Can we just gamify it via fair cake slicing algorithm and call it a day?
Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts
91–100 of 151 posts
Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Horribly. States borders are one of the worst districting systems imaginable, and the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the Senate makes it a huge, and basically insurmountable, problem.
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,…
> States aren't supposed to be districting systems though
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/when-addin... disagrees
Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
The concept of "a state as its own entity - not [ ... ] the people in the state" is so broken as to almost need no remark. What on earth does that even mean? How does a Senator represent "the state as its own entity - not [ ... ] the people in the state" ? Presumably the Senator responds to legislative proposals based on how their perceive them to affect the state, but what can it mean to say "how it affects the stat…
Perhaps I'm an idealist, but I see nothing broken about my understanding of statehood and it's more than an the existing distribution of power. If we're using the dictionary definition, a state is: "a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government." Which is exactly which each US State is. My home state, NC, is a territory which has a distinct culture and community, and it's o…
I appreciate the concept of a state as a culture. But like the concept of a state as a community, that means nothing without people. I grew up in a country (long, long ago [0]) that takes it culture so seriously that it frequently forgets this association, and believes that culture has some kind of existence above and beyond the people who might (or might not) share it. NC, relative to the UK, is a young place, and it should not make that mistake. This is how you block change, this is how you oppress the future, this is how you become irrelevant.
But I also think that your connection between the concept of a state and its culture in a political context seems odd, to put it mildly. What possible decision can the US Senate make that has any real bearing on any of what you consider NC's "culture" to be? I mean, I suppose that if they were to ban BBQ (to use one of your examples), it would be a problem, but this is hardly the work of the Senate. There's really nothing about a state as a culture and/or community that the Senate makes decisions on. So when a NC Senator takes their seat in DC, what is it that is driving their decision making process? It's not voting for a particular folk music tradition. What are they voting to defend? To maintain? To extend? It's not your dialectical plurality, I assure you.
Next: your NC traditions have a history that goes back much further than the founding of NC. To imagine that they are somehow the unique property of NC is quite a stretch. Just yesterday, I watched an incredible documentary [1] about how southern baptist and presbyterian "line singing" is almost certainly a continuation of a presbyterian (read scottish) religious song form. And a great book [2] talks at length about how 4 British "folkways" (you have to read it to understand what is meant) form the basis of the majority (not all, obviously) of white culture in North America. Picking the declaration of independence and/or creation of NC as a state as some definitive breaking point with history is, IMO, not reflective of how human cultures work.
At the same time, those traditions do not stop at the borders of NC, but twist and change across the state and across state lines.
> if you think Americans think of themselves as a single nation with minor variations - you really haven't spent enough time in the South.
Possibly not. 7 years in Seattle, 23 in Philadelphia, 2 in Santa Fe. And I do acknowledge that an overriding impression I have of Texas where I've spent several months is that the people there consider themselves Texan's first and Americans second. Nevertheless, I would posit that with the level of migratory behavior in the US today (still not huge - the median American lives 18 miles from their mother, apparently), for an awful lot of people this sort of strong state level association has become much weaker. When you have children spread to the 4 corners of the country, which is quite common these days, it's hard to view their home states as "the other" with quite the same vehemence.
[0] please don't accuse me of not "getting" the US by virtue of being an immigrant. There's a reasonably good chance, based purely on the demographics of HN, that I've lived here longer than you :)
[1] https://vimeo.com/82304757
[3] https://bookshop.org/books/albion-s-seed-four-british-folkwa...
Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Suppose you have a state with five districts and the state is 60% Brown Party and 40% Black Party. If you draw five districts that are each 60% Brown, you get five Brown representatives even though 40% of the state is Black. If you draw districts along party lines then you get three Brown representatives and two Black representatives, but the districts are totally uncompetitive and the representatives from b…
It used to be that geographic proximity caused a lot of similarity in needs/votes. But now our votes are more alike when our "tribe" is alike - e.g. professional, rural, urban poor. Plus few people ever see their local representative except on national TV. So maybe the time for geographic districts has passed. To get real minority interests some representation, and to solve the geography problem, I'd like to see a st…
> It used to be that geographic proximity caused a lot of similarity in needs/votes. But now our votes are more alike when our "tribe" is alike - e.g. professional, rural, urban poor.
But that stuff is still aligned with geography. A rural district is full of the rural poor. An urban district in San Francisco is full of professionals. You can draw the lines in a way that causes this not to happen, but if that's your concern it's easier to draw them a different way than change the whole system.
> To get real minority interests some representation, and to solve the geography problem, I'd like to see a state say they've got 10 representative positions, and you're all going to have a vote (or maybe 10). The top 10 vote-getters are then chosen.
This has all kinds of different terrible problems. Obvious example: If you're still using first past the post then you still have vote splitting and then opponents can dump anyone they don't like out of the legislature by convincing someone similar to run against them so that they both lose.
But if you switch to range voting then you can fix it without getting rid of districts:
Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reason is that WY would never become part of a federation where its partial sovereignty means nothing. Look up the Great Compromise.
WY was created by the United States of America. It wasn't some pre-existing entity that opted to join the union.
That seems... like a creative way of putting it. Wyoming may not have existed as a state entity, but the people sure did. And they had their reasons for joining the federation - this is one of them.
Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts
#96We really need to get the cube root rule passed.[0] Gerrymandering wouldn't really be useful if each district were smaller, and then we'd get Representatives that have a similar breakdown to the people they represent. For example in the US each representative would represent ~475K people instead of ~755K. So California would have 84 representatives instead of 53. It's a lot harder to gerrymander when the districts ar…
I used to think smaller districts would be harder to gerrymander, but the 99 Wisconsin State Legislature districts (each none too big) can still be gerrymandered plenty to distort the balance of that body.
Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts
#97Any attempt to completely automate this process is destined to fail, for all the reasons given in this thread. Weighting factors matter, and it is naive to assume that nobody is going to attempt to subvert a nonpartisan board, when so much power is at stake. Don't despair! There's an alternative that generates an equitable outcome between two parties that are trying to screw their rivals: Cake Cutting. https://arxiv.…
But then you just further entrench the political parties.
It doesn't have to entrench the political parties, depending on the system used. For example the people tasked with drawing each district could be selected from the general public by sortition, i.e. like jury duty.
These people would be given access to every tool and expert help they need, and if they wanted to just rubber-stamp the suggestion of whichever party they support, then they would be free to do so.
A slightly more deterministic process would be to generate a list of all parties (or independent candidates) who received more than 10% of the vote at the last election, and allow each of them to draw a number of districts in proportion to the share of the vote they received.
Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts
#98I don't think that political parties or race should be included in redistricting plans, especially since I think that this could often accidentally result in optimally "cracking" or "packing" minority districts. Neither political parties nor races should be intentionally institutionalized. The defining characteristic of a district is that it is geographically contiguous. A defining specification for districts is that…
> The defining characteristic of a district is that it is geographically contiguous.
That mattered a lot pre-internet, but theoretically that isn't as important now computers can be used to check 1 voter = 1 vote.
Districts could be redefined to mean something assigned randomly at birth, by lot or people could choose what district to belong to without living there.
From that perspective, any method of dividing the community up is pretty arbitrary.
Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts
#99I'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…
> 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.
This sounds like it would essentially result in big differences in economic status and in a few decades pit people against each other. It would lead to "let's put retired NIMBYs over here and social housing over there and let each vote for representation of their extreme views". I've never seen it lead to good results.
Re: Auto-Redistrict – automatically creates electoral districts
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
WY was created by the United States of America. It wasn't some pre-existing entity that opted to join the union.
That seems... like a creative way of putting it. Wyoming may not have existed as a state entity, but the people sure did. And they had their reasons for joining the federation - this is one of them.
wikipedia:
>The region acquired the name Wyoming by 1865, when Representative James Mitchell Ashley of Ohio introduced a bill to Congress to provide a "temporary government for the territory of Wyoming".
> The region's population grew steadily after the Union Pacific Railroad reached the town of Cheyenne in 1867, and the federal government established the Wyoming Territory on July 25, 1868
> Once government-sponsored expeditions to the Yellowstone country began, reports by Colter and Bridger, previously believed to be apocryphal, were found to be true. That led to the creation of Yellowstone National Park, which became the world's first national park in 1872. Nearly all of Yellowstone National Park lies within the far northwestern borders of Wyoming.
> In August 1886, the U.S. Army was given administration of the park
> Democrats and Republicans alike in Wyoming Territory agreed by the late 1880s that it was time their territory became a state. Statehood was attractive to the territory’s businessmen and politicians, as it offered them much more local control over land and water issues
https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/wyoming-statehood
> Gov. Warren called a special election for Nov. 5, 1889. The Constitution passed overwhelmingly by a vote of 6,272 in favor to 1,903 against. [ this at a time where the total population of the state was around 60,000 ]
>Cheyenne businessman and rancher Francis E. Warren, was appointed to a second stint as territorial governor in 1889, replacing Moonlight. Warren strongly supported statehood. [...] (Territorial governors and other top officials were appointed by the president.
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I don't find your view of Wyoming's history persuasive. The territories were created and managed by the US federal government, with every expectation that they would either become states or simply remain US-controlled territory. They were never independent pseudo-states, and if they remained a territory, they had even less control over their own destiny than if they became a state.