[HN Gopher] How to get rid of gerrymandering: the math is surpri... ___________________________________________________________________ How to get rid of gerrymandering: the math is surprising Author : lkrubner Score : 61 points Date : 2022-05-11 20:41 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (demodexio.substack.com) (TXT) w3m dump (demodexio.substack.com) | RappingBoomer wrote: | gerrymandering has the potential to increase homogeneity of | voting districts...more homogeneity means that the electorate is | more united and can therefore force the politicians to do what | the voters want. | pavlov wrote: | Gerrymandering and a first-past-the-post electoral system can | result in parliaments where a clear majority of all voters | chose party X, yet the majority of seats are held by party Y. | (There are several examples of these in the American states.) | | That doesn't seem to represent "what voters want" very well. | kelnos wrote: | That only works if the elected official from a particular | voting district has complete say over the law in that district, | which they do not. They go on to represent their district in a | larger body, which may then vote against that district's | wishes. | totierne2 wrote: | Swiss canton? We prefer blood than clocks... | saxonww wrote: | That's not what gerrymandering does. No districting scheme | forces the elected representative to do what the voters want. | Once they get elected, they have their term, and can vote | however they want barring expulsion or recall. | | Gerrymandering is where you draw up districts such that the | voting power of people who won't vote for you is minimized. It | doesn't have to result in homogeneous districts. The point is | to maximize your party's voting power as durably as possible. | onphonenow wrote: | Very quick solutions that at least drive politics towards the | middle vs extremes: | | Open primaries with ranked choice voting. | | Top two to general. | | Done. | | The current model, in a "safe" dem seat (45% R / 55% D) whoever | wins D primary wins everything. This means the D primary (with | 20% of voters - most activist) are deciding things. Same on the | right. | | With open primaries, you will get 2 D's potentially in general, | but now the R vote actually matters. This drives towards the | middle. | | Additionally RCV in the primary (ie pick 3 in order) also allows | votes for less well known folks without as much wasted voting. | | Another method is RCV with a multi-seat election. So you rate 5 | candidates and their are 5 winners in the larger geo area. This | tends to give even groups with let's say 20% makeup of voter pool | a seat at the table. Traditional winner takes all does not. | dllthomas wrote: | RCV encompasses a lot of different systems, but the most common | instantiation is something resembling instant runoff, and I am | skeptical that it drives towards the middle. | | If we believe that the appropriate compromise is no one's first | choice, the first thing IRV does is throw away any "appropriate | compromise". | chrisseaton wrote: | > Open primaries | | I don't get the idea of open primaries - why should someone who | is not a member of a party get to vote on who the party wants | to represent them? | | Imagine there was a Women's Equality Party party (there is in | the UK.) Should a large number of men, with no interests in | women's equality, be able to come along and tell the Women's | Equality Party who will represent them in an election? | derbOac wrote: | I am someplace that has open primaries and nothing like you | are concerned about transpires. The reason is that if you | participate in one primary you lose the ability to | participate in the other. In some sense the threat of each | side doing it keeps people from doing it. | | Also you can't really in keep people from registering for a | given party, so enforcing a non open primary isn't feasible | in practice. | birken wrote: | You are confused by what the OP means by open primary. It | doesn't mean that anybody can choose in which party's primary | a person can vote for (which actually is already the case... | anybody can register for any party). It means there is just | one giant open primary, and all candidates run in the same | single primary at the same time. The top 2 vote getters move | on to the general election. | | The point here is that if for instance 2 candidates of the | same party make the general election, all of the people who | are not in that party have to choose between only those two | candidates, and their votes may make the difference. So this | generally would favor the more moderate candidate. IE, if the | general election was between two republicans, and one were | very extreme and one was more moderate, all the democratic | voters would be motivated to vote for the moderate republican | as that is likely the better of the two options for their | point of view. | | In your example, if the Women's Equality Party candidate was | unappealing to some subset of voters, but extremely appealing | to another one, then they'd do fine in an open primary. By | definition if you get at least 1/3rd of the votes in the open | primary, you are guaranteed to make the general election. | chrisseaton wrote: | > anybody can register for any party | | Presumably only if they'll have you? People often get | ejected from political parties in the UK if they for some | reason are being destructive (in someone's opinion.) | [deleted] | aidenn0 wrote: | If that is what GP meant, then they used the wrong term. | The term usually used is "Blanket Primary" or "Jungle | Primary" (Jungle Primary is a specific type of blanket | primary) for what you describe. An open primary allows | people to vote regardless of party affiliation; the states | which have these may not even ask you for party affiliation | when you register to vote (Virginia, where I first voted | does not, for example). | | It does make an aggregate difference because few people | vote in primaries anyways, and even fewer will change their | party affiliation every year, making raiding much harder. | dragonwriter wrote: | That's a California-style jungle primary, not an open | primary, and it's very dubious that it promotes centrism. | aidenn0 wrote: | Given that parties don't restrict membership in the US, in | places that are majority one party, you effectively get an | open primary. I'm registered as | $MAJORITY_PARTY_IN_MY_DISTRICT because the primary election | is essentially the only one that matters. | abirch wrote: | I'm with you on the ranked choice voting, but I would say that | the general is the duopoly. This can enable more viable parties | and the death to the duopoly. | | And having more representatives (districts) will help immensely | as well. The current limit is capped by statute and can be | changed, this would especially help counter the over- | representation of unpopulated states. | drewcoo wrote: | I, for one, think that extremely D and extremely D and even | somewhere in the middle are all equally problematic. | | As long as 3rd parties are not electable, we're stuck with some | right wing, corporate-backed politician regardless of who wins. | | All the talk of gerrymandering is just a partisan distraction. | pessimizer wrote: | It's also Democratic Party excuse-making. They act as if | Republicans invented and have a greater propensity to | gerrymander than Democrats, when they both aggressively and | energetically gerrymander when they're in the position to. | The constant discussion of it is to distract from Democrats | being completely wiped out in state and local elections over | the past 20 years, giving exclusive gerrymandering power to | Republicans. | dragonwriter wrote: | > Very quick solutions that at least drive politics towards the | middle vs extremes | | This is a very good goal if you want to replace duopoly which | alienates a large number of people with monopoly which | alienates a larger number of people. | | What we need is almost the opposite: a system that, to the | extent possible without compromising things like manageable | legislature size and personal electoral accountability, | provides proportional representation so that governing | compromises are forced out in the open between parties in | government, rather than done behind the scenes within parties | so as to attempt to attain a minimal winning coalition | leveraging limited substantive choices in the general election. | | (Using Single Transferrable Vote, or a similar system, in small | multimember districts, say 5 members per district, would do | this quite well.) | samatman wrote: | The problem posed by gerrymandering is a social problem, not a | math problem. | | There are all kinds of geographical and legal boundaries in a | country, with varying levels of affinity to them. Defining | gerrymandering precisely isn't possible, it isn't even a know it | when you see it thing, and in practice it's a Russell | conjugation: they gerrymander, and we redistrict so that people | get proper representation. | | However, social problems can be solved with maths, law could | require something like this to be performed after every census: | | https://sites.math.washington.edu/~morrow/mcm/uw_1034.pdf | | I think this has considerable advantages, the biggest being that | it's objective, the next being that just looking at a Voronoi | diagram makes it clear what's going on. | | This essentially removes human factors from redistricting, and | says you get the Congressional district you get when the | population heatmap is relaxed in the simplest way it can be into | the appropriate number of partitions. | | Remember there's nothing about this which is 'fair', except for | the part where people could perhaps be persuaded to abide by the | results. | crowbahr wrote: | Perhaps the best way to district is more about maximum | contention in a race? Voroni partitioning so that the maximum | number of "purple" districts are achieved makes sense to me. | daenz wrote: | >Congratulations, you've now created a totalitarian one-party | dictatorship! The blues hold 60% of every district, so they win | every district, so 100% of the national legislature is in the | control of the blues, even though they only hold 60% of the vote. | | I'm afraid too many people would be ok with this. There is a | strong desire for "democracy" over "republic" (not a combination | of the two), meaning 51% of your average voters can do whatever | they want to the remaining 49%. Fundamentally, including a | "republic" in the formulation means that some people get a | prioritized say. I think a strong case can be made for that, but | the idea itself is deeply unpopular. | mastazi wrote: | I grew up learning that "republicanism" means that you are | opposed to the monarchy so I'm really confused by your comment. | It seems that you are using the term "republic" as an | equivalent of "pluralism" or possibly of "indirect democracy"? | 8ytecoder wrote: | There's rule by majority and then there's individual rights. | Pure democracy prioritizes majority rule and does not | guarantee any right to individuals. A Republic has a | constitution that usually lays out the fundamental rights of | a person and laws are valid only if those rights are not | violated. | daenz wrote: | I'm using "republic" here to point out that a district is | acting like an elected representative. | wahern wrote: | "The United States is a republic, not a democracy" is a meme | started by the John Birch Society that spread to the broader | conservative movement and beyond, losing much of its | coherency and substance. Now it's just become a hollow | rebuttal to [often equally hollow] claims of anti-democratic | policies or opinions. But those who have received the meme | tend to understand "republic" as having a far more specific | definition (centering on Birch Society political philosophy) | than in general discourse, including historic discourse--the | Founding Fathers used the terms "democracy" and "republic" | more loosely, including giving republic the meaning you | ascribe (which, I think, is the more correct literal | definition), but also sometimes using them interchangeably or | at least ambiguously. | Jensson wrote: | > There is a strong desire for "democracy" over "republic" (not | a combination of the two), meaning 51% of your average voters | can do whatever they want to the remaining 49%. | | This is the dumbest argument for first past the post, how is | this better than "35% of your average voters can do whatever | they want to the remaining 65%"? No matter how you count the | votes you will have a winner, and that winner can abuse the | loser. 51% winning just means you get the fewest number of | losers, and any other protections you can get with first past | the post can also be gotten in a popularity vote system. The | only thing you now miss is that some votes become worth much | more than other votes, instead you just have 1 person 1 vote, | which I thought was the standard of modern democracy. | daenz wrote: | >51% winning just means you get the fewest number of losers | | That's the wrong thing to optimize for. | jjoonathan wrote: | If you donate to both sides, you can do whatever you want with | 1% of the vote. Imagine the horror if the 99% could do whatever | they want to the 1%! | [deleted] | daenz wrote: | I'm not sure how this is relevant to my point, please | explain. | elicash wrote: | Part of why partisan gerrymandering has become such a problem is | that the tech makes it easier to gerrymander. | | But mostly, political party matters much more than ever before. | The electorate is more ideological and the candidates for office | are much more loyal to the party platform. In an era where | political party mattered less than, say, geography, then partisan | gerrymandering was less of a national problem. | | Of course, there are several types of gerrymandering and this is | just one of them. The best summary of possible solutions and | their limitations I've seen was done by 538 as part of a larger | gerrymandering project: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/its- | probably-not-possib... | cato_the_elder wrote: | I'm not really an expert on the issue, but there's this | suggestion that I kinda like: let people living in a district | choose to vote in the adjacent districts if they want to do so. | This "blurs" the arbitrary lines a bit. | | Also, this is probably an unpopular opinion, but I actually kinda | like gerrymandering. In the sense that I like the fact that it | exposes the absurdity of counting votes and claiming that it | somehow represents the voice of the people. | | The outcome is clearly very dependent on what voting method is | used, how the districts maps are drawn, who is eligible to vote, | etc. It's all just vanity of vanities. | Loughla wrote: | >it exposes the absurdity of counting votes and claiming that | it somehow represents the voice of the people. | | I actually 100% disagree with this sentence. I do not, | honestly, believe it exposes that. My experience with people | who vote is that they harangue about the "other side" | gerrymandering, but when their preferred candidate wins their | district, it's because voting works. | | I genuinely believe people are either (a) willfully ignorant, | or (b) pants-on-head idiotic when it comes to this issue. | hannasanarion wrote: | There is no "both sides" to be had here. | | Republican candidates winning Staten Island sometimes is not | gerrymandering. | | The Republican National Committee hiring gerrymandering | consultant Thomas Hofeller in 2009 to draw them maps of | Wisconsin and North Carolina that will give them absolute | supermajorities even if they lose the popular vote by a wide | margin, and then using those supermajorities to strip | incoming Democratic governors of all of their powers thus | instituting permanent one-party rule forever, that's | gerrymandering. | [deleted] | jimbob45 wrote: | What if I told you FiveThirtyEight's ongoing investigation | into gerrymandering is finding that the Democratic Party is | gerrymandering much more than the Republican Party? 538 is | a left-leaning site too. | | https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-map | s... | corrral wrote: | > is finding that the Democratic Party is gerrymandering | much more than the Republican Party | | Are those findings somewhere else? That particular page | _does not_ clearly support that claim. | pessimizer wrote: | You should go look. They're making a claim and showing | their work, and when you make a opposite claim, if you've | looked, you'll have work to show. | corrral wrote: | I did go look. If the claim made is supported by that | page, I sure didn't see it. You may also go look. We're | all using the same link here, and it's already been | supplied. | UncleMeat wrote: | "Redistricting has created more lean-blue districts than | there once were, reducing the red bias in the house" and | "dems gerrymander more than the reps" are different | claims. | corrral wrote: | It's local lingo. | | From Wikipedia: | | > A distinct set of definitions of the term "republic" | evolved in the United States, where the term is often equated | with "representative democracy." | | The term "representative democracy" is typical in poli-sci | circles and basically everywhere that's not the US, but I | don't think that's actually the distinction the poster was | looking for--some kind of constitution or other super-law | that's relatively hard to change, plus strong rule of law | (which is more about practices and norms than about what's | written on some paper), seem much more important for | preserving minority interests. | SemanticStrengh wrote: | if you enable to choose districts freely this can be mass | gamed. | maxwell wrote: | > You cannot have both, unless you're willing to have a | legislature that has something like 5,000 people in it, which is | not practical. (For instance, the USA has 50 states, so if we | wanted 100 representatives from each state, the legislature would | have 5,000 people in it -- clearly not realistic.) | | Madison said the same thing, but we didn't have contemporary | communication tools. My company's Slack has over 5,000 people and | works just fine. Why is it unrealistic to repeal the Permanent | Apportionment Act of 1929 and increase membership in the House by | an order of magnitude? | aidenn0 wrote: | Increasing membership of the House has the effect of reducing | the advantage less-populous states have (both in the house and | in the electoral college). That might make it politically | infeasible to pass. | rootusrootus wrote: | > politically infeasible to pass. | | Probably true. But I would hope that argument could be | deflated easily, since it was the senate that was supposed to | give smaller states a disproportionate amount of influence. | aidenn0 wrote: | Which is why people who don't want to pass it for this | reason will state some other reason, like "5000 | representatives is _obviously_ silly and way too many " | lifeisstillgood wrote: | Because it might be possible to stand out in a crowd of 500 but | not 5,000. And it certainly is not possible to do deals other | than "this is good for everyone". | | It would almost certainly end political parties. Lead to good | ideas being debated openly by people who have no chance of | hanging together long enough to force a direction. | | My god man what are you thinking ! | | (/s) | christkv wrote: | Why stop at 5000 make it 50 000 to make it even harder. It | would mess with everything from party discipline to lobbying. | rootusrootus wrote: | > (/s) | | IMO we should just drop this notation altogether and just let | angry people get angry, and ignore 'em. Sarcasm is better | when it doesn't have to be labeled. | aidenn0 wrote: | > Sarcasm is better when it doesn't have to be labeled. | | Which is why nobody ever uses a different tone of voice | when speaking sarcastically. | haswell wrote: | This does not match my experience. One of the reasons /s | exists is because it's much harder to read the intent of | a written paragraph than the intent of someone speaking | directly to us. | | The hallmarks of sarcasm are subtle, and come in a few | forms - sometimes it's intentional emphasis on a | particular word, sometimes it's a quizzical look or | raised eyebrow, etc. | | But at least in my experience, I can usually tell when | someone is being sarcastic in person, but it gets harder | and harder to tell on the Internet. | cato_the_elder wrote: | > Madison said the same thing | | Interesting, I didn't know that. I looked it up, and I really | liked this Madison quote: | | > In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever characters | composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. | Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian | assembly would still have been a mob. | | (from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._55) | spaetzleesser wrote: | How many people in your company with 5000 slack users are the | real decision makers ? I highly doubt it's more than a few. If | you had 5000 people in the legislature they would most likely | still vote party line based on the decision of a few. | no_protocol wrote: | Why do they need to only have single-member districts? How about | having fewer districts with more members per district? It seems | like Fix Gerrymandering is a solution aimed at the wrong problem | when the entire problem could just be eliminated. | yonran wrote: | Yes. After observing San Francisco's acrimonious supervisor | redistricting last month (in which politicians and special | interests lobbied the nonpartisan commission to move | neighborhoods to one district or other to maintain or gain | political power), this article has convinced me that the | problem is single-winner district elections in the first place. | Every map is flawed when only one person represents the | district per election. And the solution is proportional | representation where multiple people win in each election | (although the exact method of proportional representation can | be debated). | | https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfchronicle.com%2F... | rtkwe wrote: | Space partially, the US House of Reps is already pretty packed | so to add enough to get to >2 members per district you'd have | to add a lot. You also get into potential issues diluting power | that much, with so many members things like committee | memberships become the only people with real power on an | individual level. | q-big wrote: | > Space partially, the US House of Reps is already pretty | packed so to add enough to get to >2 members per district | you'd have to add a lot. | | Then make the districts bigger to compensate for this effect. | colechristensen wrote: | That's what the Senate is. This has neutralizing effect on | tyranny of a single party by forcing that party to win in | separate kinds of representation strategies. | rtkwe wrote: | The senate is wildly antidemocratic giving power to a party | just based on the amount of land/states they control. It's | also effectively single winner from the party level because | there are only 6 split senate delegations at this point. | colechristensen wrote: | What are the qualifications to label something as | "antidemocratic"? | | There are many separate interests in a large country and | thinking the only morally correct government is strictly | majority rule is definitely a matter of debate. | | The founders made it the way it is to prevent tyranny of | the majority which was a major topic in political | philosophy. You likewise wouldn't want to live in a place | absolutely controlled by the 50% +1. | | Geographic areas with lower population densities getting | higher representation makes sense, interests aren't equally | distributed nor are they distributed just to areas of high | density. If you don't do this you risk power concentrations | where people have to leave lower density places for higher | density places if they don't go along with the majority | opinion because they don't get representation and get | disadvantaged by the majority. | | People tend to like this when it benefits them and hate it | when it doesn't, but there is good sense in it, especially | when nationally the party split is nearly always very close | to even. | kelnos wrote: | In the US, the Senate directly causes the tyranny of the | minority that we're currently experiencing. | | The House also has representation issues: since the total | number of representatives in the House hasn't increased over | time as population has increased, there's a "floor" on the | number of per-state representatives that causes smaller | states to have outsized representation. | | The article doesn't really deal with any of this, though: it | assumes each "district" has the same number of people in it, | which isn't the case for House or Senate seats when you | consider the entire country. The article is more about | considering the representation within a single US state, | based on its division into districts. | colechristensen wrote: | I have a hard time with this because it's not like the | tyranny of 20% of the population, elections are all pretty | damn close to 50:50 overall much of the time. People have a | hard time accepting that about half the population voted | for things they really hate and choose instead to attack | the small percentage of difference as the unfairness | responsible for all their woes instead of the other | high-40s percentage of people who want want happens when | the majority loses. | | Currently, arguably, democrats in power in the senate had | fewer popular votes than republicans. (48 dem + 2 | independent popular vote was about 1.5 million less than | the 50 republican senators, with VP deciding ties... well | it's just not so clean cut a minority-in-power situation) | | (I blame most of the current situation on democrats being | bad at politics and not having the guts to do things they | should have.) | | There's no way to be completely fair, the current setup is | there in order to prevent several kinds of runaway power | processes and really it has worked quite well for a very | long time (unless you expect people to just be angels then | go pick a dictator you think will be good). | no_protocol wrote: | It doesn't talk about a senate at all: | | > It is divided up into 10 districts, each of which sends one | representative to the national legislature, which consists of | 10 people. | | They take this as a given and try to come up with convoluted | ways to 'fix' the problem, when just fixing this axiom would | solve it much easier. | colechristensen wrote: | Yes they don't talk about the Senate because it's not | gerrymandered because it's a statewide position not subject | to districting. | | We already have the bundled-population representation in a | senator, the House uses a different strategy explicitly | because it's different for the benefits of competing means | of representation to even out power. | Ekaros wrote: | Yeah, I never understood really this district thing... Do they | that often really represent only the certain area? Or would it | be more sane to have larger districts? Maybe in some cases up | to whole state where the winners were selected in proportional | way. | | Then again this would allow third parties to actually gain | foothold and the corrupt duopoly can't allow that. | | Also this whole electoral college thing. Why is there this | idiotic winner takes all method? Why not also maybe have lists. | So electors would be chosen in order of list and voters could | pick a list endorsing certain candidate pair? | dane-pgp wrote: | This article nicely explains the problem, but is a bit defeatist | about the possibility of reforms that could mitigate it. To offer | one reform, allow me to present the following: | | Suppose in the hypothetical country, the total number of votes | cast for Blue is some number "B", and the total for Violet is | "V". Further suppose that the number of seats won by Blue is "C" | and the seats for Violet is "W". A non-gerrymandered map would be | one where B:V is approximately C:W (or at least there is no | possible change to the seats result that would make C:W any | closer to B:V). | | My proposed reform, therefore, is that after an election, if | those ratios are not as close as possible, the electoral officers | would go down the list of seats that were lost by the under- | represented party (from best performance to worst) and flip the | result so that the under-represented party gains representation, | until the ratio can't be improved any more. | | Obviously this would feel hugely unfair to the voters in the | districts where the result was flipped, but they should blame the | people who drew the unfair map in the first place. Indeed, the | incentive would be on both parties to draw districts which were | most likely to produce a balanced result that doesn't need any | flipping. This method has the added bonus that it would encourage | parties to appeal to voters in "safe seats" just as much as | "swing seats", since everyone's vote would count towards the B:V | ratio. | | The maths gets a little more complicated when dealing with more | than 2 parties, and with independent candidates who don't belong | to any party, but I don't believe these are insurmountable | obstacles. Solving the problem of gerrymandering, | unrepresentative legislatures, and voter apathy with this one | weird trick (that doesn't involve changing the ballot papers or | counting process) seems like such a big win that the cost of a | few flipped seats has to be an acceptable price to pay. | quink wrote: | Or you could just do IRV or multi-member electorates or any | number of other things done in other more democratic countries | that are at least harder to characterise as stealing votes. | dane-pgp wrote: | Like I say, my proposal allows the electorate to keep the | same ballot papers, the same counting process, and the same | number of seats in the legislature. | | You're right, though, that if voters were prepared to | sacrifice some of that familiarity, they could do much better | than the system I proposed (which was somewhat inspired by | the multi-member system I mentioned in another comment). | JacobThreeThree wrote: | >My proposed reform, therefore, is that after an election, if | those ratios are not as close as possible, the electoral | officers would go down the list of seats that were lost by the | under-represented party (from best performance to worst) and | flip the result so that the under-represented party gains | representation, until the ratio can't be improved any more. | | This seems like an implementation that would harm the trust in | the system. If you're going to bother having representation by | geography in a democratic system, it should be based purely on | geography, not based on demographics within the geography. | | I agree with the author of the post that the geographic element | itself is the source of the issue and that there are perhaps | other better ways of dealing with the "tyranny of the majority" | issue that the founding fathers intended to handle via | republicanism. | magpi3 wrote: | > Congratulations, you've now created a totalitarian one-party | dictatorship! | | This is not true. It totally discounts independents (38% of | American are independent), and districts obviously evolve and the | popularity of the party in power tends to wane as that party | either fails to fulfill its promises or abuses its authority in | some way. It is no coincidence that in modern times whenever a | party has control over all three houses in the U.S., they lose | that control in the very next election. | Jensson wrote: | Gerrymandering is very easy to fix: don't make voting districts | matter that much. Have local seats in districts so they get | represented, but also have popular vote seats to even out so each | party gets seats corresponding to the total vote. Done, | gerrymandering no longer matters enough for it to be a big deal. | dane-pgp wrote: | Yes, this is effectively the solution that Mixed-Member | Proportional Representation (MMP) offers. | | The normal complaint with this is that it typically involves | having closed lists of candidates who get a free ticket into | parliament without any local accountability, and this is only | slightly improved by having an open list system (although that | requires teaching voters to mark extra ballot papers in | unfamiliar ways). | | Fortunately a better solution has been found and actually | implemented in Baden-Wurttemberg, and they call it the | Zweitmandat system. Basically, the "proportional seats are | filled by losing candidates who won the highest proportion of | votes". | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweitmandat | Jensson wrote: | Yeah, that seems reasonable. I'm all for giving more power to | people to pick the candidates they want instead of having | political parties handpick the last ones. | dmasi wrote: | I'm not understanding this math can I get a hand? | | 1,000,000 people that can vote | | 600K : blue & 400K : violet | | 4 districts hold 400K : blue | | 6 districts hold 33.3K : blue & 66.6K : violet | | if that's all of the districts... then isn't that only 500k? | rdw wrote: | This is written in such a way that it seems like it makes sense, | but it ultimately takes its conclusion as an axiom and is thus | essentially meaningless. | | Gerrymandering is to draw districts according to political party | affiliations. So of course if you only divide up your districts | by political party affiliation (in rather extreme ways) you will | discover that doing so doesn't lead to stable political systems. | No shit, that's the problem with gerrymandering. | | Any serious analysis of this problem needs to confront the | realities of geographical location and migration. | kelnos wrote: | > _Gerrymandering is to draw districts according to political | party affiliations._ | | That not really what it is. It's to draw districts in order to | give a particular party an advantage. Usually the way to do | that is _not_ to draw them along party lines, but to mix voters | of different affiliations in the same district such that your | party comes out with a majority in as many districts as | possible. | tunesmith wrote: | I think this article is too absolutist in its conclusions (and | its interpretation of Arrow's theorem). There are definitely ways | to limit the worst effects of gerrymandering. We came close with | a lawsuit from Wisconsin (I forget the details) and there was | hope that Justice Kennedy was waiting for that to make it to the | Supreme Court, but then he decided the other way and promptly | retired. | | EDIT: I'm thinking of the Efficiency Gap: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasted_vote#Efficiency_gap | Krisjohn wrote: | Anyone should be able to submit new boundaries to break up a | large area into the required districts. It should be accepted | automatically if; the populations are equal based on the last | official census, no boundaries pass through a residential | property, the total length of all the boundaries is less than the | current divisions. | not2b wrote: | While Germany is mentioned in the article, they don't mention the | best features of the German system: two choices -- one for the | candidate who will represent your district, one for the party you | prefer. So you get someone who truly represents the district, and | you also guarantee that the party that wins the most votes gets | the most seats. | seunosewa wrote: | MMPR. There's a balancing step to enforce proportional | representation. | q-big wrote: | Why not solve the problem of gerrymandering by getting rid of the | "winner takes all" property? | | E.g. instead of having 100 districts selecting 1 representative | using the winner-takes-all principle, which are very sensitive | with respect to gerrymandering, make 10 districts where each one | sends 10 representatives, where the distribution of | representatives approximates the distribution of the submitted | votes. | | This should decrease the problem a lot. | spaetzleesser wrote: | That would be my preference. Or split between a number of | representatives selected by winning a district and a number of | representatives selected by the popular vote. Germany has a | system like this. | david_draco wrote: | "Gerrymandering is universal in any political system that has | geographic units that demand representation." A unstated | assumption here is a winner-takes-all election system, which is | common in the US and UK, but not other countries, where | parliament is proportional, and coalitions are common. It works. | | A more interesting question would be how to build incentives in a | winner-takes-all election system towards reducing gerrymandering, | and to discuss what it would take to change away from a winner- | takes-all geographical election system. | bumper_crop wrote: | The crux of this is that the majority/plurality system is a | winner-takes-all outcome. I would like to propose a completely | fair (and totally unacceptable) Voting system: | | Blues and Violets each get a single vote. On election day, | everyone puts their vote into a big hat, and one of the ballots | is pulled out. Whoever is on that ballot, gets a unilateral | victory. This system has numerous good properties: | | 1. Power never falls into a state where the majority party can | stay in control. Gerrymandering is a non-issue. | | 2. Every vote counts. Instead of a single, tie breaking vote | changing the outcome of the election, each additional vote | increases the odds. If there are 40% violets and 60% blues, the | likelihood of a violet leader is still 40%. | | 3. Extreme minority votes still matter. If 99% of the population | is blue, and 1% of the population is violet, violet supporters | still feel their voice can be heard. | | 4. (edit) Political spending is massively reduced, since there is | a diminishing return to spending ever more money trying to tip | the 49% into being 51%. | noduerme wrote: | Assuming that the 1% extreme minority wants to turn it into a | dictatorship, you'd be guaranteeing that sooner or later the | democracy would fail. | bumper_crop wrote: | Sure, but we could have separate rules for changing how the | voting works, compared to the day to day operation of the | groups. Also, on the good end, maybe the 1% have some | amazingly good ideas that the other side would never | implement otherwise. | nitwit005 wrote: | The rules don't need to be perfect. The fundamental issue with | gerrymandering is that we want politicians to compete by | appealing to voters, rather than competing by toying with | election rules. | | And while I agree there are tradeoffs involved in having | geographic representation, these bizarrely shaped districts don't | really provide that. They don't align with any administrative or | cultural borders. | marricks wrote: | Don't some European counties like Germany have it so the number | of delegates us to roughly equal the total vote totals for a | party? So if you have "60% violet party and 40% teal party" but | the seats are split 50/50 10 closest seats move over to violet? | | Theres no _perfect_ way to solve it but the ultimate problem is t | social it's just simply one party is willing to gerrymander to | win at any cost and the other doesn't because they don't have to | but would if they actually saw any gain in it. | spaetzleesser wrote: | I think the US needs some form of representation based on the | popular vote and not by winning districts. For example if a | certain percentage of the House would be allocated to parties | based on the popular vote, districts would be less important and | third parties would be viable. | | Basically we should reduce the importance of districts and give | the popular vote more weight. In my view everything else doesn't | have a chance to solve the real issues. | Msw242 wrote: | This is dumb. We could just vote for parties instead of | candidates, then have the party choose representatives, or have | party members vote to choose representatives to fill their slots. | | Not everything is first past the poll, vote for your candidate, | etc. | Ekaros wrote: | Or you could have situation in between. Have people vote for | candidate and share the votes between party and then rank those | candidates in order of votes received. | | Would mean that winners would first be the most popular and the | extra votes would still go towards the party. And the unpopular | in terms of votes received candidates of party wouldn't get | elected. | bumper_crop wrote: | Live in California? The candidates for (Republican|Democratic) | parties are wildly different in their ability and likelihood to | do a good job. A 30 yearold candidate of the same party as a 50 | yearold are going to have vastly different social networks, | favors to lean on, money, appearance, etc. Picking the person | is a much better choice to make than the party. | penneyd wrote: | There is no political will to do anything whatsoever about | gerrymandering. Sad state of affairs. | Loughla wrote: | When the party in power gets to decide how the lines are drawn, | there is zero incentive to do anything to fix it. | | I think the solution is really, really easy. Treat politicians | like kids. | | One gets to draw the lines, but they have to draw several | different versions, that are at least XX% different, in terms | of voter groupings. Then the other gets to pick which one gets | used. | | And when they can't get along, I get to send them to the | naughty step. | sky_rw wrote: | Of course not. Both parties use it at all levels of government. | Getting rid of it only helps non-politicians, ergo politicians | will never support it (unless they are losing). | hannasanarion wrote: | Assuming you're talking an an American context, is is | absolutely not true that "both parties use [gerrymandering] | at all levels of government". | | The US Democratic party has a national policy of non- | gerrymandering at all levels of government. Maryland had a | Democratic gerrymander in the 00s, but it was exchanged for a | fair map in 2011. | | The US Republican party, on the other hand, has a national | policy of gerrymandering as much as possible. The national | committee hired gerrymandering consultant Thomas Hofeller to | draw Republican-maximizing maps for every state in 2009, and | used those maps as the backbone of their REDMAP plan to seize | permanent control of every state through extreme | gerrymandering. | nemo44x wrote: | An independent council just rejected New York states | proposed congressional map because it was so obviously | gerrymandered. Democrats do it too. | [deleted] | kelnos wrote: | How does that explain the new NY map that was recently | tossed because it was so obviously gerrymandered in favor | of Democrats? I believe the same happened in Maryland a | couple months ago as well. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-11 23:00 UTC)