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An impossibility theorem for gerrymandering

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Re: An impossibility theorem for gerrymandering

#61

Post by waqf »

waegawegawe wrote: post #14
tveita wrote: post #13

It's strange that there's so much focus on district shapes, when any voting system with proportional representation would make gerrymandering pretty much ineffective. Every voting system has its flaws, but the US system seems to have particularly few advantages.

It's not really "strange." The chances of us ever going to a proportional system en masse are near zero. The chances of making extreme gerrymandering illegal are significantly better (the Supreme Court recently heard a case about it). Many people prefer to spend time thinking within the context of what is likely to happen. That's not to say we don't need folks who dream big, but we need more than just those folks.

I agree with the substance of what you say but I don't think it's wrong to invite everyone to have a general sense of the big picture.

And by big-picture standards, because of the way the US is constituted, the questions that make their way to SCOTUS are usually pretty strange.

Re: An impossibility theorem for gerrymandering

#63

Post by KGIII »

indubitable wrote: post #21

I think this indirectly hints at something much more fundamental: district based plurality does not make sense as an election system anymore. I think an eye opening example is to consider a hypothetical single state with 10 representatives. This state has a population, perfectly well distributed, of 35% democrat, 30% republican, 20% libertarian, and 15% green. And we draw our districts up with absolutely no bias what…

Heh...I thought I'd seen that comment before.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418907

Re: An impossibility theorem for gerrymandering

#64

Post by heisenzombie »

indubitable wrote: post #21

I think this indirectly hints at something much more fundamental: district based plurality does not make sense as an election system anymore. I think an eye opening example is to consider a hypothetical single state with 10 representatives. This state has a population, perfectly well distributed, of 35% democrat, 30% republican, 20% libertarian, and 15% green. And we draw our districts up with absolutely no bias what…

The way we tackle this problem in New Zealand is with the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) voting system.

Under MMP, you have two votes: 1) The delegate you want to represent your district (we call it an electorate) 2) The party you want to support.

In addition there are two changes: 1) Each of the parties publishes a ranked list of their candidates. This is imaginatively called their "list". 2) There are more seats in the house (we call it parliament) than there are districts (electorates). We have 71 districts but nominally 120 seats in parliament.

Once everyone has cast their two votes (quick brag: We had 92.4% of our population enrolled to vote, and of those enrolled, 79.8% voted -- which I think is pretty good going). The votes are counted like so:

1) The "electorate vote" determines the person who represents your district, in a simple most-votes-wins way. Anyone who wins a district is guaranteed a seat in the house (parliament).

2) The "party vote" is counted up nationwide, and each party gets that percentage of the total seats in parliament. If they won more seats with the party vote than the electorate (almost always), their seats are "topped up" from their list until they have the correct number.

(There are some subtleties: The exact way we assign seats is http://www.elections.org.nz/voting-system/mmp-voting-system/... )

This means that each electorate/district gets to choose its representative directly, so local representation is retained. At the same time, the house/parliament reflects the global percentage of votes, so smaller parties can still get proportional representation in government.

Re: An impossibility theorem for gerrymandering

#65

Post by KGIII »

indubitable wrote: post #54
andrewla wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't like about this analysis is that it enshrines the notion of political parties. It makes individuals into automata that simply vote for whatever candidate is thrown at them. The ideal is that candidates can rest on their own merits, with the party mechanic existing to provide support to candidates who nominally align with the party's interests. People vote for candidates, not parties. Even the reality is…

I think something you're fundamentally getting at is that in today's system people's views are not necessarily representative of their party's views. Ron Paul is not really what you'd call a republican, but he certainly ran as one. The reason is that in our current system, small parties cannot exist - or at least they can't get any representation in congress, but is there really any difference? So if you want to actu…

In Maine, at least, third parties actually have a good chance at being elected. In the past few decades, we have elected Independents for governor quite frequently. The Green Party has a respectable turnout, as well. Once in a while, we get Libertarians and Socialists, but those are less frequent and usually at a local level.

(Mainah, ayuh.)

Re: An impossibility theorem for gerrymandering

#66

Post by KGIII »

indubitable wrote: post #59
andrewla wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proportional representation sort-of fixes this. I think rank-preferential (instant run-off) or approval voting also solves this, even on single candidate elections, because they remove the spoiler effect. I think switching to these methods but keeping districting is a good intermediate step that doesn't "completely change the game" but opens some new doors. Proportional representation, as I mention above, does remove…

Smaller candidates today already stand stand practically 0 chance of getting elected. Literally every single member in the house of representatives is either a democrat or a republican. That is a consequence of a simple question: 'If a person receives 10% of the vote in a state with 10 representatives, how many seats should they receive?' The current answer is 0. In our current system the one and only power of smalle…

Sanders and King are both Independents but caucused with the Democrats.

This doesn't really negate your point, I just figured you may be interested. They may not literally all be a D or an R, but it's trivial and I'm mostly being pedantic.

Re: An impossibility theorem for gerrymandering

#67

Post by Armisael16 »

KGIII wrote: post #66
indubitable wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smaller candidates today already stand stand practically 0 chance of getting elected. Literally every single member in the house of representatives is either a democrat or a republican. That is a consequence of a simple question: 'If a person receives 10% of the vote in a state with 10 representatives, how many seats should they receive?' The current answer is 0. In our current system the one and only power of smalle…

Sanders and King are both Independents but caucused with the Democrats. This doesn't really negate your point, I just figured you may be interested. They may not literally all be a D or an R, but it's trivial and I'm mostly being pedantic.

If we're being pedantic, both Sanders and King are senators.

Re: An impossibility theorem for gerrymandering

#68

Post by KGIII »

sova wrote: post #41
cmac2992 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding, the Baker v Carr in 1962 decision enabled federal courts to intervene in and to decide redistricting. Back in the day redistricting was even crazier. You could just draw an arbitrary number of districts with arbitrary population sizes. That seems bad on the surface. With this system, election outcomes could potentially be entirely determined by how districts were gerrymandered. The efficiency s…

Thanks for your words and insight. Yes, proportional voting would be great! Your state gets 5 house seats? Let's have priority-voting where a voter picks choices 1-5 for representation. Jane is first choice, then Miyoko, Sofia, Leben, and Pierre. Jane may not get all the "first place" votes but she could get enough to end up in one of the five house seats our state gets. Reading up on the 14th amendment, it does ensu…

Most States don't take away your right to vote if you are convicted of a felony. Felons get to vote and can even, more often than not, vote while incarcerated. To vote while incarcerated, they use absentee ballots from the district where they resided prior to detention.

Re: An impossibility theorem for gerrymandering

#69

Post by KGIII »

Armisael16 wrote: post #67
KGIII wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sanders and King are both Independents but caucused with the Democrats. This doesn't really negate your point, I just figured you may be interested. They may not literally all be a D or an R, but it's trivial and I'm mostly being pedantic.

If we're being pedantic, both Sanders and King are senators.

Right, my bad. I read that as congress. I'm nit sure why I missed the specificity, considering I read it twice and then looked up the information on Wikipedia.

My bad, indeed.

Re: An impossibility theorem for gerrymandering

#70

Post by cr0sh »

sova wrote: post #48
catpolice wrote: post #24

At this point I feel like it's worthwhile to remember to why we even have districts. We could, in principle, get rid of the districts and just have some kind of statewide scheme for electing representatives proportional to the outcome of a popular vote. The idea behind retaining districts, as far as I understand it, is that people in similar locales will often have very correlated interests (e.g. with regard to decis…

Ideally: the Representative who is chosen for a district (the weird shapes we are talking about) _represents_ everyone of the populous of that district. That way in Congress, when someone asks "hey do your constituents want a factory next to that highway plus a bunch of taxbreaks?" the representative knows which way to vote, as s/he _represents_ the local people. The weird shapes, even if they increase "efficiency" d…

Not only that, usually the "representative" doesn't even live in or near the area they are representing (sure, they may have an address in the area, but that isn't difficult to do).
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