If you were appointed the drawer all the congressional districts for 2022...

[Virginiá]

Anyone who votes for the first or last two options might as well admit they don't like the idea of free & fair elections.

[Virginiá]

Anyone who votes for the first or last two options might as well admit they don't like the idea of free & fair elections.

-The elections are still free and fair, just uncompetitive and settled via primary.

Yeah, no.

[Virginiá]

I'd remove minority majority districts, as well as draw based on voting aged citizens, not census population

What about children and other people likely to become eligible to vote in that period of time? Why ignore this part of the electorate, which will progressively become the electorate? Ten year intervals with only voting aged citizens (at the time) considered leaves a whole lot of future voters out in the cold.

[Virginiá]

I'd remove minority majority districts, as well as draw based on voting aged citizens, not census population

What about children and other people likely to become eligible to vote in that period of time? Why ignore this part of the electorate, which will progressively become the electorate? Ten year intervals with only voting aged citizens (at the time) considered leaves a whole lot of future voters out in the cold.

What about people who move after the census? Does that not affect them in the same way? We shouldn't be drawing districts based on population, we should be drawing them on equitable representation

Because we know by the simple passage of time that those teenagers will be eligible to vote (if they are citizens), and knowing their age, we know when they will become eligible. Whether they are move or not is much more ambiguous, and is not guaranteed. Aging and the transition to adulthood is a permanent and significant fixture in our society, and it seems ridiculous to design our districts without factoring that in. Redrawing districts every 10 years is inevitably going to lead to imbalances, but with age we at least know definitively what will happen after x amount of time.

Another argument I might have is that these representatives are there to represent the people, even if they are not all eligible to vote. Just because there are classes of people not able to weigh in on the election of these representatives shouldn't mean that they be excluded from all parts of consideration in our elections. After all, the decisions made by these politicians will not always just affect eligible voters.

[Virginiá]

We have no idea if teenagers will turn 18, we have no idea if they will reside in said district at 18. We can predict population migration trends fairly well, why shouldn't we draw based on those?

Can you accurately account for where all these children will end up? I'm saying drawing maps that exclude children to cover a period of time where you know those children will become eligible voters is ridiculously unfair.

What you said here: "we have no idea if they will reside in said district," is exactly what I was getting at - we don't know, and therefor we should just assume they will stay put. Of course not all of them will, but we have not ironclad way of knowing where they will be past 18. Not including them in redistricting at all is boneheaded if you ask me - to ignore citizens who are, lets say, 17 years old at the time the map is implemented, then they turn 18 less than a year later and they stay in their district, but now their existence was ignored by mapmakers because they didn't meet this deadline despite the government knowing ahead of time that they would. I dunno..

As for your second part it isn't fair, those individuals get their representatives. It doesn't change that, but California 40 has more non-voters than voters in it. And half as many voters as other congressional districts, why should voters there have a more important vote? That's not how democratic republics are to work.

This argument I have some sympathy for. This type of situation creates a lot of eligible voter/non-citizen imbalances. Personally I've wanted us to give these people pathways to citizenship so we can eliminate that problem, but doubt that will be a reality anytime soon.

For sure California and Texas would probably object to any attempts to switch to only counting citizens. They would stand to lose Congressional representation because of it.

Its funny democrats complaining about gerrymandering ,when they gerrymandered the house for 40 years.

http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/1102/1102gerrymandering.htm

People here, in this thread? I can't speak for the older folks, but most of us weren't even alive, let alone teenagers during these times. And gerrymandering has gotten a lot more sophisticated over the past 2 decades.

I don't find it hypocritical or funny. I'd have objected then to Democrats as well.

[Virginiá]

I suppose we will just have to agree to disagree (on the first point anyhow)