The difference between Sanders and Clinton is miniscule compared to Clinton and any conservative.
Agreed. But the point here is that I have a track record of distinguishing between what I'd like to happen and what I think will happen. If you reject the Clinton/Sanders example, there's the question of Republicans retaining the House, which I think is likely to happen (based on polling data), even though I wish it wouldn't. There are lots of partisans here who can't distinguish that way (check back in the archive to all those crowing about a coming Romney landslide, even as all the data pointed either to a close match or an Obama victory).
Do you have a problem with gerrymandering?
Yes.
Because both sides use it profusely.
Perhaps. At the present time, though, it represents a huge advantage to the Republicans -- they got fewer total votes in the House a few years back, and yet came away with a pretty sizable majority, because Republican-led state houses have managed to draw district lines to pack minorities into a few city districts, surrendering a few heavily Democratic urban districts in exchange for a large number of Republican-tilting rural and suburban ones.
What we ought to do is pass a law that has districts drawn nationally, by algorithm, using data, without human intervention. You could program a computer to come up with the most compact districts possible that produce results equal to state total voting in the prior election (e.g., if 60% of a state is Republican, Republicans tend to win about 60% of seats). That would take it out of the hands of partisans, and give us a Congress that looks a fair amount like America.
Heck, you wouldn't even need a computer if you had a law making it so the districts have to be drawn such that the aggregate outcome, applying that districting, of the last election would reflect the vote total (e.g., if Republicans got 50% of House votes nationally, they'd have gotten 50% of total seats). Take away the ability to draw funny lines to win disproportionate seats, and it would become a non-partisan job for technocrats, involving rationally fitting the district shapes to the underlying population groups.
Odd that you'd only point out the GOP here, well, not odd.
Agreed, not at all odd given that they're presently the ones shamelessly abusing the practice for a huge advantage. If this were, say, 1920, when Democrats were the mostly southern white rural people using gerrymandering to disenfranchise minorities, then it would make sense to focus on the Democrats. But Republicans have taken over that role.
