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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.
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.
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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.
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.
...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.
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
What's wrong with that?...
Let me just throw out a quick observation. The fact that gerrymandering leads to "safe" districts means that more ideologically extreme candidates are viable -- a solidly democratic district is more likely to vote for an extreme liberal and a solidly republican district is more likely to vote for an extreme conservative. This leads to ideological gridlock -- We fill our legislatures with members less wiling to compromise on issues and the swings from left to right and back again grow sharper and sharper. Not really representative of the people's will. And not exactly a formula for long-term stability. THAT would be one potential objection. This really is a problem once you think about it.
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
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.