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Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative

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

#81

Post by fivestar »

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…

I'm not tracking. Are we not a representative democracy? How are less (the word you seek is 'fewer') voters being represented? I need to know if you're one of the many millions of disaffected socialists who is still whining about the election last fall or if there is something of substance here.

The "I'm currently fundraising" is kind of a giveaway that you're one of them.

While gerrymandering is strongly disliked, I doubt there is much that is going to be done about it. The Constitution allows the creation of districts like this. Much like the electoral college, it is what it is and I don't see how it matters whether districts follow neat lines or whether they are all crazy and chopped up like they are today. This sounds like another feeble attempt at grasping at straws by people whose priorities are completely out of whack.

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

#82

Post by fivestar »

yarg wrote: post #33
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…

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.

I would say the biggest problem by far is voter education--people simply are not educated on issues. They listen to idiotic MSM sound bites and narratives and are influenced by identity politics rather than anything of substance.

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

#83

Post by Dayshine »

humanrebar wrote: post #79

The 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 consti…

The downside is increased governance costs due to duplication of bureaucracy, increased complexity of legal systems, and more confusing everyday laws (as fewer people = less documentation and support services).

Which all means "vote-with-your-feet" is actually far harder to do, as all your everyday legal knowledge is useless in other states.

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

#84

Post by fivestar »

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…

Didn't Venezuela do that? Enjoy the collapse while watching your family starve and fighting the army with sticks and rocks. No thanks.

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

#85

Post by arcbyte »

humanrebar wrote: post #79

The 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 consti…

Theres probably some kind of quantifiable tendency to centralize over time that arises from some aspect of our system. Addressing that would help better effect federalism.

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

#86

Post by distances »

hibikir wrote: post #35
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

The problem is not bias, but uneven representation. We can get uneven representation without bias quite easily: I've not ran your system in practical terms, but I'd be very surprised if, in the US, this gave you republican house majorities even when they lose the popular vote. The reason is simple: Republican voters are more dispersed geographically, so it's very hard for them to get clumped into a district where the…

> magical budget cuts make it harder to vote in areas that tend to vote democratic

Once and again the divisiveness of the US politics keeps astonishing me. This would never fly in my home country, even reading this here is repulsive in its unfairness. Sure the parties push their own ideologies, but luckily a fair election still seems to be a sacred concept.

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

#88

Post by realusername »

labster wrote: post #21
acjohnson55 wrote: post #6

To me, the problem is winner-take-all districts to begin with. It all but ensures some constituents are going to be sorely disappointed. Why not consider something like multi-member districts? We could tune it even further by awarding variable voting power. Then the way the borders are drawn becomes far less relevant. I'm sure there are tradeoffs, but it would certainly be more representative.

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 current system is 10x more complex than a ranked system since they don't vote directly for the president at the moment.

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

#89

Post by humanrebar »

Dayshine wrote: post #83
humanrebar wrote: post #79

The 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 consti…

The downside is increased governance costs due to duplication of bureaucracy, increased complexity of legal systems, and more confusing everyday laws (as fewer people = less documentation and support services). Which all means "vote-with-your-feet" is actually far harder to do, as all your everyday legal knowledge is useless in other states.

The counterargument is that increased layers of bureaucracy is also expensive, possibly more expensive. And we already have byzantine regulations, so it's not all that much of a downside.

And, at the end of the day, we can talk to our city councilmen about the unfairness of complicated regulations. And cities can brag about their simple and fair legal systems to get people to want to move there.

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

#90

Post by Torwald »

ValG wrote: post #23
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.…

That's a super interesting concept. I will look into it; book ordered! From a quick think through - I think that this argument may fall flat on 2 related ideas. 1. Data shows that when seats are more secure like you say (90-10 instead of 50-50), representatives often go towards the extremes of the political spectrum (on both sides). this leads to issue 2... 2. Voters are generally not strictly partisan - that is to s…

Could this be mitigated by having a system with more than two parties?
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