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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

#41

Post by lacker »

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.

If you read the article, it says there are actually two types of gerrymandering. One is "packing" all of a voting block together, and the other is "cracking" a voting block into multiple districts so that it can't win in any of them.

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

#42

Post by ouid »

ValG wrote: post #28
ouid wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't "mutually exclusive". If your voters have been packed into a district, making your seat more secure, then you are a victim of gerrymandering. It's not simply an alternative type of gerrymandering. The misunderstanding of who stands to benefit from redistricting has allowed republicans to propagate a narrative that "democrats do it too". In 2012, despite Republican house candidates receiving less of the po…

It seems like you're not reading what I'm writing at all. I literally said "they are not mutually exclusive. Also, you are misinformed, both parties 100% do this [1](or attempt to) - It just happens that Republicans are way better at it. Way better.[2] Either way, I don't care who does it, it must be stopped b/c it's not good for a democracy like ours. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/06/repub.…

You misunderstand my criticism. The reason they aren't "mutually exclusive" is because one of the things that you are calling gerrymandering isn't gerrymandering.

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

#43

Post by ouid »

kirrent wrote: post #34
ouid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For number 2, there could be any number of solutions to fix those degrees of freedom. Intuitively, a maximum margin separator for determining the division wouldn't seem to be a terrible idea.

That just means that the way of restricting the degrees of freedom is, itself, a degree of freedom, but I wasn't the one arguing that the problem could be solved.

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

#44

Post by slyfocks »

woopwoop wrote: post #22

It's easy to gerrymander a surface. It's hard to gerrymander a line, or a circle, where the connectedness requirement has teeth. One solution to gerrymandering is to determine congressional districts by birthday, or last name, rather than by geographic location.

The U.S. is not a monolith–registered Democrats in West Virginia have very different priorities from those in Massachusetts–so geographical boundaries actually serve a purpose in electing a representative who is (ideally) aware of local needs and committed to fighting for them.

In contrast, those with a common birthday or name have no distinguishable political desires in aggregate, so the likely result would be 538 generic congress members.

Furthermore, if we assume people exhibit a bias toward candidates from their home state (they do, on average), grouping by birthday or last name is actually a net negative choice since it would likely result in overrepresenation of Californians in congress (assuming first-past-the-post).

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

#45

Post by ouid »

lacker wrote: post #41
ouid wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you read the article, it says there are actually two types of gerrymandering. One is "packing" all of a voting block together, and the other is "cracking" a voting block into multiple districts so that it can't win in any of them.

and somehow, neither of these strategies are "making your own seats more secure"

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

#46

Post by ajmurmann »

prodikl wrote: post #37
ianai wrote: post #5

I think we need approval voting.

Is this like.. where you choose 1, 2, 3? so if I choose 1. Dem 2. Green 3. Repub and you chose 1. Repub 2. Green 3. Dem They'd all be equal? (four points each)

I think you are moving this up with ranked choice. Approval voting allows you to vote for every option either ones or not at all. So you either approve of the option or not. If you want you can vote for everyone. However, that's the same as voting for nobody. You could however also vote for everybody except for one option. That would be the equivalent of voting against somebody. Example ballots could be:

Voter one: Green - yes; dem - yes; rep - no. Voter two: Green - yes; dem - no; rep - yes. This would result in the green party winning in the above example.

The vote would be very close if not identical to approval ratings we frequently see for various candidates. This would have probably gotten us Bernie, since he was the only candidate running at all with favorable approval ratings. Both candidates who made it beyond the primaries were disliked by the majority, which is unfortunate to say the least.

As an added benefit we could completely leave off primaries if we want. There is very little spoiler effect in this system.

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

#47

Post by slyfocks »

LaughingGoat wrote: post #38
woopwoop wrote: post #22

It's easy to gerrymander a surface. It's hard to gerrymander a line, or a circle, where the connectedness requirement has teeth. One solution to gerrymandering is to determine congressional districts by birthday, or last name, rather than by geographic location.

Interesting concept! I wonder if this is hackable based on demographic popularity of last names, by race. According to Wolfram Alpha, the most common last names are: Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, which don't share a common 1st letter. But maybe some ethnic names might: Rodriguez, Ramirez, Chan, Chen, Chang... But ultimately, what political needs would a community of last-name-starts-with-C need?

> But ultimately, what political needs would a community of last-name-starts-with-C need?

None, which is why that grouping would only make sense in a society of extremely generic robots.

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

#48

Post by [deleted] »

LaughingGoat wrote: post #38
woopwoop wrote: post #22

It's easy to gerrymander a surface. It's hard to gerrymander a line, or a circle, where the connectedness requirement has teeth. One solution to gerrymandering is to determine congressional districts by birthday, or last name, rather than by geographic location.

Interesting concept! I wonder if this is hackable based on demographic popularity of last names, by race. According to Wolfram Alpha, the most common last names are: Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, which don't share a common 1st letter. But maybe some ethnic names might: Rodriguez, Ramirez, Chan, Chen, Chang... But ultimately, what political needs would a community of last-name-starts-with-C need?

[deleted]

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

#49

Post by cryptonector »

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 self-limited.

The party in power (in a State government) can either maximize the number of seats it has, or make seats safe. It cannot do both at once!

Maximizing seats -> minimizing the margin of victory in each district -> increasing likelihood of losing its majority in a future election!

Making seats safe -> maximizing margin of victory in each district and minimizing the number of seats by concentrating the majority's voters -> minimizing margin of victory in the popular houses (of the State legislature and Congress) -> increasing likelihood of losing its majority in a future election!

That is, no matter how you redraw district borders, as long as population per-district is roughly even (in each State), then you cannot get a long-lasting advantage.

This will probably be surprising to some here, but it's clearly true.

This means that Gerrymandering is a much smaller evil than one might think.

I would further argue that Gerrymandering is not an evil at all. It is part and parcel of the Republican system of government in the U.S.:

- the Senate, especially when Senators were selected by State governments, and still now due to its 6-year terms and staggered elections, modulates the popular House

- first past the post leads to a small number of parties and reduces party power (you vote for a person, not just a party as in the case of proportional representation systems)

- gerrymandering also modulates popular will

- juries modulate law and prosecutors

- the president is selected by the Electoral College, which also modulates popular will

- the States have police power, which modulates Federal power

- the Courts modulate Congress and the Executive branch

These things were well thought out by the Founders! They were arrived at by compromise. They weren't accidents born of ignorance of mathematics or science. This system has served us well. Changing it requires broad consensus, which requires strong arguments. So far I've yet to see any decent arguments against this structure.

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

#50

Post by acjohnson55 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #40
labster wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the arguments against this center on the fact that ranked systems would be too complex for voters to understand. Which I used to think was pure hogwash, but Americans have since proved that they can't handle even two candidates for a major office. Hint: the worst one was the one with zero government experience.

The parent didn't mention ranked choice voting unless I read it wrong. I read them to argue in favor of multiple representatives per district. You can have that even with the current voting system. The top n candidates get the job with n > 1. There only difference is right now n = 1. That being said there is also the much simpler approval voting.

Yep, you read me correctly.

Approval voting is great too, but I don't know that it addresses the issue of district boundaries on its own.

And to address the question of complexity from the first person to reply to me, I don't think that's a realistic concern. Basically it would work like this: you vote normally (whether singe vote, approval, ranked, or whatever), then each party gets at most the number of winners proportional to their aggregate share of the vote, with representatives chosen in order of performance.

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