130
The GOP’s Secret to Protecting Gerrymandered Electoral Maps? Claim Privilege.
(www.propublica.org)
this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
130 points (97.1% liked)
politics
19916 readers
3148 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This would probably be too volatile, and also lack the ability to make deals and compromises. You really need to know that this guy brings this number of votes for at least a certain amount of time, otherwise it becomes very difficult to make deals in a political system.
It would also eliminate the secret ballot nature of the system, because you would have to keep active track of who voted for who, so that that vote could be reassigned at any time. This is an inherent protection against political persecution, so a group in power can't look up the rolls, see who voted against them and move against them. As voting information, it would necessarily be public in order to prevent fraud, at which point other people could look it up. Imagine people in...certain areas...which vote for the 'wrong' party, now their vote can be known by their neighbors.
Considering those deals are where a lot of the corruption enters the system, I can't agree that it would be a bad thing to make them unviable. If they are above board, then just put them into whatever is being voted on. But a lot of them are probably more of a "support this bill which I pinky swear won't hurt anyone and I'll give you financial support for your campaign or a nice consulting gig when you retire from politics". Those "benefits" don't help anyone they claim to represent.
As for the political violence part of it, it would be a change in the nature of it because right now the representatives themselves aren't anonymous and can be targetted with violence or threats. Just look at the death threats surrounding the speaker vote and consider how often that might happen where the representatives threatened think they should just vote the way they were told to keep their family safe. Not to say individual voters being targeted would be better, but it would certainly be harder to do that in secrecy and in the volume required to change popular votes.
I think it would mean civil wars would replace assassinations which sounds bad at first until you consider how much riskier and more difficult civil wars are and that it's already an option in the current system as much as it would be in that system. Plus it really looks like that's where this system is headed with that fanatical base that has built their own reality to live in.