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Gerrymandering by Computer
jefu writes "In the latest New Yorker there is an excellent article on redistricting and gerrymandering (more permanent URL). It discusses how recent gerrymandering is being done with the aid of computers. It also discusses how redistricting is polarizing voters and is making many seats in the House of Representatives 'safe seats' which effectively gives incumbents a permanent seat. It is not hard to see how this also tends to leave our 'elected' representatives in a position where voter input is less important to them than things like lobbying." Few articles about gerrymandering really get into how ugly and blatant it is.
Would have been nice to define a not-often-used word in the article so we all don't have to dig...
To divide (a geographic area) into voting districts so as to give unfair advantage to one party in elections. (Link.)
Give me my karma, baby.
evil adrian
See subject.
Yeah, so tell me something I don't already know..
...including nice charts and graphs can be found here on FraudFactor.
From the examples given in the FraudFactor article, both sides seem guilty of gerrymandering whenever possible.
The Army reading list
It's crazy that in the US politicians are involved in drawing district boundaries at all. In the UK, we have an independent electoral commission who are in charge of this.
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
Here we have seen another step towards the death of democracy. Where those incumbents, who got elected by the people, no longer need to respond to people. Where the big money businesses can pay their way to get laws favorable to them pass. It will be the society of the rich people, for the rich people, by the rich people.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
Computer? Don't you mean calculator?
To me, the first problem with our government is that it's too large. The second, which is directly related to the first, is that it's filled with too many politicians. Our government tries to do too much, most of which it sucks at. These thoughts are the main reason I call myself a libertarian.
... just replace our representative democracy with a true democracy.
As King Longshanks once said (in Braveheart at least), "The problem with Scotland... is that it's full of Scots!" The problem with U.S. politics is that it's filled with politicians.
In the simplest way, how do we solve this problem (and thus issues with gerrymandering, lobbyists, the inability to elect anyone outside the two party system, etc.)? "Easy"
But wait, I hear you say, that would be rule by "tyranny of the majority."
Here is where my libertarian ideals come in to play. Of course this is all hypothetical, idealistic, unrealistic, and some might say, Unpossible... ahem.
But what if we eliminated this looming threat of tyranny under this truly democratic system? How could this be done? Well think about where tyranny of the majority comes from primarily -- issues related to control of private citizens lives.
Are you allowed to drink alcohol and smoke drugs? Look at porn? Own a weapon to protect your life and property? Practice atheism or a minority religion?
These are examples of issues where the tyranny of the majority could have a negative effect. I think the central thing to all these issues is that they should not be controlled by the government in the first place. If we had an ammendment in the constitution that clarified the constitution, that the federal government shall not make laws that seek to control the behavior of a person not explicitly harming another person, then what is left for the tyranny of the majority to affect?
Then when an issue comes up in front of our tiny, truly democratic government of the citizens of the United States, it's a referendum that we all vote equally on. If there are multiple choices, we use a smart voting style (approval, counting, etc), and not the insane methods used now to pick such unimportant things as our next President.
This is just an idea that has been brewing in my head, can anyone see holes in it and offer constructive criticism?
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I know I posted on something similar maybe a week ago. What's ugly is that it was already seeming like our representatives (in general) cared very little for our wishes (consider the recent secret spending bill) and more for their pocketbooks. Obviously we can't expect everyone to be a martyr, but this is getting rediculous. We're a democracy in name only. We vote for appearances. Less and less of what we say we want is really heard.
Who, then, is really running the country? And how did they really get in office?
No, serious, I want to know. Because I'm starting to think that my voice really DOESN'T matter.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
Really, not all of us are energetic enough to search Google
there was a case a few years ago where Dame Shirley Porter was convicted of ~40 million pounds worth of gerrymandering in a votes for homes scandal. Of course she's actually paid very very little of it back (less than a few hundred thousand pounds, if I remember the Private Eye story correctly)...
What goes around, comes around, unless you can pay enough money to the right people....
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
A buddy of mine came up with an initiative in CA to eliminate the bias in redistricting by using a set of easily-understood rules that could be set into law and would ensure a balanced outcome based on geography and population levels, not political benefits.
You can find the details at Fair Vote 2k2.
He's still working on getting it passed into law by the voters in CA. It's tough when it doesn't really benefit the party in power to change the system to make it fair.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
In Iowa, for example, voter party registrations are not allowed to be used in the redistricting, so it is non-partisian. Several states have initiatives to switch over to non-partisan redistricting.
You get more Gerries for your mandering needs.
I had my Gerry mandered once...when I was in the service. A shot cleared it up though.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Save for the fact that software is being used to help the process along. I find this less worrying than it appears -- ultimately the advantage gained by gerrymandering is slim and short term, since demographic change is inevitable, especially in a society as mobile as the US.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
How much longer until our vote is purely symbolic and has nothing left to do with reality?
Although in the article, they mainly focus on Texas, it's pretty clear that the whole system is being gamed and gamed hardest by the Republicans.
How's the job market in Europe these days, I wonder...
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I believe this is one of many, why political positions shouldn't be a career. One of the founding fathers felt that one should get elected, do what's needed during the term, then go back to what one was doing before. No making a career out of it.
From the article: "He opposes abortion, fights for balanced budgets, and voted for the impeachment of President Clinton. His Web site features photographs of him carrying or firing guns. Through it all, though, Stenholm has remained a member of the Democratic Party"
I wonder what you have to do to be conservative down there.
Also this makes me think that gerrymandering isn't the only threat to democracy in the states. It seems Michael Moore's claim that the Democrats and the Republicans are the same isn't so far off.
Not so fast, first you should, write:
I will memorize my English vocabulary lesson and never make fun of the teacher.
100 times on the board.
Check out the book "How to Lie with Maps", by Mark Monmonier.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/022
Why yes, I am a geographer...
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
The logical opposite of gerrymandering is automating the process to provide politically balanced districts, 50% left, 50% right. Leaving aside how "left" and "right" ought to be defined (and how "center" is accomodated), balanced districts would tend for shorttermism and inaction at the political level higher. If you don't expect to keep your job, you don't plan what you'll be doing after the next election.
Solution? An independent commission. The nearer their decisions create equal political fury from both (all) sides, the higher the pay.
...and get our licks in in the primary. Really, to me, what this article says is that political parties really have become obsolete bodies whose only purpose is to disenfranchise the voters, and that we voters should simply ignore parties and vote pragmatically.
I don't register with a party affiliation because I find both parties so distasteful. I think it would be very wise for us independents to figure out for what party our district has been gerrymandered and register in that party, and if we run, run in that party.
It would be cool if the supremes solved this by ruling that all voters have to be able to vote in all primaries.
Not quite "whenever possible". At very least, redistricting has been historically confined to census cycles, by a sort of gentleman's agreement between the parties. The reason it's been in the news so much lately is a couple of Republican-controlled state legislatures (Texas, most notably) have escalated the process and begun redistricting more frequently.
No doubt the Democrats will follow suit as soon as they can. But the fact remains: this is a chain of events that didn't need to be set in motion.
In NC there is (was?) a district that was artificially constructed to get a Minority (black) Majority district. It ran from one largely minority area, up a highway (no wider than a mile on either side of the highway), and connected with another minority area many many miles away.
I think they threw it out.
Ugly and blatant, perhaps. But many minority representatives (both State and Federal) would not have been / would not be elected without redistricting.
All sorts of interesting articles and view points available via Google.
Here is an interesting page with a lot of resources on the subject.
the people here are mostly upset with the legislature - they are exclusively Democrat party, with a handful of Republican seats. The Democrat legislature seats which are Democrat held will NEVER be unseated in my lifetime, and they well know that.
.they actually are Socialists.
That has created the absense of the everyday normal Democrat from being represented in California's legislature... it is now full of actual, real life Socialists and Communists - and i'm not using hyperbole...
They are actively fighting a spending cap in the state. They have actively sought out people to put onto welfare rolls.
All this because they know that they can never be unseated. They have no accountability, and they know that there will never be Republicans that can take over their seats.
The governor is just a figurehead here in the state. That's why its irrelevant to that a action movie actor is now governor - nothing is actually going to change because the legislature writes the laws.
The only thing we hope for here is that not all of them pass by 2/3rds, so he can veto much of what they send to him.
California is only 6 seats in the house, and 2 in the state senate from going 2/3rds Democrat, and able to make the position of governor ACTUALLY null and void... right now, he still has veto power.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
We have all known this for some time. Look at some of the people up there. The Senate represents party intrest only and the House is purely special interest.
If it wasn't for the need of Republicans to get seats in the House and Senate minorities would have been totally marginalized by Democrats. The Democrats speak a very good game of inclusion but they are in effect the party of exclusion. Gingrich and his cronies understood that and used it to their advantage.
The best solution to this would be to give each state X number of seats and then award those to the top X number of vote getters statewide. This would still protect the original intent of the framers of our Consititution and allow for more diverse people in office. It might finally allow a green or gasp, a libertarian, into the so called hallowed grounds.
People bitch and moan all the time about Presidential abuses but convienently ignore what goes on in the Senate (requirement of super majorities to vote is not in the Constitution - it is the exact fear the framers had - a government trapped by a militant minorty). Neither side will give up that power and hence they sell us out when making deals.
Whine about Electronic voting, Bush, and Diebold all you want. You really don't have a choice in who is elected to the House of Representatives... and apparently don't care.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
let a computer pick random groups of zip codes that are adjacent to each other and distibute the districts that way. Make sure each district is apporximately the same population size. Let a judge or other neutral party manage the process.
Oh and don't let Diebold anywhere NEAR the computer.
Hmmm... maybe there should be a law that requires election districts to have the minimum possible perimeter. :-)
Five percent of one year's DoD budget puts us on Mars.
The U.S. government is becoming more and more corrupt. What do you plan to do about it?
If you want to see ugly, take a look at the North Carolina 12th district. It's been re-drawn more times than I can remember, and been ruled illegal almost as many.
The NC Libertarian Party offered to redraw the districts as a disinterested 3rd party to the process (theirs would have mostly followed county lines), but the Democrats & Republicans would have none of that, and so we have our snake-like boundaries. A better view is available in this pdf (area in gray).
Chip H.
Few articles about gerrymandering really get into how ugly and blatant it is.
It's been ugly and blatant for decades. The only change is who's doing it, and the Democrats are screaming because they don't control the process any more.
Wake up and smell the coffee, guys: turnabout is fair play.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
In Iowa, the State Constitution says that congressional districts can't cross county lines (unless more than one district can be formed from that county, although not an issue in Iowa)
I believe something like this was discussed due to the controversy in Georgia. When the Democrats who controlled the legislature redrew the House districts, they drew them to give Democrats a blatantly unfair advantage. New districts were created that had a slight Democratic majority, while Republican incumbents ran against each other in extremely Republican districts. (Note: Georgia, like much of the South, tends to vote Democrat at a State level, Republican at a National level).
50 State Constitutional amendments like this wouldn't prevent gerrymandering, but it would make it a lot more difficult.
The reason gerrymandering exists is simple: you need to split people up into relatively equal-numbered-sized chunks, so each representative represents a mostly equivalent number of people.
Where those lines are drawn can be key to who gets elected.
Let's use a simple example. If each representative represents 100 voters and you have 100 relatives that live in a 2-block square, the best district for you would be a shape specifying the exact size of that 2-block square where your relatives are. You can pretty much guarantee that all your relatives will vote for you, or at least most of your relatives won't vote for someone else. Thus you're a guaranteed winner.
What's wrong with that? Are you not going to represent the will and desires of those 100 people?
Any whining about gerrymandering is done by the people that lose out. In this case, it's the Democrats (usually) that are whining about gerrymandering, because they're starting to get voted out of office at the local level. In the past, the Republicans were whining about it because they were "drawn out" of the election process by the Dems.
Really, it's just a game of tactical advantage played by people on all sides. Advantage today turns into disadvantages tomorrow. Whiners today turn into brutal gerrymanderers of tomorrow.
That's how it is.
And "independent" councils are nothing of the kind. Anyone involved in the political process is a political actor, and are by definition not independent. They live, work, and eat with everyone else...it's just that everyone agrees not to complain too loudly when the "independents" favor one part or another.
...and never have been. We're a federal republic. Just thought I'd clear that up. Moving on, there are all manner of creative ways to eliminate gerrymandering. None, to date, have been effectively employed. The 'one man, one vote' concept could work, wherein we eliminate districting altogether...but that leads to under-represented folks in less densely populated areas, since politicos will pander to the highest concentration of votes. In other words, ALL candidates will spend all of their time and money in the big cities, making promises to those folks, while ignoring the needs of the rural communities. You could also mandate (gasp!) multi-party rep elections. That is to say, instead of allowing an icumbent to run unopposed, there *must* be a candidate from each party for the election to be valid. The subtext being that, if no one is there to oppose him, things must be going along just fine, and he is not needed. Add a twist, and make it three parties! Or four! Watch how many people become interested in politics then. Watch how many more voters make it to the polls, when given a range of choices instead of 'white meat' or 'dark meat'. Perhaps they are sick of Turkey altogether, and would prefer a nice cheeseburger. What happens when you offer the voter steak? Or veggie-dogs? There are plenty of other ideas as well. But to eliminate gerrymandering under the current system, one would need to wrest control of district boundaries from elected officials...preferably into a rotating panel of technogeeks who would rather simply get the damn things done so they can get back to their labs.
gerrymander Audio pronunciation of gerrymandering ( P ) Pronunciation Key (jr-mndr, gr-)
tr.v. gerrymandered, gerrymandering, gerrymanders
To divide (a geographic area) into voting districts so as to give unfair advantage to one party in elections.
n.
1. The act, process, or an instance of gerrymandering.
2. A district or configuration of districts differing widely in size or population because of gerrymandering.
[After Gerry, Elbridge + (sala)mander(from the shape of an election district created while Gerry was governor of Massachusetts).]
Thanks Dictionary.com
It seems to me like gerrymandering could be cut to manageable proportions by mandating a few simple rules, enforced in order of priority:
1) Districts must be contiguous.
2) No party registration data may be used while assigning districts.
3) Districts must encompass areas equivalent in population within 0.X%.
4) Districts must have a ratio of perimeter to area of no more than Y.
5) Redistricting may not move the geographical center of any district by more than Z miles per census cycle.
We'd need to do a little study to find apprpriate values for X, Y, and Z, of course. But does it really need to be any harder than this? It is about fairness of representation... right?
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
"In 2001, that process produced a standoff in Texas, with the Republican state senate and the Democratic state house of representatives unable to reach an agreement. As a result, a panel of federal judges formulated a compromise plan, which more or less replicated the current partisan balance in the state's congressional delegation."
Too many important issues are being pushed to the courts by representatives who are afraid of making decisions and losing face. Why is it that judges can compromise, but our elected officials populating the legislative branches seem to have lost that ability?
Arnold says:
Quack, quack.
First, what gerrymandering is (from the web):
e /r ed/readjusting_e.htm
"Politicians could design their ridings (districts in the U.S.) to ensure that they would be re-elected. They could move areas that voted against them out of their ridings, or divide areas that supported their party into more, smaller ridings. The process is called gerrymandering, after Massachusetts governor Eldridge Gerry, who pioneered the technique in the early 19th century."
In Canada, prior to 1951, Parliament was soley responsible for drawing the electoral boundaries. Of course, the boundaries shifted with the political motivations of the MPs. Suffice to say that enough MPs developed a moral sense that democracy was suffering from the personal motivations of some and a permanent independent commission was struck to alleviate those concerns. The following URL goes into some history and discussion:
http://www.elections.ca/scripts/fedrep/federal_
I have no idea how the process works in U.S., but it would seem that an independent commission, with the proper structure and powers, would be the fairest and would further the needs of democracy the best.
Anyone know what process is used in the U.S.? I would assume that some states have a committee for that purpose, but is it independent?
For having a system where "the winner takes all votes".
It's much better to have percentages and multiple parties, where one of the benefits is this kinda scam just isn't possible, one vote counts as exactly one vote, and the correct president actually wins.
See Europe (excluding the UK)
Will code a sig generator for food
Instead of letting the legislators have the power to district, which by some strange coincidence affects their (re-)electability, it would be nice to have districting done by a mathemetical grid of sufficiently small size laid over the state in question, and let a publicly-known algorithm functioning like a state (ha haa) machine and work its way across the grid map, apportioning areas. With sufficient trials, the program can run until it gets cohesive districts of roughly equal population. It's just computer time, so who cares about that?
At least this forces the gerrymanderers to be smart enough to figure out how to exploit loopholes in the algorithm.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Really, gerrymandering is an act of creating rotten boroughs of some sort. It's detrimental to democracy, and EVIL. Gerry should be mandered no more. His backside must be sore by now. In addition, I swear I saw Lady Liberty being raped by some men of refined yet crude taste. Richard, George and John, if I'm not mistaken.
From the article:
>While Texas was shifting its districts, the governing Republicans in Colorado did their own mid-cycle reapportionment, to solidify their hold
>on the one House seat in the state that produced a close election in 2002. (Legal challenges to the new Texas and Colorado districts are
>now pending.)
Background for this: In 2002, there were 4 republican seats, 2 democratic seats, and 1 intensely competetive seat (the republican won by 121 votes) In 2003, in the last 3 days of the session, republicans pushed through a redistricting which would essentially have guaranteed that 5 seats will remain republican until the next redistricting. Challenges were immediately filed on both legal and constitutional grounds; the legal case (in federal court) has been on hold pending the outcome of the constitutional case.
Before the Colorado Supreme Court, the democrats argued that the redistricting was unconstitutional; the republicans argued that not only did they have the right to redistrict, but AG Ken Salazar (the plantiff) didn't have the right to sue the state he works for. The court found 5-2 that the redistricting was unconstitutional and 7-0 that the AG has the duty to challenge laws he feels violate the Constitution.
Because the ruling was based in the Colorado constitution, it may or may not affect rulings in other redistrictings.
Twenties Retirement
No, it would negate the entire point of primaries. Primary elections are intended to let each party decide by vote who will represent them in the General Election. Allowing people not in the party to vote, or cross-over voting allows people outside the party to influence this; the most probable reason is to ensure that the least electable candidate gets the nod.
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I remember watching the 2000 presidential debacle with some amusement, and most interesting of all was the partisan nature of EVERY aspect. It seemed that representatives from both parties were needed not only for political comments, but for everything from counting votes to doing statistical analysis. In the end, even the supreme court decide along party lines.
I mentioned how absurd this is to my father, who is a civil servant here (Sweden) and a historian. His answer was that the concept of a politically indepedent civil servant in Europe is actually a remnant of the monarchic roots: civil servants in European monarchies were traditionally loyal to the king, not to the houses of parlament. Even though the monarchy is reduced to a symbolic role (more so here than in the UK), the tradition of indepedence from the political process lives on.
America simply does not have this background: everything in American government is fundamentally political, so the concept of an _independent_ electoral commission is impossible.
This has been going on for a _long_ while. Aside from the increased ease of redistricting, it seems like this is only a big deal in the media now only because that the scales tip more towards the "R" side.
Big deal, politics runs in cycles and in a few years the Repubs will be making the same complaints about the Dems, just like they were a few years ago. Back then (80's wasn't it?) it was the Repubs saying the the Dems were consolidating their base through redistricting to insure themselves a safe seat in Congress and that the bizarre contortions the districts went through circumvented the democratic process.
So... flash forward a few years and the Dems have their safe seats, but in the swing of politics the Repubs have taken control of the redistricting process and now the Dem are complaining about the contorted shapes of the districts they have.
SHOCKING!!!!
I see that trolls get +2 when they're lefty.
Nice.
IHBT. IWHAND.
Bob
Get used to it, the word is going to become commonplace. I remember when I could not remember the name Ayatollah Khomeini.
No, what is pretty clear is that this article was written by a very biased individual, intending to paint republicans, esp those from Texas (hmm...wonder what republican is from Texas..) as evil, petty people. The reality is that this has been going on for a long time, and that it is done by both sides. The article doesn't say that, because its author has a political agenda.
I've never understood the objection here. Why is it good that every election be contested? Why do we want 51/49 elections? Gerrymandering means that there will be more people who voted for the winner of the election. I say that this is more representative, not less.
Gerrymandering groups people according to ideology, not geography. I think that makes a lot more sense. In fact, in the limit, gerrymandering approaches proportional representation, which many people argue is superior to the current system.
This is another great reason we need term limits for Congress. Those people are supposed to be running the country-not rearranging voting districts to ensure that they'll get relected so they can be there to waste more time redistricting the next time around.
Think about it-how many problems could be solved if elected officials were more concerned with getting work done instead of getting re-elected! Do you really think that Fritz Hollings would have spent so much time passing bills for Disney if he hadn't needed their bribes, er, campaign donations, to get re-elected? Would we actually have a budget that could be passed if politicians worried about re-election weren't stuffing it with more pork than the country can afford?
Let's all stop wasting time fighting all of the problems caused by these corrupt scum, and just get laws passed to keep them from coming back!
Why not just do it by counties instead of districts? Counties don't change. If a state has 9 counties and 6 districts, divide it up by population so it is essentially equal, and get on with it.
Hand the problem to a commission of mathematicians to determine the new boundaries:
Psudeo-math statement? (I am not a mathematician):
Problem: Given N House seats, with a total State population of P, find N districts such that the population of each region is P/N and the total length of all the edges between districts is minimized.
Yea, you can then get districts with political majorities, but
and _this_ is the kind of democracy US brings to the middle east and the rest of the world.
First, the commissions are made up of three people:
A judge, chosen by the Chief Justice of each Province or Territory, who acts as chairperson and two civil servants chosen by the Speaker of the House. In practice, many commission members, aside from the chairpersons, have been university professors or non-elected officials of legislative assemblies. N.B. Sitting members of Parliament, the Provincial Legislatures or the Senate are not permitted by law to be members.
Second, the commissions hold hearings that the public is entitled and encouraged to attend. There is a specific Parliamentary committee that forwards complaints and suggestions to the commissions, but the commission is under no obligation to consider them. The commssions are required to draw boundaries based upon population density, mainly, but other factors are considered.
After forty years of an independent commission, a certain amount of trial and error and fine tuning has resulted in a process that is indeed independent and effective. I cannot recall a single instance where boundary disputes were referred to a court for resolution.
An aspect that I haven't seen commented on here is Racial Gerrymandering. Even if you disallow using partisan information, you can achieve the same results if your state has a large percentage of African-American (AA) voters. And in the Southern states where the Voting Rights Act is in effect, there is somewhat of a loose requirement of not diluting AA vote strength. This will, in all instances, cause the creation of a number of majority AA districts, which always will elect a Democrat. And it makes the surrounding districts "bleached" or overwhelmingly white, which tend to elect GOP candidates. Assume that AA voters vote Democrat 90% of the time. And note that isn't a racial stereotype. Any political scientist or political professional will tell you that it's an historical fact for at least 20 years. Knowing that a census block is 90% AA, you can safely assume that the voters will go overwhelmingly Democratic. It is also notable that voters' tend to cluster by partisanship. In the city I live in, GOP voters live overwhelmingly in the suburbs and a few intown neighborhoods with high average home value and average income. White Dems cluster in certain other intown neighborhoods and near the large University in town. AA voters live predominantly on the southside. Without knowing partisan voting behavior, I can still draw GOP and DEM districts in my sleep. FWIW, I work in politics professionally and have been using computers for redistricting for 12 years.
Let me tell you, gerrymanderring was a fact of life in Northern Ireland from 1923 to 1969, most famously in Derry where about 8,000 protestants regularly outvoted 12,000 catholics. That was one factor that led to the civil unrest that resulted in the troubles that brought the state to its knees and killed about 3000 people over 30 years. I'm not suggesting that that could happen in the US when word gets out about the rigging of elections, but if the sound of angry voices and marching feet take to the street, I'm outta here!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The beliefs of local Republicans and local Democrats changes between regions. They are basically deltas off the median. It nigh-on impossible to get elected in Texas with an anti-gun stance. Thus, the Democrats who do get elected are gun supporters. You get similar oddities in Republicans in Democratic areas.
Unfortunately, a Texas Democrat's Republican tendancies do not translate well to Congress, as the Democrats do not like them because they are Republicans, and the Republicans pressure them with supporting or opposing their next election (if not more blatant). Cross-overs do occasionally happen, but generally it's from the minority, where individuals get promises from the majority in exchange.
It's a democracy at work just like Franklin and Jefferson would have wanted. Um, sort-of.
On the other hand, the USA is still doing a lot better than other places are, in general, at least when it comes to corruption.
Entitlement programs that make it so kids have the skills/abilities to get decent employment, or policing programs to catch those kids that didn't get those skills and so are looking for any way they can to survive -- which may involve home invasion and violence?
Which is cheaper?
Paying taxes so the single mom is able to feed her kid, or paying taxes to arrest, try, sentence, and punish the same mom who started prostituting herself to do the same.. and now having the state take on her child as a ward as well?
Which is cheaper?
Paying an agency such as the EPA to investigate and stop environmental contamination, or paying to clean it up later -- well after the company doing it has gone out of business?
Which is cheaper?
Prevention or cure?
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Actually, I've thought about this problem before. If a computer can redraw districts to make them safe for a specific party, can't a computer also redraw districts to make them as inhomogenious as possible?
Ideally you'd want to draw districts based on a combination of geographic and logical divisions. My thinking is to take a grid, subdivide it, and mandate that you can't have more than 12 sides to any particular region (yes, I'm biased toward squares, and against circles.) If the census is using a grid-type system, use that. Anything that violates the 12 sides rule, or has any orientation that is more than 1.5 times the diameter of the region selected as a circle should be deemed illegal. Finally, each region has to roughly correspond to the ideal population size for that district, give or take 15%.
Last rule, if you travel from the center of mass of the selected region to any outlying portion of that region, and you cross the boundary of the selected region more than 3 times, that also is a no-no. (to prevent amoeba-like formations.) After every census, the computer randomly redraws everything according to these rules. If the politicians don't like it, tough luck.
Take the redistricting process out of the politicians, and give it to the cartographers, statisticians, and machines instead.
Now, a lot of this trouble could be avoided if, instead of drawing districts for EVERY congressional representative, we drew big districts where multiple representatives could be elected...
This is one of the worst problems in American politics, and underappreciated. The Democrats blatantly practiced it for many years; now that control has passed to the Republicans, and they take up the practice, the Democrats suddenly discover gerrymandering as the evil it is. Both sides should end the practice, but because the Republican legislators will now (like the Democrats before them) enjoy the luxury of choosing their voters, they will only (and justly) point out that the Democrats are sore losers. Thus no reform. In worst cases (like North Carolina) the two parties connive together for a comfortable modus vivendi.
FYI, this word came into being as the result :^)
of the behavior of a man named Gerry, who
pronounced his name as Gary (not Jerry).
The sad thing is, it would really easy to get census data into a format where a couple easy rules would create good geographical regions. For instance:
1) all districts must have X (X is state population/#districts) voters, +-5% (or some number, this rule actually already is used).
2) Divide the state into 1 mile by 1 mile squares, each district consists of neighboring squares, and the total boundary between all the districts must be as short as possible while fulfilling 1.
You'd probably end up with a bunch of basically square or circular districts.
Communication is only possible between equals
Give each politician a proxy for the number of first-place votes he or she receives in an at-large election. Small parties would have some representation, popular politicians would have more power than unpopular ones, and gerrymandering is removed completely.
Of course, that's now backwards and the Senate represents the country better thanks to these stupid redistricting plans. In the last general election, less than 30 of the 530 seats changed (IIRC), but no matter what the number was it was pathetic compared to the way it used to be. Many seats were unopposed. Districts since the last census have been drawn largly like this: the Democrats negotiated so that their candidates got strong "safe" districts with little to no opposition. In exchange, the Republicans got everything else, so congress won't change much untill after the 2010 census.
OK, so how do we fix this? The answer is to take the political parties out of it. Somewhere (Iowa?) a amendment or some such was passed so that when redistricting, the commite can only look at city boundries, population, voter turn out, and other such things to try to make the districts fair, they were NOT allowed to take political party registration and such into account. The result? In the last election almost every seat in that state was well contested and so the citizens there had a good democratic election working for them, while those of us in most of the country basically get force fed some candidate (who may be great, but may be terrible). What we need is to pass laws like this all over the country, so that none of these shenanigans go on.
As we all know the current process works REALLY well. Let's take Texas for example. In Texas, the Democrats didn't like the Republican redistricting (which from what I've heard was unfair, and I'm a Republican, FYI) so they FLED THE STATE just to keep it from getting passed. TWICE. If we fix this process, there would be nothing for them to complain about, because things would be fair (or at least many MANY times closer to fair than they are now).
Please, let's pass some reform!
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Um -- when I first heard the word "gerrymander" I think I was in junior high school. Was that sound I heard in the 7th grade the death-rattle of democracy?
Breakfast served all day!
Single Transferable Voting, aka Proportional Representation.
This simulataneously removes the problem of voters voting against their consciences for fear of wasting their vote. In the PR system, no votes are wasted. It has been used in Ireland and other European countries for quite some time now, and the constitution is designed to allow for coalition governments. Just about all of the smaller parties have been players in coalition governments at one time or another.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I was a supporter of term limits, in theory, until I moved to wonderfully wacky California. Here there are term limits for the State Legislature and guess what gets done. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.
It seems that terms limits had the unintended consequence that instead of "getting work done" the pols simply became gridlocked. Now instead of compromise, we just get a big "Stuff it up your A**" by both sides.
The issue is best highlighted by a couple of recent examples. Dems voted overwhelmingly for Drivers' Licenses for undocumented workers and repubs against. Arnold says he doesn't like the law and the Dems fold like a card house and repeal the law that was signed into law weeks earlier. On the other side, the Repubs were hell bent on "cutting the waste" to balance the budget and were appalled at the idea of floating a 10 billion dollar bond that would balance the budget on paper, but would end up costing billions more in future debt payments. Arnie boy comes to town and proposes an even larger bond sale, 15 BiLLION, and the repubs can't sign on fast enough, while the Dems are now unsure about passing such a huge debt on to future generations.
Now the point of those two examples is that these term limited pols flip-flopped like fish outta water when it suited their interests. Someone worried about their reelection might have considered the ramifications of making their previous stance so blatantly transparent. With term limits, you just do or oppose whatever the hell you want because you know it's not your neck on the chopping block if you screw up.
Before you condemn Republicans for redistricting Texas, consider why Texas sends more democrats to washington than republicans, when the state votes about 2/3s for republicans. 22-10 sounds about right for Texas.
people who don't F'ing vote.
Campaign finances, redistricting, gerrymandering and everything except outright fraud would be non issues if people would get off of their asses and go vote.
Sure, it's a complicated world and we all have other things to worry about, like feeding our families and paying our bills, but giving an hour or two twice per year isn't asking too much.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
How about defining a gerrymandering number? This is the length of the perimeter of the district divided by the length perimeter that is the smallest and encloses the same area as the district.
There is a website called www.arcadeshop.com and the guy who runs the thing restores classic games and sells parts. He's a pretty good guy and his shop is like walking into a time warp. Rows and rows of old classics....
-B
Democrats invented Gerrymandering. That's how they had such a huge stranglehold on the house for so long. Computers have been around much longer than the Republican party.
Basically, it's only since this past census that there's been a huge shift in Statewide Legislatures being taken from Democrats by Republicans. To the victors go the spoils.
Districts that Republicans are re-drawing were already Gerry Mandered.
Oh, now you go cryign crocodile tears...
As a toy to demonstrate how badly you can change the outcome of an election, I wrote a toy demo a few years ago which still seems to be up and running - you can try it out here It only implements simple population-based measures, but it does get the point over.
Spell checker (c) creative spelling inc. (aka my dyslexic brain)
They way it's done now, especially here in California, results in statehouses filled to the brim with extreme ideologues whose minds, in all honestly, have completely gone to seed. The folks running California really are some of the stupidest sacks of dog s*** that have ever held political office. I wouldn't hire any of those drooling, blithering fools to trim my freaking lawn. I wouldn't let them blow me if it was free.
People pick on Arnold, but at least he frigging accomplished something in his life. He was successful in business long before he was well known even in the bodybuilding world. Most of the twittering jackasses in the Legislature have never had real jobs, and their minds are utterly devoid of creativity and critical thought. I'm serious here... they dumber than a slag heap, and about as useful.
I just wonder if that loser Davis knows how many Latino votes he *lost* when he made fun of Arnold's accent. I know of six personally, and seeing as I only know about eight... Yeah, you were a real bright bulb on that one, Gray. One down, the rest of the Legislature to go.
--- Ban humanity.
California has open primaries. Your arguments were echoed by opponents of the open primary referendum, but to my knowledge the "intentional sabotage" fear was never borne out - most people still don't vote in primaries, and the party hardliners do a good enough job of electing extremist (and thusly the least palatable) candidates to represent them, without external influences to help.
Redistricting, especially that to give one party an advantage, is always subject to judicial review. This kind of stuff is old hat. Safe seats are a reality in most States anyway, and every once in a while a party gets frisky and tries to redistrict to their distinct advantage. The courts get involved, regulate the redistricting, and things seem to work out.
Most Americans have never imagined running elections any other way, but the book will introduce you to alternative methods of balloting, multi-round elections, and the idea that voting districts as we know them might be totally superfluous.
Link to the book on Amazon
In a system of proportional representation district size and shape does not affect the representation of the different parties. Each vote is mathematically worth exactly as much as any other.
So the problem is solved by just not existing...
Coming from such a country to the US, it's pretty bizarre how crappy and corrupt some of these things are done here.
But, as the submission says, Gerrymandering results in making almost all seats safe. So one elected, the politician will be reelected unless he act like Gary Condit and gets caught. And even that was a close race.
So it seems to me that it creates the exact opposite effect of what you complain about.
The whole point of gerrymandering is that it's blatant and still not illegal. That they use computers to accomplish it in this day is not even near surprising. What would one expect? A large map with little colored push-pins?
-bZj
.sig
No, partisan voting is the opiate of the masses, along with religion, and, uh, opium derivative pharmaceuticals. . .
Last year in my Computer Science Theory class on one of my homework assignments we had to write an algorithm for Optimal Gerrymandering. (Problem 2)
In that session, Republican did press their advantage to gerrymander Texas congressional districts, just as the Democrats had done every decade they were in charge of Texas. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, and to the victor goes the spoils. There are many things to dislike about gerrymandering, but the Supreme Court has ruled that it is prefectly legal and constitutional as long as its not done for the purpose of racial discrimination. Moreover, the new districts more accurately reflect the voting preferences of Texans as a whole.
Moreover, since when does a slanted piece by an unabashed liberal partisan complaining about the political opposition actually qualify as "stuff that matters"? Oh wait, this is Slashdot, and anything vaguely tech-related that bashes Bush or Republicans gets listed...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
If you had bothered to read through the whole thing, you would have found several examples of democrats doing the same exact thing, along with a non-partisan alternative painted in a positive light. Some people (like the author of this article) really do care about freedom and liberty, and not just partisan nonsense. The article is disparaging the system as a whole, of letting political parties draw voting districts. In this time leading up to the Supreme Court hearing on the matter, it is crucial to make the public aware of the crap these people are pulling (at the expense of your and my vote's relevance). Hopefully, the media attention will be significant enough to make the Supreme Court feel that the public is feeling cheated by the status quo, and that they will do something about it. (insert deity or equivalent all-knowing entity here) only knows, no one else can tackle this issue in the US government. The two-party system in the US is a sham, robbing everyone of the clarity to see the big picture, and the actual result of their votes, along with the character of the people they're voting for. Vote for people because they're good people who you trust to make wise decisions (at least moreso than their opponents), not because they're towing the party line.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
The citizens are unable to analyse the cost of each policy proposal in the depth that a government can. In addition, as conflicting proposals may be offered to the citizens simultaneously, the voters have the tricky task of second-guessing which expenditures will pass. For example: I like initiative A, but B (which is horribly expensive) will probably pass. I don't want A to pass if B does. How do I vote?
Introducing complex voting systems to allay this issue will disenfranchise those without time to work out their preferences, and lead to less participation.
Even more problematically, CA's constitution makes repeal of such initiatives, e.g. in times of economic crisis, extremely tricky.
To reiterate: giving the cognitive load of government to part-timers (the public) does not work.
P.S. Source: The Economist's coverage of CA gubernatorial campaign.
In some ways, gerrymandered districts are fair. You have to ask, "what is the point of districts?"
Well, representatives are assigned to districts. Specifically, a representative ought to represent the district. That means that the district ought to be representable by a representative. Now, take it as given that a representative should not have multiple personality disorder. He can only represent the district as a unit if the district is a unit. Which means that the district needs to be composed of like-minded people. If this is the case, than the representative will be able to accurately represent his district.
Since the district ought to be composed of like-minded people -- ideally, political party can be used as an indicator of this, though we'd need more parties to work with -- the districts ought to be gerrymandered to provide this.
Any flaws in my logic?
Of course, the whole "entrenched ideologies" thing is no good, and that threat to stability might override the fulfillment of the purpose of districts.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
The problem is, as you point out, that it circumvents the political process. You say that when the power balance shifts it will swing back. But the point of it is to make it very hard for the power balance to shift, even if most of the electorate wants it.
It is fair between the parties in a sense, but democracy is not for the parties, it's for the voters, and they're the ones getting screwed, no matter who is doing the screwing for the moment.
Of course, today's Republicans have two advantages denied earlier Democrats: 1. Software that lets them redistrict more cleverly and 2. Black eagerness to elect people of their own color. A 'win' for Democrats on this issue is likely to be a loss for blacks.
If we'd like to depoliticize this, we could turn the entire process over to computers. They could be instructed to start at a specific corner of the state and move back and forth, assigning districts solely by voter registration, ignoring everything else. Or perhaps to make life easier for us humans, they could take into account political boundaries (like city limits or zip codes) but ignore the sorts of things politicians use in gerrymandering.
Whether that would be an improvement or not is another matter. Creating more balanced districts, something the writer seems to advocate, will make for more tightly contested elections. But the 'winner take all' character of elections means that a more evenly divided district will have MORE voters upset that the other side won (barely). That, in turn, could polarize politics. For a telling example, look at how our close 2000 Presidential election sent so many Democrats over the edge.
So basically this 'commission' is made up of deep, deep insiders heavily vested in government and bureacracy.
The fact that no boundary disputes have been referred to a court for resolution makes it sound even more like it's a closed up deal.
Yes, as a Californian, I know we do. I opposed it, voted against it and would vote to remove it. Nobody except for members of a party should have a say in who any party runs. That goes for all parties, not only whatever one (if any) I'm registered with.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
If I am not mistaken, this article is about software enabling gerrymandering. Given that Republicans run things at the moment, it is forgivable to wonder if bashing a technology is somehow synonymous with bashing a party.
Given many other stories about serious problems with our electoral system on many, many levels, I think this view is wrong, but it is reasonable to disagree. I can see a variety of responses. Some of them I don't like. I advocate a strong, fair, transparent system. both for elections and electoral groups. (why should Catholics tell me which district to pray in?)
But bitching about the story for the content of the comments the stories attract is just missing the point.
[Bill O'Really]
I forget what 8 was for.
modded this fool up? Whoever wrote this seems to entirely miss the points in previous posts. Gerrymandering is about mixing up the population to get an optimal result. Therefore any shuffling of the population where political views of said populations are taken into account (as suggested above) is gerrymandering.... unless this is shuffling to reverse previous gerrymandering but then we're on very dodgy ground.
Not only does the parent post miss the point, they are abusive with it. Sad to see abusive posts modded up really.
karma karma karma karma karma chameleon, you come and go, you come and go.
Arrr!
Oh, the idea isn't intentional sabotage. It is, "if the only person who can win in this district is a republican, then I want a chance to choose which republican runs."
The article in the New Yorker points out that in a district that's been gerrymandered, the party for whom that district has been gerrymandered always wins the election, so the real election is the primary, not the general election. So really only about 1/6 of the voters in the district actually choose, and they're the most polarized voters.
So the point is, if your district has been gerrymandered, you should register as a member of the party for which the district has been gerrymandered, so that you get to be one of the 1/6th that vote. If everybody did this, the primary would be the general election, and the candidate would be accountable to the voters despite the gerrymandering.
Term limits make politicians less responsive to people's needs, not more. They will make for more corruption and graft, not less. If a congressman is only going to be around for a couple of terms, whats going to stop him for selling you out for some corporation in exchange for kickbacks or the promise of a cushy job for a vote on key legislation? If a congressional politician can't make a career out of it, he'll constantly be looking for their next career. What's going to get him another career: pleasing voters or pleasing corporations who can actually give him a job after he's out of office?
And term limits wont do a damn thing to fix the problem of gerrymandering. The reason all these seats are unchallenged is because there is a concentration of voters of one party or another in those districts. All term limits will do is you'll have different people holding these seats, but they'll still be of the same party, the partisanship will be just as bad and congressional representation will be just as out of touch with the actual population as it is now.
Finally, term limits restrict your choice to vote for whomever you want to. Why would anyone want to limit their own right to vote, the bedrock of any democracy or republic?
Do you really see that happening? I'm not sure with the country as viciously polarized as it is that either side would be able to come up enough voters to really change anything. The next question is would it matter? The dems are just as dirty in my book, one of the reasons the Democratic candidates are strangely quiet about corruption in elected government.
It's constantly surprising how many people back Bush, people who aren't in the top 25% income bracket. Maybe Bush and the neo-cons (sounds like a rock band) are what this country really deserves. When our political process is little more than two scorpions in a bottle, does it really matter which one is on top?
Anybody here ever lived in New Zealand? What's it like?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
They covered some of the why's, how all parties do it when they have the control of the state legislatures to do so, and a bit about how better demographic and mapping technology helps make the process easier technically. Discussed some of the state court cases trying to oppose particularly gerrymandered redistricting plans (colorado, texas, etc).
Also discussed how the one-person, one-vote supreme court decisions directly led states away from districts generally based on towns, cities, county lines, etc, and to base them more closely on actual population distribution within the state, and giving more opportunity for gerrymandering as a result.
The date of the show was Thursday, December 4, 2003. It should be up on the WAMU.org site soon. Find it under the Diane Rehm show archives. (by date or titled "Congressional Redistricting")
In places where voter initiatives are available (like trend-setting [like-it-or-not] California) this would make an excellent ballot initiative.
Proposition N: Should voting districts be defined by algorithm X (describe) or by cheating polititicans to furthor their own desires.
I think it might pass...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
"making many seats in the House of Representatives 'safe seats' which effectively gives incumbents a permanent seat."
There's a very simple solution here. Congress set an arbitrary size for the House of Representatives in 1910. Four more states and 200,000,000 more people, we're still stuck with 435 (nowhere near the current costitutional limit of 9,380).
Voting districts too polarized? House seats too stable? Break them into smaller chunks. It's easier to polarize large groups of voters than smaller groups, and smaller groups tend to be more dynamic (meaning more congresscritter turn-over for the district). This also has the added benefit of lowering campaign costs (fewer voters to reach).
I'm not saying we should jump straight to 10,000, but there seems to be an argument for a cube-root relation, and 655 seem to be as good a number as any.
According to this page at the National Conference of State Legislatures, twelve U.S. States do their legistlative redistricting by independent commissions, with Iowa as a wildcard. And six U.S. States do their congressional redistricting via independent commissions.
I'd never thought of that. Maybe there's hope for us yet.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Ummm, we've got that here in Iowa too. Why take a different countries example to use when you've got one in our own United States that works?
/.ers that we use GIS systems to re-draw the districts when it's time to.
It would probably even be interesting to
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
So many complaints about how gerrymandering distorts the opinion of the people as a whole...since when was democracy about the people anyway?
I've heard that the word democracy comes from Greek: -Cracy means rule by and demo- comes from demos, which obviously must mean demons. Therefore, democracy is rule by the demons. I think it's only reasonable to expect war, lies, power struggles, cover-ups for cozy relationships between government and business, and a general ignorance for what the people what their government to be when their government is organized as rule by the demons!
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
This is the same reason why support for the Florida recounts was almost precisely divided along party lines. It's hardly a coincidence that virtualy all Democrats believed that "hand recounts are the only way to be sure," while virtually all Republicans believed that "ballot tampering/theft and inconsistent counting of hanging/pregnant chads makes the hand recount actually less accurate, or at least more subjective, than the original machine tabulation." People believe what will get their canidates into power.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
But there is another problem with complaints about gerrymandering that are preachy about centrism. Suppose that the electorate REALLY IS BECOMING POLARIZED. An adequate system of representation is going to reflect that. At some point representatives will not be doing their job if they view their job only as compromise. This is especially the case if representatives are reacting to what their constituents see as "deontological" moral absolutes: take for example the death penalty, or on the right, abortion. Arguably, its unjustifiable moral violence to force compromise on people who have these views BEFORE they come into the political public sphere. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH HAVING CONSERVATIVE AND LIBERAL DISTRICTS. It is the representational system doing its job.
It is also too easy to assume that gerrymandering is unfair without looking at consequences for minorities that are organized out of our political system. Too many commentators on redistricting assume that there are easy answers to complicated questions. Take for example the assumption that a district should be "compact" -- approximating a circle. In practical terms this means drawing disctrict lines with census tracts rather than their nested blocks. To take an "infamous district" as an example (that other threads on this topic have commented on abstratcly but NOT CONCRETELY): What is the correct shape for a district that follows a freeway corridor, and which has a "community of interest" very different from the other surrounding communities through which it runs? An ideological commitment to compact districts merely results in the underrepresentation of a potentially large and underrepresented segment of the population. And even if gerrymandering does not have such a concrete basis in geographic features, what shape is a community of interest? Round is fair is a baseless axiom. In order to say something is unfair you need a baseline. If you take a community that normally elects a black democrat to represent it, because that is what represents the community, arguing that the line should be redrawn so that a centrist white guy is elected seems unfair to me.
Finally, it's important to challenge the naive assumption that computing makes a huge difference in gerrymandering as a political technique for redistricters. In my experience, it means that many other groups than the redistricters have access to quick calculations about a potential plan. Redistricteres have always done, and will always do the math. But its a complicated optimization problem. If you make your majorities too thin, you increase the risk that you will lose the district: there are some pretty great examples. This has lead some really smart people to argue that the "problem" of excessive redistricting is in practice self negating.
The Facist Republicans are EVIL for gaming the system at every opportunity as are the the Stalinist Democrats for doing the same whenever they can. But you are correct when you observe that the Republicans are winning just now.
The current "crisis" in gerrymandering highlights the power of one of the forgotten units of government... namely the State legislature(s). Due to the national reach of the American Media, people's perception of the importance of State Government has declined. For most state offices (other than Governor usually), people tend to vote a party line. God forbid they learn about the candidates and their positions! God forbid they read a newspaper! If Peter Jennings or Bill O'Reilly doesn't cover it, it isn't important.
Personally, I attribute the whole problem to the dumbing down of America America. The current lowest common denominator is the pre-digested coverage on the 24-hr news channels. Sad, isn't it?
Blame the Republicans or the Democrats if you lack imagination. Blame yourself if you don't know the same of your state representative. Blame your neighbors if they didn't vote on the '02 elections because "they don't matter". Blame your friends who aren't even registered to vote.
Or just Blame Canada.
Correction to my post....
The left wing is generally considered pro-conscription. So ignore that point. My mistake... I think you'll see it work out that way too. The Democrats will start conscripting people if they attack Iran or Syria while the Republicans probably won't (unless they are desperate)...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
The people you elect are elected to represent your best interests. To that effect, they may vote for things you (or the majority of people) don't like, but they are not there to represent your opinion, they're there to do what they think is best for the people they represent.
While that is true, the people is the ultimate judge of what is "to the best" of themselves, through voting.
It's fair enough that the people elect a set of representatives, instead of referendums, because there's simply no way millions upon millions of people could spend the time required to make informed decisions on the thousands of issues raised each year. To that end, they should also be allowed to vote different than the popular opinion, since they can (hopefully) make informed decisions.
I just feel that at some point, politicians go overboard and start treating their voters as incapable of understanding, as if they were children. "We're doing what's good for you. Don't argue with us or try to make us explain why. If you disagree, you're the one that is wrong. We know the best, just trust us. Vote for us."
Somewhere down along that line it ceases to be a democracy, and becomes something like a modern aristocracy, only with career politicans instead of nobles. Where voting becomes nothing more than the illusion of democracy, while the people in power do as they please. Partcularly if you can buy more votes through a PR budget of campaign contribution money than from voters actually paying attention to what they do.
I'd love to see more direct referendums. While it might also lead to "hi-jacked" elections by special interest groups, it'd also lend a lot more personal responsibility to voters. One thing is voting for a party, they're a very complex group. But if you didn't vote on the law, then you really have no excuse for complaining.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Better yet, since members of the legislative assembly of the Australian Capital Territory are chosen using Hare-Clark, the ACT electoral commssion has contracted a company to build free software electronic voting and counting systems to conduct elections using the method.
PR systems like Hare-Clark are somewhat difficult to count by hand, and the most accurate algorithms, such as Meek's Method must be done by computer.
Incidentally, complexity is one of the major problems facing adoption of proportional representation schemes... the mechanics are somewhat difficult to explain to nontechnical voters, and thus debates on the issue lend themselves easily to spin and misrepresentation.
(The other major issue, of course, being that PR tends to threaten established politicians and other elites... here is an interesting site, for instance, that discusses the impact of PR in New York after communists and blacks were elected using the method back in the 1940s).
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
The article mentions that software (and it implies expensive - oooh $4000/seat!) is being used to draw up the districts.
So what if the software drew up the districts according to the specs without human intervention - instead of enabling the corrupt pols to data mine and draw up the districts according to their biases.
Of course the data-gathering process would need to be looked at.
Hell you could even GPL it or BSD it - suit yourself.
It has gone the other way in the past. In 1960, the Democratic margin of victory in Illinois was smaller than the amount of vote fraud that went on in Chicago. Nixon chose to concede the election rather than put the country through a constitutional crisis -- perhaps the only decent thing he ever did in his public career.
You're right, though. The New York Times sponsored a post-election recount of the paper ballots (yay paper ballots). Theie study came out with the result that the NY Times didn't want to see, so they barely mentioned that their study had finished, and that, according to their count, Bush got more votes.
A pox on both their houses.
Seems that not long ago, this same gang of thugs was pushing term limits.
Funny what happens when the shoe gets on the other foot.
Keep in mind, under a parlimentary system you have a few advantages, since most of the incentives for gerrymandering simply don't exist.
Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't your MPs simply assigned to districts proportionally based on the nationwide vote tally? The incentives for "packing," "cracking," and "kidnapping" simply don't exist for you guys. From the article:
The Republicans in Harrisburg used venerable techniques in redistricting, like "packing," "cracking," and "kidnapping." Packing concentrates one group's voters in the fewest possible districts, so they cannot influence the outcome of races in others; cracking divides a group's voters into other districts, where they will be ineffective minorities; and kidnapping places two incumbents from the same party in the same district.
Once again, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't see any major reason why gerrymandering would be much a problem for you guys.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
Actually, you have it completely backwards.
In circles that discuss these things, "delegate democracy" refers to a sort of liquid, or proxy, democracy where people at the community level get together in town halls to decide issues... they send a delegate to the legislature, much like a nation sends an ambassador to the United Nations, to represent their interests. The delegate isn't "elected" in the traditional sense, since he's selected directly by the citizens voting in town hall, and he's immediately recallable for any reason whatsoever... what the delegate says, meanwhile, is not binding per se -- he requires the direction and continuing support of the town hall that selected him.
A representative democracy is what exists in the United States or in the parliamentary democracies arising out of the Westminster Statutes... in representative democracy, people in general election select a supposed representative -- whose job is ostensibly the same as the delegate's -- but, in reality, that representative needn't consider anyone's opinion but his own while he sits in office. In few places is an incumbent representative recallable, and in even fewer do representatives hold regular, binding town halls.
The terms could be easily reversed, as you have, but in actual usage "representative democracy" refers to the sort of electoral system prevalent in the States.
For those of you who didnt read the whole thing, I recommend you do. I thought I had a pretty good grasp on Gerrymandering, but this article brought up some ver good points and issues. Very well done.
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Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
I don't want to defend the practice of Gerrymandering, nor continuous redistricting BUT, this is definitely a case of "turnaround is fair play". The Republicans especcially in Texas have already had "the boot on the other foot" and this is payback time.
The current districts are a clear cut case of gerrymandering. In this last election 57% of Texas voters voted to send a Republican to the House of Representatives but the Democrats got the majority of Texas seats (17 out of 32) in the house. The current Democratic gerrymander gives the Democrats 3-4 seats beyond what would be "fair" by the popular vote. In the early '90's when the current districts were first put in place the Democrats managed to capture 70% of the house seats with only 1/2 of the vote. Micheal Barrone the author of the "American Political Almanac" called it ""The most partisan redistricting in the '90 cycle in the nation" in the Almanac he called it "the shrewdest gerrymander". To keep the post on-topic the Democratic gerrymander was implementied using a computer program, yet strangely the New Yorker didn't find that as newsworthy at the time. Here is a relevent quote from a journalism students story (apparently the Dems screwing the Reps doesn't attract as much interest in the media) on using computers to gerrymander Texas: A scrupulously fair redistricting would give the Republicans 3-4 additional seats. The Republicans to be fair are engaging in their own bit of gerrymandering to "unfairly" pick up an additional 2-3 extra seats to give them a total pick-up of 6-7.
It's worth noting that those 2-3 extra seats aren't quite as aggressive as what the Democrats achieved throughout the 90's. In the 90's however, there was no comparable outcry from outraged defenders of representative democracy. Republican complaints didn't get any traction in the media. Most likely this is a case of the Republicans not playing the game as well as the Democrats - they fought the gerrymander but didn't go the the extra-ordinary lengths that the Dems did in this round. Perhaps they didn't think that the press would be as kind to them.
If there were fewer districts, gerrymandering would be more difficult, and as it would affect a greater percentage of the population, it would be harder to pull off.
..., x reps also wouldn't have any gerrymandering, a welcome change from what happens now.
I'm not suggesting that we reduce the number of members of Congress. Rather, what if a district could elect x representatives, where x <= 5. Then, you have instant runoff elections, choosing x representatives. If a super-district is 60% Pub and 40% Dem, than it's likely that there'd be 3 Pubs and 2 Dems -- not the current 4 vs 1 scenario.
Gerrymandering would be harder because many states couldn't do it at all (they'd have a single super-district), medium sized states (6 - 10 congress critters) would have a "single line" to draw, large states (11 - 15 or so) would have a total of three districts, and CA/TX/OH/MI/FL/PA/NY/IL would still have to deal with gerrymandering, but perhaps to a lesser extent.
As a side bar, this would also result in less incumbancy, and more viable and electible third party candidates.
Some notes:
* Roughly, I'd guess a good value for x is 5... but this number is certainly open for discussion.
* Obviously if a state only has 1 rep (the Dakotas, Wyoming, etc) than the super-district is the same as their current district, but there is no district lines to be drawn there anyway because the entire state is the district (or super-district).
* States with 2, 3,
* Without trying to gerrymander, state legislatures could get more work done. The courts, too!
* Would this require a US Constitutional change, or just a change in a state constitution? IANACS (Constitutional Scholar), so I have no idea.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Parent is only summarizing the article, not providing any new information.
You miss out one little detail, the judge had thrown out the map previously because it flunked the civil rights issue. So much for your 'less biased sources'.
No, where did you get that idea? The court created the current district map (essentially a continuation of the previous map) because the legislature was deadlocked and couldn't didn't come up with one. You really might consider finding less biased sources. I'd suggest looking at regional papers - they are occasionally biased but are less likely to get the story so wrong as partisan opinion journals or even national papers.
That is not the result of gerrymandering, it is the result of incumbency. Texas has been Democratic for decades.
Wrong again, In the 1990 redistricting the Democrats who still had the majority in the state house but were seeing the state as a whole trending Republican. So they gerrymandered the districts to give them 70% of the house seats with only 50% of the popular vote, and most recently The only incumbency that helped them was the imcumbent Democratic state legislators doing the redistricting (with the aid of a computer program, I might add). When the state was solidly (conservative) Democrat such aggressive gerrymandering wasn't necessary, they resorted to it as the populace became increasingly Republican.
DeLay and cronies are upset that voters do not want to trade their existing democrats in for republicans to do his bidding.
Actually the voters DID vote to trade democrats for republicans - as I said 57% of the vote went Republican. It's just that the majority sentiment was packed into a small number of overwhelmingly Republican districts while the minority sentiment was spread out the get relatively thin majorities among all the rest. The result, despite losing the congressional vote by a margin that would usually be considered a landslide (14% points down!) the Democrats got MORE of the seats (17 out of 32). That is a gerrymander no matter how you justify it.
Given the corrupt way the bill was forced through - changing the rules to fit the deed there is no moral reason the courts should defer to the legislature on this one.
Exactly what "rules" have been changed? The "rules" say that the STATE not the federal courts has the responsibility to draw electoral lines. If the courts invalidate such lines for some good cause (such as a deadlocked legislature that can't get it done on time) that does not change the RULE that it is the states responsibility. Lines drawn by courts have been redrawn by state legislatures on off years in the past (in California in 1984 for example). Court drawn lines have often changed *multiple* times over the course of a decade. It's hard to see how a body given only general oversight responsibilities (the federal courts) can have complete freedom to redraw districts as it will multiple times while the body EXPLICITY given that responsiblity has it completely taken out of their hands.
The courts should only step in when something goes very clearly wrong. Even when it does when the proper constitutionally mandated body comes back and does it's job right the court should defer to that proper body rather than usurp responsibilities given to others.
As far as I can see the only "rule" changed was the rule that Republican voters should be obligated to send Democratic politicians to Washington. I can understand why Democrats liked that "rule" but I don't think it should stand up in court.
Me thinks that is how the Republicians have taken control of everything. Isn't this tin foil hat neet!
I have done that - voting Republican - so I can have some say during the Primary cycle about who will represent me in an overwhelmingly Republican district, but it hasn't worked for me.
If I vote for the candidate I find least objectionable, he loses, and the psycho gets the office. If I vote for the psycho, figuring, "Surely everyone can see this man is not fit for holding the office of dogcatcher, let alone Governor," he wins anyway. It's very demoralizing, I have to say.
If so-called victimless crimes are legalized, do you want to see bordellos in shopping centers next to Hair Cuttery? More importantly, do you -- as a result of making it part of the U.S. Constitution -- wish to prohibit U.S. states from regulating such behavior? Isn't that just putting more control into Washington, and isn't that tyranny of a different sort? See my blog article from two days ago, Fed has assumed so much power, Virginia to now make pretend laws.
Oh, well, then it's okay.
Screw assigning blame. No matter which side is doing it, it's bullshit.
And might makes right.
A cliche isn't an argument.
Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right. The Supreme Couty ruled that slavery was legal at one point. Should previous generations simply have shrugged and said, "Hey, the Supreme Court says it's legal, I guess I can't complain"? If something is truly wrong you need to stand up against, even if it's legal.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
It wouldn't work unless everybody did it. I think it would take a concerted effort to convince people to register strategically, rather than registering with the party they dislike the least (I don't think many people register with parties they actually *like*, unfortunately).
...Politicians choose YOU!
I think a simple fix would be to require districts to have no more than 4 borders. "Contiguous" means nothing.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Go down the list of states from highest population to lowest, alternating D and R between them. Every 5 years, switch.
The effect will be still gerrymandered districts, but will give a lot more incentive to be centrist, sine you won't know who your constituency around your house will be in 5 years.
Your link for support to MediaResearch.org. This is the same media research.org that has the slogan:
And I'm supposed to trust their opinion as more unbiased than the person their slandering? How about some non-partisan review?-- mark
BTW, a brief google search found media bias watchdog groups of the left and of the right. Anyone know a media watchdog group that is ostensibly non-partisan?
Have you forgotten Westminster City Council? Dame Shirley Porter is still refusing to repay a penny of the 30 million or so she spent evicting poor people from marginal wards [Hansard (page down if you find juicy scandals more entertaining than the Fishery Limits amendment they were supposed to be debating)]. Not that that was the Electoral Commission's doing, mind you.
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
They are unlikely to remove the systems they used to get in.
"The Republican party is very anxious to prevent people hearing about what they did in Florida"
The Republicans are very proud of what they did in Florida, just like they are proud of Tennessee and other Red States: They were able to convince more people in these states to vote for the Republican candidate. There is nothing scandalous about being more popular and geting more votes as a result. That is how it is supposed to work.
"If they learned that the GOP was fixing the vote long"
That is a false claim. These are lies made up by sore losers that require the existence of a vast right-wing conspiracy which contained the left-wing Democratic officials involved with cleaning felons off the list, counting in Democratic counties, and performing other tasks that the nutjub theories claim are part of a GOP effort to rig the election.
It is time to get over it and move on. Gore lost the election because he did not get enough votes in enough states. Jimmy Carter lost the exact same way Gore did. So did Dukakis and Dole. Yet, you didn't see lying and whining from people in their camp who refused to accept the facts.
Yes, it is democracy. Sometimes your guy WILL lose even if you really hate his opponent REAL BAD.
Just like the solution of two children wanting a leftover piece of pie - one party makes the cuts, and the other party picks what piece they want. Just add a mediating party to ensure accurate measurement of percentage on each piece. Flip which is the cutting/choosing party each time played. Neither party can complain about their piece being too small and the other too large.
Got anything more difficult to discuss...?