<story><title>Trump to Sign Executive Order Waiving Key Environmental Laws</title><url>https://e360.yale.edu/digest/president-trump-to-sign-executive-order-waiving-key-environmental-laws</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>veeralpatel979</author><text>I hate gerrymandering too. More competitive elections, in my view, makes politicians less partisan and incentivizes them more to deliver for their districts.&lt;p&gt;But who should determine who draws electoral lines? Right now, it&amp;#x27;s in the hands of elected officials, so you can at least vote them out if they gerrymander.&lt;p&gt;If electoral lines are drawn by a nonpartisan commission, who appoints the commission? How do you ensure the members of the commission stay nonpartisan? Can the public hold members of this commission accountable?&lt;p&gt;Definitely our current system is broken; what are some alternatives to elected officials drawing electoral lines that are promising?</text></item><item><author>cgrealy</author><text>Because your system of government is so fundamentally broken it barely even qualifies as a democracy anymore?&lt;p&gt;All the systems built into the US government were designed for a country with 1% the number of people it has now, when the fastest method of communication was a horse and the majority of it&amp;#x27;s populace were farmers.&lt;p&gt;There are a few simple things that could be done right now to fix the US government (abolish the EC and gerrymandering to start with), but no one has the political will to do it.</text></item><item><author>tathougies</author><text>Why have we as a people allowed our past three administrations to continue to rule by fiat? Ultimately, these are probably perfectly reasonable ideas,  but this kind of action must come from the legislature.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>munk-a</author><text>Oh - districts should be drawn to guarantee mathematical fairness and a few relatively good measures exist[1] including one that was used in court in connection to a particularly egregious Wisconsin district (the efficiency-gap measure).&lt;p&gt;This is really less of an unsolvable problem than people make it out to be - it&amp;#x27;s just that most of the discussion you hear about it is from the political parties both of which benefit from its existence and, especially, the incumbents who have a much more secure seat with careful district drawing to make sure you don&amp;#x27;t get too many progressives that might vote out a centrist (or ditto on the other side)&lt;p&gt;1. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.scientificamerican.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;the-mathematicians-who-want-to-save-democracy&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.scientificamerican.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;the-mathematician...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Trump to Sign Executive Order Waiving Key Environmental Laws</title><url>https://e360.yale.edu/digest/president-trump-to-sign-executive-order-waiving-key-environmental-laws</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>veeralpatel979</author><text>I hate gerrymandering too. More competitive elections, in my view, makes politicians less partisan and incentivizes them more to deliver for their districts.&lt;p&gt;But who should determine who draws electoral lines? Right now, it&amp;#x27;s in the hands of elected officials, so you can at least vote them out if they gerrymander.&lt;p&gt;If electoral lines are drawn by a nonpartisan commission, who appoints the commission? How do you ensure the members of the commission stay nonpartisan? Can the public hold members of this commission accountable?&lt;p&gt;Definitely our current system is broken; what are some alternatives to elected officials drawing electoral lines that are promising?</text></item><item><author>cgrealy</author><text>Because your system of government is so fundamentally broken it barely even qualifies as a democracy anymore?&lt;p&gt;All the systems built into the US government were designed for a country with 1% the number of people it has now, when the fastest method of communication was a horse and the majority of it&amp;#x27;s populace were farmers.&lt;p&gt;There are a few simple things that could be done right now to fix the US government (abolish the EC and gerrymandering to start with), but no one has the political will to do it.</text></item><item><author>tathougies</author><text>Why have we as a people allowed our past three administrations to continue to rule by fiat? Ultimately, these are probably perfectly reasonable ideas,  but this kind of action must come from the legislature.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xxpor</author><text>Who says we have to draw electoral lines at all?&lt;p&gt;Proportional representation of house members per state is one option. Which would be completely constitutional, btw.</text></comment>