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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

#111

Post by ams6110 »

letitgo12345 wrote: post #10
nhebb wrote: post #8

This article from 2013 puts it at D+7.1 overall for the House: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/who-gerrymande... What surprises me, though, is how little attention is given to caucuses in the US presidential primaries. The turnout is very low and they're subject to strong arming and party insider corruption in both major parties.

Well speaking just for myself, I honestly would prefer an even more party insiders driven process for the primaries. Too much democracy seems to lead to insane levels of populism leading to characters like Trump. At any rate, US democracy guarantees one a vote in the general -- parties are private orgs and it's not "corrupt" or "wrong" for them to select candidates however they want.

My perspective is that the politics of the the past 20-30 years lead to candidates like Trump. People were tired of being taken for granted and hearing a lot of promises that weren't kept, from the same bunch of recycled politicians, while their day to day lives kept getting worse.

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

#113

Post by ende »

The real solution to preventing gerrymandering is to get rid of congressional districts altogether, and move to proportionally representative delegations from each state. Afterall, there is absolutely no constitutional basis for partitioning states into districts.

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

#114

Post by EGreg »

Instead of using math to rewrite districts, do something else:

Change the ballot.

Ranked voting is better than First Past the Post (what we use) but the one with the BEST statistical properties and simplest exanation is the Approval Vote.

Simply be able to mark more than one candidate.

This way Bernie or Bloomberg could have run and taken the whole thing. As opposed to staying out because of fear "a vote for X is a vote against Y".

Maine did it. They switched! Now 49 more states to go.

This can be done at a local level in some places. Any district that does this will become less politically polarized and people won't be so fearful and hate each other less :)

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

#115

Post by specialist »

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.

Ditto the voting system.

I support replacing our winner takes all (first past the post) elections with approval voting. Maybe as a step towards PR. But we'll always have executive races that'd benefit.

Benefits

  * super easy to explain, administrate
  * per Duverger's Law, would end our two party system
  * eliminates separate primary elections
  * reduces voter fatigue
  * reduces admin costs
  * greatly reduce mudslinging, because everyone wants to be your second choice
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

Note: I prefer approval to the slightly mathematically superior score voting, we'd get most of the benefits but much more simple.

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

#116

Post by cryptonector »

jamesmurray wrote: post #61
cryptonector wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Saying gerrymandering is self-limiting because the party has to choose how to allocate its power is like saying sexual assault is self-limiting because the perpetrator can only use one orifice at a time. Gerrymandering gives an absolute advantage. At the core of it, you are destroying part of the votes of your enemies, either by bundling them in one district, or completely destroying their power by cracking them. Fla…

I was actually paraphrasing a majority opinion by Justice O'Connor.

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

#117

Post by cryptonector »

n4r9 wrote: post #63
dwaltrip wrote: post #51

Earlier 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 only a temporary advantage.

If you maximize seat safety, you minimize the number of seats you have because you bunch up all your voters. This means that the opposition need only flip a few districts to win back a majority (and then redistrict to their liking!).

If you maximize the number of seats you have then you spread your voters thin. This makes it easier to win in a wave: with many districts close to 50/50, you only have to flip a few percent of the voters state-wide or nation-wide and you win. And that's exactly what's been happening. We've had a number of wave elections recently.

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

#118

Post by frabbit »

pyroinferno wrote: post #92
75dvtwin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, my recommendation, would create more informed voter base. Mostly because lobbyist would have to reach out to the voters, rather than to the politicians. Additionally, perhaps, letting a voter to 'forego' his/her right for the allocation could be allowed. This way you can choose to forego the right, while others would keep it.

So we're opening a whole new floodgate of lobbyist propaganda?

Lobbyists currently do not even need to use propaganda. They just need to provide a sufficient monetary reward to the smaller number of people's "representatives". It is much easier to bribe/suborn a few people than the entire electorate.

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

#119

Post by cryptonector »

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…

Folks, I was paraphrasing a majority opinion by Justice O'Connor (retired). Shaw v. Reno[0], IIRC.

Downvote all you want, but all you're doing is showing your bias and ignorance. This isn't the sort of subject where you can reliably determine the truth value of any statement a commenter might make. You should be more open minded. I get the impression that if the tables were flipped you'd flip too, that the disgust you express at redistricting (or the Electoral College, or...) is merely convenient and insincere.

EDIT: And the tables have flipped over the years, haven't they. Democrats ran the table and redistricted accordingly for over 60 years between 1932 and 1994. I'm OK with that. I'm OK with Republicans doing the same now, and I will be OK with it when Democrats next get to do it again. Redistricting doesn't seem to have the effect you all seem to fear. In spite of redistricting, 2006 and 2008 happened, did they not? The 60 years that Republicans spent in the wilderness weren't due to redistricting, they were due to the long-lasting cultural effects of the Great Depression. It's reasonable to suspect that without the Great Depression we would have seen a much higher frequency of majority party switches in the 20th century. I think a switch frequency of 1 every 20 years is a reasonable guess. I can live with that.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaw_v._Reno

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

#120

Post by cryptonector »

lend000 wrote: post #55
cryptonector wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It assumes the opposition can sway some percentage of the population in a wave in one case (maximizing seats) or that they can put up a few really good candidates that can win on personal attributes and policy, not policy alone, in the other (maximizing seat safety).

We've certainly had wave elections, have we not? 1920, 1932, 1994, 2006, 2010... They're getting more frequent, perhaps because redistricting may not be maximizing seat safety as much? (I'm not sure, I've not and will not spend my cycles on analyzing redistricting history.)

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