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

Gerrymandering and a cure for it – the shortest splitline algorithm

rangevoting.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 178 posts

Re: Gerrymandering and a cure for it – the shortest splitline algorithm

#151

Post by dragonwriter »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #117
vacri wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try twenty parties who can't agree on anything. What, multipolar politics, like modern Germany or Sweden or Australia? Wealthy, socially progressive countries with high standards of living? You're just spreading FUD. PR was one of a great many factors involved in the rise of Hitler, but keep in mind that the US system also let a president get elected that didn't win the popular vote, who then went on to destroy a f…

"What, multipolar politics, like modern Germany" Modern Germany does not have PR. For good reason. " PR was one of a great many factors involved in the rise of Hitler, but keep in mind that the US system also let a president get elected that didn't win the popular vote" The U.S. President has never been elected by popular vote. Again, for good reason. Feature, not bug.

Modern Germany hasPR via a mixed member proportional (MMP) system -- which, IIRC, was a German innovation when introduced; it doesn't have straight party-list PR, but then the more proportional system for the US proposed upthread isn't party-list PR, either. Proportionality is a (really, continuous valued, not binary) outcome, there are a number of systems for achieving it to a greater or lesser extent.

Re: Gerrymandering and a cure for it – the shortest splitline algorithm

#152

Post by panglott »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #4

Doesn't gerrymandering mostly carve out a lot of districts for black congressmen who otherwise wouldn't have districts? I think that's kinda what it boils down to in America. There are conservative areas adjacent to and mixed with majority black areas and they want different representation.

This was more true in the era of overt white supremacy, when majority-white electorates would refuse to vote for black candidates, and thus black candidates could only win elections in strongly majority-black districts. This has changed from the 1990s, which black candidates started winning even in majority-white districts.

However, this also led political marginalization as well. To tilt a purple state Republican, you gerrymander districts so that you have more slightly-Republican districts than strongly-Democratic one. Concentrating black Democratic voters in one district is a strategy both to guarantee the presence of a few black representatives as well as an overall Republican majority.

Re: Gerrymandering and a cure for it – the shortest splitline algorithm

#153

Post by Kapow »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #69
dragonwriter wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Proportional representation is far from a panacea. Among modern, established democracies, proportionality of representation is pretty closely linked to public satisfaction with government, and public participation with government. Its as close to a panacea for effective democracy as you could have -- which isn't surprising, proportionality of representation is a pretty direct measure of the extent to which a govern…

"Among modern, established democracies, proportionality of representation is pretty closely linked to public satisfaction with government" When one of these "modern, established democracies" manages to maintain a stable government (or even survive) for as long as the United States has, perhaps that statement could be made. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation#Li... Other than perhaps the Scandina…

>When one of these "modern, established democracies" manages to maintain a stable government (or even survive) for as long as the United States has

"Has" up to what date? Is there some set length of time they have to surpass? Or are you suggesting the US can't learn anything from other countries until after it collapses and is outlived? Seems like a moot point by then.

Re: Gerrymandering and a cure for it – the shortest splitline algorithm

#154

Post by SapphireSun »

Retra wrote: post #140
SapphireSun wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but every time an individual result is unfair... it's still unfair. If I live on the red side and there are two blue reps, I have literally no representation despite comprising 50% of the population. The fact that I sometimes get to sock it to the blue side with two red reps is unfair to them. This isn't a case of turnabout is fair play, as the promise of representative government is that everyone gets a…

It sounds like you are confusing "everyone gets a vote" with "everyone gets a result." If you're the only red person in a room of blues, there's no way it's going to be fair unless you can convince others to turn, or you run away. A voting system is not meant to make everything possible, but to make it so that the one red in the room has an out: get more votes. (Because without something , you've got a very volatile…

On what timescale? If district I'm talking about went 100 years red then 100 years blue but retained the same characteristics, that would be aggregate fairness, but clearly unfair. In your case of one red person in a sea of blue, it's obvious that they would be at a disadvantage. The situation I'm specifically talking about is one where red and blue are roughly equal. Does it make sense to randomly remove one side's voice?

Re: Gerrymandering and a cure for it – the shortest splitline algorithm

#155

Post by panglott »

cryogospel wrote: post #22

gerrymandering is good--for the electorate. why? Because gerrymandering increases homogeneity. A gerrymandered district is more homogeneous--the voters are more alike than they were before. In general. Homogeneity in general increases unity. A more homogeneous district means the voters in general share more common interests. If the voters share more common interests then it is easier for them to elect and hold accoun…

Nope. Gerrymandering makes districts more or less homogenous in a way that benefits one party.

To tilt a balanced state Republican, you concentrate Democratic votes into a few districts where Republicans will never be competitive, then create a larger number of districts where Republicans can consistently win with razor-thin margins. You'll have one homogenous district that is 70% Democratic, and seven Republican districts that are 53% Republican.

Re: Gerrymandering and a cure for it – the shortest splitline algorithm

#156

Post by DennisP »

A while back, I was friends with someone who was a forensic accountant and former state senator. She talked about gerrymandering quite a bit. She'd say "you don't choose your representatives, they choose you."

She said both parties cooperated in drawing safe seats for everybody, and claimed that most of the people in our state congress were corrupt. Anyone who didn't play along with the graft would find their district redrawn out from under them, if the timing made that possible.

This actually happened to another friend who was a former state house member. The two of them were instrumental in revealing the corrupt activities of state House Speaker Jim Black, who ended up serving time in prison.

Re: Gerrymandering and a cure for it – the shortest splitline algorithm

#157

Post by JoeAltmaier »

DennisP wrote: post #156

A while back, I was friends with someone who was a forensic accountant and former state senator. She talked about gerrymandering quite a bit. She'd say "you don't choose your representatives, they choose you." She said both parties cooperated in drawing safe seats for everybody, and claimed that most of the people in our state congress were corrupt. Anyone who didn't play along with the graft would find their distric…

I imagine Jim Black was a sacrifice as well - he didn't play along with somebody, so he got tossed to the wolves. And the public thinks "Well, that's been dealt with" and the rest of the corrupt remain safe from further scrutiny. For a while.

Re: Gerrymandering and a cure for it – the shortest splitline algorithm

#158

Post by davidw »

hackeraccount wrote: post #138
davidw wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italy and Israel are two countries that have had very proportional systems in recent time frames. Having lived in Italy, I am not that impressed by the politics there, and think that proportional representation with party lists is part of the problem. I think STV is pretty interesting, but producing one winner is no bad thing either. Of course, as per Arrow, nothing is perfect.

How on earth can it be that yours is the only reference to Arrow?

For those who don't know what that is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...

Re: Gerrymandering and a cure for it – the shortest splitline algorithm

#159

Post by dragonwriter »

specialist wrote: post #10
dragonwriter wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't gerrymandering a much more complex problem than that makes it out to be? No, its vastly simpler: the problem with gerrymandering is that there is no good way to draw single-member winner-take-all districts, and the solution is just don't do that . Multimember districts with a system that provides proportional representation within each district (e.g., five-member districts with STV) solve the problem pretty m…

Agreed. But even when the USA sees the light on proportional representation, there will continue to be winner takes all elections. Executive positions (president, governor, mayor), senators, judges, ballot issues, etc. In those cases, approval voting is the correct answer. Easy to explain, easy to tabulate, most mathematically fair, hardest to game. Per Duvenger's Law, approval voting would probably also help replace…

> But even when the USA sees the light on proportional representation, there will continue to be winner takes all elections. Executive positions (president, governor, mayor), senators, judges, ballot issues, etc.

Maybe, maybe not. Most of those don't fundamentally have to be single-winner elected things, e.g., executive positions don't have to be single-winner systems; multiseat executives do exist, after all -- even many US states have multiseat executives, but do those by single-winner election with seats allocated by portfolio (see, e.g., California's "Constitutional officers".)

> In those cases, approval voting is the correct answer.

Approval voting is, IMO, generally a poor choice for most elections (its good for elections in groups where disapproval or approval is tied to some substantive commitment -- e.g., if you are voting on where to go to for lunch, and "approve" on an option means "I will go if this option is chosen".) It doesn't make a lot of sense for most other purposes (because "approval" doesn't mean the same thing across different ballots -- this is actually true, though to a far lesser degree, of systems that require a forced ranking ballot, which is why I prefer ranked voting systems that can use unforced rankings) -- for ballot props that potentially might conflict, a system that merges features of majority and approval makes some sense (that is, it takes a majority to pass, but in the case of conflict the larger majority trumps the smaller one) and is, in fact, already used in some places (e.g., its what California already uses for ballot props.)

> Easy to explain, easy to tabulate, most mathematically fair, hardest to game.

IRV isn't much worse on any of those, and is if anything more familiar (and if you are using STV for multiseat elections, IRV is identical, so even though its a little harder to explain on its own, if you are using STV elsewhere, IRV for single-seat elections is pretty much free in terms of complexity, either of explanation or administration.)

Re: Gerrymandering and a cure for it – the shortest splitline algorithm

#160

Post by saalweachter »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #130
saalweachter wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: there is actually no such thing as ZIP code boundaries. ZIP codes are actually based on delivery routes: your ZIP code is the post office your mail carrier leaves from. ZIP codes will not actually respect community boundaries: if a town lies between two post offices, it is frequently more efficient for mail to be delivered by carriers from multiple post offices. Moreover, not every address in the US receive…

Ok I wondered about this. Our local village has no mail delivery; everybody in town has to have a PO box. I thought Federal mail delivery was a given thing, like a right. How can the town just decide to blow it off?

Home delivery was never quite universal. Rural Free Delivery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Free_Delivery) wasn't even a thing until the 1890s. Hilariously, with budget cuts, there has been more of a tendency to keep RFD while cutting home delivery in some of the smaller towns and villages, since it is easier for people in the village to get to the post office.
Post reply on HN