| Mr Khan said: Not really. The mere geography of it favors Republicans due to rural sprawl. Building evenly-designed districts would still favor them, just not as egregiously as some of the artistic shapes they've got in some states currently. I propose use of a computer program following certain rules, working one square mile at a time, starting from the state capitol building and radiating outward until it has enough "blocks" to form a district, then for the next block it processes, that becomes block one of a new district, which radiates outward until it forms a district. |
I don't see our politicians as binary. The gerrymandering doesn't just mean "Republicans win X seats, Democrats win Y seats." It also means "District X is drawn such that its representative has little pressure to moderate and much to pander to the local political extreme." I'd argue we're seeing the effects here: the reason many Republicans here in particular are okay with standing firm is that their districts are drawn in such a way that compromising/moderating their position may do them more harm than good.
What was the statistic: even though the Republican Party is receiving the brunt of the blame here, the voter impact is going to be disproportionately in the Senate, with only about 12 Republican House seats being endangered?
Fake edit: here's the first google result I pulled up on the subject. http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/government-shutdown-republicans-deal-97768.html
