendment, or what have you.
To CGP Grey... I feel like you would be the perfect person to teach game theory. If you have some videos already please let me know. I absolutely love your videos... in general, sure... but I love your series on voting and elections, gerrymandering, etc.
You have just described the British Parliamentary system with first past the post and the endless tinkering of both of the 'oh crap we only have two' parties. We do not live in a democracy in the UK as I can vote Green my whole life and never get represented. Proportional rep is the only fair way but it's not in the interests of either of the big two and so the only way we will ever see it is if we stay in Europe and it gets imposed. We have the oldest parliamentary democracy so it makes sense that it would need the most reform, unfortunately there are too many vested interests for it to come from our rotten to the core Parliament.
The problem is that representative democracy isn't in the interest of the people is in the interest of the representatives. No amount of gerrymandering will fix that.
Gregory Samuel Teo The problem isn't that people don't demand enough, people protest several issues from human rights to energy policies. The problem is that the people who are most affected by the decision making process do not take part in it. Proponents of representative government often say that the people exercise their power through elections, that they can choose not to elect bad governments and punish underperformant ones. That thesis doesn't hold to scrutiny though, because when one's choice is between coconut-vanilla and vanilla-mocha we don't have much of a choice. And the other reason it's a fallacious argument is because there are several years in between elections, in that time the public is oblivious of the decisions that were made, largely by the complicity of the media, the boredom of modern times, and the secretiveness of the government and the military.
Ricardo Acuna what? i'm merely saying there needs to be demonstrations against such issues. if you wanna lump in how completely broken the US plutocracy is, that still doesn't explain the lack of demonstrations on this particular issue. instead, we see protests against things like gay marriage all the time. sure, mainstream media is bs; but that's why we have the internet, no? i can understand if the older generation are still mostly influenced by fox news, but the younger generations?
My point is that even if people raised the issue, a demonstration won't fix anything. Politicians make the laws, politicians draw the boundaries, politicians won't make illegal a practice that benefits them. It took decades for the LBGT and civil rights movements to make a dent in the system, and they have only partially succeeded because it fell out of fashion being a homophobic racist, because when they came out politicians found out they have someone in their families or communities who is gay or black or both. My whole point is that the system doesn't work for the people in principle, the rights(temporary privileges) that we have, are not there to protect us they are there to protect the rich from an uprising, from popular dissent. Give them the illusion of rights and of choice and they will be calm, this is an elaborated theory going back to the roman empire where some emperor said let them have bread and circus. Then they had the gladiators as entertainment now we have 24/7 TV.
We have the technology to count votes by brute force today and do not need representatives. We should abolish the representation system and just use raw votes for everything.
This system of referenda and popular initiatives exists and works rather well in Switzerland, an extremely wealthy and highly educated country of 7 mil. There is not a chance in hell it would work well in countries like the UK or the US which have large populations of poorly educated and destitute voters.
dubsll Not gonna lie, most Americans on either side of a debate don't know what they're talking about :/ I find myself in an awkward position when I don't just think the people on the other isle are ignorant, but that the people on my side of the argument are spouting incorrect information and logical fallacies as well :l
I got the you must construct additional pylons reference. I appreciate your little references to Warcraft and Starcraft in some of your videos, you must be a big blizzard fan.
You could use the German System which has two votes: The second is used to directly set the proportion of seats in the pairlament, making gerrymandering impossible. The first one is used to elect the representative of your district and even through you could do gerrymandering, it does not matter because it does not change the proportion of the pairlament.
This is great! Can I make a suggestion: please slow down as you talk. This is quite a bit of info to take in and it's the first time your audience is hearing it. Our brains and minds need to adjust to all the wonderful info you're giving. Thank you for all your hard work!
It's insane that gerrymandering has not been dealt with, everyone supports reform there. However, the problem with direct democracy is that it is tyranny of the majority.
***** It would be tyranny, but it would be tyranny that most people wanted to see, so even if to you it is wrong, to them it's right. To fight that kind of situation, you should have an educated population.
firesteel1 Which is why we have certain unalienable rights which are supposed to prevent such things. Using represenatives and laws to stop this is the essence of a Republic.However, there is yet to be a truly perfected form of government
2:14 i never realized that you used an OLPC for the graphic up until now. I used to own one of those machines for school (and by school, i mean the only thing i found it useful for was a thing to play games like Sim City on when i was bored as the inbuilt documents program sucked and was not compatible with any of my printers)
What's the point of these zones nower days? It may have made sense back when representatives had to ride a horse for days to get to D.C. or where ever they need to represent their zone. But today we could easily just count every single vote after we put them all into a giant bucket. Is there a problem with my thinking?
+Broockle The biggest problem of direct democracy is the "tyranny of the majority". If votes were entirely proportional, theoretically, 51% of the population could vote in politicians that only benefit them, while hurting the other 49%.
Steven Sheffey And zones prevent that? So it's more just to everyone if the votes are unfair? What a concept xD I'm not sure if I can get behind that idea lol But intriguing definitely.
+TheyCallMeGunny Hold your horses. 20% of popular vote doesn't mean the resting 80% voted against a person, although this may very well be the case in the upcoming US election.
2:57 "Citizens want ... close elections where either candidate has a chance of winning." I don't think that is necessarily true. Isn't it actually better for citizens if the elections are not close. If a candidate only receives 51% of the vote that means that at least 49% of the people in their constituency wanted someone else, and possibly more if there are a large number of strategic voters or non-voters. However, if the lines are drawn in a way that gives the average candidate a definite landslide of say 80%, that means that s/he would better represent the views of her/his constituency, because a lower percentage desired someone else. For that matter, would it not be better to have no districts at all, but use an alternative vote that gives candidates voting power in the assembly proportional to the percentage of voters that chose them?
1:14 We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere - like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I ties an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Give me five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now where were we? Oh yeah: the most important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.
In Germany on state level we have a simple election. Party A gets 30% of the votes -> Party A has 30% of the seats. Quite simple, quite effective. You just need a parlamential democracy not a presedential.
That´s not true. This only is relevant to the legislature. You can use your proportional system regardless of whether you have a presidential republic or a parliamentary one. Latin America often uses proportional systems these says like Brazil and Argentina, but elects their presidents independently.
2:28 "You must construct additional ranges". That's a meme about the Protoss, a playable race in the game Starcraft, where the player is very often reminded that "You must construct additional pylons"
