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Gerrymandering Using Census Clustering And GIS
dpplgngr writes "According to this BBC article, Map redrawing angers U.S. Democrats, Republicans in Texas are making use of Census data and mapping software to redraw districts, signficantly altering the election process, and resulting in the lowest overturn of incumbents in history."
Although it can be done a lot more precisely with this technology, this has been going on since the 1800's. There's really nothing new about it, other than the Republicans' rabid desire to have 100% control of Texas. :)
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Gerrymandering is an old, old game. There's already a solution for it; computer models exist that can generate maps that are fair. But with all the yelling the Democrats are doing right now, they'd never consider adopting a map-based system because then they'd lose the opportunity to gerrymander next time.
I think one very effective way to reduce the effects of gerrymandering, and other seeming corruption, is an increase in the size of representatives in the House, which was locked at 433 in 1911 (with provisions for the allowance of representatives for New Mexico and Arizona, when they became states). With the admittance of Alaska and Hawaii, it was temporarily raised to 467. After the 1960 census, it dropped to 435 again.
If the 2000 census is correct, we have around 294 million people in the United States. This makes for a ratio of one representative : 675,862 constituents. In 1910, the ratio was about 1 : 200,000.
I don't foresee the population of the United States coming down any time soon, which is all the reason you need to see that this issue is only becoming more important, not less -- having a veritable Senator for your district who cannot be voted out and is distant from your needs breeds apathy and alienation.
While many people I've talked to think that the number of representatives is fixed by the Constitution, it isn't -- it was fixed by Congress, and Congress can unfix it as well.
Observe what Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution has to say on the subject:
"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three."
So apparently, they thought 30,000 : 1 was a bit of a low ratio to be sensible. By that count, we'd have 9,800 representatives. But having only 1,200 reps would mean having a ratio of 1 : 245,000; more than halfing the current 1 : almost 700,000 ratio.
There are obviously logistical problems, like voting, space, offices, and so on. Also, it would significantly limit the amount of power reps currently have, which I can see as a good thing and a bad thing. But in a day where it seems nobody doesn't have a lawyer, why would it be so crazy to think that everyone should know their representative?
New map shows that Canada really is part of the United States!
:)
Okay, off to RTFA now, eh?
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
Gerrymandering isn't the only way incumbents stay in power. Campaign finance reform also allows them to stay in power. This is because of the drive to keep money out of politics just further reinforces the edge that incumbents have finacially.
It takes money to win unfortunately, and if you restrict the ability to raise money, you impede the ability for a challenge to run a competitive campaign.
If you are concerned about low turnover in the US house, gerrymandering or increasing the number of representatives is not the place to be looking. These are non-issues. Allow donors to give as much money to a candidate as they desire. Then the campaign will be more competitive.
-Brent
Never mind the Democratic Gerrymanders in Georgia that are ridiculous, or any of the other dozens or hundreds of times that both parties have controlled redistricting to their own benefit.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
The BBC is talking about this as if this were the Republicans in Texas coming out of the blue and just turning this on the Democrats. What a load of shit.
a nual/tx.htm
For those of you who don't remember, or don't care, Texas was a Democrat state a rather short period of time ago (about 20 years). Most of the uproar is from the Republicans trying to reverse the grossly partisan gerrymandering that took place just a little while ago to keep the Republicans from coming to power.
The Texas Constitution requires new boundaries to be drawn every 10 years. In 1991, the last redistricting, both the Senate and the House were strongly controlled by Democrats ( 77% in the Senate and 62 % in the House). http://www.fairvote.org/redistricting/reports/rem
That explains very well with maps what exactly happened in 1991, and even further back.
Take my area for example. US District 21 extends from San Antonio all the way to El Paso, making it one of the largest districts in Texas. This was created to make a very strong Republican District so that the rest of the districts in the area could feed off of the Democrats.
Even though the Bexar County Area is about 65% Republican, our representation in the state legislature is 70% Democrat. And one of those 3 Republicans is a moderate.
Another interesting fact is that while it is illegal to redistrict based on race, it is perfectly legal to do it based on Political Parties.
If the number of reps increased, we'd have to rename "pork" to "beef" or "elephant." It's a problem when you have too many cooks, because it spoils the pot. An increase in the numbers would decrease the bill-making efficiency.
Then again, maybe slowing down congress is just what this country needs. We already have too many federal laws.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
What, require candidates to weigh a minimum of like, 350 lbs?
On a more serious note, why haven't there been any discussions focusing on the past two debates? Meanwhile, there has been a lot of discussion regarding independent candidates whose chances of being elected are statistically indistinguishable from zero.
In my opinion, the reality of the situation is that either a democrat or a republican is going to be running things the next four years. Given their differences on issues like taxation, the economy, gay marriage, abortion, and foreign policy, which one we get stuck with is going to have a huge influence on the society we live in. And let's not hear that uninformed "they're all the same" nonsense. In the second debate, they came down on different sides of virtually every single question, with the exception of the draft.
A lot of people are annoyed having politics in a tech forum, but as I see it the tech community cannot (and should not) live independently of the larger society (yes, even those of us who are stuck behind a keyboard so much the word "society" sounds oddly unfamiliar). Maybe it would be worth starting up some discussions on how the choices facing us may affect that community?
It's interesting to note that the only one of the first twelve constitutional amendments proposed by the first Congress that has not (yet) been ratified was a mechanism for automatically increasing the size of the House with the census. It was still linear so even that would prove to be unworkable today, but it's interesting that it's quite possibly the first outright alteration (as opposed to an addition) of the constitution proposed and passed by Congress.
There are arguments for a cube root formula here and there that sounds reasonable, but I don't see it happening any time soon, what with the House of Representatives becoming a career often spanning decades (why bother with the biennial elections at that point?). It would reduce the power and influence of individual members of Congress, and I give it as much a chance of passing Congress as, say... a repeal of the federal law that requires single-member districts (now that would kill gerrymandering in its tracks).
If states start making noise about calling for a constitutional convention in which to propose such an amendment, the House might take action, but otherwise...
Texas voted for GWB 60.9% to 39.1% (1) for Gore. Yet the Reps that Texas sent to US House is spit evenly, 16 each (2). While it is possible that some people in Houston voted for Bush as Prez and Sheila Jackson Lee as Rep, it is highly unlikely. It is much more likely that the map was heavily slanted in favor of the Democrats, and not a true representation of the political reality of Texas. This is a correction, not a take over! The Dems just need something to cry about.
/ pdf/plan1369 h~2000gen.pdfi onary.com/List% 20of%20members%20of%20the%20U.S.%20House%20of%20Re presentatives).
Sources:
(1)http://gis1.tlc.state.tx.us/static
(2)http://encyclopedia.thefreedict
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Count this as a published patent.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Apologies for my naivety (and perhaps ignorance), but could you explain to me - as a non-US citizen and not particularly au-fait with US politics - how gerrymandering is not classed as effectively cheating?
From what I've just read, it appears that this is simply a way of increasing the vote for a particular party within the newly-drawn district, and thus lands more seats.
Isn't that your main complaint? Why don't you run back to Newmax and tell them.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I agree. Frankly, expecting a little bit less in terms of proposals and more in terms of votes would go a long way -- I prefer as many laws to keep water coming out of my faucet as needed, and no more. (Not to mention that bill-making efficiency is abundant when wanted and completely absent when political; I don't think more voices in the room could be a bad thing.)
However, it's not like we have 435 people working together anyway; most work is done in committee, where I don't think increasing the size by 20 persons could hurt. Increasing the number of reps in the interest of fairness, with an expense being a limitation of power, is I think, a fair trade. Not only would you find elections becoming more fair financially, as there would be more local contribution to the candidate and less need to support a candidate who can't vote in your interest (this could go the other way, also, since more people need media time, more people need exorbitant contributions). You might also find more third-party candidates spring up, as people realize they (candidates) have more of a chance than before.
Ok, so I was imagining a lizard viewed from above, crawling on its back, like in this article. But I was curious what it actually looked like. Turns out, the name was actually due in large part to a political cartoon. Pretty stuff, but wouldn't look like a salamander to me without the generous addition of artwork.
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
But this is a NEW big deal. Not because gerrymandering is new, but because its become so very powerful and accurate. It used to be that the House was the agent of change and the Senate was supposed to be the cautionary brake. Now the House has become gerrymandered so badly its considered even more stable for incumbents than the Senate. The House of Representatives has basically lost all purpose--in the space of a few decades of computer modelling, the House has become almost invulnerable to popular will. Much like the Senate pre-17th amendment, representatives are de facto appointed by the state legislatures. Except that those same legislatures are gerrymandering themselves as well. Without correction, we will have a self appointed Politburo running state governments and the House.
Would proportional representation fix this problem? Don't have districts anymore. Simply have all state registered voters vote this way... 1. List all candidates on the ballot with party affiliation. 2. Have each voter pick the candidate of their choice. 3. Let's say 40% choose Democrats, 35% choose Republicans, 15% choose independents, and 10% choose Libertarians. 4. 40% of the total seats would go to Democrats. 35% to Republicans. And so on. 5. Lets say there are 11 seats in a given state. That's 4 seats to Democrats, 4 seats to Republicans, 2 seats to independents, and 1 seat to Libertarians. 6. The top 4 plurality winners for Democrats get 4 seats. The top 4 plurality winners for Republicans get 4 seats. The top 2 plurality winners for independents get 2 seats. And the top plurality winner for Libertarians get 1 seat.
I work in politics. The program that we use for this is Caliper's Mapitude. It's a bad-ass little package. Perhaps the most amusing function is the ability to pinpoint an address (the incumbent's) and construct a district that includes every house in the neighborhood but that one, pitting two incumbents of the same party against each other and leaving an open seat for the redistricting party. I'd love to own a copy, just to play with, but for $500, I'd rather have a new iPod. :)
I don't know why I couch this is "this party" and "other party" language -- it's the Republicans, because they had dominance in many states after the 2000 census, just as technology had advanced sufficiently to turn redistricting into more of a science. If we Democrats had the majority then, we probably would have dome the same thing (though I'd like to hope I'd have argued against it in favor of redistricting by disinterested parties, not that what I say matters to anybody in any way).
-Waldo Jaquith
This is to avoid sounding biased. Since the republicans got SLAMMED in the debates, any mention thereof would have to make note of this fact.
Buttsex.
it's like a whole other country.
Oh my god, what's wrong with the "biased" media, somehow this got into the article:
"There is little sympathy for him (Frost) either.
"Prior to last year's map redistricting, the most significant gerrymander in Texas was carried out by the Democrats in 1991.
"They carved up the state to favour their side, and the figure at the helm that year was a certain... Martin Frost.
Of course you didn't read the article. No, facts might be inconvienent for your world-view.
I believe there are many better ideas for Presidential elections than our current method. (Not all of my ideas are original, meaning I may have borrowed them from other places.) 1. Each county gets one "electoral vote", but no persons are elected as electors. Each county votes for President via IRV (Instant Runoff Voting), and the majority winner is granted one electoral vote. This prevents rural counties from being ignored, and makes things real interesting. The plurality winner at the national level wins the Presidency. 2. Keep the current system, but determine the winner by this method. The candidate with the highest popular vote and electoral vote combined, using their percentages. So 40% of the popular and 50% of the electoral vote would lose to 42% of the popular vote and 49% of the electoral vote. 3. Same as number 1, but give each county a weighted vote by on every million registered voters. If a county has four million registered voters, that's a weighted vote of four. If a county has 10 registered voters, yes, ten, that's one vote.
I believe there are many better ideas for Presidential elections than our current method. (Not all of my ideas are original, meaning I may have borrowed them from other places.)
1. Each county gets one "electoral vote", but no persons are elected as electors. Each county votes for President via IRV (Instant Runoff Voting), and the majority winner is granted one electoral vote. This prevents rural counties from being ignored, and makes things real interesting. The plurality winner at the national level wins the Presidency.
2. Keep the current system, but determine the winner by this method. The candidate with the highest popular vote and electoral vote combined, using their percentages. So 40% of the popular and 50% of the electoral vote would lose to 42% of the popular vote and 49% of the electoral vote.
3. Same as number 1, but give each county a weighted vote by on every million registered voters. If a county has four million registered voters, that's a weighted vote of four. If a county has 10 registered voters, yes, ten, that's one vote.
Apparently the Dems were not THAT effective or manipulative in there previous gerrymandering as apparently they are no longer in power. The point of the article is that using new tech the current Republicans are REALLY locking in their majority.
Also, I may be wrong on this part but I think they used their current majority to force through a redistricting order outside of the normal schedule in an attempt to make their majority permanent.
As far as being one-sided, as a earlier poster said, the history of Dem attempts was mentioned.
This is a huge problem, not only in Texas, but most states. Dick Morris, former Clinton staffer, highlights this point in his book "Off with their heads". This is being done not just by Republicans, but Democrats as well. Texas, Mississppi, California, New York, New Jersey, the list sadly goes on.
I believe it's Utah Mr. Morris highlights in his book as the model of redistricting. They have an independent body that is agreed to only in number of participants by the parties, and they use strict interperatation of the numbers to adjust the districts accordingly.
Both parties should share the blame on this issue, just as it's a problem in more states than Texas.
--Reverend Raven
Desperate days demand dire deeds.
Gerrymandering and single-seat districts are the biggest barriers to third parties gaining significant representation. One of my professors recently suggested that it could be argued that this system violates the First and Fourteenth Amendements (limits free speech, discriminates against certain individuals). I am no legal expert, but it seems plausible. Just a matter of getting the Supreme Court to agree.
its talking about state-level representatives, not the ones that go to d.c.
No, it is not.
Why do we never see any mention of term limits any more? As the story mentions, we're at an almost crisis of incumbency, yet I still hear nobody mention term limits.
Would there ever be any hope of such a thing getting passed?
(I would think some of the smaller states would be in favor, since the most powerful career congressmen are from the bigger states, though there are exceptions)
INsigNIFICANT
The second debate was all pre-approved questions, despite the fact that they were from the audience. Could it be that both camps simply refused to approve questions that they knew their opponent would sound the same on?
live(free) || die;
the big question is, why should it be complicated? sure there are mountains, seas, bodys of water, sand , and wetlands. That areas of the state are empty or unusable doesn't mean it's not part of the state. Every district has these sorts of areas. They are still in a district. It's not a size issue, it's shape. Here in Washington we can fit whole mountain ranges, Volcanos and all in a rectangle. So what if the population of that area is dominated by hermits and Hot Steam party. It's still a district. Cram enough people in it and you got a regulation census approved distict. Likely they will have more in common politically then with costal fisherfolk. Also a nice rectangle. Denser population areas get smaller areas but that's normal even without this idea. A district has X people not Y area.
And the answer to Size doesn't matter is of course - She Lied.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
What actually happened was that both parties had fought in our legislature and could not come up with a solution for the redistricting. So the map was drawn by a nonpartisan panel of federal judges, based on the 2000 Census figures.
Nonpartisan? Right......judges never let politics sway them.
Just looking at the results of the election in 2002 shows something is fishy.
These judges were so non-partisan that they drew maps giving the Democrats over 70% of the representatives even though they received less than 50% of the vote.
First of all, two of the Judges on the 3 judge panel were Democrat appointments.
/.'s slant, this parent is proof of it.
So what? Was their map unfair? Arguably no. As you said they took the Senate map, which also would have been drawn up by the GOP, so they weren't just being partisan.
Fourth, even though Texas voted more then 60% Republican in 2000, 17 out of our 32 seats went to Democrats.
Actually it was 56%. And why should a party that got 56% of the vote get over 70% of the seats?
If anyone doubted
You are so full of shit. One poster speaks for all of the Slashdot admins and all of the several hundered thousand people who have accounts here?
Here in the UK we have an independent Boundary Commission that re-draws Parliamentary seats. It can receive submissions from the political parties, but it is required to produce a map that ensures constituencies of roughly equal population (about 70K electors IIRC), and - crucially - form a distinct community, or part of one (i.e. a town can be split into two or more constituencies if the population is sufficient).
Now, the distinct community bit is obviously open to intepretation, but it does mean that some of the strange districts some US states have come up with straggling long thin arms halfway across the state wouldn't be allowed.
Admittedly, sometimes balancing the requirements of population vs community can come up with oddities: at present the Western Isles of Scotland are rather over represented with one MP for around 30K electorate, whereas the Isle of Wight is under-represented with one MP for around 100K as it's not quite big enough to qualify for two constituencies. In both cases the Commission felt that the places were too distinct a community, being islands, to be combined with seats on the mainland.
I know US posters will respond that there's no way in thousand years that the politicians would willingly give up this power, but surely in those states that allow popular initiative it ought to be feasible to set up a pressure group to campaign for it?
I was going to post something about proportional representation, and why it would stop gerrymandering... but, heck, I know the answers I'll be getting:
The founding fathers designed the system, they knew what they were doing yadda yadda. sure... it 's not perfect, but it's served us pretty well... yadda yadda We're the most stable democracy in the world yadda yadda.
"I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." -George H.W. Bush
I was told by a friend that Iowa has a law that says that district borders have to be as close to squares/rectangles as possible. While this isn't a complete solution to gerrymandering, it does make it a TON harder to do because you can't just go around a group of people and make those weird borders to suit your needs. Maybe this should become a national election law.
http://www.fairvote.org/dubdem/tx.htm
1992:
48% voted R and won 30%(9) of the US House seats
50% voted D and won 70%(21) of the US House seats
1994:
56% voted R and won 37%(11) of the US House seats
42% voted D and won 63%(19) of the US House seats
1996:
54% voted R and won 43%(13) of the US House seats
44% voted D and won 57%(17) of the US House seats
1998:
52% voted R and won 43%(13) of the US House seats
44% voted D and won 57%(17) of the US House seats
2000:
48.0% voted R and won 43%(13) of the US House seats
46.7% voted D and won 57%(17) of the US House seats
2002:
53% voted R and won 47%(15) of the US House seats
44% voted D and won 53%(17) of the US House seats
Any way you cut it, for the past ten years Texas has consistently had more R's voting than D's and yet they have lagged in actual representation by a VERY LARGE percentage!
I don't endores what the Republicans are doing in Texas because I think it is wrong, but the Democrats should not be complaining! They have been disenfranchising Republicans for quite some time! Turn about is fair play.
Maybe one of these days folks will adopt multi-member districts with cummulative voting or some other full representation system.
http://www.fairvote.org/pr/whatis.htm
Junior,
The term most used nowadays is "Full Representation" and they are as varied as the colors of the rainbow.
You can have party based systems like they have in Europe (ick!). Or you can have multi-member districts with limited voting, cumulative voting or choice voting. Personally, I like limited voting.
It goes like this, let's say you have a district with 5 members. Everyone gets one (or some number less than 5) votes. The top 5 vote getters win with the highest vote getters being the "senior" members from that district.
Cummulative Voting is similar as well. 5 members in the district, and each voter gets 5 votes. They can use all 5 on the same candidate or vote for 5 different candidates. The top 5 vote getters are elected.
They are pretty simple. The reason they are called "full" representation systems instead of proportional representation because you don't look at the % of votes and then determine the winners...you just count the votes and the higest vote totals win.
The BBC article has one small omission. Martin Frost's old district is #24, and is mapped accurately in the article. However, Frost is not running in #24 -- he's running in District 32. He's chosen to change districts and run against Pete Sessions, an incumbent Republican. The race is nasty, and I'd personally have a hard time voting for either corporate mouthpiece.
The Democratic candidate for Texas House District #24 is a friend of mine, Gary Page. He ran on the Green ticket in 2002, and his performance in four-way debates (D/R/Grn/Lib) led the Democrats to recruit him for this year's run. I'm hoping that disgust with the Republican gerrymander will help overcome the 100:1 money gap between Page and his corporate opponent.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Good grief, the Democrats in California did the same thing after the 2000 census using computer generated maps to lock in their large majorities in state and federal office. The Republicans decided not to fight it this time and hang on to their safe districts.
http://www.fairvote.org/dubdem/tx.htm
1992:
48% voted R and won 30%(9) of the US House seats
50% voted D and won 70%(21) of the US House seats
1994:
56% voted R and won 37%(11) of the US House seats
42% voted D and won 63%(19) of the US House seats
1996:
54% voted R and won 43%(13) of the US House seats
44% voted D and won 57%(17) of the US House seats
1998:
52% voted R and won 43%(13) of the US House seats
44% voted D and won 57%(17) of the US House seats
2000:
48.0% voted R and won 43%(13) of the US House seats
46.7% voted D and won 57%(17) of the US House seats
2002:
53% voted R and won 47%(15) of the US House seats
44% voted D and won 53%(17) of the US House seats
Someone please mod uppackman97's parent post. As a native Texan myself, the amount and underhandedness of the Democrat's cheating in Texas politics is beyond staggering - there is literally no depth to which they will not stoop to retain thier seats, legally or illegally. They still have their panties in a wad about the fact that W managed to somehow become governor in spite of their best efforts - turns out they just can't seem to cheat enough (yet) to outwiegh the opinions of legitimate voters.
If you doubt the Democrat's adoption of cheating as an actual strategy here in Texas, remember that Travis County was Ground Zero for the recent low in sleazy presidential politics: Ben Barnes and the Democrats using CBS news to broadcast forged documents in an effort to defame a sitting president and influence a national election. That sort of underhanded crap ought to infuriate people regardless of party affiliation.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Map redrawing angers U.S. Democrats,
Only because the Republicans beat them to the punch. Don't, even for one minute, think that the Democrats wouldn't have done it if they had the chance.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
(Un)fortunately (depending on your point of view), this stands very little chance of being approved, as it would dilute the voting power of people in those big rectangular states in the Presidential election.
I don't remember the exact numbers, but I remember someone working out what would have happened if Congress hadn't locked in the number of representatives, and as it turns out Gore would have won the 2000 election even w/o Florida.