this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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Politics
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It's interesting to see US political mechanics as a foreigner.
Isn't gerrymandering just deciding who "the majority" is? Can't constitutional amendments be revoked? A "ballot initiative" was news to me, and seems a bit more like a form of direct democracy. Am I misunderstanding that?
Gerrymandering is complicated. Simplest version; it involves diluting the vote of smaller groups who likely would have been able to vote in representation into the government if not for the interference.
This is done by breaking up that voting group among groups that favor the manipulating party.
The wiki on it does a good job of providing the details.
You are right that anything done can be undone BUT it requires the same level of governmental control. And if you can gerrymander the heck out of the voters, you can pass almost anything.
Note: it is not a purely 'popular' vote. That would bypass gerrymandering. Gerrymandering depends on block voting.
All US states have their own Constitution, which is usually similar to the US federal Constitution but always with at least a few differences. "Constitution" in this case refers to the foundational law of the land, which supercedes all other laws. Some, but not all US states have constitutions that say the constitution can be amended by ballot initiative, and yes, it is a bit more like direct democracy. However, how the measure gets on the ballot is important.
In most states (I think actually all states but I'm not intimately familiar with every state's laws), the governor has veto power, which means the legislature can't pass most laws unless the governor agrees with them. This is similar to the US federal government, where the president can veto almost anything that is passed by Congress. What this means is that, in states where the governor represents one party and the legislature represents another, neither party can pass anything that the other party disagrees with, so most laws that are passed are pretty moderate. This is the state of affairs in Wisconsin right now.
Evidently, in Wisconsin, the legislature can put constitutional amendment questions on the ballot without the governor's approval. Additionally, the legislature gets to decide how the question is phrased. And this is Republicans approving these particular ballot initiatives, so we can assume that the phrasing will be intentionally-misleading to confuse misinformed moderate/centrist voters into voting against their best interests.
Finally, because these are constitutional amendments, this means that they take precedence over other laws passed by the legislature. If the electorate is misled into voting against their best interests, then it would take more than a motivated legislature to repeal. It would take either a legal challenge (sometimes difficult), or another ballot initiative to repeal. Obviously both of these solutions can be time-consuming, and while time passes, Republicans can use the new amendments to take even more rights away.
Does that clear up your confusion?
CGPGrey has a decent video about gerrymandering