As Texas Republicans try to muscle a rare mid-decade redistricting bill through the Legislature to help Republicans gain seats in Congress – at President Donald Trump’s request – residents in Austin, the state capital, could find themselves sharing a district with rural Texans more than 300 miles away.

The proposed map chops up Central Texas’ 37th Congressional District, which is currently represented by Democrat Rep. Lloyd Doggett, will be consumed by four neighboring districts, three of which Republicans now hold.

One of those portions of the Austin-area district was drawn to be part of the 11th District that Republican Rep. August Pfluger represents, which stretches into rural Ector County, about 20 miles away from the New Mexico border.

  • mcv@lemmy.zip
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    3 days ago

    Get rid of districts and fill Congress through proportional representation. That solves so many problems.

    • LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz
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      3 days ago

      But it creates others. In the US we vote for people, in proportional representing, you vote for parties.

      You can argue that’s better, but it’s very different from what we have now.

      • mcv@lemmy.zip
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        3 days ago

        It is different, and I would indeed argue it’s better. And let’s face it, you are mostly voting for parties anyway. How many independents are there really?

        But if you want to have district representatives, you could do a hybrid system where half the seats are assigned by district, and the other half are assigned from a national list to fill out the proportionality.

        Republicans would be getting most of their seats from districts, Greens and Libertarians would get them entirely from the national list, but at least they’d get representation.

    • tehn00bi@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      We should make it proportionate to economic output. Not number of people. Seems like the capitalist way.

        • IngeniousRocks (They/She) @lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 days ago

          Reality has a left leaning bias, this is why the US has a gerymandering issue in the first place. If the right could get into power without rigging things, they would, but they can’t, so gerrymander it up.

          Edit: I think I replied to the wrong comment, but I can’t for the life of me figure out which one it was meant to be a reply to. Perhaps the one that the one I’m replying to is replying to.

          • trebor8201@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            There’s a quote about that. “If conservatives can’t win in a democratic system, they won’t abandon conservatism, they will abandon democracy.”

      • mcv@lemmy.zip
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        3 days ago

        Republicans rarely have a majority of the congressional votes. They get their majority in Congress from uneven representation and gerrymandering. In proportional representation, they’d lose their majority.