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.

Comments

A comprehensive discussion of gerrymandering...

[tcopeland]

...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.

Re:A comprehensive discussion of gerrymandering...

[pizzaman100]

One good way to minimize gerrymandering is to create compact districts. This is a requirement that districts be roughly uniform in shape (like a hexagon or circle). This doesn't prevent all gerrymandering, but makes it much more difficult. Typically gerrymandered districst are easy to spot, because they come in odd shapes.

Independent electoral commission

[Stephen]

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.

Re:Independent electoral commission

[Stephen]

The problem is that these commissions are made up of people who are inevitably partisan, so what you end up with is only the illusion of independence, when in fact the party with the most adherents on the commission effectively draws the district boundaries to the benefit of its members

This is an argument I've heard before from Americans, but all I can say is, it's really not like that.

Maybe it's that we don't assume that everyone is partisan. We have a long tradition of an independent civil service, which pretty much works most of the time. The members of the Electoral Commission are doing it as a career, they're not elected, or appointed by politicians. Keeping their jobs relies on them being non-partisan -- if they were elected or appointed they would have an incentive to be partisan.

The Boundary Committee publishes draft proposals and consults widely before finalising them. Of course, political parties try and persuade it to draw the districts one way or another, but they seem to be immune to that sort of pressure. They base their decisions purely on which are the natural clumps into which the population falls.

I don't hear people suggesting that the committee is biased. If this were widely believed, there would be an enormous scandal. The idea that there was any partisanship in the drawing of boundaries would in our eyes completely undermine the integrity of the election.

By the way, here are their web pages: Electoral Commission, Boundary Committee

Re:Independent electoral commission

[mmcdouga]

This is an argument I've heard before from Americans, but all I can say is, it's really not like that.

Maybe it's that we don't assume that everyone is partisan.

I'm from Canada (where we also have non-partisan electoral commissions) and I live in the US (where everything is partisan). In my experience both sides are right. In America people are born and bred thinking that everyone is partisan and everyone actually is partisan. In Canada, where people are born and bred thinking civil servants should be non-partisan, there are actually non-partisan civil servants.

It seems like Canada and the US each have a system that's suited to their respective culture. I think it will take a change in culture for the US to adopt the Canadian system (or vice-versa).

Re:The Perfect Government?

[crimethinker]

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?

Taxes.

The unproductive majority will claim that the wealthier minority must pay for all the social programs. Social programs, are, of course, not in conflict with your proposed amendment, because they aren't trying to control anyone's behaviour (other than "donations" to those programs by the wealthy minority).

Until the government restricts itself, or is restricted, to the specific powers granted it by We The People via the Constitution, we will always have a problem of tyranny - tyranny of the majority, tyranny of the lobbyists, or tyranny of one of the two major parties.

-paul

Re:Hmm

[Zeinfeld]

Would have been nice to define a not-often-used word in the article so we all don't have to dig...

The term comes from an election (in Chicago?) where the mayor (Gerry) came up with a set of fixed boundaries, one of which was in the shape of a salamander (lizard). Hence gerymander.

Any experienced pol will tall you that this type of trickery has a much bigger impact on an election than outright fixing of the polls. The way to cheat is by fixing the rules and by keeping opposing voters from the polls. During seggregation that is exactly how they stopped black people voting in Missisippi, any black man who dared to vote was liable to be lynched. The KKK and the police would man roadblocks to keep blacks from the polls and then there were the litteracy tests.

One of the big impacts on the Florida outcome was the state law that prohibits someone who has ever been convicted of a fellony from ever voting. This is another holdover from seggragation, litteracy tests were struck down but not felony disenfranchisement even though the intent (and effect) was largely the same - disproportionately disenfranchise black voters.

Click on my sig and you will see an article by a UK journalist who is one of the few who reported on this aspect of the Florida fix at the time the fix was in.

The answer BTW is not to try to fix the system to make it harder to gerrymander, change the electoral system to Single Transferable Vote and multi-member constituencies. That way you also create a way for the minor parties to be represented. With the increasing corruption of the Republican party Democrats should seriously consider this even if only as a self-interested move.

Regardless, there is a better way to get Tom DeLay and King George out of office. Get so many voters to the polls to vote against them that it does not matter how they try to rig the vote, they fail.