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Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative

nature.com

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Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative

#11

Post by 75dvtwin »

orthecreedence wrote: post #7
frabbit wrote: post #3

The problem is with the idea of representative democracy at all. If the electorate is smart enough to figure out that Candidate A is _both_ correct on a range of policy matters _and_ of a trustworthy nature, then why are they not smart enough to decide directly on said policy matters? Governments should be composed solely of civil servants drawn from academia and other fields in which they need to prove their knowled…

Just like I hire a person to fix my car, or hire a person to fly the planes I sometimes travel on, we hire people to handle running the country for us. It's an abstraction of labor. I really don't want to be bothered with every little tiny decision about budget or foreign policy. That said, people in the US are so busy that they don't have any time at all to even make informed decisions on who to elect to run the cit…

I think allowing to specify what percent of your tax goes into what 'pre-canned' list of causes, would allow a way for folks to influence the politicians outside of the 'election process', and, without, full blown on-line-referendum surveys for all the issues.

Clearly, the above would bias some of the decision making power away from low-income populous, however this can be addressed by some form of weighting and thresholds.

Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative

#12

Post by ouid »

skierscott wrote: post #9

One of the most reasonable rules I've heard IMO for deterring voting districts: > In each section (at first a state, etc), find a dividing line that splits the population in two. This seems somewhat reasonable, and there's no way for humans to bias it. Here's some pictures of what this looks like [1], and the write up of this idea [2] [1]: http://rangevoting.org/alRS.png [2]: http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html

First of all, this only allows for a power of two of representatives.

Second, any degree of freedom creates variance, and you can optimize it. There are many straight lines that divide a population in two.

Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative

#14

Post by ouid »

ValG wrote: post #2

There are a ton of important issues, but, I believe that gerrymandering is a core issue in the United States because : Partisan gerrymandering allows for politicians to secure their seats - this leads to less voters being represented (allowing the politicians to become more polarized) e.g. when races are tight, politicians tend to move towards the center. [2] Partisan gerrymandering is strongly disliked by both parti…

Gerrymandering is not the act of making seats "more secure". This is profound misinformation, gerrymandering is only ever about disenfranchising a voting block by packing them together.

Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative

#15

Post by gizmo686 »

75dvtwin wrote: post #11
orthecreedence wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like I hire a person to fix my car, or hire a person to fly the planes I sometimes travel on, we hire people to handle running the country for us. It's an abstraction of labor. I really don't want to be bothered with every little tiny decision about budget or foreign policy. That said, people in the US are so busy that they don't have any time at all to even make informed decisions on who to elect to run the cit…

I think allowing to specify what percent of your tax goes into what 'pre-canned' list of causes, would allow a way for folks to influence the politicians outside of the 'election process', and, without, full blown on-line-referendum surveys for all the issues. Clearly, the above would bias some of the decision making power away from low-income populous, however this can be addressed by some form of weighting and thre…

The problem is, I, and the typical taxpayer, is not qualified to make an informed decision about budget allocations. When I want to know where to spend my tax dollar, It is not sufficient to know how I value the causes, but rather how I value them relative to their existing budget allocations, and how useful additional money would be to them.

For instance, I may value national defense and our military in the abstract. However, if I look at the actual budget, think we overspend and that the marginal value of an additional dollar is small because of diminishing returns.

In contrast, I am sure that there are government programs that provide me great benefit but that I do not know or think about. This proposal would require every government cause to engage in large scale marketing, which is wastefully expensive, and would likely result in inefficient allocations.

>Clearly, the above would bias some of the decision making power away from low-income populous, however this can be addressed by some form of weighting and thresholds.

We could avoid this problem entirely by giving every voter an equal slice of the government budget to allocate.

Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative

#16

Post by ouid »

frabbit wrote: post #3

The problem is with the idea of representative democracy at all. If the electorate is smart enough to figure out that Candidate A is _both_ correct on a range of policy matters _and_ of a trustworthy nature, then why are they not smart enough to decide directly on said policy matters? Governments should be composed solely of civil servants drawn from academia and other fields in which they need to prove their knowled…

>_both_ correct on a range of policy matters _and_ of a trustworthy nature

I think representative democracy only needs to do the second one to be successful.

Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative

#17

Post by aaron-lebo »

ValG wrote: post #2

There are a ton of important issues, but, I believe that gerrymandering is a core issue in the United States because : Partisan gerrymandering allows for politicians to secure their seats - this leads to less voters being represented (allowing the politicians to become more polarized) e.g. when races are tight, politicians tend to move towards the center. [2] Partisan gerrymandering is strongly disliked by both parti…

One of my professors at UT Dallas has a book that argues that districts in fact should be partisan. It's been a few years but the logic is something like if you've got a 50-50 district, you're gonna end up with 50% of the people in the district unhappy. Where as if you intentionally designed districts to be like like 90-10 (or whatever possible), more people are happy.

Not sure if I believe him, but it's interesting.

Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections are Bad for America

https://www.amazon.com/Redistricting-Representation-Competit...

Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative

#18

Post by clarkmoody »

frabbit wrote: post #3

The problem is with the idea of representative democracy at all. If the electorate is smart enough to figure out that Candidate A is _both_ correct on a range of policy matters _and_ of a trustworthy nature, then why are they not smart enough to decide directly on said policy matters? Governments should be composed solely of civil servants drawn from academia and other fields in which they need to prove their knowled…

New ballot initiative:

  Impose a new wealth tax on anyone in the top 1% 
  of income earners. Redistribute the money directly
  to the people.
> The problem is with the idea of representative democracy at all.

The real problem is faith in democracy itself. It's not about a smart electorate or a technocratic bureaucracy. It's about voting being inherently adversarial, with a voting majority (population minority) always on the offensive against the rest of the people. Many vote in defense of their property against their neighbors who would take it through the ballot box.

Look at the 2016 US election. How many actually voted for either candidate, rather than against the other one?

The only hope for the long-term survival of America is to decentralize power into smaller and smaller self-governing units, with free movement of people and property between those units. We are a union of states, after all (not that they teach republicanism in schools).

Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative

#19

Post by ValG »

ouid wrote: post #14
ValG wrote: post #2

There are a ton of important issues, but, I believe that gerrymandering is a core issue in the United States because : Partisan gerrymandering allows for politicians to secure their seats - this leads to less voters being represented (allowing the politicians to become more polarized) e.g. when races are tight, politicians tend to move towards the center. [2] Partisan gerrymandering is strongly disliked by both parti…

Gerrymandering is not the act of making seats "more secure". This is profound misinformation, gerrymandering is only ever about dis enfranchising a voting block by packing them together.

You may have missed point three, where I literally say that. Also, they are not mutually exclusive, in fact they are quite causal. Also, there is more to gerrymandering that packing a voting block together; you can split voting blocks up do more sophisticated things to ensure your goals are met (the primary objectives generally being "get re-elected"). My email is in the comment and my profile, happy to chat more.

Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative

#20

Post by nathancahill »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #17
ValG wrote: post #2

There are a ton of important issues, but, I believe that gerrymandering is a core issue in the United States because : Partisan gerrymandering allows for politicians to secure their seats - this leads to less voters being represented (allowing the politicians to become more polarized) e.g. when races are tight, politicians tend to move towards the center. [2] Partisan gerrymandering is strongly disliked by both parti…

One of my professors at UT Dallas has a book that argues that districts in fact should be partisan. It's been a few years but the logic is something like if you've got a 50-50 district, you're gonna end up with 50% of the people in the district unhappy. Where as if you intentionally designed districts to be like like 90-10 (or whatever possible), more people are happy. Not sure if I believe him, but it's interesting.…

That's assuming a polarizing representative (one that 50% like and 50% are unhappy with. Could more balanced districts lead to more centrist representatives?
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