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Mathematicians Study Effects of Gerrymandering On 2012 Election
HughPickens.com writes Gerrymandering is the practice of establishing a political advantage for a particular party by manipulating district boundaries to concentrate all your opponents' votes in a few districts while keeping your party's supporters as a majority in the remaining districts. For example, in North Carolina in 2012 Republicans ended up winning nine out of 13 congressional seats even though more North Carolinians voted for Democrats than Republicans statewide. Now Jessica Jones reports that researchers at Duke are studying the mathematical explanation for the discrepancy. Mathematicians Jonathan Mattingly and Christy Vaughn created a series of district maps using the same vote totals from 2012, but with different borders. Their work was governed by two principles of redistricting: a federal rule requires each district have roughly the same population and a state rule requires congressional districts to be compact. Using those principles as a guide, they created a mathematical algorithm to randomly redraw the boundaries of the state's 13 congressional districts. "We just used the actual vote counts from 2012 and just retabulated them under the different districtings," says Vaughn. "If someone voted for a particular candidate in the 2012 election and one of our redrawn maps assigned where they live to a new congressional district, we assumed that they would still vote for the same political party."
The results were startling. After re-running the election 100 times with a randomly drawn nonpartisan map each time, the average simulated election result was 7 or 8 U.S. House seats for the Democrats and 5 or 6 for Republicans. The maximum number of Republican seats that emerged from any of the simulations was eight. The actual outcome of the election — four Democratic representatives and nine Republicans – did not occur in any of the simulations. "If we really want our elections to reflect the will of the people, then I think we have to put in safeguards to protect our democracy so redistrictings don't end up so biased that they essentially fix the elections before they get started," says Mattingly. But North Carolina State Senator Bob Rucho is unimpressed. "I'm saying these maps aren't gerrymandered," says Rucho. "It was a matter of what the candidates actually was able to tell the voters and if the voters agreed with them. Why would you call that uncompetitive?"
The results were startling. After re-running the election 100 times with a randomly drawn nonpartisan map each time, the average simulated election result was 7 or 8 U.S. House seats for the Democrats and 5 or 6 for Republicans. The maximum number of Republican seats that emerged from any of the simulations was eight. The actual outcome of the election — four Democratic representatives and nine Republicans – did not occur in any of the simulations. "If we really want our elections to reflect the will of the people, then I think we have to put in safeguards to protect our democracy so redistrictings don't end up so biased that they essentially fix the elections before they get started," says Mattingly. But North Carolina State Senator Bob Rucho is unimpressed. "I'm saying these maps aren't gerrymandered," says Rucho. "It was a matter of what the candidates actually was able to tell the voters and if the voters agreed with them. Why would you call that uncompetitive?"
Sounds pretty obvious to me.
Did they take into account the Voting Rights Act provision that requires that minority voters be concentrated into districts that they have a good likelihood of winning? That alone has the effect of diluting minority strength elsewhere.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
How big would the Congressional Black Caucus be if minorities weren't packed into their own segregated districts?
How many Hispanics would be in Congress?
I wonder what the complaints would be if Congress "Doesn't look like America!"
Ok well that settles it then!
"The results were startling. After re-running the election 100 times with a randomly drawn nonpartisan map each time, the average simulated election result was 7 or 8 U.S. House seats for the Democrats and 5 or 6 for Republicans."
I have no idea what this means. Can anyone explain?
--MyLongNickname
When we had so many political consultants bidding for the contract to make those district maps?
It would also be the end of the two party systems.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
it's a fake math, science, history, religion, money, heros, media, rulers, enemies, chatters, 'weather' etc... 'problem'
Is subdistrict voting data available, or did they just assume a uniform voting pattern across each current district? In the latter case, what they're doing is resampling which tends to average things out, so their result isn't surprising and their conclusion is invalid.
Whilst the Republicans have played this game well in recent years, it's not that long ago that the Democrats were at it equally successfully, and in many states they still do it. Which is not to suggest that it's a good thing - but let's not get partisan about it.
It looks like they based it on county data. But yes, they would have access to data at the subdistrict level.
In federal elections, state borders can be considered as districts causing the same kinds of distortions.
It would take a pretty thorough rewrite of The Constitution of the USA to eliminate disproportionate weight of citizen votes.
We have always been friends with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia. Gerrymandering is bad when it works against us. When it works for us (constructing voting districts so that black men will win [because we all know that blacks will always vote for candidates that match their own skin color]) then it's good. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
He does politics for a living and has succeeded in a competitive domain, we should listen.
The issue is that Gerrymandered seats are safer, the elected official *is* communicating with voters, but the electorate he must worry most about is his own party in the primaries.
If you have a seat that is safe for one party then you get elected by activists of that party, not voters in general which leads to people getting elected from both parties who would never win on their own merits if they had to "communicate" with a more representative portion of the electorate.
They don't get re-elected by doing a good job, they get it by convincing activist members of their own party that they "represented our values".
They don't get fired by screwing up, but because some faction of their own party, be it unions, Tea party, some religious or ethnic group don't like them or because they sleep with someone that causes a fuss.
So the surprise is not that elected official are less than the best, the surprise is that they know such advanced maths as "some numbers are bigger than others" and that grasp foreign politics well enough to know that the Queen of England isn't a New York bar.
Dominic Connor,Quant Headhunter
1 - Lower the quality of math teaching and the math requirements to advance through the educational system.
2 - Wait about twenty years.
3 - Rig the elections in a non absolutely obvious way.
Whilst it is possible to see Germany as having had a stable governmental system despite PR, in most other countries it has caused substantial instability, to the extent that in many countries PR is tweeked to reduce its impact, e.g. Greece where the party with the most votes gets an extra tranche of MPs. By contrast Belgium's record of 18 months without a government as a result of PR should be a warning to us all.
The great virtue of 'first past the post' is that it forces parties to appeal to a wider group than their obvious supporters; know nothing tea partiers mashed up with business advocates are lined up against a mixture of union placemen and minority activists. The process of coalesce has got to occur somewhere; the belief that it is best done in the spotlight of publicity of the floor of the legislature is somewhat unproven, at best. Certainly the collapse of both the Weimar Republic and the French 4th Republic are usually blamed on their use of PR; I remain to be convinced its the optimal solution.
Actually if anything they're more serious than the external ones. In an ordinary district the candidates from each major party have to compete for a majority of voters. In a gerrymandered "safe" district the other side is never going to win in the first place so the real contest isn't between each side but rather during the primary to see who's can be more extreme.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Besides the effect on lawmaking (or failure to pass laws under gridlock), gerrymandering gives people on both sides of issues a sense of majority. "I won in a landslide, I must be right", combined with polarized news programming, has been demonstrated to make people dumber. Harvard Business Review has an interesting article this week on opinion reinforcement and groupthink this week [ https://hbr.org/2014/11/making... ], which compares focus groups from liberal Boulder CO USA and conservative Colorado Springs USA. The researchers documented the negative effects of grouping like-minded people in political discussions. I think gerrymandering has the same effect on political intelligence. Their own conservatism or liberalism appears validated by landslide elections in their districts.
Gently reply
... in academia when there was a preponderance of Democrats in power in the states. I wonder why? Just doing their part (or not) I guess.
Looks like this study makes the same faulty assumption that the news media does - that a voter can be counted on only to vote for the candidate of their preferred party. Those other candidates they magically transferred votes for didn't actually run in those districts, so saying one democrat is the same as another and one republican is the same as another - a fashionable and fun cynical fiction for sure - is just not true.
"If we really want our elections to reflect the will of the people,"
What "people", though?
Let me be absolutely clear: gerrymandering is bullshit - I'm *all* in favor of algorithmically-determined districts, such that they conform to: ...that's great, as far as it goes, and in reading the article, that seems to be where they stopped. I'd add one further, complicating factor:
- must have the same population
- must be contiguous
- they have to recognize communities
It's easy enough to parcel a state into clumps of districts with the same population, but if they split (for example) a town's two voting precincts into different districts, that's a failed algorithm. I can't tell from the article how they addressed that. It seems like they may have tried.
The other point is that we need to decide that each person gets one vote. Not "one person gets one vote but because we feel sorry for a specific group we need to twist things to make sure that they have a chance". That - whatever the motivation - is intrinsically antithetical to actual democracy.
-Styopa
...as TFA seems to imply. In the People's Republic of Maryland, the Democrats managed to gerrymander wacko-conservative Western MD into laughably liberal Montgomery County in an effort to dilute the conservative's strength.
All politicians suck.
it's a fake math, science, history, religion, money, heros, media, rulers, enemies, chatters, 'weather' etc... 'problem'
Your argument is compelling, oh great master. Let me sit at your feet and drink from the font of your wisdom.
Personally, I find it all to be a bunch of bullcrap. Have you seen those voting districts that are along, squiggly lines that wander all over the place? Give me big squares, randomly generated with approval from a set of judges or something like that, and get the god damned legislators out of the district drawing business.
That's not the answer either. The answer is to tie them to geographical features which define "bioregions", sadly itself not a highly defined term. We can usually recognize 'em when we se 'em. All the people in a given bioregion have a natural confluence of interests, and arbitrary districting works against that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's interesting when the result isn't what's wanted by the vocal minority.
Well, quite frankly, there wasn't any. When Republicans win, the media and academia dutifully explain to us how the election was bought and paid for, surely also the result of voter intimidation and disenfranchisement. Oh, yeah gerrymandering too. The election was stolen! Our democracy is crumbling! Peter Jennings once even told us that a Republican win was the result of voters throwing a "temper tantrum".
When Democrats win, they get a misty tear in their eye as they are overcome with pride that the will of the people has prevailed, democracy has been saved, and their party now has a clear mandate.
Morons, all of them.
Each state should create a competitive contract and to build a re-districting computer program. The requirements for the program should include
* The only data fed to the program is geographic markers the will provide convenient district borders (railroad lines, roads, rivers, county and city borders, etc.) and the number of people within each section. No other demographic data (age, race, previous voting patterns, income, etc.) will be input into the program
* the program will be completed 2 years before the redistricting and be open source so that anyone can inspect it and run it and get the same result
* the program will take a random seed as input and will generate different results based on that seed.
The geographic data will also be made public 2 years in advance of the redistricting
When the census data comes out it will be published as well.
On the big day they'll hold a lotto-type drawing to select the random seed. At that point anyone - researchers, journalists, some kid in his basement - can run the program and know the result before it is even published by the government. If the result isn't what everyone else expects we'll know there was funny business.
The program will be fair because the kind of data that allows gerrymandering simply won't be permitted as input. Any sneaky attempts to use something like population density as a proxy will be something anyone can find and complain about in the open source code. Neither party will be able look at the results ahead of time, see that by chance it gives a slight advantage to their opponents, and scuttle the process because the outcome won't be available until the random seed is drawn.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Meanwhile, some other academics tried something similar and came up with a different result, which they describe as "unintentional gerrymandering". Essentially, Democrats dominate in urban areas and Republicans in rural areas, in a way that ends up inefficiently concentrating Democratic votes.
See: http://www-personal.umich.edu/...
Then seat the top 13 candidates.
Or have each party submit a districting plan, and let the voters pick their favorite plan. What could be more democratic?
I'm sure I'm being incredibly naive, but what's wrong with a plain old popular vote? I don't know why there's always this obsession with districts, electoral colleges, all of that bollocks. If you get the most votes you get the job, why must that be complicated? I'm not trying to be facetious here I'm honestly curious.
And you're the real moron if you think there is anything but fluffy differences between the Democrats or the Republicans. You're also a staggeringly insane moron if you want to make such sweeping generalizations, which only demonstrate you're either not interested (or incapable) of learning what's actually happening in the disparate group you're generalizing.
Grow up, the future begs you.
Is why I don't vote.
Now if we had a system based on Single Transferable Vote https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And districts made by Shortest splitline Algorithm https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Then i would.
What I find funny about the Republican/Democrat divide is that the two parties are, for all intents and purposes, almost exactly the same. The Democrats are *slightly* less rightwing and don't have quite as many unhinged members, but from a policy perspective they are both extremely right wing parties.
Can you give us more details about it? I'd like to know. I believe this sort of thing to be a great cancer on our government... a gerrymandered senator doesn't have to worry about representing his people, and that's a very bad thing.
Ask the people which district their vote should be counted in
White Democrats bundled blacks into gerrymandered, idiotic, follow-the-highway districts so they could, you know, "vote their own kind in" (though they'd never say that in those words, of course, how gauche), which gave the progressive white people in Martha's Vinyard a warm and fuzzy. (Some Republicans actually noted that that, while true, would make the surrounding districts more conservative, and thus whoever ran in them would not need to be as close to the center as they might otherwise be, shifting the net political landscape to the right. BTW, they viewed this as a bad thing, not good, and recommended against it, but it was lost in the Vinyard din.)
So...working as intended...by both parties.
> If I'm wrong, please do show me this mass D gerrymandering that's going on.... Or did go on.
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act _requires_ that districts be gerrymandered such that demographic groups which are a _minority_ of the population make up a _majority_ of the voters in those districts. When states fail to gerrymander for democrats ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H black people, the federal government intervenes and forces gerrymandered districts. This is not new.
Here is a prime example of gerrymandering. It's the 12th congressional district of North Carolina:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
The district was deliberately drawn to increase the odds of getting a minority congressman. The district follows the Interstate 85 highway.
With a nationwide proportional system, maybe only for the House, this problem would be solved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Furthermore, it would allow more, smaller parties to enter the House of Representatives, so one wouldn't be forced to vote either for the Arms and Oil Lobby (AKA Republican Party) or the Media and Finance Lobby (AKA Democratic Party). For example, both Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party would have direct representation in congress. You might even run the risk to elect someone who actually cares about the people!
I would also like to point out that the US is probably the only western country where the voting system is directly imposed by the constitution instead of ordinary law, making it difficult to change.
Can that 2-century old constitution be changed or God really doesn't agree?
Nice study. However, 21st century US systems are set up to benefit those in power, or their corporate sponsors. Redistricting is not going to change to be more fair.
The great virtue of 'first past the post' is that it forces parties to appeal to a wider group than their obvious supporters; know nothing tea partiers mashed up with business advocates are lined up against a mixture of union placemen and minority activists
It's possible to replace FPTP and go full PR.
North Carolina, in fact, has a very famously gerrymandered district for this reason ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina%27s_12th_congressional_district ); and I'm sure the simulation ignored that detail.
If a state has ten districts, and 10% of the population is black, under current federal law, they have to do their best to give blacks a majority vote in one district. But that generally means that nine of that states representatives can completely ignore the black vote. It seems to me that the world would be a better place if black voters made up 10% of each district's population: they could swing the election in any of those districts, and each representative would have a very strong reason to listen to their concerns.
Wikipedia, gerrymandering scroll down to the example districts.
Yes, let's not get partisan about the very partisan thing someone did. I mean, even though Democrats controlled the NC legislature for a century before the 2006 elections and the maps weren't particularly gerrymandered then.
br> "Both sides do it" is what cowards say when their side gets caught doing something.
Settle down. Of course I'm generalizing. And real grown-ups are capable detecting the levity in an Internet post so they don't embarrass themselves with a hateful, flame-broiled response. Cheers.
I love comments like this. Tell me what is right wing about these positions:
nationalizing health care
right to abortion
paid college tuition
open borders/immigration amnesty
regulation of business, to a detrimental level
union empowerment
higher taxes on the rich
more social programs for the poor
These might not all be top line items for the US Democratic Party, but they are top line items for prominent members of the party, and solid planks in the party platform.
It seems that the only thing that can make a party left wing is if it advocates that the ownership of the land should be in the hands of the people, and ownership of industry should be in the hands of the workers.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
...they get rid of this, AND the electoral college, the "will of the people" won't always be true.
This study is attempting a purposeful deception. There is another reason for setting up districts this way, which is to curtail the influence of highly concentrated urban populations picking representatives for people whose lives and issues they know nothing about. If you look at the NY statewide election, the only reason Cuomo won re-election was that 3 urban centers overwhelmingly voted for him. Every other county, in a massively large state, voted for the other guy.
Now you could argue that those urbanites are just so much more intelligent than the country folk. Talk to people in NYC and ask them why they voted for Cuomo, despite his self-inflicted corruption scandal. Even his competitor in the primary could have trounced him absent the urban vote.
If it were not for gerrymandered districts, these same lackluster voters would be picking representatives who had no interest in representing those who live anywhere else farther than 20 miles from NYC, Buffalo, or Rochester (and those just barely).
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
A better solution is to do what the founding fathers came up with in the first place. Most governing should be done locally (city or county level). Things that are too big for local get handled by the state. The states form a federation to handle matters such as national defense, but for the most part the federal government stays out of citizens' lives.
I don't see how that could be. In an information society, copyright interferes in citizens' lives daily. And the US Constitution explicitly made copyright a federal power.
http://redistrictinggame.org/
I've spent quite a few hours here successfully drawing districts to help both my red or blue candidates win, even with restrictions to make the process more "fair". As long as humans are involved in redistrcting, it will never be fair.
Randomness has a well known liberal bias. This is just another example of how our liberal higher educational systems have become corrupted, and why higher education is not just unnecessary, but actually harmful to voters..
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The funny part of this is, zraider didn't actually say there was a difference between the parties. He only commented on the media's response to the two parties winning different elections.
Oh, and, look at my sig.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Those are contained within the caveat offered by the OP. You seem to be willing to do anything to keep this notion of "them vs. us" alive in your head. That's the scary part, and inherently dangerous to boot.
Since I live in North Carolina I just have to comment. If anyone thinks the Democrats that controlled the legislature for over 90 of the last 100 years didn't try to gerrymander, they are fools. The fact that they lost the legislature anyway tells any person that actually thinks for themselves that the people aren't buying what they are selling. Even when the districts are drawn to influence the outcome, if the people get fed up, the seat will change anyway. One seat that stayed Democrat was NC 12. A look at the map shows why, this twisted like a run over snake district runs along I85 from Greensboro to Charlotte and has bits of 4 counties. A black Republican woman can't win there (DR Ada Fisher tried at least 4 times). Only a liberal Democrat can possibly win. I doubt if that will change in my lifetime since the courts won't allow it.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Yes, you are generalizing, but then using that generalization to tar and feather entire, varied sections of society. You can pretend that it's "levity", but it's demonstrably just lazy thinking. Oh, and calling out moronic behaviour and attitudes isn't hateful, just honest. It might seem hateful to have one's bullshit called out, but that hate lies squarely in the brain of the bullshit peddler.
So you think the media just gloms on to the democrats because they like blue? Because that (or some equally shallow reason) is what would have to happen for zraider to not be implying there are differences in the parties. And your sig is cute! Kawaiiii desuuu!
"This is why you get, effectively, extremists on both sides." They always exist, but in a FPTP system must vote for 'their' party come what may. The effect is to weaken the power of those extremists unless they represent a large enough group as to endanger one of the main party's chance of winning specific constituencies. This is what is happening atm with UKIP; they are perceived as endangering the Tories, so Cameron is being forced to play to their tune; the same is true of the National Front in France. By contrast Muslim voters in the UK have largely been forced to remain voting for the major parties, which is helpful in encouraging integration.
The pathological case of PR taken to its logical extent is Switzerland where the same parties have formed the government in the same proportions since forever. The voters have almost no impact on government policy, except via referendums which often go against government policy, which is not a healthy way to run a country because it means your representatives are not being representative.
I have no idea what you are talking about. I'd be perfectly happy with both main parties being dismantled under RICO statutes and their power going to the next 10 parties on various ballots. My sig isn't just for shits and giggles.
The caveat of "The Democrats are *slightly* less rightwing" doesn't begin to explain the policy differences between a left wing party and a right wing party.
The reason for my post above is that I have seen that argument made, that both parties are far right wing, just one is slightly less so, and it makes no sense. Unless the centrist party is the Communist Party, and the left wing parties are Anarchy and Local Warlord, there is no reasonable argument that the US Democratic Party is, in the poster's own words, "extremely right wing".
By the way, regarding my comment about ownership of the land and industry being in the hands of the people and workers, I would also be fine with that system, provided it was not corrupted by the ones in charge. If everyone had to get their hands dirty in the field and factory, living by the motto "If you don't work, you don't eat" we would be much better off as a people. The government might collapse, but I really wouldn't miss it.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
The media gloms onto democrats because most media personalities think the democrats share their social beliefs. Whether it is true or not isn't the issue, and whether zraider prefers one party of the other also isn't the issue.
As for my sig, I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party in 2012. On another site I used to visit, about half of the two dozen regulars voted Green. The fact that I did shocked the more left wing members of the group, because everyone assumes I am some far right wing zealot.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Isn't pretty much every vote split along party lines anyway?
Note that while this sometimes fails to happen that does not mean that the problem does not exist.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I think the misleading implied conclusion is that with neutral gerrymandering we will end up with a functionally different government, that somehow Republican advantaged gerrymandering is somehow solely or even predominantly responsible for all that's nasty about government.
I don't disagree with the idea that politically motivated gerrymandering has negative democratic effects, I just don't think that some neutrally ideal gerrmandering scheme would really alter the nature of government in a way that still wouldn't produce the same national security apparatus, deference to corporate and financial interests, etc.
Whilst it is possible to see Germany as having had a stable governmental system despite PR, in most other countries it has caused substantial instability, to the extent that in many countries PR is tweeked to reduce its impact,
PR with some small tweaks are still nice systems. Some (like Norway) keep out the very small by blocking those with less than 5%. Usually, no party gets more than 30% - 40%, but that is not a problem. One solution is that a few parties join up in a majority coalition that lasts till the next election (or the coalition fall apart.) If this does not happen, the government still works; with no ruling majority the elected representatives simply have to vote a lot. And make deals of the type "we vote for your cause if you vote for ours". Same kind of deal as a coalition is, but on a case by case basis.
PR combined with a need for 'a majority' can fail spectacularly - as in Belgium. PR without that majority requirement works just fine and does not deadlock. Politicians unable to form a majority coalition simply get a lot more work for themselves negotiating case by case, law by law.
Why bother with 'districts' with all their failings? Count all the votes in the entire election into a single set of sums. No borders to manipulate, no gerrymandering possible.
I don't believe it was the point to scapegoat one party. This was how the numbers ran in the state of NC. With only 2 parties its always easy for one side to claim the victim.
If their methodology is so incredibly sound, then no one need vote at all: they can just use the party affiliation for all registered voters as their input and let the computer figure it out. I mean, gosh, voters will always show up at the polls and vote a party ticket regardless of the candidates. Can you imagine being able to brag about our 100% voter turnout?! What a huge achievement that would be. And we'd owe it all to mathematics. Math. E. Matics!
What a crock of shit.
Government purports to represent voters, but it's unclear whether that's the best solution. In the US, the government represent the concerns of people in a particular area, and that area happens to have voters in it.
The US Senate is designed to give equal representation to states, no matter how big or small. Puny states like MD or RI have as much voting power as NY and CA. Fair? No, if you count "fairness" by "representative based on population."
However, the Senate is fair if you count them as representatives of the States.
Likewise for Congressional districts. A Rep represents a district, and by extension the voters in a district.
By representing by straight vote count you will over-represent urban voters, which is exactly what's happening in most of the states today. That's bad for a number of reasons, the first being that concerns of urban voters are different than concerns of rural voters; the urban voters will always win on a straight up-and-down vote.
While this may seem great to the urbanistas, a bit of reflection should enlighten you as to why this would be a bad idea.
Even if you did get moded down, you're not the only one asking.
This study assumes that every voter in NC voted for their representatives based on political party and nothing else, that politician of the same party are interchangeable.
Politicians in one district never campaign outside their district, because that would be wasted effort since voters in other districts can't vote for them.
as a mathematical exercise I *guess* it has some value, if one felt the need to prove there's a reason congressional districts look the way they do geographically - but did anyone think there was any other reason for the shapes of congressional districts?
Ken
them
Democrat gerrymandering guaranteed a Democrat lock on control of the US House by nearly 2-to-1 margins for DECADES. That lock was so solid that the Republican party in DC was convinced that they would NEVER be able to even reach parity in the House - so "establishment" Republicans fought against Newt Gingrich and his allies in the late 80's and early 90s for even suggesting that the Republicans should TRY. The reason the bosses fought the idea? They were afraid that be even trying, they would anger the Democrats who ran the House and there would be pay-back in the form of even less power, smaller offices, fewer comittee assignments, etc. and they were afraid this might mean less "pork" to use back home getting re-elected.
During those years, I never saw a single article by any left wing person denouncing gerrymandering.
Sorry, but all this recent garbage about the need to tear-up one of the key parts of the Constitution (the electoral college) and to eliminate gerrymandering (to make things "fair") are just another example of the progressive ideology "the ends justify the means". By this reasoning, we must destroy anything that blocks progressives from getting their way on everything - we need to convert the US from a Constitutional Republic (where the majority gets its way on many things as long as it does not trample on the rights of the minority) to a Democracy (where the mod rules and whatever group is unpopular can be ordered to walk into the gas chambers). Of course, it makes sense, given that the National Socialist German Workers Party was a progressive left-wing gang...
Enjoy - from The Washington Post
Ken
Sure, "both sides do it" *can* be what a coward says when their side gets caught. Equally well "The guys that won did it" (with reference to a deplorable tactic commonly employed by both sides) *can* be what a coward says when they lose an election. More importantly than either, though, you're committing a logical fallacy if you think any of these arguments have any weight or merit in this discussion about whether the tactic is deplorable or not (either in general or in this specific case).
It seems to me that the world would be a better place if black voters made up 10% of each district's population: they could swing the election in any of those districts, and each representative would have a very strong reason to listen to their concerns.
This.
Gerrymandering is a trade off that trades security in one or more seats on one side against security for the other side in one or more seats. If you can get a massive majority for the other side in one seat, that's good to bias many other seats the other way. This is what gerrymanderers seek to do.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
At the very least, the Democrats are fighting back with the same dubious tactic. Here in Maryland, we just squeezed out another Republican seat with some extremely sketchy-looking districts.
That's one, mind you, compared to the three or four they were finding in North Carolina. It would take decades for Democrats to try to regain control of the legislatures. It would be much better to replace the system with one less easily corrupted (or at least, less immediately corrupted), but I do expect both parties to live down to the tactics of the worst. It's what gets you elected.
The Democrats happen to be worse at it (for now), and I'd love to see them be able to use that to campaign for a less corrupt system. The trick will be getting people out to vote for it. It's not on most people's priority list. That list consists primarily of pocketbook issues.
excuse too. they grew out of it. what's your excuse.
Here in Florida, we have extensive gerrymandering of districts, 2 elections in a row, complete with court disputes and judges orders to redraw. "We are sorry, but we cant have that done before the election date." and the judge gives in and says ok. And even with all that, and spending 200-300% more than the competition, they barely won. But, any win is a win. and it is trumpeted as "The people have spoken."
Well, the only thing that can gerrymander a United States Senator is the borders of a state, and those don't change much, and certainly not because of the census.
Gerrymandering at the federal level is strictly a phenomenon of the U.S. House of Representatives, as the 435 seats of that body are reapportioned based on the United States Census every 10 years, per the constitution.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I've done a mathematical analysis and it appears that, as of this writing, 100% of posts that have been scored by Slashdot moderators with a negative score show an anti-liberal slant. Mathematically, it appears that Slashdot moderators have a pro-liberal/democrat bias and seem to be attempting to silence those with minority views here. I don't understand this bigoted attack on this minority group. We need to stop the hate.
Why are liberals so anti-science.
Senators can't be gerrymandered because they represent the entire state. A pre-set geographic boundary which (usually) can't be changed. Gerrymandering happens after each Census (2010, 2000, 1990, 1980, etc) when the House seats are reapportioned and redrawn to be relatively equal in population.
If you want a recent Democrat example, just look at California. In the 2014 House elections, Democrat candidates got 57.7% of the votes relative to Republicans (4.06m vs 2.98m). Yet they won 73.6% of the races (39 of 53). Of the 9 races where the winner got fewer than 57.7% of the votes, Democrats won 8, Republicans just 1.
Anyway, this is nothing new. The term Gerrymandering dates back to 1812. Letting the State legislatures draw the election districts is literally letting the foxes guard the henhouse (gerrymandering isn't just about helping your own party, it's also about making "safe" districts so incumbents have an easier time getting re-elected). In the 1990 election, California ended up with a Democrat-controlled legislature and a Republican governor. The Democrats gerrymandered the districts, and the governor vetoed it. The boundaries ended up being drawn by the State Supreme Court, and for the next 8 years California had probably the fairest elections in its history.
There were two California ballot initiatives in 1990 for taking control of redrawing the districts away from the legislature. They were both winning until about a month before the election. Basically every special interest out there realized fairer districts would add unpredictability by increasing the chances of incumbents losing. So they all ran ads against them (including several groups I had previously thought were "honest" like the Sierra Club and NOW). And both initiatives were defeated.
Yep. Every time..
Organization? You must be joking..
Sortocracy is sorting proponents of social theories into governments that test them. It is the only political system that allows people to escape bad governance: People can vote with their feet.
Any attempt to "reform the political process" is doomed for the reason pointed out by Machiavellli:
Any system that does not allow people to experience a new order of things by voluntary assortation is doomed to the political equivalent of theocracy: Imposing a single social theory on unwilling human experimental subjects. You must allow for consent to experimental treatment of human subjects and you must allow for control groups to evidence causality.
There is going to be a revolution.
Seastead this.
Two things:
1) You can't gerrymander a Senator, since (s)he's elected at large in a State.
2) The word "gerrymander" is based on the originator of the idea, Elbridge Gerry, who first did it. He was a member of the "Democrat-Republican Party", which eventually fissioned into the Democrat Party and the Whig Party (which disappeared later, to be replaced by the Republican Party at about the time of Lincoln).
So, yeah, the idea came out of the Democrat Party, and spread to the Republican Party after the Republican Party came into existence 50 years later.
Do note that some elements of the Republican Party and Democrat Party switched places later. Many of the things advocated by the modern Democratic Party were introduced by the Republican Party back in the day, and vice versa. As an example, Segregation was a Democratic idea for nearly a century before they change their minds. Likewise, to the extent that Desegregation was even an idea, it was a Republican idea for that same period, then they changed their minds a bit later (as far as I can tell, because the Dems came out in favour of Desegregation, so the Reps HAD to oppose it - stupid gits).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
In Soviet America, voters don't chose their representatives, rather the representatives choose their voters.
Stalin is reported to have said that he takes little account of who votes, but rather it is he who counts the votes that matters. Politics in American have done him proud... it matters not who votes, but where you vote that counts. One vote in a swing state is worth thousands of votes in the so called "safe states". In fact with most districts there isn't even a meaningful contest.
Tyranny by definition is rule without mandate. When less than 50% of the people vote, and of them not all the votes have equal political value, then I think it is safe to state that the USA has perhaps crossed the line into tyranny.
Yet some tyrannies can be quite nice to live in.
The bigger question is why all voting mishaps uniformly favor Republicans, notably in areas where Republicans face the most adversity.
Is it really coincidence that we continue to have no meaningful reform on electronic voting and Republicans continue to get this unfair advantage? Video slot machines are subject to stricter rules than voting machines are, which seems unbelievable.
Electronic voting is fundamentally flawed. Traditional voting, hanging chads and all, are still more reliable and robust, and provide a verifiable record of the votes made.
The Canadian way strikes me as better. It involves two principles:
1. The politicians are not the ones who define the electoral districts. It's in the hands of a selected group of people with long-standing reputations for scrupulous fairness. (Retired judges, university presidents, etc. Not all of them - just the ones with a reputation for fairness.)
2. The districts are redrawn every 5 years - that's how often they do a census - so no one ever has a permanent district to run from.
One of the pleasures of living here in Washington State is that we have three unique systems to enable safe, efficient, and non-partisan voting.
1. Independent Redistricting Commission - Before 1983 redistricting was handled by the legislature, now handled by an independent commission.
http://www.redistricting.wa.gov
2. Vote by Mail - Washington state doesn't need voter ID laws, because we don't rely on Poll Workers to validate identity at the time of voting, Silliness.
https://wei.sos.wa.gov/agency/osos/en/voters/Pages/vote_by_mail.aspx
3. Top Two Primary - Washington state voters don't have to register as a "republican" or "democrat", we just for in the primary, and vote in the general election. Only the top two candidates move to the general election, and doesn't matter what party they are from.
http://ballotpedia.org/Blanket_primary#Washington
The Scandinavians have very homogeneous societies where the issues are relatively one dimensional, allowing the formation of coalitions without great difficulty. This was the experience in Germany, but is now breaking down because the far left 'Left' and Greens are splitting the left, whilst 'The Alternative' is offering a serious right wing challenge that splits the right, and is very problematic, whilst the collapse of the FDP has removed the traditional third party. The result has been a CDU/SPD coalition that is working well, but at the cost of alienating those who are not impressed to the point of their voting for those more extreme parties; I anticipate growing problems in Germany over the next few years.
And disproportionate anger substituted for cogent argumentation is lack of thinking entirely. Such aggressive reactions usually indicate desperate frustration that reality doesn't conform to a politically convenient narrative. In other words, you absolutely hate that I'm right.
As you said it yourself, there already is a Senate for territorial representation. Such representation makes sense there because state boundaries don't arbitrarily change, and because states actually have a significant degree of sovereignty; in contrast, electoral district boundaries change frequently, and one district is not meaningfully different from the other as far as governance and administration goes.
By representing by straight vote count you won't over-represent urban voters. You will represent them proportionally to how many there are, which is precisely the point. It's only "over-representing" if you believe that their vote is somehow less valuable. And the House is supposed to represent the people, not districts.
Meanwhile, rural states are already adequately represented in the Senate, because it is specifically designed to represent geographical territories. And on state level, similarly, even in the states dominated by urban areas, the state Senate represents rural districts, counterbalancing the direct popular representation in the state House.
If you can find two more Gerrymandered districts than Maryland's 2nd and 3rd please don't tell me about them. Honestly look at the damn map and try to explain how these pass any kind of compactness test. And this is Democrats, my friends, not those evil tea-party Republicans you all love to hammer. So bugger off with the your "their party evil cheaters, my party righteous saints" garbage. Both sides do this crap.
http://www.mdp.state.md.us/PDF/Redistricting/2010maps/Cong/Statewide.pdf
As a Republican in California, I'm all too familiar with the effects of gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering isn't really a big deal in the long run (50 yrs or so). The gaining party will either be correct in their ideas (ahead of their time) or the gaining party will fail and the resulting abrupt switch to another party's ideas (behind their time) will take effect. On the switch from the failed party, the gerrymandering will also switch and the new party will take control of the gerrymandering and (presumably) use the gerrymandering to their advantage. This will create a significant gap where the failed party needs to re-center itself (a good thing) or become obsolete (and possibly disappear). The process will continue on-and-on waiting for the party-in-power to make a mistake and then switch again.
tl;dr System is stable.
I love comments like these because they show how wingers have created an alternate reality for themselves where facts need not apply.
Tell me you've paid an iota of attention to what the Democrats have been doing for the last 30 years?
You mean far better care for far less money? Not only did Democrats take Single Payer off the table before negotiations began, top Democrats (Obama, Reid, Baucus, Pelsoi) killed the Public Option. If, on the other hand, you're referring to Obomneycare....yeah, that's a right wing, market based plan. First cooked up by the Heritage Foundation in the 90's - something both Obamabots and wingers have an allergic reaction to remembering.
Where. Nothing has been done nationally, and tuition will have about doubled under Brown.
Obama deported immigrants at a rate far higher than Bush, before pulling a mini-Reagan when it was politically meaningless.
On some planet where Democrats haven't continued deregulating businesses? Reagan-Bush sent 800 bankers to jail over the S&L fraud; Obama hasn't prosecuted a single banker for a crisis 70 times as large. If, again, you're referring to Obomneycare, take it up with these guys.
"Empowered" right out of their teaching jobs with RTTT, which is Bush's NCLB on steroids. Sin taxes on union health insurance, something Obama attacked McCain for wanting to do in '08. Killed EFCA. Auto bailout gutted the union by forcing new employees to work for far less money than existing workers - and why support a union if you aren't going to get anything out of it?
Most of Bush tax cuts were extended, and they keep wanting to cut corporate tax rates.
They just cut 9 billion in food stamps in the last farm bill. And who do you think "ended welfare as we know it" in the 90's, President Dole?
Ah yes, the "Johnny did it first - decades ago - so it's no big deal that Boehner is Speaker right now because of gerrymandering" canard. Not get partisan, my ass.
Let's fix that nonsense: When Democrats win elections, the media says they need to be bipartisan and work with Republicans. When the Democrats lose elections, it's because they're too far to the left.
When Republicans lose elections, it's because they didn't move far enough to the right to make their base happy. When they win elections, it's a sign they have a mandate and the Democrats should be bipartisan and work with them.
Notice the consist theme? Democrats are always supposed to move to the right.
Yes, Virginia, Gerrymandering exists, and a non-political solution is needed. Some variation on citizen input plus computer factoring is needed. Plus remember that the courts require that minorities are not disenfranchized. Did this study account for court ordered requirements? More important, after Gerrymandering is removed, states need to allocate Electoral College votes by Congressional districts to more favorably balance the disparity between urban and rural areas. In states such as IL, urban areas (Chicago) so dominate presidential elections such that rural areas might as well not vote.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Except that in this case the issue is majority representation.
But remember that Africa is a country!
You have to realize that US is not a modern democratic country like, i.e., India. We have the electoral college, a remnant of the time when a substantial portion of the ruling class were scared silly of the idea of the President being chosen by popular vote. At that time Senators were also not chosen by popular vote. The typical method for choosing Senators involved wealthy individuals buying sufficient numbers of state legislators. Speaking of the US Senate, did you realize that someone in Wyoming has 76 times the vote of someone in California?
One result of this utterly ridiculous system is that large swaths of the country are basically ignored by presidential campaigns. Instead, the focus is nearly entirely on the so-called battleground states where the electoral college votes are not a forgone conclusion.
Perhaps the US Constitution could use some revision?
In 2012 North Carolina voted statewide more for Republicans than Democrats. Republican won the Governorship 53.7% to 43.2% and the Presidency 50.6% to 48.4%.
The current method is one where "every vote is equal": each vote has an equal probability in a given district of being the deciding vote. Pretty hard to argue electoral inequality. What We are seeing is the result of approximation which not only is inherent in any democratic republic, such as the U.S., but what happens when each state has a limited number of indivisible Representatives.
And, to be fair, they have to if the majority against them in the House isn't going to be even more lopsided. It's just one of the chronic failures of the US political system.
One of the streets near me is all rentals where students usually live and that street is attached to a district that has pooling station 2 miles away instead of one that is 4 blocks away.
The Daily Show and Colbert Report (you know, shows a lot of people watch) have been doing reports on gerrymandering ever since Obama was first elected eight years ago. But don't let this interrupt your Republican pity party circle jerk.