Gerrymandering is as Bad as Ever: Worst New Maps - TLDR News 

USA be like "we're aggainst corruption" USA also be like "it's not bribes, its lobbying" USA also be like "eh lets just close down voting stations in areas that wont vote for me, and redraw lines so those that do are more empowered"

It's like disarmament. No party can stop gerrymandering, as that would just lead to them losing.

I love US politics. It feels like watching a monkey doing something, getting punished for it, and then doing it again with a bit more effort to hide it. I wish that Bulgaria wasn't the same tho.

I am from Maryland, which has some of the worst gerrymandering in the country. I hope that this situation can be improved.

i still remember the famous quote from the movie Wargames: ‘ the only winning move is not to play(this quote is actually made by AI, which is now used to play the gerrymandering game by lawmakers or law firms hired by law makers)’. the only way to end gerrymandering is to replace the current single-member-district system with proportional representation. you can never draw a perfect map. an independent commission will not solve the problem.

It’s very important to add that in 2010, a republican effort called Project Red Maps helped coordinate republican gerrymandering. Project Red Maps wasn’t revived for 2022, so republican gerrymandering was much weaker than 2010. Another big trend in redistricting this year was, instead of drawing out the opposite party, many state parties put the incumbents of their party into much safer seats, leading to that staggering decline of competitive districts

World greatest democracy 🤣🤣🤣🤣

I see Gerrymandering as a game of chess played by the political parties, with every advance, there is a tactical retreat. However, this leads to the unfortunate result that states can become one party states. Even with independent commissions, it has still not resolved states that are effectively just run by a singular party at the state level, like in California. No matter how you slice it, California is a one party state with a minor Republican party that can't even do anything to stop the Democrats from doing whatever they want. One party run states are bad for every democracy. With no way to push back, bad ideas formed in echo chambers will just become law.

Gerrymangering is a symptom not the main issue. That's not having a proportional elections system.

New Mexico dems drew the districts this way because in a neutral environment, they'll win 3-0. The GOP needs to carry the national vote by around 3-4 pts to win smth there.

All the states need to move to non-partisan commissions. If the vote is 54% to 46% the party with 54% shouldn't end up with 80% of the seats. It's BS and is not representative democracy.

You cannot improve what you don't have. The US political system is so broken it don't think it qualifies as a democracy. Remove the districts. And use proportional representation. Allow for new parties. After that I do might consider it a democracy

This is also a problem in the Philippines, except Gerrymandering isn't (just) for political parties, but usually for political dynasties who want more seats. Honestly, district FPTP needs to stop or at least make it MMP.

I have yet to be ensured that these "independent redistricting commissions" are any better than the state legislatures with regards to institutional bias in electoral policy.

Fun (historical) fact, from someone from Massachusetts where this all started: Elbridge Gerry was pronounced as "Garry" (hard g) and the original portmanteau was thus "garry-mandering."

As someone from Michigan I actually really like the map the Commission came up with. It makes sense based on geography/distinct regions within the State as well as increasing the amount of competitive seats.

As someone from Ohio I am glad we passed the amendment to our constitution to stop gerrymandering. Our court has struck down the map a second time. Which is good because this is a serious problem.

Maybe we should look towards independent district mappers. Or like iowa where they use ai to map their districts.

As a resident of NY-10, I just have to say: Technically it makes sense for those parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn to be connected, to connect the mainly Jewish areas of NYC. But it’s especially egregious that they snaked through blocks in Cobble Hill and Downtown Brooklyn because they extended NY-11 to Park Slope, meaning the usual route to access Borough Park from NY Bay through the Southern areas was blocked.

Great update but one minor point. It's true that census derived redistricting will only happen again in 2032, however ballot initiatives and court decisions drive redistricting much more frequently than that. Here in North Carolina we've had many different redistricting efforts in the last few years.

I’m so proud of michigan for passing laws to stop this nonsense!!

Small correction: Apparently, Gerry's name was pronounced with a hard "g", but the term "gerrymander" has since been pronounced as you said it here, despite the etymological difference.

I feel like TLDR US is the smallest channel because it has the least amount of uploads. I follow all 4 channels and the majority of content is on the UK and Global, the subscriber counts reflects that. Personally US news interests me the most and Id love to see more of it

What can be done about Gerrymandering? Stop using First Past the Post! There are several ways you can ensure local representation and still end up giving each party roughly the number of seat corresponding to the number of people who voted on them. Every vote should matter, it doesn't in FPTP and that's a tragedy.

The thing I don't understand is why politicians draw maps. It should be independent people who study population and they should use a map that ONLY has population in areas (ie: counties), and does not include profiles such as age, race, gender and party affiliation.

I like that this channel doesn't just shit on one side but actually sheds light on both sides.

Fun Fact: Elbridge Gerry’s last name is pronounced with a “G” as in “Gary”, not like a J as in “Gerrymander”

The British say a “thank god” for having the Boundary Commission.

It's not a democracy when the outcome is predetermined. The argument that "we should do this because the other side did it" both tosses your principles in the trash and facilitates the continuous cycle of retribution.

Props to Wyoming for having the least gerrymandered districts.

A first-past-the-post election systems in the USA and UK have so many problems. Both countries should just go to proportional representation, like my country did in 1917. In the Computer Age, this system is just hopelessly out of date and too easy to corrupt. This is a danger to democracy, all seats should be competitive.

"In a democracy, the voters pick the politicians. In America the politicians pick the voters."

To be fair, Maryland’s new map certainly is an improvement from the previous one

Gerrymandering: instead of voters choosing politicians, Politicians choose their voters ( = fishing in a barrel).

Comparison between FPTP elections and a proportional outcome is not a good measure of unfairness. Bipartisan gerrymandering is also a thing where both parties work together to make it so they are all uncompetitive

Now, it's worth noting that the SHAPE of a district does not indicate gerrymandering. If the district is shaped strangely, but still connects people of similar beliefs and voting patterns, it can still be representative of those people. What you need to look at is competitiveness and overall representation to tell if a map is bad or not.

You can't fix gerrymandering as FPTP is completely broken on a fundamental level. You need multiseat areas, anything else is polising the turd.

In my opinion the best and fairest solution is to devise a simple mathematical formula for drawing the districts. Something along the lines of drawing the shortest line that splits the population in half. Repeat as needed until you have the number of districts required. Certainly not perfect, there will be odd districts and some weighted one way or another, but it's far less susceptible to corruption and bias. And it doesn't pick favorites. One weak point would be the census, if you can manipulate who gets counted you can manipulate the lines on the map. Still better than the blatant corruption now.

Man. If only there was a federal law that would end gerrymandering.

A salamander made by Gerry? -Gerrymander A snake through Manhattan? - Snakehattan

The solution against Gerrymandering would be introducing a proportional representation system, because every vote should count.

Only one party fields a candidate where I live. I don’t even get options.

I really don’t understand why the people responsible for making the voting districts are the very people who are elected? Who thought that would be okay?

Kinda reminds me of what happened in Queensland, Australia in the 70’s/80’s

Gerrymandering should only be allowed if it makes funny shapes on the map. Like a huge middle finger in Texas, a massive piece of male anatomy in California, a swastika in North Dakota! You are destroying democracy, but at least it's entertaining.

Michigan Democrats objected to its new district map because Detroit wasn't gerrymandered. While using gerrymandering as þe basis of þeir objection.

A lot of comments are saying to implement proportional representation . but that would mean you won’t have a single representative to represent your district or constituent related issues . It does not let people have their own representative assigned to them , which is a huge drawback

The district I was assigned to in 2020 is the same one I'm assigned to this year, but because the district changed, I had to register to vote again.

I am proud of my state Washington. But this is a huge problem for the country. We need a different system.

As a Canadian, with elections and political boundaries run by arms length independent body, I find US politics baffling. The fact that there is resistance to the idea of independent body running elections even more confusing.

4:24 dude, as a texan, this map is fair. the cities have their own districts and are equal to rural communities. this was the intention. latinos in rural areas vote HARD RED. like re legalizing gay conversion therapy red. meanwhile most of texas is center right. the DOJ is controlled by a democrat president. we drew the map based on population. many towns in the red areas lean blue, but the rural areas make it red. hell if anything, having the cities as their own districts almost makes it unfair towards the democrats. If the cities with are barely center left were combined with the rural areas, they would be SOLID RED. Texas isnt very privvy to dumb leftist policy. I've lived here 19 years, in the course of my time here our economy has grown a LOT while california has collapsed. Now look at Calis map......

I think all districts within a state should be required to have the same ratio of perimeter-to-area. That would ensure maps don't end up with a few large blocky districts and a few thin snaky districts -- either all the districts will have to be similarly blocky, or all the districts will have to be similarly snaky. The level of effort to make a map full of snaky districts, just to generate a couple districts that are snaky _for political gain,_ would thus give a significant advantage to just drawing a bunch of simple blocky districts.

America, please implement a multi-party system already

While Nadler's new district is indeed egregious, it's actually less obnoxious than his old district.

The US keeps surprising me time and time again. To me, it is the least democratic Western nation out there. Quite convincingly so too. Is it really a democracy at all any more? I'm not so sure. That's why I never went for the jobs offered to me. No matter how much money they were (including a Green Card). Oh, and I don't really fancy working 60+ hours and go broke regarding health care.. My country's system is expensive enough as it is...

It's hard to have a threat to democracy when you don't have a democracy

It should be noted that despite the ballot initiative for an independent commission in Utah, the state legislature has voted to throw out the commission’s suggestion and make their own highly gerrymandered version, completely carving up SLC and Provo into multiple different districts to dilute the Democratic vote. Ballot initiatives in Utah don’t actually matter, the legislature similarly overturned the legalisation of marijuana 5 or 6 years ago despite the ballot initiative succeeding

Correction: The California Citizens Redistricting Commission adopted final congressional and legislative maps for the next decade, starting with 2022 elections.

I wish y’all had shown a close-up of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Truly some despicable gerrymandering.

The Democratic Party is the only one which has supported anti-gerrymandering legislation though.

The gerrymander-salamander has been in my history textbooks!

I think they should just get rid of districts altogether. A state with 10 reps still gets to send 10 reps, but it's broken down along party lines. So if 50% of the people vote republican, 30% democrat, and 20% libertarian, then the state sends 5 GOP reps, 3 dems, and 2 libertarians (who are picked during the primary season).

0:10 This is incorrect. All states are required under the constitution and federal law to have equal population congressional districts in place for the 2022 elections. There are no exceptions. And it seems really odd to claim Montana might be late when they already have a congressional district plan enacted. 0:31 This is called _partisan_ gerrymandering, as opposed to other forms of gerrymandering (e.g. racial) 0:40 North Carolina and Ohio do not have finalized plans as their maps have been struck down by the courts (as you later note). As well, Washington enacted their plan the day before you posted this video, and Tennessee two days before that. The Upper Peninsula is part of Michigan and should be colored green. 1:22 A bit nit-picky but you've pronounced both of Gerry's names wrong (Elbridge not Eldbridge, and Gerry has a hard G) 2:56 That is not what that diagram is projecting. It's projecting the long-run makeup of the congressional district map, not the specific outcome of the 2022 election, which is likely to be redder than average. You make the same error at 3:25, 4:02, and 5:27

Some facts that are not in the video, but are rather important if you are interested in this topic: 1. California is an example of why independent redistricting committees are not a panacea for this problem. California has one, and yet it wound with a map as gerrymandered as many of those highlighted in the video. California votes in mid-60% range for Democratic candidate for Congress much like New York but the "non-partisan" process produced a map where 85% of the seats are lean or safe Democrat. This may be because all the members of the independent commission, including the Republicans, were appointed by the Governor, and the heads of the two chambers of the legislature, all of whom are Democrats. 2. North Carolina has elected judges. The Supreme Court that struck down the legislature's map is majority Democrat. 3. Democrats "spin" on gerrymandering is that they do it because they have to, but they are opposed to it and Republicans are not. That is not really true. Democrats tend to oppose gerrymandering at the party level (I am sure there are many individual Democrats who oppose it genuinely because they think it is bad) because Republicans control redistricting in 26 states. Democrats have sufficient political control to have a free hand in map drawing in 20 states, but when you add in genuinely non-partisan redistricting plans like Colorado's its slightly less than that. So, as a party the real reason the Democratic Party decries gerrymandering is because it is an easier tool for Republicans to use. The proof of this is that they use it with zeal whenever they get the chance. 4. New York voters voted overwhelming for a non-partisan commission which should signal to everyone how they feel about gerrymandering, Unfortunately, the commission couldn't reach agreement so, as the law provides, the legislature took over. The desire of the people of New York for fairer maps made no impact on them. The gerrymandered the heck out of the state. This has one other interesting effect which is that while California and New York do send some very moderate Republicans to Congress they also both send some extremists. This is because when you cram all the Republicans into a few districts the winning strategy is to appeal to the most energized wing of your own party which tends to be the extreme. So the people you need in the legislature in DC to build bridges between the parties have a harder time winning. 5. Republicans have generally done very modest maps this time. People hold up Ohio and North Carolina's maps and say SEE!!!, but they actually are the exception. Republicans could have done way more than they did. Conversely, Democrats have maximized their opportunities. The reason why is that Democrats tend to win states 60-40 to 65-35 whereas Republicans tend to win them 52-48 to 55-45. Democrats also tend to be more concentrated within the states where they win. The result is that "fair" maps from a geographic standpoint tend to skew Republican. So Democrats, who of late are getting 52-55% of the Congressional vote, need dodgier maps to win 52-55% of the Congressional seats. 6. Maryland is a really interesting case when it comes to diluting minority voting power. To avoid having 2-3 Republican districts Democrats have diced up the city of Baltimore like an onion. So much so that African American Democrats actually prevailed upon the Democratic Party not to seize the opportunity to eliminate the last Republican district in the state by further dividing Baltimore. There is a piece of Baltimore in several districts, but the districts take in a lot of whiter, suburban Democrats as they reach into rural areas to take in chunks for Republican voters to weaken Republican power outside the urban core and allow the Democrats to keep the western districts in the state in Democratic hands. Why isn't that the dilution of minority voting power? You could create two solid, urban African American majority districts out of Baltimore if you didn't try and crack the natural Republican bastion out west, but that doesn't violate the VRA. Odd.

the state of Tattoine is missing in the map

I studied poli sci. We had a whole test on how to Gerrymander.

TN voted governor 60/40. Will be gerrymandered to 8/1. Democratic states are more likely to have independent commissions. We NEED multiwinner statewide elections. It would eliminate the effort of redrawing altogether.

While there are other stupid ways to draw district maps, gerrymandering takes the cake. The fact that they allow *politicians* to draw the maps is just stupid. It doesn't matter your party alignment, you should want the maps to be fair, and when politicians are drawing the maps, there is just no chance of that happening. As Thomas Hoeffeler (The man who gerrymandered Republican States for years) put it: "normally the voters pick the politicians, but in redistricting, the politicians get to pick the voters".

Both parties can agree Colorado, Michigan and Virginia were the best in the country. We need to have every map look like those

As a Missourian I'd like to clarify his comments about clean Missouri. Clean Missouri did nothing for federal house seats. It only impacted redistricting of state house and state senate seats. And actually instead of banning gerrymandering it actually legalized it. It only got passed, because Democrats were able to sell it better than Republicans could. Once people truly understood what it was did people realize that it needed to get removed. Missouri before Clean Missouri had lawmakers limit how many county breaks while redistricting. With Clean Missouri it legalized county breaks and would lead to districts that look just like New York's 10th, but across the entire state. You could have easily ended up having ST. Louis city and Jefferson City in the same district. There was nothing clean about clean Missouri and portraying it an anti-gerrymandering bill is lazy journalism at best straight misinformation at worst

Why is it that the democratic examples of gerrymandering aren't reported as in contention, while more of the republican examples are being struck down by the supreme courts? I mean this as a genuine question, and not as a rhetorical question. If you know the answer, please reply.

In the US there is no such thing as "non-partisan"

in my country, there are 18 main districts, +2 autonomous reagions, +2 from emigrants. the electoral maps are never changed, but the number of seats they elect are. after the census, the electoral comission divides the 231 seats by the 24 districs ( 4 seats are allways elected by the emigrants). Gerry mandering is extremelly hard. sure, there is injustice, mainly because there is a threshold to gain or lose a seat, so a distric may be gaining more population and other losing it, but the threshold isnt obtained and the seats arent actualized. but I find this system much better than the UK or US. My country is smaller than britan, and we are culturally unified, so the perfect system would be to abolish electoral districts (or keeping the autonomous reagions districs) and the rest goes to one electoral district, the entire country. this avoids votes beeing ignored. in the most recent election we had one party leaving parliament, but getting more votes than other party that got into parliament

What a joke they should abolish all seats and allocate seats based on the percentage of voters you get

That bit in the end was disingenuous as to why the GOP didn't vote for the "For the People Act". It wasn't only for the redistricting being monitored/controlled by the Federal government, but a whole slue of other federal law that would greatly change state elections. If ya want a non partisan vote, stop putting so much pork in a single bill. Bring smaller bills that focus on more non partisan topics (like gerrymandering) to the table.

"A snake through Manhattan," when the majority of the weirdness is in Brooklyn.

Just get rid of congressional districts and use proportional representation 😉

Why don’t the state supreme courts draw the maps...? They’re much less partisan than legislatures. Honestly, courts need to take more part in government.

If we're going to talk about the voting rights act, we need to talk about New Mexico. All three new New Mexico maps are majority Hispanic.

Notice how all the Republican states are declared "unconstitutional" whereas the Democratic one are perfectly legal. "Sovereign is he who makes the exception" - Carl Schmitt

If only there was some sort of a system where the numbers of REPRESENTATIVEs in office match the PROPORTION of the people who have cast their votes for them 🤔🤔🤔

American democracy? What a joke.

We really need proportional representation

So my state representative, state senator, county commissioner, city council member, state board of education member, all elected county officials, and judges are all Republican, but my congressman is now a Democrat at the federal level. They took a back road by my house and split it. The north side becomes safe Republican, the south side joined a new district which is now safe Democrat.

The "For The People Act" wouldn't change anything since the power to draw new map boundaries belongs to the 50 State Legislatures NOT the US Congress. The US Congress can pass laws to stop the State Legislatures from making racist map boundaries but they can't pass a law forcing the State Legislatures to have "independent" groups create the map boundaries. The only legal ways to change how the US does its mapping is: 1) Amend the US Constitution. 2) The State Legislatures give up their right to draw the map boundaries to "independent" groups. 3) Amend the State Constitution of each State.

Gerrymandering may well be the biggest or certainly one of the biggest threats to American democracy. It is outrageous that politicians create districts for partisan gain. They might as well cheat on the vote counting... the effect is the same. Non-partisan commissions seem like the best way to go, but something most definitely needs to change. As a Democrat in Maryland, my approach (since my Democratic representatives refused to support fair districts) is to henceforth vote Republican for the Legislature in an effort to get rid of the Democratic super-majority there.

In merica voters don't elect their representatives. The representatives selcts its voters 🤣

It seems to me that a third-party non-profit that knows the laws regarding redistricting should be consulted throughout the process before a new map is reviewed by a state's Supreme Court to reduce the amount of time it takes for a new map to be validated.

I haven't thought much of gerrymandering because my whole life has been lived in overwhelmingly one-party districts. The village I grew up in: solidly red. The city a hundred miles away where I now live: solidly blue. And the regional voting records over the past few decades reflect this. Legislators couldn't gerrymander my districts if they tried. It would be nice to live in a competitive district, one ripe for gerrymandering, so that I can help control which of these two worthless parties represents me. Ain't happening though.

They way to stop gerrymandering is to change the law so that districts must be drawn in the simplest way to describe, that way you will get lots of square blocks or districts that follow country boundaries.

America, please just use proportional representation already and there will be no more gerrymandering problem!!

The NY 10th district is horrible. No one in their right mind would lump someone from the upper west side with someone from Borough park in Brooklyn.

I’m firmly in the opinion that if you have humans drawing the maps, you’ll eventually have corrupt humans (whether blatantly as in your New York example, or more insidiously). I think the way forward would be district by shortest line method - whereby an algorithm is created to sort equal amounts of population in areas determined by the shortest average circumference. Now while this is not perfect (can overinflate an urban centres voting power by merging with large swatches of rural land), I think it is a good place to start, and fundamentally is out of the control of any political party to influence, leading to a truly “fair” electoral district map. What do I know though, I live in Canada 😂

3:55 Maryland's 1st District has gone across the bay before. And the Democrats have always held a supermajority in Maryland, so we're kinda "meh" about it. Unless the Urban side's values shift so dramatically, it's unlikely Maryland's state legislature will ever have a Republican majority. So we just... kind of role with it.

The most easiest way to end gerrymandering is; proportional representation on state-basis - states acting as a single constituency - with a threshold of 3 to 5%. Another step would be to increase Congressional seats to around 870. More seats would make gerrymandering much more difficult.

It's a huge problem, it's politicians choosing their voters instead of the other way around. America's electoral system is extremely antiquated, just look at the electoral college and the fact that, along with the UK it's the only western democracy that uses a first past the post voting system.

What's this white noise in the background?

In India, we have a Delimitation Commission of India, independent body that cannot be challenged in court. This body changes the boundaries of constituencies with the data from the recent population census. The new boundaries are sent to the National Parliament, the State & UT legislatures, the UT administrations and the Election commission of India. Last Delimitation was done in 2002. Next one is in 2026.

Republicans are saying that abolishing gerrymandering will benefit Democrats. Literally just saying the quiet parts out loud.

There was one interesting defense of gerrymandering I heard was that it allows for minority representation. Apparently several gerrymandered districts are drawn in such a way that the black vote, latino vote, etc can be consolidated and given a representative from their community, whereas more cleanly drawn district lines may split them and make them minority voter bases in their respective communities. I can understand this to an extent, but even then the practice as a whole seems really indefensible to me. There's got to be a better way to get representation for marginalized communities than to prop up such an anti-democratic practice.