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'At Least He Admits It': Trump Says Pro-Democracy Resolution Would Destroy GOP
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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politics
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Mechal-Hitler would have to pass peer-review.
Peer review by whom?
If you mean an independent commission, some states already use those for redistricting. There's no need for a computer program.
Or do you mean by state legislatures, that's already what the most heavily gerrymandered states already use for redistricting. It would make no difference if they were simply "approving" a computer-generated district map (made with algorithms designed by whom?).
The computer program you suggest is entirely unnecessary and superfluous.
Peer-review by university professors of computer science. Since gerrymandering exists, a computer program is quite necessary.
Have you ever met a comp sci professor? They're so cloistered, with no practical understanding of the world beyond the digital. They shouldn't have anything to do with electoral reform.
Gerrymandering has already been solved in most states by utilizing independent redistricting commissions. Only the most backward states still give that task to their legislatures.
That's what's desired. Someone who isn't interested in politics just whether a computer program is biased. All states would have to use the winning computer program.
So now you're saying the federal government should impose this computer algorithm on the states? Don't you realize the constitution explicitly gives electoral power to the states?
Your idea just gets worse and worse the more you try to defend it.
No, there are limits to state powers. Gerrymandering is essentially disenfranchising some voters.
Of course there are limits to state powers, and I never claimed otherwise. However, there are also limits to federal powers. And elections are the purview of the states, not the federal government. This is made explicitly clear in the constitution and it's the way elections have been run for 250 years now.
Of course gerrymandering is disenfranchising voters. That's what gerrymandering is. But redistricting is not the same thing as gerrymandering.
Plenty of states have protocols for redistricting without gerrymandering. It's called an independent redistricting commission. It's non-partisan.
Contrast this with gerrymandered states, where the legislatures handle redistricting, which is partisan by nature.
I lost count of how many times I've already explained this to you.
With control of Congress dependent on just a few changes in party affiliation, gerrymandering makes a huge difference. A computer program will completely end gerrymandering.
You continue to ignore what I'm saying. The argument isn't about whether or not gerrymandering is bad for democracy. Of course it is.
I'm telling you, that gerrymandering has already been solved in many states by using independent redistricting commissions instead of having partisan state legislatures redraw maps.
Computer programs are not guaranteed to end gerrymandering, and instead are more likely to make gerrymandering worse in states that still have gerrymandering.
But what about states which use gerrymandering? These are enough to shift the balance of power in the House of Representatives. Computer programs are guaranteed to end gerrymandering. Peer-review of the winning program will ensure that. How will a computer program which is required to be used by all states make gerrymandering worse?
No they're fucking not!
Because according to the Constitution, the federal government cannot dictate how states run elections.
How fucking many times do I need to repeat that?
University CS departments don't write government policy, either, and would not be the ones to write that algorithms. There would be no "peer review" like you're imagining. Realistically, you'd be putting a lot of trust in whomever the sitting congress decides to commission for that computer program. If it were this one, it would probably go to one of their buddies to ensure the continued ratfucking of democracy by the republican party.
So it's a good fucking thing the Constitution doesn't allow that!
Yes, gerrymandering is a problem. But that's up to the states to fix. Some states refuse to, because they're already gerrymandered and it benefits the party with legislative majorities in those states (usually republicans) to continue gerrymandering. That's why it's such a stubborn problem that hasn't been fixed yet.
A solution already exists though, it's called an independent redistricting commission, which most states already use anyway. It's just that some continue to refuse to change so that they can keep gerrymandering. That's the problem, and a computer program won't fix it.
States have limits on what they can do. They cannot disenfranchise voters which is what gerrymandering does. The US government would have companies bid on a computer districting program. The winning program would be subject to peer review by university computer science professors to ensure the integrity of the program. All states would be required to use the program. In contrast, you have no solution to forcing states to adopt independent redistricting commission. Also, these states would probably fill the commission with biased people.
Yes, states have limits on what they can do. But gerrymandering is not something that's limited, unless the state itself does something to prevent it. Gerrymandering is wrong, correct, but that's not the same thing as the limits on federal powers that are enshrined in the Constitution which rightfully prevent the federal government from interfering in elections.
That's a terrible idea. The business class already has an outsized influence on US politics, we don't need to give them the power to (indirectly) draw congressional maps by writing a computer program that every state is forced to use.
This is where you go from "wrong" to "disastrously wrong."
I've already explained this multiple times to you, so maybe all caps will help.
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CANNOT DICTATE HOW STATES RUN THEIR ELECTIONS.
That would be overtly unconstitutional. You cannot "require" states to use your special algorithm that you promise is totally fair!
Because that would be unconstitutional.
That isn't what an independent commission is. These commissions are non-partisan. The whole point is that partisan legislatures can't stack them with biased people.
The Supreme Court has determined that partisan gerrymandering is acceptable because there is no means to determine that the redistricting is partisan. However, a computer program is definitely not partisan and consequently, can be imposed on states.
The only inputs a computer program need is the boundaries of the state, the population size, where people live, and the number of districts desired. How can such a program be biased?
How can it be assured that the commissions are nonpartisan?
This Supreme Court?!? Of course they ruled to allow gerrymandering. Most gerrymandered states are controlled by republican legislatures. It's no surprise the Scotus would let thise legislatures keep drawing their own congressional maps.
Typically it's up to the state courts to declare those maps to be illegally gerrymandered. That happened in Ohio, but the legislature ignored the ruling and somehow held elections with those illegal maps. But it's up to the state to sort that out.
A computer program absolutely can be partisan, if it's designed by someone who's partisan.
No it can't. That's not how the constitution works, you thick-skulled looby.
Clearly you don't know how gerrymandering works if you don't realize there's still room within those constraints for partisan fuckery.
This question is moot because a majority of states have already successfully implemented it. You wanna know how they did about it, go read about it instead of armchair politicking.
What inputs would you manipulate to make the program partisan? Once the state is entered, the program will know the state's boundaries and number of districts. Population size and locations could probably be extracted from the US census data base.
Do you not realize that there are still multiple ways to slice that pie?
The whole point of gerrymandering is to split up opposition strongholds (typically blue areas in red states, i.e. cities) and attach them piecemeal to larger-by-area districts with lower population densities in order to water down their votes in redder districts.
That way instead of a city having one or two reps who are blue and can actually represent their constituencies, you have a bunch of tiny slivers of that city that are represented by the reps for the rural districts they're attached to. It's how republicans have disenfranchised urban voters for a long time. And yes, there's a heavily racial subtext to this, since urban areas tend to be more non-white than rural areas. It's how republicans disenfranchise non-white voters.
A computer program can still do the same thing. That doesn't solve gerrymandering.
No, a computer program whose purpose is to gerrymander can be designed to gerrymander. An input to the program would be the party affiliation of various locations. A computer program which isn't designed to gerrymander would not be given that information. All it needs to know are the boundaries of the state, the population, the various locations of the population, and the required number of districts.
There are a multitude of proxies for political affiliation that can be used instead to stealthily gerrymander. And you have no way of ensuring that an unconstitutionally mandated computer program wouldn't include those.
No, since political affiliation would not be an input to the computer program. Peer-review by university computer science professors would catch any attempt to sneak it in. Do you think a company would risk being caught and punished? It is not unconstitutional to force a state to adopt something which does not disenfranchise a part of the population no more than it's unconstitutional to force a state to adopt a voting method which is not prone to fraud.
You're putting a lot of faith in the political awareness and good intentions of these computer science professors.
Yes it is. It literally is, when you're talking about electoral processes such as redistricting.
You're only continuing to reveal how little you know about the topic.