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

Gerrymandering with geographically compact districts

dustingmixon.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 116 posts

Re: Gerrymandering with geographically compact districts

#81

Post by squiggleblaz »

int_19h wrote: post #75
openasocket wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"proportional representation" is a generic term for a wide variety of possible representational systems. And each system has their own advantages and disadvantages. Those that get rid of districts entirely lose the ability for specific sub-regions of a state to have their own dedicated representative to vouch for their specific needs. This matters less in small states and countries, but can mean quite a lot in very l…

Mixed-member proportional representation provides for geographic districts, while still ensuring that every party gets no more seats than its popular vote percentage.

You can hardly do MMP in America. Several states have only one or two seats, where MMP would be equivalent to FPTP or block vote - a significant step back.

Re: Gerrymandering with geographically compact districts

#82

Post by lambertsimnel »

rocqua wrote: post #72
Jesus_Jones wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breaking up the big liberal states has been proposed by conservatives, because they want to get more conservative leg members. We'd need to break up conservative states too. There has been discussion of breaking Seattle off into it's own state or country. That would add a Republican Senate and House Rep, since the test of the state is more conservative, so you have to do a 3 way breakup of WA state. Anyway, these thi…

There is a similar issue with switching states away from 'winner takes all' in the electoral college. If a liberal state does it, it costs liberals votes. If a conservative state does it, it costs conservatives votes. It seems pretty clear that such a system is fairer, and yet no-one wants to actually do it.

Twenty-three states have already passed the National Popular Vote bill, which will in effect switch all states from winner-takes-all when it covers a majority of the electoral college: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/state-status

Re: Gerrymandering with geographically compact districts

#83

Post by squiggleblaz »

eli wrote: post #68
masklinn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those that get rid of districts entirely lose the ability for specific sub-regions of a state to have their own dedicated representative to vouch for their specific needs. It's doubtful whether that still exists as anything more than a foil/justification though, given Congress's expansion was stopped a century back, and each Representatives now stands in for at least half a million people (RH has the lowest number…

The people in CA-8 (Mojave Desert) have very different needs and concerns from the people in CA-12 (San Francisco) even though they represent the same number of people.

Actually, under Open List PR, you could still have de facto local representatives. Someone could focus their attention on the needs of the Mojave Desert dwellers and get elected or not based on their popularity in the desert. PR doesn't prevent people from focusing their attention on geographic regions; it merely creates other alternatives.

Re: Gerrymandering with geographically compact districts

#84

Post by int_19h »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #81
int_19h wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mixed-member proportional representation provides for geographic districts, while still ensuring that every party gets no more seats than its popular vote percentage.

You can hardly do MMP in America. Several states have only one or two seats, where MMP would be equivalent to FPTP or block vote - a significant step back.

You'd need to do it on the national level, not state. Our parties transcend state boundaries anyway, and House was always supposed to be representing people as a whole; the states have the Senate for their representation as entities.

Re: Gerrymandering with geographically compact districts

#85

Post by Taniwha »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #81
int_19h wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mixed-member proportional representation provides for geographic districts, while still ensuring that every party gets no more seats than its popular vote percentage.

You can hardly do MMP in America. Several states have only one or two seats, where MMP would be equivalent to FPTP or block vote - a significant step back.

those low-population states should use STV systems (as should states for senators)

Re: Gerrymandering with geographically compact districts

#86

Post by int_19h »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #78
int_19h wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that legislative coalitions don't have to be permanent, the way parties are. Various factions in the legislature can come together for a particular bill, or series of bills on some issue that's relevant to them all. But on something else, they might realign differently. Also, even when coalitions are more persistent, the terms are effectively renegotiated every election - party platforms are much mo…

American parties aren't exactly permanent tho are they? How many bills have fallen this year because some republican senator wouldn't support it? And I certainly wouldn't describe Trump's Republican administration as pursuing the same platform as Bush II's. Certainly there's similarity but not the stability you imply.

I didn't say that they are permanent. But they change very slowly. More importantly, they mostly change by accrual; you rarely see old polices dropped hastily. Indeed, even for all the Trump rhetoric, the current administration (and legislature) is not doing anything that wouldn't be expected from a Republican government.

The reason why we have so many bills falling through is because of the razor thin margins in the Senate, so that a few dissenters can affect things. But if you look at how votes in legislature went down historically, we're pretty much at peak partisanship - it used to be a lot more common for congressmen to vote across party lines.

Re: Gerrymandering with geographically compact districts

#87

Post by lambertsimnel »

jessriedel wrote: post #66
specialist wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root cause is Duverger's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law TL;DR: With FPTP, each belligerent tries to form the smallest winning coalition, resulting in a near even split two-party system. Proportional Representation is the remedy for assemblies, councils, houses. Approval voting is the remedy for executive races (eg sheriff, mayor, governor). Additional benefits of both PR and Approval Voting: -…

Proportional representation just shifts the coalition building from the electorate level to the legislative level. It's well known that such coalitions tend to be the smallest majority possible. You may think for various reasons that it's better to form coalitions at one level of the voting process than the other, but let's not pretend PR avoids it.

Among the many disadvantages of taking coalition building away from the legislative level (where it is in most democracies) is that it no longer takes more votes to win than to lose. With single-winner districts, a party getting more votes and fewer seats than another party and a majority government can rule with a minority of the votes.

Re: Gerrymandering with geographically compact districts

#88

Post by lambertsimnel »

openasocket wrote: post #38
TSiege wrote: post #24

Districting has time and time again proven to be a cat and mouse endeavor. Someone is always going to be able to create models to game the system one way or another. The real solution is abandoning districting for proportional representation like a true democracy. This Vox opinion piece is a great explainer, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/11/16453512/...

"proportional representation" is a generic term for a wide variety of possible representational systems. And each system has their own advantages and disadvantages. Those that get rid of districts entirely lose the ability for specific sub-regions of a state to have their own dedicated representative to vouch for their specific needs. This matters less in small states and countries, but can mean quite a lot in very l…

> Those that get rid of districts entirely lose the ability for specific sub-regions of a state to have their own dedicated representative to vouch for their specific needs.

Not if they establish their own parties.

Re: Gerrymandering with geographically compact districts

#89

Post by Taniwha »

skj wrote: post #65

Here's an idea: 1. decide how many congresspeople there should be 2. allow anyone to run 3. allow anyone to vote for anyone 4. once someone has #voters/#congresspeople, they become a congressperson 5. no one else can vote for that person So, you're not actually competing against another person. You're competing get enough people to say "this person represents me".

you've essentially described the first steps of an STV election ....

In an STV election people make a list, at step 4 above the highest vote on your list that's still viable accrues to someone, if they get more votes that required the portion of your vote that's needed to elect the person stays with them and the rest of your vote moves down your list ... whenever the process gets stuck the person with the least number of votes is removed from contention and their voters get to try the next person on their list

Re: Gerrymandering with geographically compact districts

#90

Post by realcoopernurse »

Here's a relatively new PR method developed by a grad student at Harvard. It's an interesting twist on STV that avoids the ballot complexity.

https://medium.com/@jameson.quinn/place-voting-explained-129...

I agree with others on this thread that the only solution to gerrymandering is some form of PR. PLACE voting is interesting because it doesn't require a change in the ballot and retains the notion of geographic districts.

Post reply on HN