Hey cartography and politics people: reading about Jamaal Bowman's defeat in the primary, I don't see much discussion of the changes in the boundaries of NY's 16th congressional district. When Bowman was first elected in 2020, the 16th CD included lots more of the Bronx, but in 2022 (and also a bit in 2024) it was moved to mainly include Westchester.
Anyone have maps directly comparing the demographic or partisan makeup of the district between 2020 and today?
It seems like a big part of the story is that after 2020 #JamaalBowman was already much more vulnerable than most of the other members of The Squad, having lost a lot of his progressive voting base due to #redistricting.
Another example of why it's ridiculous to have single-member districts for a legislative body. The shape of each district (whether gerrymandered with political goals or simply random chance) usually determines the winner, not the candidates or the campaign.
@alan I'd say it's a case of that being the worst possible way of doing things, except for all the alternatives 🙂
Every method of choosing representatives has trade-offs. Personally I think the issues of district shape that you are bringing up is worth accepting in return for the possibility of judging candidates individually, even if the voters might all too often shirk that responsibility.
@volkris Well, that's why I'm a huge fan of Ranked Choice Voting in multi-member districts (aka Single Transferable Vote). The voters can still reject individual candidates they don't like, without having to sacrifice the proportion of seats that each party of faction deserves.
@alan so again, I'm not saying I have THE right answer because I don't think there is A right answer, only tradeoffs.
For me personally, though, it's exactly that elevation of faction that I'd object to.
I want to talk about how how this candidate is doing their job regardless of faction; I don't want to build faction into the system, as we have enough issues with that as it is.
In fact, I'd say the present state of the US House is exactly the trainwreck that happens when folks focus on what factions deserve instead of each member working for their own individual constituents.
@volkris If you don't like "faction" you could say "point of view"... We seem to have different fundamental views about what politics is. I believe there will always be differences of opinion in the public and the goal of politics and government is to have effective proxy representatives of those views to come to mutually agreeable compromises. In every democracy around the world, parties exist, usually lots of parties, and factions within those parties. It's natural and right.
@volkris You seem to think that politics is about electing "good people" who will do the "right thing" for the populace, which is a charming way of thinking about things, and made sense when the founders of the USA were inventing the first modern democracy from scratch... but we know a lot more about democracy now than they did then. Things that made sense to them (the Electoral College, single-seat elections, the non-existence of parties of any kind) seems naive now.
@volkris But here's the bright side: if you believe that parties and "factions" are bad things and that elections are just about picking the most objectively wise and noble people who will know to do the right thing for everyone... then Single Transferrable Vote would still work perfectly well in that universe, and it would still be better than our current system.
@alan but I don't believe those things 🙂
I don't believe factions are bad things, I believe that they lead to poor results. It doesn't really mean they're bad, but focusing on them is not effective.
I also don't believe that anything is about picking wise and noble people here. Rather, it's about picking people that do the job well, even if they happen to be complete morons that are also corrupt but somehow manage to serve the public.
So I would judge the public official based on his performance. What faction is he with? Don't care! Look at his voting record. Is he noble and honest? Don't care! Look at his voting record.
My preference is to look at performance in office of individuals, and as I watch the performance of parliamentary systems around the world I'm always struck by this issue.
@volkris My point about the factions and point-of-view thing, is that different voters have different metrics of performance. One voter will judge performance based on how much taxes are cut, while another voter will judge performance based on how many new services are provided by government. There is no objective standard of performance. That's politics.
@alan but again I'm trying to highlight that it's not just about how much taxes are cut or how many new services are provided, It's about how my specific representative made either intelligent or bone-headed votes in his job to provide for those.
So often I hear friends of mine complaining about some governmental policy while at the same time they support and talk about voting for the representative who cast his vote for the thing that they are complaining about.
They should be kicking that guy to the curb. He voted wrong. He voted against the interests of his constituents. But, the friends will be so focused on the faction that they let him off the hook. He escapes accountability by hiding in faction.
We need to be promoting the idea of people looking at how their representatives actually vote, and then holding them accountable for it.
Too often the focus on faction lets representatives escape accountability as it is, and you're talking about making that even worse.
@volkris hmm I’m not sure you know what I’m exactly proposing. I’m talking about Single Transferable Vote, not some kind of party list PR. Individual candidates are still directly accountable to the electorate, and voters can easily boot out any ineffective rep they don’t like, without benefitting candidates from parties that they don’t like.