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Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts

autoredistrict.org

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Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts

#41

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

spankalee wrote: post #30
sudosteph wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

States aren't supposed to be districting systems though - they're meant to be independent governing bodies that work under a set of shared constraints for a shared repbublic. The entire point of the Sentate is to give a representation to the need of the state as its own entity - not as a representation to the people in the state. It wasn't even intended to be an elected body. It may feel unfair, but it's intentional,…

I know it's intentional, but it's unfair and broken. There's no valid reason for a WY resident to have 60x the voting power of a CA resident.

There is if both California and Wyoming are sovereign states within the federal system of the United States. The alternative is the abject subjugation of vast regions to the will of the more populous regions. Should Canada be subject to the will of the American people because the American people outnumber the Canadian people 10 to 1?

Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts

#42

Post by totalZero »

clircle wrote: post #7

The website is down, so I don't have much to say. But I will be very interested in how the authors define 'fairness' for this sort of problem. Algorithms are fair right guys? It can't be biased if it's just math. \s

One advantage of a system like this can be the static nature of the objective function. If you set the rules up clearly beforehand (perhaps in a Constitutional amendment), then after a while the ebb and flow of two-party politics will balance out in the new reality (see Duverger's Law) and you no longer have to deal with gerrymandering.

Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts

#43

Post by cabalamat »

tshaddox wrote: post #29
sudosteph wrote: post #13

I'm a North Carolinian - so it's fair to say that "creative" redistricting has harmed my state a bit more than most. However, I disagree with fundamental precepts they are using because they do not take culture into account. The representative system works best when it's able to group people with similar interests and values and lets them elect someone who can share those interests. I do not think that valuing "compa…

This sounds nice, but who gets to choose what attributes of populations are the right ones to group together into districts? You suggest grouping by population density, which certainly makes sense for grouping together certain political interests (like zoning). And yet by doing that, you've essentially maximally fragmented people by gender, which is another attribute that makes sense for grouping together certain pol…

> but who gets to choose what attributes of populations are the right ones to group together into districts?

Let the voters decide. Allow them to group themselves into self-selecting affinity groups, i.e. have proportional representation.

Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts

#45

Post by phnofive »

Are geographic districts required by the Constitution? State and Federal laws certainly follow from this assumption, but could a state simply assign registered voters at random (per election, roughly in line with ballots being finalized) to each of its districts? Single-seated states already enjoy this luxury.

Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts

#46

Post by dane-pgp »

jrussino wrote: post #37

Whenever the topic of of redistricting/gerrymandering or voting comes up, I always like to recommend CGP Gray's series of videos on the subject: https://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom I think the "meta" issue of improving our political system is probably the most important political issue we should focus on for the long-term health of our society. Does anybody here have other good resources to recomme…

Another popular resource that is often shared is the explorable explanation "To Build A Better Ballot" by Nicky Case here:

https://ncase.me/ballot/

It's a great way to get to grips with some of the theory of different voting systems, and has some links at the bottom to various relevant groups.

Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts

#47

Post by ogre_codes »

phnofive wrote: post #45

Are geographic districts required by the Constitution? State and Federal laws certainly follow from this assumption, but could a state simply assign registered voters at random (per election, roughly in line with ballots being finalized) to each of its districts? Single-seated states already enjoy this luxury.

It is good to know who your representative is and for a representative to be able to visit their district and have community meetings so they can (in theory) represent the interests of the people in that community. If the district is spread across the state like avocado on toast, you aren't really representing anyone.

Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts

#48

Post by sudosteph »

tshaddox wrote: post #29
sudosteph wrote: post #13

I'm a North Carolinian - so it's fair to say that "creative" redistricting has harmed my state a bit more than most. However, I disagree with fundamental precepts they are using because they do not take culture into account. The representative system works best when it's able to group people with similar interests and values and lets them elect someone who can share those interests. I do not think that valuing "compa…

This sounds nice, but who gets to choose what attributes of populations are the right ones to group together into districts? You suggest grouping by population density, which certainly makes sense for grouping together certain political interests (like zoning). And yet by doing that, you've essentially maximally fragmented people by gender, which is another attribute that makes sense for grouping together certain pol…

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. What does gender have to do with population density? I chose population density, because it was the only value that I could think of that closely correlated with culture and that was not a protected status (ie, not race, religion, sex, etc). If it's done algorithmically, it doesn't seem like a bad measure.

Anyhow, the "who gets to choose" thing is tough. Right now legislators get to choose, but the judges said that they are failing at that, so IIRC, now an academic from a state university got to make some map adjustment. Ideally, I'd have a committee of academics provide vetted map recommendations that elected officials choose from, and that a judge signs off on.

Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts

#49

Post by WorldMaker »

sudosteph wrote: post #13

I'm a North Carolinian - so it's fair to say that "creative" redistricting has harmed my state a bit more than most. However, I disagree with fundamental precepts they are using because they do not take culture into account. The representative system works best when it's able to group people with similar interests and values and lets them elect someone who can share those interests. I do not think that valuing "compa…

A lot of that gets to the question of what are we optimizing our k-clusters for?

The idea of geography-based representation spurs from the ideal that a representative should be able to "shake hands" with everyone they represent, right? That a townhall with one's representative might be isomorphic with one's "neighborhood meeting"?

In those cases things like "compact" serve a purpose in going back towards that "neighborhood" ideal (which arguably has never existed in US practice).

But it's 2021 and is geography and the "neighborhood" ideal still useful for us in selecting representatives? When was the last time you shook hands with your representative? When was the last time you had a neighborhood meeting where the representative just swung by for an impromptu townhall?

Maybe we should find a better optimization for our k-means clustering that isn't geography because gerrymandering seems to imply that we'll never fix geographic clustering? With tools like TV and the internet, geography may not even matter like it did to 18th century Americans. A Zoom call isn't a handshake, of course, but we have more tools for virtual shared interest groups than ever before and don't necessarily need to remain tied to the vagaries of geography.

I don't necessarily have good answers for what those metrics/optimizations could be/should look like beyond geography. All I know is that it would be hard to impossible to find good ones under the current two party system and as with most things, the blame for a lot of our problems continues to be directly on the two party system.

Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts

#50

Post by dane-pgp »

phnofive wrote: post #45

Are geographic districts required by the Constitution? State and Federal laws certainly follow from this assumption, but could a state simply assign registered voters at random (per election, roughly in line with ballots being finalized) to each of its districts? Single-seated states already enjoy this luxury.

I believe the requirement to have single-member districts was introduced with 2 U.S.C. § 2c in 1967. The name for the previous practice was "at Large" election, and the text of the law[0] includes a reference to that practice as part of a transitional measure:

"a State which is entitled to more than one Representative and which has in all previous elections elected its Representatives at Large may elect its Representatives at Large to the Ninety-first Congress"

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/2c

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