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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?"
That would be the provision cited in Scared Old White People v. Progress. It's hard to find a copy because it was written between the lines in invisible ink.
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!
The party with the popular majority doesn't really have to gerrymander. The only use for the practice is a minority wealthy party desperately trying to hold on to control. Because of that, it makes me happy. It means in 10 years the Republitards will be relegated to the shitpile of history.
You mean the way the democraps were this year? And your assumption is false. The party with the popular majority is the only one that has control of the process to implement the gerrymandering. Democraps have been doing this for decades and it was fine and now the other side is in power and does it and now all the sudden it's BAD. You are a hypocrite.
Ha! He's butthurt because everyone knows Rs gerrymander, and now it's shown to effect elections. Of course it effects elections. That's. The. Point. "But both sides are doing it!" He says. Oh wait. No they're not. We're not hypocrites. You're just a blind tool.
If I'm wrong, please do show me this mass D gerrymandering that's going on.... Or did go on. I'll change my mind shown evidence... unlike someone around here...
Go here - http://www.washingtonpost.com/... - and talk about how the worst Republian-drawn districts are so much worse than the worst Democrat-drawn district.
Both parties have been doing it for years, and every election the losers complain about gerrymandering the other party did.
Sure, from the article you just linked.
Democrats won in nine of the 10 most-gerrymandered districts. But eight out of 10 of those districts were drawn by Republicans.
Republicans drew Congressional boundaries in six of the 10 most-gerrymandered states.
So the Republicans are at least a little worse on the subject of gerrymandering, but I didn't just say gerrymandering, I said electioneering. The Republicans are notorious for voter suppression efforts which, when combined with gerrymandering, makes them egregious electioneers in general.
I stole this Sig