Comments Posted By Matt DeCoursey
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SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS MOST OF TEXAS GERRYMANDER
Steve, look abroad. This problem has been solved elsewhere. In most democracies, gerrymandering is not a problem. To say "Drawing political boundaries is, by its very nature, a political act" is just sleight of hand. In some ivory-tower realm of philosophical purity, it's true enough. In practice, a perfectly ordinary group of people genuinely trying to do the job with perfectly ordinary common sense will get you close enough. To say that this is impossible in the United States is to condemn the US political system to a kind of perpetual political hell. You don't have to put up with this, Americans. You, too, can achieve the lofty level of political purity that most people living in democracies take for granted.
Comment Posted By Matt DeCoursey On 29.06.2006 @ 22:21
I think this decision will strengthen the impression of many non-Americans, including myself, that democracy in America is becoming a hollow shell, no more meaningful than what you find here in Hong Kong.
Anyone who is part of gerrymandering is an enemy of democracy. Anyone who fails to object to gerrymandering is an enemy of democracy. The reference to Democratic gerrymandering in the early eighties is typical of American political myopia. For someone like me, from the outside, it just means that the whole system is corrupt, not just one side.
Sometimes American commentators say "It's always been like that. You can't get away from it." Well, other countries have got away from it. The province I come from in Canada, Saskatchewan, had gerrymandering in the first election I was aware of in 1971. The incumbents lost, partly because of the public's anger about gerrymandering. The new government, rather than gerrymandering on its own account, established independent electoral commissions, and there's been no trouble since then.
Americans: If you can't deal with this very simple problem in your system, no one has any reason to regard your system as a model, not in Iraq, not anywhere.
Comment Posted By Matt DeCoursey On 28.06.2006 @ 20:34
