Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts • Hacker News Board

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#101

Post by brokenkebab » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

meddlepal wrote: post #85

EGreg wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The barrier remains regardless of whether you contact your rep, or not. We may as well ask for both. Multi member districts is not a bad idea for the House of Representatives. Can be done on a local level. But there needs to be a constitutional amendment. Why not simply switch to a system where a state itself is a giant multi member district, like a parliamentary system?

> Why not simply switch to a system where a state itself is a giant multi member district, like a parliamentary system? Because this isn't software... you can't just "switch" to a different form of government like that.

I'm not an expert in US law, so maybe I miss something, but there are countries which successfully changed their electoral systems, so apparently it's possible.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#102

Post by runarberg » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:14 PM UTC

clmckinley wrote: post #97

runarberg wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My bigger question is when the political split is more like 80/20 case should the 20 be guaranteed representation? Yes they should. They should get around 20% of the representatives.

So then without making other more fundamental changes we would have to gerrymander. In fact a number of strange looking districts are gerrymandered with creating a majority minority district as the stated goal. I believe we need structural changes to really solve this problem but absent that, I think having a computer algorithm that has the following priorities in the following order: 1) Compact (ie smallest circumfe…

Why do we need a large number of small districts? It seems like a relic from an obsolete philosophy that people from a geographically separate areas need a different representation. But that is not how reality works. People want representation based on their class status, not geography. We have local governments to deal with local issues and it is silly to also divide federal representation based on geography.

Alternatively I propose the state being a single district, with representatives directly partitioned based on the proportion of vote they get in the state. So if a state gets 10 representatives in congress, and a party gets 10% of the votes in that state. That party will get 1 representative in congress.

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Edit: And before this starts being called unrealistic, I believe all we would need is a constitutional amendment (even just in state constitutions) that states that every vote should count the same.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#103

Post by brokenkebab » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:15 PM UTC

toddsiegel wrote: post #82

pergadad wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could drop the whole issue by turning to a representative democracy with proportional voting, where it's about policy not individuals raising money.

Proportional would be nice, but that's a more radical change. I am an incrementalist and believe restoring sanity to the existing system is the good first step, and easier to get done.

'Incremental' implies you are getting closer to a better solution, but you are not. FPP is simply not created for proportional representation of voters' preferences. It has it's own advantages to be fair, but it's not about that. Any district shapes will favor some party, and square-ish is not better in this regard then a salamander-like.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#104

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#105

Post by runarberg » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:22 PM UTC

toddsiegel wrote: post #82

pergadad wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could drop the whole issue by turning to a representative democracy with proportional voting, where it's about policy not individuals raising money.

Proportional would be nice, but that's a more radical change. I am an incrementalist and believe restoring sanity to the existing system is the good first step, and easier to get done.

Sometimes a system is so bad that the only reform is a revolution. Incrementalism is simply an unrealistic option in many cases, including voting reform (and climate change)

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#106

Post by runarberg » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

AndrewHampton wrote: post #3

FiveThirtyEight did a great podcast series on gerrymandering in 2017 [1]. It turns out to be a much more complicated topic than I expected. Some gerrymandering is even legally required to ensure proper representation of minority groups even if they live in somewhat distributed communities. 1: https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/gerrymandering-podcast/

State representation usually clusters around class issues not ethnicity. And even if it didn’t, why arbitrarily focus on ethnicity? Handicapped people need representation, yet we don’t draw districts that ensures they get one. And if we did, and started splitting votes by who we think need the most representation, we might as well do away with democracy and start arbitrarily arranging representatives.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#107

Post by marcus_holmes » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #39

jascii wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not quite sure I follow you, could you elaborate?

One of the arguments in favor of the electoral college is that it boosts the voice of people who are in areas with lower population density. This is to ensure that minority interests are respected and taken into account by presidential hopefuls. Without this protection the voices of people who live outside the 5 major metropolitan areas simply wouldn't matter and candidates would have no reason to listen to their iss…

To be fair, Western Australia has this problem. 10% of the population but 15-20% (depending on boom status) of the export revenue. Politically irrelevant, but the source of all the mining royalties. It causes problems.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#108

Post by andrekandre » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

TheBranca18 wrote: post #57

Spivak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the arguments in favor of the electoral college is that it boosts the voice of people who are in areas with lower population density. This is to ensure that minority interests are respected and taken into account by presidential hopefuls. Without this protection the voices of people who live outside the 5 major metropolitan areas simply wouldn't matter and candidates would have no reason to listen to their iss…

If this is the issue, the electoral college doesn't solve this. Because what happens is the campaigning for the general election is usually dictated by swing state status and when the caucus or primary takes place in the election calendar. If you look at the distribution of states visited during the campaigning for the general election, it backs this up. Also, the Senate is supposed to combat the House in this instan…

yep, and i would posit that hanging everything off of swing states gyrates the presidential debates into wild swings in extreme directions which possibly further divide the population against each other over time

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#109

Post by balthasar » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

Pointing out the obvious injustice and loss of adjacency imposed on voters in these districts is the obvious reason for this project but leave it to Hacker News readers to fixate on the technical aspects of redistricting while ignoring the political and social reasons which led to this issue.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#110

Post by thephyber » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:35 PM UTC

raldi wrote: post #70

EForEndeavour wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only three letters in this project include California; only the letters T and X are represented exclusively by California. The statement is powerful and hilarious, not "lost."

The T district doesn't even look problematic to me. Nor does the other California letter, X, which is made up of a combination of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_8th_congression... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_14th_congressio... ...both of which seem like textbook examples of what a good, non-gerrymandered district should look like.

I think it was a dig at Texas, especially since the gp didn't mention the third CA letter.