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

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#91

Post by on_and_off » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

tunesmith wrote: post #40

toddsiegel wrote: post #24

It says tweet your reps. To be clear, you should probably contact your state rep about this (and send an email, not a tweet). They have the power to do something about it. This is very important, esp. in light the recent US Supreme Court decision on this subject[1]. Gerrymandering creates safe districts that make primaries hold increasingly more weight then general elections, which is leading, in a significant way, t…

More competitive? Or more representative of the overall population? Because those two things are at odds. Say you have a state that is split 55/44, and has nine districts. Do you want nine districts each at 55/44, meaning 9-0? That's more competitive, but less representative of the state. Or do you want five districts for one, and four for the other? That's more representative of the state, but less competitive. Redi…

Interesting how everything is only Democrats vs Republicans in the USA.

It probably does not help the political climate that for most people it is just a binary choice.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#92

Post by c3534l » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 6:39 PM UTC

endlessbeing wrote: post #59

lsaferite wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of Gerrymandering is to specifically have the outcome of 9-0 though. The natural distributions would make a natural outcome of 9-0 highly unlikely without rigging the district lines.

Actually, I think gerrymandering aims to have the result be more like 7-2 consistently, where 7 is the party with less actual representation. Gerrymandering aims to put all of the opponent's voters in the smallest number of districts possible, while spreading out your own base. The result is that the opponent wins fewer districts with over 90% of the vote where you win more districts with 55% or 60% of the vote.

Non-representative outcomes is a symptom of Gerrymandering, ont the goal of it. The reason for gerrymandering a district varies, but overall it tends to preserve the status quo. Those in power can use it to disenfranchise a group of people, or they can use it to create safe districts for party leaders. Gerrymandering should be thought of as a tool. The illustrations popular online showing how gerrymandering can be used to produce paradoxical representation have done a lot to raise awarenss, but it's also made people confused about what it is. Gerrymandering is a tool, not a goal.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#93

Post by tptacek » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 6:41 PM UTC

on_and_off wrote: post #91

tunesmith wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More competitive? Or more representative of the overall population? Because those two things are at odds. Say you have a state that is split 55/44, and has nine districts. Do you want nine districts each at 55/44, meaning 9-0? That's more competitive, but less representative of the state. Or do you want five districts for one, and four for the other? That's more representative of the state, but less competitive. Redi…

Interesting how everything is only Democrats vs Republicans in the USA. It probably does not help the political climate that for most people it is just a binary choice.

That's a consequence of first-past-the-post voting (Duverger's law), not gerrymandering.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#94

Post by defterGoose » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 6:42 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.

...and attitudes like this are largely why.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#95

Post by jascii » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 6:50 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…

I thought that the electoral college and gerrymandering were to separate issues, how are they related?

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#96

Post by dabernathy89 » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 6:57 PM UTC

A funny looking district != a gerrymandered district.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gerrymandering-strange-maps_n...

I mean, just imagine if every district were a simple polygon. How could that possibly work with population density variations, minority voter distribution, physical barriers like mountains and rivers, etc?

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#97

Post by clmckinley » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 6:58 PM UTC

runarberg wrote: post #87

clmckinley wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this analogy is that the 55/44 split is not equally distributed across a state. In virtually every case there are pockets of one or the other. As long as you keep the goals of uniform, compact and consistent sizes they should do a much better job of getting closer to the 4/5 you are looking for or maybe a couple of safer and a couple of swing districts. What happens now is that the party in control (…

> 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 circumference)

2) Least number of axis points and smallest difference in the sides.(ie a square is the goal)

3) Least number of wasted votes (ie use the proposal from the supreme court case)

4) Least change from a previous district (maybe not for this first run)

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#98

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

padobson wrote: post #86

legitster wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is SUPER important. People think redistricting is a panacea, but it actually sounds like a super tough nut to crack. Even states that have non-partisan districting enshrined in law are going through their own controversies and it doesn't (at first blush) appear to be solving anything. 99pi/538 did an excellent series on the topic I would recommend.

Came here to say something like this. Chief Justice Roberts' opinion[0] touches on the legislative evolution of the problem. The advent of districts was instituted by congress to encourage proportional representation - and it worked! Gerrymandering is actually an improvement over the older system that led to situations like GP is describing. Gerrymandering is not the problem, it's a symptom. The problem is first-past…

I agree entirely. Ranked voting or preference with instant runoff (Australia) or MMP (New Zealand) are all much better at representing the population.

They're not perfect of course. People in power will always try to adjust the system to benefit them and their supporters (read: The Dictators Handbook). Even in Australia where voting is mandatory, there is a top and bottom of the ballot and only the top is required (if a party doesn't have a certain percentage, that party is moved to the bottom).

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#99

Post by crdrost » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

tialaramex wrote: post #63

tunesmith wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More competitive? Or more representative of the overall population? Because those two things are at odds. Say you have a state that is split 55/44, and has nine districts. Do you want nine districts each at 55/44, meaning 9-0? That's more competitive, but less representative of the state. Or do you want five districts for one, and four for the other? That's more representative of the state, but less competitive. Redi…

If you worry about this, the reform you want is multi-member districts. Instead of voting for one representative people are picking several and the districts are bigger. This is how EU parliamentary elections work for example, a region gets say 5 slots and it needs to send 5 representatives to fill those slots, elected democratically but the EU doesn't tightly constrain the method used. There are a few ways you can d…

With that said, before you start writing your state legislature about “Multi-member districts TODAY!” you should also know that they have a very difficult history of being shot down by the Supreme Court. This was pointed out to me by a number of good folks on Politics.StackExchange[1].

But yes, the route to avoiding a second US Civil War is only incidentally through the “eliminating gerrymandering” nodes of the graph—the 50/50 saturation of the vote into two spineless political parties happens in both the House (gerrymandered to hell) and the Senate (not gerrymandered at all) and is a consequence of something more fundamental. States do need to switch to the proportional system, but there is a decent chance that the Supreme Court might destroy this out-of-hand, in which case a Constitutional amendment may well be necessary.

[1] “Would Switching to a Proportionate House Require a Constitutional Amendment?” https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/42551/would-swi...

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#100

Post by jfengel » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

tialaramex wrote: post #63

tunesmith wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More competitive? Or more representative of the overall population? Because those two things are at odds. Say you have a state that is split 55/44, and has nine districts. Do you want nine districts each at 55/44, meaning 9-0? That's more competitive, but less representative of the state. Or do you want five districts for one, and four for the other? That's more representative of the state, but less competitive. Redi…

If you worry about this, the reform you want is multi-member districts. Instead of voting for one representative people are picking several and the districts are bigger. This is how EU parliamentary elections work for example, a region gets say 5 slots and it needs to send 5 representatives to fill those slots, elected democratically but the EU doesn't tightly constrain the method used. There are a few ways you can d…

Or doing away with districts entirely, which amounts to the same thing. Right now we elect people as if geography were the only concern that could link voters. That makes it prone to ignoring voters whose concerns differ from that of their immediate neighbors. And very susceptible to manipulation by those who get to define "neighbors".

Geography will always play into it, especially in our odd hybrid system where we insist on devolving many laws to the states (such that even obvious crimes like murder, and apparently-unrelated notions like real estate or health care, end up with 50 separate laws with small but crucial differences). But there are lots of ways to change the system so that you're not solely linked by geography and hoping that, if you're in a local minority, somebody else will elect somebody to represent your view.