Talk Elections

I move that the senate Change the 4th amendement section 3 to read:Districts shall be determined by how many registered voters there are at the Forum. Each district should have nearly equal the amount of registered voters as the other districts have.
deleting the last paragraph. "All districts must be contiguous."

that might work

I oppose this amendment.  Districts should be contiguous.

What about Alaska and Hawaii?

Techinicalities aside, the fact is that with the current voter distribution, it is impossible to make districts that are both totally contiguous and close in population (also a constitutional requirement).

The problem is that NY has 10 voters, and is the only state contiguous with New England.  if you put NY in the same district as NE, the district is too large.  Without NY, the district is too small.

I think we should have the one district with 23 voters, and 4 with 17-18 voters.  Putting New Jersey with New England doesn't make any geographic sense.

My opinion is the contiguous-ness of districts is more important than the number of voters.

The defeats the purpose of districts, which are supposed to be divided by voters, though.

I plan on voting against this amendment should it come to a vote on the senate floor.

I would also like to point out that total number of registered voters is not always the most important thing.

Several of the registered voters in the Northeast seem unlikely to participate in future elections. Don't get too hung up on the numbers alone.

I support this amenment.

Regions were meant to be contiguous, but districts were meant to represent the voting population from day one.

NMow that we've signed away regions, we are tryinjg to change district to regions. Thats just stupid. Districts have a valid role to play, and so do regions. But perhaps regions aren't necessary in the senate.

Districts are, though, and therefor I wish to support the original meaning of the creation of districts, and support this amendment.

The alternative would be to split the state of New York...

In that case we will have to start with a list of names of which people are in each district.

Wow, let's not get too carried away here...I think contigiousness (hm, does that really exist?) is more important. Look at how actual districts in RL looks. They're always contigious (except for when they're HEAVILY gerrymandered). And population doesn't have to be exactly equal number ov voters. As long as the differences aren't too big.

In real life, the Supreme Court has definitely held that districts being equal size is more important that geographical integrity.  This is because "one person, one vote" is a constitutional guarantee, while geography

For instance, they struck down the original Pennsylvania map in 2002 for only slight differences in population, while upholding all of the recent political gerrymanders, like Maryland and Texas, no matter how wacky the Districts looked, as long as they had equal populations.

The SC has struck down gerrymanders that were racially motivated.  But that is because not being discriminated against on the basis of race is a constitutional guarantee; pure georgraphy is awarded no such protection.

I was not talking excluseively about the US... :P I still think thatwe should try and keep the districts contigious.

I hereby withdraw this amendement.

:(