never heard that
please explain
Comment on F*ck off Arnie, you're out of your element!
ceenote@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoIt would be a full rewrite of the first article of the constitution, so it’s not really on the table.
Zachariah@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
ceenote@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Article 1 of the US constitution lays out how the Congress is structured and what powers it should have. It can be changed by passing constitutional amendments, but the bar for passing those is so high that it’s not realistic to think the current US Congress could or would change it for the better right now, for a whole bunch of reasons that are pretty evident.
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Article one is where the founders put the design of the structure of the government, including the bullshit used to put their thumb in the scale of democracy, along with how they’re elected, what powers they (should) have and the limits of it (when they choose to enforce it).
blarghly@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Thats what amendments are for.
flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
So I went and looked it up
If I’m interpreting this correctly, representatives are proportioned among states based on population. But there is no provision specifying that within a state the election must be based on electoral districts.
And according to Wikipedia
There doesn’t seem to be any constitutional requirements for electoral districts. It’s regulated by a law but not constitution, which should make it easier to modify.
protist@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
They’re saying the constitution explicitly delegates this power to the states, meaning in order to enact something in this area nationally, it would require a constitutional amendment
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s regulated per state. What Texas is doing, while highly unethical and, frankly, fraudulent, is entirely legal and up to the Texas state legislature to decide. Only the federal government may supersede it and only with a change to the constitution which prescribes this power to the states. So, for the Texas legislature, yes it’s easier to modify the law. To change it without them, it is absolutely not easier.
CIA_chatbot@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well, kinda- gerrymandering g itself was illegal until the current Supreme Court (well, the GOP part) decided to gut election laws for Trump
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
No it wasn’t. Gerrymandering that demonstrably targeted racial or other protected demographics or otherwise broke the voting rights act was illegal. But gerrymandering as a concept has never been illegal in the US. State and federal courts, including SCOTUS, have ruled several times that there is no constitutional law against it, nor a mechanism to objectively identify it, nor a means to remedy it. If it violates those other laws in the process, it gets rejected and kicked back to be fixed. But if not, there is nothing illegal about it under current law, despite it being blatant vote manipulation.
ceenote@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It wouldn’t mean much as long as the senate still exists.