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Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative
71–80 of 136 posts
Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
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: htt…
Cryptonector's comment makes very little sense. It's an obvious advantage if you can move the boundaries between two seats in order to go from 80-20/50-50 to 75-25/55-45.
It's somewhat frustrating though when you can see that one area is 200k people and another is 50k people but the party negatively affected (someone will be) by re-drawing the boundaries to be "fairer" will scream bloody murder and claim Gerrymandering.
Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lets say that each state have 10 seats. Anyone can run for a seat in a state, but not in more than one state. Two or more people can form a party and have that party on the voting list with them personally on the ballot paper under that party name. (Some mechanism should prevent everyone and his mother to run for shit'n'giggles, e.g. a % of all voters signatures). Distribute the seats based on largest quotient (detai…
No need to invent anything new. Correct way to get proportional representation has been already figured out. It's called d'Hondt method or Jefferson method. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method Thomas Jefferson introduced the method for proportional allocation of seats in the United States House of Representatives in 1791. Victor D'Hondt published it in 1882. d'Hondt and Jefferson methods are equivalent. On…
That is what I just described.
Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative
#74There 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…
The fact that gerrymandering is even possible is a symptom (albeit an severely exacerbating one) - not the cause - of the problems in the US electoral structure. It could be countered quite effectively by a system using larger jurisdictions each with multiple representitives.
Yeah, you can't really do anything like it in a proportional system. For gerrymandering to be possible It is crucial that there is a large number of parallell contests so that winning many contests is more important than winning overall support.
Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative
#75Earlier 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…
I'm open to any alternative system to the one vote/winner take all system. The US needs change.
Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative
#76Geometry of Redistricting: Summer School http://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/
It is open to the public and free of charge
Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative
#77The 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.
I think the idea that any of us are able to judge the trustworthiness of a politician is dubious on its face. When we add in the cliched and repetitive history of broken campaign promises then it becomes laughable.
Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative
#78The 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…
> 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.
I am proposing that fundamental policy matters: taxation, foreign wars, climate change accords, trade deals be dealt with directly.
The smaller details can be handled by experts in order to free up our time to watch football games, catch up on soap operas and paint our nails.
Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative
#79The real problem, in my opinion, is that we're making more and more centralized decisions. Federalism properly done lessens the pressure to come up with complex gerrymandering and voting schemes by lessening the election pressure altogether.
It adds more power to other important democratic mechanisms: free speech and vote-with-your-feet.
The power of free speech is improved because a state legislator has fewer constituents, so each group of 100 with similar interests matters a lot more.
And, at the end of the day, if a city or state is really screwing things up, people (not everyone, but enough) can relocate to somewhere that is doing a better job.
Eliminating gerrymandering (how? how will it get passed?) and new voting schemes (which? how will it get passed?) are interesting, but federalism already exists (10th amendment), it's just underemphasized.
Re: Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative
#80There 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…
Partisan gerrymandering takes on many forms. There are also the convoluted voting blocs created to insure minority representation that can actually increase one parties representation over another based on how convoluted it is just so they don't run afoul of the courts; as in you don't make sure the selected group wins you are in court.
then the anecdotal bit, got a cousin who is in politics in a mid Western state following in her dad's foot steps. here is the dirty part, at county and city levels and even to state levels the parties negotiate who runs. sometimes they get a wild card but both pretty much work to stop that. she wanted a county seat moving up from her city district, one she got because the guy in both sides hated and no one else wanted it.
to get the county seat requires finding a way for the person in it to retire or get into state level politics. she cannot simply go up against this person because she won't have her parties help.
politics gets dirty at the earliest possible moment. gerrymandering only seems to be an issue to most when the wrong party manages to overcome it and take power. yet sometimes we need this type of distracting for the same reason how the House is set up. To prevent cities from overpowering the counties and other areas in the state.