Now do Maryland.
Show HN: Antimander – Optimize Congressional Districts with Genetic Algorithms
31–40 of 51 posts
Re: Show HN: Antimander – Optimize Congressional Districts with Genetic Algorithms
#32As Congressional elections become more and more a national affair, why do we still have districts? Say a state gets 24 reps. Give me a ballot with all the candidates and let me mark the 24 I want. Yes the ballot will be more complicated, but this way we entirely avoid districting and the process is entirely fair (well until you consider states not being fairly drawn, but that’s one level up).
IMO, lifting the cap on the number of representatives we can have as a nation is the best way to fight this issue. Representatives are supposed to represent the people in their district. If each representative represented no-more than, say, 200k people, then gerrymandering would almost be impossible and the people would be better represented.
Yes, we'd have a LOT more representatives. But we also now have the technology to support such a thing.
> As a result [of the Reapportionment Act of 1929], the average size of a congressional district has tripled in size—from 210,328 inhabitants based on the 1910 Census, to 710,767 according to the 2010 Census. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reapportionment_Act_of_1929
Re: Show HN: Antimander – Optimize Congressional Districts with Genetic Algorithms
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Likely it means that big cities would get all the reps and the rest of the state gets nothing.
As that is where most of the people live, why is it wrong? Why does largely unpopulated land get a vote?
This. Why do voters living in rural areas get more weight to their votes? This is obviously more pronounced in the Senate, but clearly also a problem in the House.
Re: Show HN: Antimander – Optimize Congressional Districts with Genetic Algorithms
#34As Congressional elections become more and more a national affair, why do we still have districts? Say a state gets 24 reps. Give me a ballot with all the candidates and let me mark the 24 I want. Yes the ballot will be more complicated, but this way we entirely avoid districting and the process is entirely fair (well until you consider states not being fairly drawn, but that’s one level up).
Why stop there? Why do small states get the same number of Senators as large states? All the Senators should just be from California, Texas, New York, and Florida.
I know you are trying to be sarcastic but you are correct. There is zero reason for the Senate to work the way it does as it is very clearly an unfair system. Instead, Senators should be nationally elected: 100 spots and every voter votes on every one of them.
Re: Show HN: Antimander – Optimize Congressional Districts with Genetic Algorithms
#35As Congressional elections become more and more a national affair, why do we still have districts? Say a state gets 24 reps. Give me a ballot with all the candidates and let me mark the 24 I want. Yes the ballot will be more complicated, but this way we entirely avoid districting and the process is entirely fair (well until you consider states not being fairly drawn, but that’s one level up).
IMO, lifting the cap on the number of representatives we can have as a nation is the best way to fight this issue. Representatives are supposed to represent the people in their district. If each representative represented no-more than, say, 200k people, then gerrymandering would almost be impossible and the people would be better represented. Yes, we'd have a LOT more representatives. But we also now have the technol…
That would help somewhat but all it would do is require more computational power to draw imperfect districts. The fundamentals of gerrymandering do not change with doubling the number of districts. And my proposal is based on the idea that today House reps do not represent their district. Look at people like Pelosi and AOC and Nunes. They represent voters from across the whole country but are only elected in their districts. The debates we have are also largely national, not district-level. Most reps spend little time in their districts. They are national level politicians, so why do we pretend like they are the politicians representing just your neighborhood?
Re: Show HN: Antimander – Optimize Congressional Districts with Genetic Algorithms
#36As Congressional elections become more and more a national affair, why do we still have districts? Say a state gets 24 reps. Give me a ballot with all the candidates and let me mark the 24 I want. Yes the ballot will be more complicated, but this way we entirely avoid districting and the process is entirely fair (well until you consider states not being fairly drawn, but that’s one level up).
That of course defeats the purpose of smaller districts getting a voice and not being crushed by larger districts.
Yes. That’s a feature, not a bug. 10m people in a city should get 10x the say than 1m people in the surrounding rural land. Why would you ever want it to be different other than trying to skew elections towards giving rural residents disproportionate amounts of voting power?
Re: Show HN: Antimander – Optimize Congressional Districts with Genetic Algorithms
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why stop there? Why do small states get the same number of Senators as large states? All the Senators should just be from California, Texas, New York, and Florida.
The small states getting the same number of senators as large states is partly a legacy of slavery. Interestingly, the constitution explicitly prohibits the 2-senators-per-state rule from being amended away (Article V).
Can you amend that prohibition?
Re: Show HN: Antimander – Optimize Congressional Districts with Genetic Algorithms
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
The small states getting the same number of senators as large states is partly a legacy of slavery. Interestingly, the constitution explicitly prohibits the 2-senators-per-state rule from being amended away (Article V).
Can you amend that prohibition?
Good question. If you want to get into the weeds, there are a couple articles worth looking at:
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/PROJECTS/FTRIALS/CONLAW/unamend...
https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...
Re: Show HN: Antimander – Optimize Congressional Districts with Genetic Algorithms
#39How hard would it be to change the congressional election system to proportional voting by party? In California you would vote for 53 representatives, each representative would be part of a party. First the seats are divided among all parties based on some system. Then within each party the seats are given to the representatives that have the most votes within the party. This would introduce new parties to the system…
Would this require me to make 53 different votes? This sounds a like pretty complicated situation to expect educated votes for all 53 votes.
In practice, in mostly countries that use STV PR, you have smaller electoral districts, for this reason. For instance, in Ireland, electoral districts elect 3-5 TDs depending on population. This is big enough to make gerrymandering difficult and not very effective, but small enough to avoid the situation where someone has to cast 53 different votes. And 53 would be the low end here, really. That would assume you only want to vote for one candidate per seat, which is not typically the way it works out. I'm in a four seat constituency and voted about ten preferences in the last election, say.
In practice, in STV PR it is generally optimal to vote for almost everyone on the ballot; you give low preferences to people you don't care about to avoid people you actively don't want getting in (it's commonly claimed that you should optimally give a preference to everyone, even those you actively don't want, but this is incorrect).
Re: Show HN: Antimander – Optimize Congressional Districts with Genetic Algorithms
#40How hard would it be to change the congressional election system to proportional voting by party? In California you would vote for 53 representatives, each representative would be part of a party. First the seats are divided among all parties based on some system. Then within each party the seats are given to the representatives that have the most votes within the party. This would introduce new parties to the system…
Would this require me to make 53 different votes? This sounds a like pretty complicated situation to expect educated votes for all 53 votes.
Usually each party would provide a list with their preferred representatives that can be modified.
Where I life, you can give up to 2 votes per representative. You don't need to choose 54 different politicians because "empty" votes will still count for the party.
Most people will just use the list of their party and maybe remove some that they don't like or vote double for someone they like.