OTM #3: The System Is Rigged

For my final On The Media post, I listened to the episode The System Is Rigged. I chose this episode because although it's not a surprise to me that Trump's allegations are incorrect, it was a surprise to me to learn how the election is actually rigged. And that's the specific segment that I'm going to discuss in my post.

In this segment Bob Garfield brings on David Daley author of, "Ratfucked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy" to talk about gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering isn't a new concept, what's new about it is today's technology and the data it provides. Daley explains how this makes the drawing of the lines even more arbitrary. One district in Pennsylvania actually looks like Goofy kicking Donald Duck in his rear end (I don't see it), Daley says about this, "And they are really funny, however, these district lines are the building blocks of democracy, and when they get as perverted and twisted as this it leads to deeply undemocratic outcomes."

His point is that these lines are supposed to mirror popular opinion and public will, but they don't, and it's beyond control of the voters.

I read an article from the Washington Post about this (here), which provides visuals that help explain how this is done. But I also found it interesting because their suggested solution was to have an independent company draw the lines rather than the parties, which I think would just get bought out by the parties anyway. Or to have a computer draw the lines. This made me think back to a previous episode of on the media discussing how algorithims are essentially still programmed by humans, therefore the bias would still remain.

I think these solutions are all better than what is currently happening, however I still think we can do better. Very few of my peers voted or were even excited that they could vote. This should not be the case. Too many feel that their vote doesn't matter, and this is due to both voter myths as well as popular vote not holding the weight that it should in our democracy. I know it's not just me that finds it offensive that we need an electoral college to represent us common (aka dumb) folk. We've just got to find a way to balance the smaller and larger states as well as better represent our populations opinions. People deserve to have their voices heard, to be able to celebrate for contributing to their government, and to actually be represented by their government.