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What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

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Re: What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

#41

Post by pyroinferno »

tzs wrote: post #18
mtgx wrote: post #13

A proportional representation voting system would also largely solve the gerrymandering problem (no district would be dominated by a single party anymore so exploiting the gerrymandering system wouldn't help much), along with having many other benefits for democracy: http://www.fairvote.org/fair_representation > They complied with the Constitution’s one person, one vote requirement That line is interesting. How is th…

It's a bit of a tangent, but the discussion of voting systems reminds me of another modification to voting that I sometimes think might be reasonable: weighting votes based on voter age, with the weight starting off low for the youngest voters and increasing to a peak, and then dropping off again. What brought this on was thinking about the brexit vote over in the UK, which from what I read had very different outcome…

Something to think about, while young people and middle-age people have never lived under a non-EU ruled UK, old people have seen what the UK was like with the EU and not the EU around. They offer a unique perspective on this matter.

Re: What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

#42

Post by thaumasiotes »

bluetwo wrote: post #36
thaumasiotes wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As possible given what constraints? There's no requirement that they have equal population; it seems like your rule would always require districts to cross zero county lines.

If it could be drawn while crossing zero lines, then yes. But even then it is likely several different options would exist, and each party would try to pick one that favors them. I'm OK with that as a solution.

> If it could be drawn while crossing zero lines, then yes

What would prevent this?

Re: What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

#43

Post by pklausler »

burkaman wrote: post #23
paulmd wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To rephrase this a little more concisely: SCOTUS turns based on which side of the bed Kennedy wakes up on (on most issues). There are 4 solid liberal votes and 4 solid conservative votes and Kennedy in the middle. Kennedy indicated in a ruling a few years ago that in theory he's uncomfortable with gerrymandering and might be open to striking them down, but apart from "I know it when I see it" he doesn't know a neutra…

> SCOTUS turns based on which side of the bed Kennedy wakes up on (on most issues). I think this is a little bit misleading. Most Supreme Court decisions are unanimous.

When unanimous, SCOTUS isn't turning.

Re: What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

#44

Post by fernandopj »

"Gerrymandering" is a word difficult enough to grasp, and "partisan gerrymandering" (for me at least) doesn't ring any bells either, so for those of us who don't come from an USA background, but are interested in how someone could mathematically define that, I found this link:

https://www.senate.mn/departments/scr/REDIST/Red2000/ch5part...

> Partisan (or political) gerrymandering is the drawing of electoral district lines in a manner that discriminates against a political party.

Re: What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

#45

Post by jon_richards »

fernandopj wrote: post #44

"Gerrymandering" is a word difficult enough to grasp, and "partisan gerrymandering" (for me at least) doesn't ring any bells either, so for those of us who don't come from an USA background, but are interested in how someone could mathematically define that, I found this link: https://www.senate.mn/departments/scr/REDIST/Red2000/ch5part... > Partisan (or political) gerrymandering is the drawing of electoral district…

Gerrymandering is by definition partisan (or political). The term comes from when Governor Gerry redrew districts to benefit his party, resulting a district some described as looking like a salamander, causing it to be named the "gerrymander".

Re: What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

#47

Post by [deleted] »

pc86 wrote: post #28
paulmd wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To rephrase this a little more concisely: SCOTUS turns based on which side of the bed Kennedy wakes up on (on most issues). There are 4 solid liberal votes and 4 solid conservative votes and Kennedy in the middle. Kennedy indicated in a ruling a few years ago that in theory he's uncomfortable with gerrymandering and might be open to striking them down, but apart from "I know it when I see it" he doesn't know a neutra…

I was pretty much with you until the last paragraph. The efficiency gap for all plans[0] shows pretty clearly gerrymandering can occur for either party. In fact, the very pro-Democratic plans are more gerrymandered than the very pro-Republican plans, including the plan in question. There are four pro-D plans with the upper error limit above .2 while the plan in question appears to be at approximately -1.5 There's no…

[deleted]

Re: What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

#48

Post by aljones »

mapmeld wrote: post #6
crb002 wrote: post #3

I wish SCOTUS would put out a Euclidian distance Voronoi metric, where the redistricting map presented with minimum error wins. You quickly get into non-linear territory by using travel time instead of Euclidian distance. Roads and bridges become weapons for cutting or connecting districts. Bad bad stuff.

Programmers like to come up with mathematical plans like this, but you would likely run into the Voting Rights Act! Many districts which aren't compact have been created as majority-minority districts, to prevent disenfranchisement of racial minorities. Plans which divide or erase one of these districts get stopped by the Supreme Court all the time. It's a 1960s approach to equality, but you can tell its effectivenes…

The article addresses this specifically.

Re: What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

#49

Post by mapmeld »

graycamry wrote: post #14
mapmeld wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programmers like to come up with mathematical plans like this, but you would likely run into the Voting Rights Act! Many districts which aren't compact have been created as majority-minority districts, to prevent disenfranchisement of racial minorities. Plans which divide or erase one of these districts get stopped by the Supreme Court all the time. It's a 1960s approach to equality, but you can tell its effectivenes…

> Many districts which aren't compact have been created as majority-minority districts, to prevent disenfranchisement of racial minorities. [citation needed] I have seen many examples of horribly shaped districts, but all of them were done for partisan advantage. I would love it if you 1. Give an example of a majority minority district that is horribly shaped explicitly to accommodate the VRA. 2. Give citation for st…

The Chicago example is famous, but the case earlier this year with several districts in North Carolina revolved around race and disenfranchisement (as partisan gerrymandering is common and exceedingly difficult to make unconstitutional). These were created in a partisan way, but with hopes that it would be within the law. In any case replacing North Carolina's districts algorithmically without respect to race would be illegal.

Some background https://ballotpedia.org/Majority-minority_districts

Re: What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

#50

Post by s73ver »

Spivak wrote: post #40
s73ver wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take the power to create districts away from the legislature. Give it to a non-partisan commission. 1/3 Democrats, 1/3 Republicans, and 1/3 other/no party. We did that in California, and almost none of the legislators were happy with it, which means it probably did a good job. The state still wound up with mostly Democratic representation, but that's more a product of California being heavily Democrat. I'd imagine th…

Woo! Enshrining the current two party system in legislation. What could possibly go wrong?

So don't include them by name. Just say the two major parties. Doesn't matter, doesn't change a thing.
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