Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 136 posts

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

#51

Post by dwaltrip »

cryptonector wrote: post #49
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 conce…

I thought gerrymandering is the art of creatively drawing the lines such that all of the opposing constituents are squeezed into one or a few "throwaway districts", thus preserving comfortable majorities in the remaining districts.

How is this self-limiting? Also, I don't quite see how it maps to the rather abstract phenomenon you are talking about?

Edit -- wikipedia seems to match up with what I was remembering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering

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

#52

Post by thaumasiotes »

mozumder wrote: post #36
aaron-lebo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

The problem is gerrymandering results in only one district that's 90-10 while 9 other districts are 55-45. Without gerrymandering, districts would have a normal distribution from 60-40 to 40-60.

It doesn't seem implausible that like-minded people would choose to live near each other.

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

#53

Post by thaumasiotes »

ouid wrote: post #45
lacker wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

The first one is.

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

#54

Post by [deleted] »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #50
ajmurmann wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

[deleted]

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

#55

Post by lend000 »

cryptonector wrote: post #49
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 conce…

Interesting take, but it assumes a high margin of error in the voting preferences of certain constituents, which may not be true, which likely makes it not self-limiting enough.

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

#56

Post by [deleted] »

clarkmoody wrote: post #18
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 t…

[deleted]

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

#57

Post by rayiner »

clarkmoody wrote: post #18
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 t…

There are two moral alternatives: either you impose the yoke of government on people, then give them majoritarian control over government, or you have no government. The latter sucks for people who make up the 1% now, because it's government that keeps the merchant/capitalist/industrial class from being dominated by the warrior class.

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

#58

Post by thaumasiotes »

ajmurmann wrote: post #46
prodikl wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: G…

> There is very little spoiler effect [under approval voting].

Why do you believe this?

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

#59

Post by onion2k »

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.…

Surely the point of a democratic election is for there to be the possibility of change? If every district is 90% in favour of one party or another then that will never happen. Assuming there are an equal number of districts then every election would be a tie, and any party that wanted to win would have to resort to gerrymandering in order to affect a change.

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

#60

Post by [deleted] »

cryptonector wrote: post #49
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 conce…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN