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?"

Comments

Federal law has an effect, too

[Jay Maynard]

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.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[mbone]

Please quote that provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[Zocalo]

Not according to a comment by Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola University, in one of the linked articles and acknowledged by Mattingly - he did say that incorporating it might be an option for further research though. This was apparently a "proof of concept" with deliberately simple rules, but given the interest and positive feedback it seems to be generating I'd like to see what happens if this could be adapated to include a more complete set of rules, not to mention be adapted for other countries where this is a problem.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[QilessQi]

Citation needed.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[KermodeBear]

From Redrawing the Lines (just a site I found with a quick Google search, no special reason to pick it other than it is what I found):

Are states permitted to create new majority- minority districts?

States are permitted and sometimes required to create new majority-minority districts under the Voting Rights Act to avoid diluting minority voting strength during redistricting. States with significant minority population growth over the course of the last decade, for instance, may need to create new majority-minority districts to ensure that redistricting plans comply with the requirements of Section 2 of the Act. Plans that dilute minority voting strength by failing to create feasible majority-minority districts may be quickly challenged following adoption. Since Section 2 litigation can be both costly and time- consuming, officials in many states set out to draw plans that fairly reflect minority voting strength at the beginning of the redistricting process. The need to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to avoid minority vote dilution can serve as a compelling justification for both preserving and creating new majority-minority districts, which helps protect these districts from constitutional attack.

From Cornell University, we have:

Vote Dilution

Section 2 of the VRA, codified at 42 U.S.C. 1973, prohibits drawing election districts in ways that improperly dilute minorities’ voting power. This prohibition applies to states, counties, cities, school districts, and any other governmental unit that holds elections. Two typical forms of vote dilution involve “cracking” a minority community between several election districts, and “submerging” minority communities in multi-member districts. Cracking occurs when election officials split a single minority community into enough different election districts that even if the community voted as a bloc, it could not influence any single districts’ elections. Alternately, election officials might dilute a minority community’s voting power by submerging it in a multi-member district with enough non-minority voters to routinely defeat the minority community’s chosen candidates. See Gerrymandering.

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. I don't care who it "hurts" or "helps", it is ridiculous to have some of the districts that we do.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[Anonymous Coward]

Please quote that provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Let me Google that for you.

Geez, even Daily Kos is honest about this:

What if legislators didn't have to draw majority-minority districts? Democrats would lose big

The Voting Rights Act saw one of its main enforcement mechanisms gutted last summer in the controversial and partisan 5-4 Supreme Court decision Shelby County v. Holder. However, even without section 5 requiring many jurisdictions to pre-clear changes to the voting process section 2 remains. Through it and accompanying jurisprudence such as Thornburg v. Gingles and Barlett v. Strickland, states and other jurisdictions are effectively required to draw majority-minority districts under appropriate circumstances. ...

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[readin]

So the purpose of that part of the Voting Rights Act was to require gerrymandering that favors Democrats? Good thing it was struck down. Gerrymandering isn't good but if we're going to have it it should at least be equally accessible to both parties.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[Jay Maynard]

That part of the Voting Rights Act wasn't struck down.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[phayes]

So? As long as the gerrymandering respects the law, Dems cannot be complaining about a system that on the whole has been benefitting them disproportionately for decades. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[AthanasiusKircher]

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?

Yeah, and you know what? One of the most famous ones is in North Carolina, the site of this study.

And guess who created it and why? Democrats did, in order to secure a minority voting block big enough to elect a black person to Congress. Ever since, it's been one of the most litigated districts in the U.S.

I'm always shocked at how many people don't realize that this is one of the primary LEGAL rationales for gerrymandering -- back in the 1980s and 1990s you even saw unholy alliances between minority leaders and conservative Republicans conspiring to create awkward districts in some states that would give each group what they wanted: the minorities got enough people together in a district to elect a minority to Congress, and the Republicans got to excise many of those annoying mostly Democratic minority voters from their districts.

We are still living with that legacy in many states, and I frankly have found news coverage in recent years of gerrymandering to be lacking in discussion of this issue. It's not all just Republicans who have taken control of state legislatures -- we've also had a committed effort for quite a few decades to segregate voter districts in such a way that would allow more minorities in Congress.

But of course that creates a problem, because it ends up disenfranching non-minority Democrats who get stuck in all the surrounding districts that can no longer elect a Democrat because a large portion of Democrats were deliberately removed from swing districts to create the minority-majority district.

So the Democrats end up in a Catch-22. If they want to promote Congressional "diversity," they can create districts where minorities get elected, but they can end up screwing themselves over in the process because then all the surrounding districts become more Republican and make it more difficult for Democrats to actually achieve an overall Congressional majority.

It's certainly not the only issue that has led to Republican majorities in Congress -- but it's one that's not often talked about, and it has had some significant effects.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[hey!]

They're only required to gerrymander minority districts if they have a history suppressing minority votes.

This is kind of like equitable relief, where the court compels a guilty party in a civil case to perform some action to remedy an unfair action it performed earlier.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[AthanasiusKircher]

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.

Who the hell modded this as "troll"?? Not only have other posts cited examples of how the VRA has frequently been used for it, the issue is specifically discussed in one of the linked articles in TFS:

But, he cautions, in the real world, there are many other factors that go into drawing district lines.

"One of them is our national commitment to minority voting rights," says Levitt. "It's really the strongest national commitment we have to minority representation anywhere, the voting rights act, and as I think the professor and student would say, their model districts don't even comply with the voting rights act, that's not what they were aiming to do."

Levitt says other factors matter too, including geography.

In response, Mattingly says it's possible to design the program to account for minority representation, but he and Vaughn chose to keep it as simple and as transparent as possible for now.

You don't mod someone as "troll" for bringing up a legitimate issue that's actually discussed in TFA.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[AthanasiusKircher]

Oops -- wrong link. The article linked in TFS that I quoted is here.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[AthanasiusKircher]

They're only required to gerrymander minority districts if they have a history suppressing minority votes.

False. Legislators are required to draw districts in such a way that minority votes will NOT be diluted. Thus, if they are forced to redraw districts (say, due to new allocations of the number of representatives after a census), they are REQUIRED to take minority distribution into account and produce a new set of districts which will not negatively affect minority voters.

It has been easier for these issues to end up in the courts in places that have a history of suppressing minority votes -- but the restrictions are binding on all states, regardless of past wrongs.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[phantomfive]

Give me big squares, randomly generated with approval from a set of judges or something like that

California tried the non-paratisan judge trick. The leading party stacked the panel of judges to favor them.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[nbauman]

You ought to be shocked at the original purpose of those laws: Segregationist states in the former Confederacy were preventing blacks from registering to vote (which also kept them off juries), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... by methods including killing them if they tried to as late as 1963 vote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... In 2000, the Florida Secretary of State eliminated enough black voters from the voting rolls, by falsely accusing them of being felons, to give the vote, and the presidency, to George W. Bush. http://www.gregpalast.com/flor... So black voters are denied the right to vote, in violation of the constitution, even today. That's the purpose of the picture ID laws.

Racism benefited the Democratic Party, while the Democratic Party was the party of racism. When the Democratic Party tried to reform itself, by giving constitutional rights to blacks, the Republican Party opportunistically took their place as the party of racism. Good for the Republicans, bad for America.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[AthanasiusKircher]

You ought to be shocked at the original purpose of those laws

Who said I'm not? Of course I recognize racial disparities in the U.S. Of course I recognize the need to change the system to avoid racism -- both overt and systemic -- now.

My post wasn't about judging the validity of arguments for redressing racism or preventing racist political actions. My post is bringing up the obvious point that if you gerrymander a bunch of Democrats (of whatever race) into one district for whatever reason, you may end up making it more difficult for Democrats to win surrounding districts.

Hence, if we gerrymander to allow minorities a chance to get someone elected to Congress, but in the process we also gather together a lot of Democrats in one place, we can SIMULTANEOUSLY enhance the minority effect of voting while diluting the overall effect of Democratic voters.

At no point did I say we haven't had significant racial problems in the U.S., nor did I in any way imply we still don't have a long way to go to overcome various racist parts of our political system. But even if you find the creation of majority-minority districts a good idea, you still have to recognize that it can also potentially set-back the Democratic cause at large. That's the tension I was actually pointing out.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[Attila Dimedici]

When did the Republican Party become the party of racism? Was it when they supplied the necessary votes to pass the Civil Rights Act by voting for it in higher percentages than the Democrats? Or was it when Richard Nixon implemented the "Southern Strategy" of actually enforcing the desegregation of schools, especially in the South?

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[nbauman]

When did the Republican Party become the party of racism? Was it when they supplied the necessary votes to pass the Civil Rights Act by voting for it in higher percentages than the Democrats? Or was it when Richard Nixon implemented the "Southern Strategy" of actually enforcing the desegregation of schools, especially in the South?

According to John Dean, in a series of articles for FindlLaw about his experience in the Republican party, it happened when some win-at-any-cost Republican strategists decided that there was a large lower-class religious population in the South, who were already being manipulated by preachers, who could also be manipulated by Republicans.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[nbauman]

So, you are saying that, by desegregating the schools in the south, the Republican Party under Richard Nixon was demonstrating its racism?

John Dean, a Republican, was talking about the Republican Party after Nixon. Nixon's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, was Pat Moynihan, a liberal.

Dean said that after the Democratic Party stopped supporting Southern racism, the Republican Party (after Nixon) adopted a strategy of taking their place, by appealing to white racist Southerners.

I can't find Dean's old articles on FindLaw, and Findlaw may have been deleted them after FindLaw changed its format, or Dean may have deleted them after he collected them into his book.

I would suggest that you examine the results of the policies of both the Republicans and the Democrats to determine which party is truly racist. Democrats pursue policies which trap minorities (and others) in poverty while increasing the wealth and power of those who already have it.

Since I read the Wall Street Journal editorial page for 30 years, I have examined those arguments in great detail. The WSJ used to argue that free-market policies, lowering taxes and restricting government, would lead to prosperity, which would trickle down to the poor. They also used to argue that government handouts to the poor, like unemployment insurance, minimum wage, unions, public housing, welfare, free health care, and free education, would give them a disincentive to work and make them lazy. On the other hand, when the rich are born into trust funds, and never have to work a day in their lives, that gives them an incentive to become job creators, like Hank Rearden and Bill Gates.

This was in contrast to the news section of the WSJ, which regularly reported how the conservative policies of the editorial page weren't working as predicted.

When Democrats control the government, the gap between white and black income almost invariably widens. When republicans control the government it usually narrows.

While that is what conservative economists predict based on theory, and that is what they believe without (or in spite of) empirical evidence, I am not aware of any data to prove it. I'd like to see the data.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[Attila Dimedici]

Well, since John Dean no longer had access to the inner circles of Republican strategy after Nixon, how would he know? I actually know who John Dean was. There is no way that anyone who was doing what John Dean claimed the Republican strategists were doing would have talked to him about it after he spilled the beans on the plots he had been involved in while on the Nixon team.
You know it is interesting that you say you reached your conclusions by reading the WSJ. I reached my conclusions by listening to what various politicians said they believed and watching the actual results of their policies...and the results of the policies they said would lead to disaster. For example, Democrats said that welfare reform, passed by Republicans and signed by Bill Clinton (with a promise to "fix" it after he was re-elected) would result in single mothers and others dependent on the programs it effected ending up homeless and starving. In actuality, it turned out to lift large numbers out of poverty. Or for another example, just look at Detroit.
As to what happens when Democrats are in charge of the government, When Ronald Reagan was President median African American incomes rose by 84% as opposed to 68% for whites. Under Obama, the median income for African Americans has dropped 10.9%, while that for non-hispanic whites has dropped 3.6 %. I'm sorry, but when one looks at the results of the policies implemented by Democrats vs those implemented by Republicans one realizes that the Democrats are still the same as when they founded the KKK.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[nbauman]

It was no big secret. A lot of the Republican loudmouths were bragging about it.

Some of the Republican leadership even apologized for it: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...

Clinton's welfare reform was a disaster for the poor, and indirectly for the rest of the country.

http://billmoyers.com/2014/05/...

http://www.thenation.com/blog/...

I remember the Reagan presidency. Reagan made a deal with the Soviets to let the Soviet "Jews" emigrate. I knew a lot of Soviet Jews. They had to claim that they had suffered anti-Semitism and were victims in order to immigrate here as refugees. They had lawyers and fixers who would copy the identical stories of anti-Semitism for new immigrants and hand them into the INS. They would fabricate their stories. It was a scam. A lot of them weren't even Jewish; they forged documents. They immediately got welfare, housing, health care, jobs, vocational training programs, and free college tuition. They were getting more benefits than I could get. It's no wonder they liked capitalism so much. For them, capitalism was a series of handouts that they didn't have to work for. That's welfare, Reagan style.

I know a black woman who worked for the welfare department, and she was annoyed at the way the Soviet Jews would come in and act as if they were entitled to welfare. It was easier for them to get welfare than native Americans. A lot of them turned out to be criminals, and you can still read stories in the New York Times and Daily News about Russian Jews from that immigration who got caught in all kinds of illegal schemes, particularly welfare and Medicaid/Medicare fraud.

The Russian immigrants had several magazines, the most popular of which was Metropol. I once talked to the editor of Metropol. He said that as soon as they became citizens, the Russian immigrants registered Republican and voted for Ronald Reagan. He said once in the while he would get a letter saying, "Why don't we vote for Democrats," but no more than 1 in 100. It was the most brazen quid pro quo. Reagan gave them handouts, and in return they voted solid Republican. Giuliani did the same thing. This is what the Republicans accuse Obama of doing. https://danieljmitchell.files....

The same thing happened to the Cubans in Miami. And all the other favored minority immigrants.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[Talderas]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the legislation only enacted against states that had a history of racism? This is one of the reasons why Indiana can get away with requiring voter ID when voting but southern states get slapped on the wrist and told they can't.

Re:Federal law has an effect, too

[FreedomFirstThenPeac]

A real analysis of correlations would have to include not only the party of the Executive branch, but also the parties in the House and Senate. At a minimum. But Attila Dimedici's points are still well noted. Another "Inconvenient Truth" kept out of the minds of the people. Not unlike people who would point to Washington DC's abysmal schools and note that it has been a Democratic city since way back. Forbes has an interesting article on this

The most fundamental difference between the data that conservatives prefer—that the 10 poorest cities are longtime Democratic strongholds—and the data that liberals will be more inclined to cite—that the 10 poorest states are predominantly Republican, is that conservatives can point to actual policies that Democrats implemented that contributed to the impoverishment of the cities, while the liberals cannot point to specific GOP policies that have caused the poorer states to lag behind.

The Democratic case is illusory and circumstantial; the Republican case is solid and substantial. However, in a country where so many people are economically and historically illiterate, combined with the human proclivity whereby “a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest” (Paul Simon, “The Boxer”), the Democrats may be able to score some points with a hollow argument. The Republicans, though, have the facts on their side.

Ref: Are the 10 Poorest States Really Republican

How can we argue with an author who quotes Paul Simon?

"I'm saying these maps aren't gerrymandered,"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok well that settles it then!

"Why would you call that uncompetitive?"

[mbone]

When we had so many political consultants bidding for the contract to make those district maps?

Re:"Why would you call that uncompetitive?"

[davester666]

They put out contracts for this stuff? Why?

It seems to be that there are a bunch of people that will pay lots of money to be able to set these voting boundaries.

At least then we'll know who bought the votes.

Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[Teun]

Start using a democratic system where every vote is equal, it's called Proportional Representation and works very well.

It would also be the end of the two party systems.

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[Chrisq]

Start using a democratic system where every vote is equal, it's called Proportional Representation and works very well.

It would also be the end of the two party systems.

Personally I agree but the likelihood of it happening is very small. The chances of someone who has just won by the fisrt past the post system voting for a change is very low!

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[Shadow of Eternity]

first past the post isn't what's doing that, not having instant runoff style ballots is.

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[OzPeter]

Start using a democratic system where every vote is equal, it's called Proportional Representation and works very well.

It would also be the end of the two party systems.

How preferential voting in Australia works .. in a nice, easy to read cartoon style where Dennis the Election Koala gives Ken the Voting Dingo an important lesson in civics! You Can’t ‘Waste Your Vote’!

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[Jason Levine]

Start using a democratic system where every vote is equal, it's called Proportional Representation and works very well.

It would also be the end of the two party systems.

Personally I agree but the likelihood of it happening is very small. The chances of someone who has just won by the fisrt past the post system voting for a change is very low!

Not just a politician who won first past the post, but both major parties. Changing the voting system would require one or both of the major parties supporting the change. However, both parties know that they gain power in the current system. Yes, the Democrats lost this round of elections, but wait a few years and the Republicans will be kicked out and replaced by Democrats - who will be kicked out a few years later in favor of Republicans. Repeat ad infinitum.

Why would they support a change that would let some upstart third party gain enough power to unseat their power sharing arrangement? Or worse, allow a few third parties to arise and push Democrats and Republicans to the sidelines instead of sharing the spotlight?

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[Rockoon]

Start using a democratic system where every vote is equal, it's called Proportional Representation and works very well.

Thats fine for House elections, not so fine for Senate elections. The House represents the People but the Senate is supposed to represent the States. We should go back to appointing Senators rather than electing them.

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[Carewolf]

first past the post isn't what's doing that, not having instant runoff style ballots is.

Yes it is. With proportional voting a minor party with 15% in every district would get one candidate in a state of 11 districts like this case. In a two party system, aka first past the post, they would get none.

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[delt0r]

No it doesn't. It like all 2 party systems. You between shit and syphilis.

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[Teun]

So why do you think a senator voted in on PR is worse than the FPTP one?

Interesting, who is going to appoint those senators?

Over here in The Netherlands we have a system whereby the senate is voted in by the provincial 'parliaments' called The States.
This election happens every 4 years, no later than three months after the provincial elections.
The 'value' of a provincial vote depends on how populous the province is.

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[wired_parrot]

Start using a democratic system where every vote is equal, it's called Proportional Representation and works very well.

It would also be the end of the two party systems.

We have first past the post system here in Canada and we still manage to elect strong third parties. In fact we have 6 federal parties with elected members. In the last 20 years, we've also gone through 6 official opposition parties at the federal level. At the provincial level, the story is similar. Other countries with a first past the post system, such as the UK, also have strong third parties, so that's not the issue.

I'd also gerrymandering is a more of a symptom of a democratic deficit in US politics than a cause. The idea behind gerrymandering is to create "safe" electoral districts. Safe electoral districts are not usually stable here in Canada because it creates an easy opening for third party candidates. Voters in a strongly liberal district can vote for a liberal alternative without risk of a conservative candidate winning - likewise for a strongly conservative district. One should never have districts where one side wins with over 90% of the votes, as happens in numerous republican and democratic districts alike in the US, as that speaks to the lack of a democratic alternative at a local level in those districts.

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[I'm New Around Here]

You missed his point. In the US, the Senators were originally appointed by the state legislatures. There were no elections for the Senate. This was set in the Constitution back in the 1700s. As Rockoon says, they are supposed to represent the States, and argue for the States' rights.

In the early 1900s, an amendment was passed that changed how senators are chosen. The reasoning for the change was that the state legislatures were appointing millionaires who donated the most election money to the state legislators, of any party. So, to end the corruption, senators were to be elected by a popular vote of the people.

As we see today though, the people who want to be senators are still giving money to the people who vote for them, but now it is in the form of government handouts to more and more of the population. A candidate who promises to cut handouts won't win if many of the people in his area depend on those handouts.

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[dave420]

The third strong party in the UK is an anomaly. They only exist to threaten taking votes from the main parties which don't pander to the third party's voters. FPTP is broken.

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[MachineShedFred]

But it would require voting for a party, rather than a person. I'm not represented by a political party - I'm represented by Steve.

It would also require a constitutional amendment, passed by whom? Good luck with that.

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[Shadow of Eternity]

With proportional voting a minority party in the US system would still be largely locked out because of Duverger's Law and the two major parties would exploit proportional voting using large numbers of less populous districts to outweigh more densely populated urban areas. With instant runoff voting people can vote for whoever they want without having to worry about Duverger's Law screwing them.

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[CrimsonAvenger]

Start using a democratic system where every vote is equal, it's called Proportional Representation and works very well.

Alas, in the USA, we vote for a candidate, NOT A PARTY!

Yes, I'm aware that in Europe you just vote for the Party you want, and then the Party picks the candidate. Won't happen here without a change to the Constitution....

Re: Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[wired_parrot]

I'd say we had minority governments in Canada where third parties played a significant role, so their impact can't be neglected.

The other advantage of first-past-the-post system is that every voter within an electoral district has a clearly defined representative to represent and defend the interests of that constituency. A representative is elected to represent a particular district, and not just the voters who voted for him or her. In a proportional system, there is no guarantee of representation. If one votes for a third party that does not manage to elect any members, one is left without representation. And even if members of your party are elected, they may not elect members from your area. This lack of representation is the biggest flaw in the proportional representation system, in my opinion.

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[jfengel]

I'd like to give PR a try, though I don't expect it to be the end of the two-party system. Minority parties tend to be subsumed into one of the two leading parties, because any vote on legislation ends up dividing people into "yes" and "no" camps. Ideally, the coalitions would differ from vote to vote, but since the best way to get to "yes" on some issue is to trade off a vote on another issue, the coalitions tend to be fairly stable over time.

The advantage of PR, in the United States, is that increasingly people are voting for party over personality anyway. Personality tends to serve mostly as a liability: if you end up calling attention to yourself it's usually for something you screwed up. In a safe seat (as so many are), a distinctive personality will help you keep winning the primary, but in competitive seats the names you remember are largely the ones who committed some terrible "gaffe" (often manufactured or blown out of proportion by the press and the opposition party).

Once elected, they tend to vote the party line. If they do anything distinctive, it's most often just grandstanding, with little effect on the legislative outcome. A good politician actually can do some real wheeling and dealing behind the scenes, getting a favorable position for their district, but the effects are usually hard to see. The most prominent things they do are to vote the same way as anybody else would with the same letter after their name.

So since we're voting for parties over personalities anyway, we might as well give PR a try. Don't expect it to cure the ills you expect it to, since what we end up with is going to look a lot like a two-party system anyway, but it will at least allow us to reconsider the system. It might even end the practice of voting against whichever politician is most easily tagged with negative personality traits, so that they can focus on the party most in line with their ideology. (I'm not crazy about that, either, but at least it's slightly more real.)

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[Teun]

Thanks for the clarification.

It's so obvious the money trail has to be cut.

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[I'm New Around Here]

...these days it is the hyper-rich and Super-PACs that influence elections more than anything else. A candidate must kowtow to these special interests. Those depending on handouts are almost without influence. Unless it is handouts to corporations and tax cuts to the very rich that you mean.

Yes, that's why Romney's "47%" comment made not a single ripple when he said it to hyper-rich donors. And he of course, won that election with all those votes from that same 47%.

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[shutdown -p now]

A minority party doesn't have to be many seats to have a significant leverage in the parliament - they can throw their votes in with one of the bigger guys in exchange for helping push some of their own agenda later.

Re: Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[shutdown -p now]

In a proportional system, there is no guarantee of representation.

This problem was solved many years ago.

Re:Stop this stupid First past the Post system

[Copid]

Alas, in the USA, we vote for a candidate, NOT A PARTY!

And the best part about it is that once we're finished voting for those individual candidates, they go off to the legislature and join up with their parties and vote in lockstep anyway. Strict party discipline has kind of made the whole "I'm a trustworthy and wise leader with good ideas" schtick kind of irrelevant.

Subdistrict data available?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Subdistrict data available?

[MachineShedFred]

Each district has precincts, but that's likely the lowest the data goes.

Don't hear that it's just the Republicans at this

[Bruce66423]

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.

States too are districts

[anorlunda]

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.

 

Re:States too are districts

[dkf]

In federal elections, state borders can be considered as districts causing the same kinds of distortions.

Maybe, but the effects are less severe because state lines are enormously more difficult to change for short-term political advantage. State-level gerrymandering requires sustained visible policies that affect migration and/or birth rates over decades.

Re:States too are districts

[TubeSteak]

Maybe, but the effects are less severe because state lines are enormously more difficult to change for short-term political advantage.

This is only tangentially related, but in the USA, many of the State borders are wrong.

Surveying was a significantly less exact science 200+ years ago.
Many of the borders were marked by specific trees, rocks, or waterways that have since moved or disappeared.
To add to the confusion, the surveyors didn't/couldn't always follow the original land grant instructions,
since making a perfectly straight line across several hundred miles of wilderness was nearly impossible.

By way of example, the Four Corners Monument (AZ/CO/NM/UT) is ~1800 feet East of where it should be.
The Mason-Dixon line (separating DE/PA/MD) is off by 800~900 feet in places.
They couldn't correct for gravitational effects that skewed their plumb bob and consequently offset their star sightings.

For the most part, these issues aren't very contentious, except where water is involved.
States fight like cats and dogs over water rights and access.

The senator is right

[DCFC]

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.

Re:The senator is right

[Shadow of Eternity]

Exactly. "safe" districts shift the major contest from each side fighting over the middle to the "safe" side fighting with itself over who can appeal to more zealots.

Math

[Thanshin]

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.

Re:Math

[plover]

You don't have to lower the math standards any, you just have to fail to raise them for the next 20 years. Even then it won't matter, because so many people are so bad at statistics and estimating, even when they know better.

Re:Quit demanding majority-minority districts then

[taiwanjohn]

Perhaps bigger?

Did it ever occur to you that most people don't vote on racial lines?

Re:What Does This Mean

[TheRaven64]

They created an algorithm that constructed constituency boundaries randomly, but in such a way that obeyed the rules. They constructed 100 such random maps. The average of these had 7-8 Democrat seats, 5-6 Republican seats. The actual results were 9 Republican, 4 Democrat, using maps drawn up by the Republicans (note: TFA didn't say what the results would have been with the previous set of maps, which had been drawn up by the Democrats). This means that, although the Republicans lost the popular vote in the state, and they lost the geographically weighted vote according to 100 randomly drawn electoral maps, they still ended up winning the state overall.

PR works well? Where?

[Bruce66423]

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.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[dkf]

By contrast Belgium's record of 18 months without a government as a result of PR should be a warning to us all.

Those who hope for a reduction of government meddling in their affairs will see it as a sign of true hope: the sky didn't fall in, despite the fact that the politicians couldn't agree on the most basic thing of all. Throwing them all out of office and only then starting work on the replacement would in fact be just fine...

Re:PR works well? Where?

[daveewart]

The great virtue of 'first past the post' is that it forces parties to appeal to a wider group than their obvious supporters...

I'm not sure that's necessarily true, but what FPTP does do is push everything towards a two-party state. This is why you get, effectively, extremists on both sides. Case in point: UK and USA. Minor parties are pushed out, moderate viewpoints are ignored. FPTP directly leads to "Us v. Them" contests.

In fact, thinking more about your first point: I don't think it's quite true. FPTP encourages parties to talk negatively about their opponents rather than push their own positive points.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[Teun]

Similar happens in The Netherlands, many months with lengthy negotiations to find a majority coalition.

It's typically during these periods we have the most stable system :)

The German tweak is a 5% minimum threshold to get into the parliament, only recognised minorities are exempted.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[drinkypoo]

Sometimes governments need to collapse sooner rather than later. Less dogs will be under the porch.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[Trepidity]

The great virtue of 'first past the post' is that it forces parties to appeal to a wider group than their obvious supporters

With the increase of uncompetitive districts in the U.S., I think this is no longer the case. The real decision-making in many districts happens in the caucuses or primaries (depending on the state), not in the general election. And in those cases it's typically a narrow slice of grassroots party activists, jockeying with party establishment insiders and major donors, who select the candidate.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're ignoring that Belgium is a federal state, so we still had 5 governments left (Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels, the German speaking part -- officially, there are even more governments/parliaments, but they all overlap with one of those). Additionally, while the new government was being formed, the old one stayed in function and could still rule regarding the "daily affairs". Other issues that are normally the prerogative of the executive power could only be addressed with support of the ("new" elected) parliament.

I.o.w.: during the 18 months it took to form a new federal government, we were by no means without government.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[Anonymous Coward]

> By contrast Belgium's record of 18 months without a government as a result of PR should be a warning to us all.

Does not really matter in Belgium. During absence of federal government, we still got - for 10e6 people country - more than six parliaments, 3 regional governments and 3 linguistic community having a lot of power. Power is split in so many parts that losing one does not matter.

Not having a government during the peak of the economical crisis was actually good: nothing stupid done, debt stabilized, ...

Re:PR works well? Where?

[Entrope]

The US is even better in that respect. If our federal government went out to lunch for 18 months (which might be a reduction for some of our Washington politicians...) we would still have 51 governments plus the territories.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anecdotal evidence? Germany, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and more use proportional representation systems to some extent. Hardly unstable countries.

If I could design a voting process, I would use the condorcet method and proportional representation.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[ichabod801]

You're confusing two separate things: proportional representation and parliamentary systems. The two are typically combined, but there is nothing necessary about that. If the U.S. elected Congress through proportional representation, but continued to elect the President through popular vote (er, I mean the Electoral College), you would have the multiple parties of proportional representation without the instability of having to form a coalition government.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[pjt33]

By contrast Belgium's record of 18 months without a government as a result of PR should be a warning to us all.

A warning or an incentive?

Re:PR works well? Where?

[dave420]

No, the US is in precisely the same situation - from the perspective of a citizen, if the federal government were to disappear, they'd still have their state government. It's not like someone in Iowa is suddenly also represented by the Florida government because the federal government can't get its shit together.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[Anonymous Coward]

Belgium has problems forming a government because it is split in a French-speaking and Dutch-speaking part (and the bilingual Brussels), which have different political parties and news media and generally can't get along. The issues at a Federal leveral are always about the distribution of money between the two parts of the country and about the distribution of government tasks between the Federal and local governments. Not having a Federal government isn't actually that important because important issues such as education, social security and healthcare are responsibilities of the local governments.

The local Flemish, Wallonian and Brussels parliaments are also elected with proportional agreement and have no problems forming a government.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[alvinrod]

Then stop trying to form coalitions and just let groups or individuals vote how they want to vote rather than cutting deal. If you can't get at least half to agree that something is a good idea, it obviously needs more refinement.

The only thing that a government would need to agree on at some point is a budget. If they can't pass a new one, just use the the previous one adjusted for inflation and dissolve the current government and elect a new one.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[Hognoxious]

Sorry to piss on your libertarian parade, but even if there wasn't a gubmint in place, all pre-existing laws were still in force. Police still handed out speeding tickets, taxes were still collected, etc.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[Third Position]

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.

Is that an indictment or an endorsement?

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.

That sounds more like an indictment of democracy itself. I'll point out that if Wilhelm had remained on the throne of Germany, neither the collapse of the Weimar republic nor the subsequent unfortunate events would have been possible. Those are entirely the fruits of democracy.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[khallow]

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.

It's interesting how people retcon history.

The Wiemar Republic was imposed by force by parties who wanted to keep Germany weak following Germany's defeat in the First World War. So sure, the selection of a proportional representation system is a bit damning.

But various parties (particularly, the German military and allied industrialists and nobility) were working towards the destruction of the Weimar Republic since its creation (long before Hitler became a factor). A more unified government would have just made the transition even faster.

As to the Fourth French Republic, they lost Dien Bien Phu (and as a result French Indochina) and were set to repeat that performance in Algeria. That gets blamed on the disunity from proportional representation, but I just don't see France keeping these territories no matter what government it has. They were still rebuilding after the destruction of the Second World War. First-Past-The-Post doesn't magically build up a powerful military in a few short years.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[thospel]

What is Belgium doing in your list of stable countries ?

Re:PR works well? Where?

[Etherwalk]

What is Belgium doing in your list of stable countries ?

Not being invaded by Germany!

Re:PR works well? Where?

[aaarrrgggh]

Belgium might not be the best example. Do they have a government yet?

Re:PR works well? Where?

[Teun]

And why do you think there are no minority governments?

Presently The Netherlands has one, Denmark usually has one and they work.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[SLi]

I live in Finland. Why do you think there is "instability" in "having to form a coalition government"? To the contrary, I find it ensures that every vote counts to the extent it should. I also would be somewhat horrified if some party in my country got enough votes that it could form a government alone. It would have way too much power.

Let's consider a simple example, say we have parties A (40% of votes), B (35 %), C (15 %) and D (10 %).

To be stable a coalition should have around 60 % of members of parliament behind it. Hence, generally the interesting stable coalitions would be A+B, A+C+D and B+C+D.

Now this allows for the parties to haggle and trade on those issues they consider most important. For example, say that party B strongly wants to have higher taxes for fuel, while party A is strongly opposed to it. Party A somewhat prefers to impose fascism, while the other parties don't want that.

Now, say that parties C and D would, everything else being equal, not want higher taxes for fuel, but they don't consider it a core issue.

Now, let's say party C wants to safeguard some minority to a larger extent compared to the other parties, and none of the other parties is strongly opposed to that (but would not do it on their own). Party D has similarly some core issue of its own.

Now, A+B may not be a good coalition because their agendas are so contradictory that it's hard to figure out a good deal. A+C+D would be a viable coalition: A, C and D get their wish on fuel taxes, but A has to give up on fascism (which it mildly prefers) and accept the core agendas of C and D.

Also, B+C+D would be possible; probably B would have to make some concessions that A is not willing to make.

As you can see, every party has an incentive to offer to give up to an extent on their minor agendas in order to reach a consensus that is preferable to each of them. And this, I believe, makes everybody get a better deal.

Also, a two-party system (which is a natural result of your voting system) seems to be incredibly polarizing. See, you have two kinds of people, democrats and republicans, and it seems to me that the ones you don't belong to are those crazy lunatic bastards. I find it hard to imagine that is healthy for a population.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[Rich0]

If I could design a voting process, I would use the condorcet method and proportional representation.

Does condorcet even make sense with proportional representation? You aren't voting for individual candidates, and you don't really have incentive to vote strategically with PR.

Don't get me wrong, I love condorcet, it just makes more sense when you're electing one person to a single office from a pool of many candidates.

Re:PR works well? Where?

[TMB]

Canada has FPTP and has had at least 3 major parties every election for decades (at times up to 5). It's more the case that when you have 2-party FPTP, it is very hard to break out of it... but if you start off with more viable parties, it can remain that way.

Which is not to say that I endorse FPTP in any way, shape or form. We all know that Arrow's Theorem says that no voting system satisfies all the axioms you would like a voting system to adhere to, but some violate the axioms more often and in more egregious ways than others. FPTP is more egregious at the individual level than almost any alternative.

The problem with Arrow's Theorem is that it is really about what happens for a choice amongst a few individuals (like a presidential election), while the majority of countries have parliamentary systems in which it is the aggregate of all of the individual choices that determines the government. If you ask what government you get as a result of all of those individual FPTP elections, its faults vis-a-vis Arrow's Theorem are usually not too bad. Which is probably why FPTP persists despite the fact that it does badly at the individual level -- people tend to agree that the government it produces at the national level usually reflects the will of the people.

Gerrymandering has internal effects too...

[Shadow of Eternity]

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.

Creates False Impressions of Opinion Majority

[retroworks]

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.

Re:How is that startling?

[plover]

Gerrymandering has a long, proud tradition in U.S. politics. I wouldn't be surprised if it resulted in advantage to one side about half the time.

It seems that political power is self-limiting. One side will occupy Congress for a while, until the other side gets fed up and makes a switch. As long as one party doesn't control the whole Congress plus the presidency, gridlock keeps us safe from most of the excesses of either side. It's only when one side runs the whole show that it's time to worry.

I don't recall such interest in gerrymandering ...

[Scepticle]

... 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.

Faulty assumption

[the-matt-mobile]

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.

Re:Faulty assumption

[imunfair]

We actually had an interesting candidate in my district that I felt gave insight into this issue. It was a young guy with no experience or thoughts on issues - basically he said that he was going to ask the people what they thought. He got 30% of the vote.

That leads me to believe that 50-60% of people are voting purely based on party. Sure there may have been some intentional votes, but his platform seems more appropriate for a third party aimed at freedom, etc - and third parties around here don't get more than 2-3% of the overall vote.

He was running as a Democrat, but I don't think that's relevant - I'd expect to see the same numbers if you ran him as a republican.

Except...

[argStyopa]

"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:
- must have the same population
- must be contiguous ...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:
- 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.

Re:Except...

[readin]

"recognizing communities" is the heart of gerrymandering. Any gerrymandering algorithm should be forbidden from doing so.

Re:Except...

[Entrope]

District-drawing very much should recognize communities. If you can avoid it, it does not make sense to have districts that are half suburban and half agricultural, or half high-end gentrified downtown and half working-class and poor. Unfortunately, as you point out, the judgment involved does make it easier to slip in some degree of gerrymandering.

Re:Except...

[I'm New Around Here]

No, the heart of gerrymandering is "recognizing communities and then ripping them apart electorally".

Re:Except...

[readin]

District-drawing very much should recognize communities. If you can avoid it, it does not make sense to have districts that are half suburban and half agricultural, or half high-end gentrified downtown and half working-class and poor. Unfortunately, as you point out, the judgment involved does make it easier to slip in some degree of gerrymandering.

it does make sense if you want to have non-extremist represents willing to compromise because they have to worry about pleasing more than one kind of constituent. One of the big complaints about gerrymandering is that it has lead to 'safe' seats where extreme partisans cause gridlock.

Re:Except...

[readin]

No, the heart of gerrymandering is "recognizing communities and then ripping them apart electorally".

or tying them tightly together so they only get one representative.

Re:Except...

[argStyopa]

Let's remember that one of the "triumphs" of the Civil Rights movement in 1965 was the voting rights act that LEGITIMIZED gerrymandering in order to offer minorities more political power by concentrating them in districts so that they could win.

We can't have it both ways - we can't legitimize fiddling with boundaries for your precious cause (giving minorities the vote), and then not do it for mine (re-electing me). Slippery slope indeed.

Re:Except...

[Entrope]

And in your world, how do you deal with unicorn overpopulation?

When you have one district that breaks down mostly into two significantly different constituencies -- whether they are based on race, class, rural versus suburban, or whatever else -- the way politicians react in reality is that they focus their appeal on one of the constituencies, try to increase turnout for that constituency, and discourage turnout for the other one. It's just gerrymandering of a different kind.

Not just Republicans....

[Rick Zeman]

...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.

Re:Not just Republicans....

[phantomfive]

The biggest problem is:
Those politicians who are not willing to bend the rules through gerrymandering ultimately lose to those who do. It's like Darwinist evolution pressure in favor of corrupt politicians.

Re:Not just Republicans....

[Rick Zeman]

First, my state isn't Maryland. Secondly, unlike yours, my state isn't a province of Mexico...again.

Bioregionalism

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:Bioregionalism

[memnock]

So do you mean people who live in a river valley, for example, will all vote the same way?

Re:I don't recall such interest in gerrymandering

[zraider]

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.

Re:How is that startling?

[Trepidity]

Duke is a private university. And its main external funding comes from a rich industrialist's foundation.

There is an open source solution

[readin]

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.

Re:There is an open source solution

[BradleyUffner]

Who chooses the seed?

Re:There is an open source solution

[hey!]

The state lottery commission.

Oddly enough, a state that can't be counted on to run an election competently and honestly can *still* manage to run a competent lottery.

Re:There is an open source solution

[phantomfive]

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.

Here's the flaw: the people who provide the 'convenient district borders' will be able to choose them in a way that favors one party or another.

Re:There is an open source solution

[hoeferbe]

readin wrote:

* 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.

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.

I really like your idea of making district boundary-drawing be more repeatable and open. However, I don't understand the difference between the number of people within each section and population density; would you please explain?

It would seem to me that drawing up districts should start out like drawing a topographical map. After dividing the landmass up into smallish-units (like a grid), the districting would start with the unit of highest population density and expand out from there (using a mathematical formula of the gradient of the population density) by adding more units to an area until the district it builds reaches the pre-determined minimum number of people in it without going over some pre-determined maximum. Each district would be required to be within, say, ~0.1% of the ideal number.

I'm sure this ideas has lots of holes in it; I've not spent any time studying it.

Re:There is an open source solution

[readin]

I was in a hurry at the time and wished I could come up with better wording for what I meant by "people within each section". I did mean population density - but as I was writing it the thought occurred to me that precise knowledge of population density could be used to do some partisan gerrymandering and was thinking at the time that maybe less precise data would be better.

In your second paragraph you suggest that districts should be built around population centers. Why do we want that? Why should every farmer be tied to a town instead of large sections of farmers (a community) being tied together?

I've had this method of redistricting in my mind for a long time but I have to admit this population density issue had never occurred to me before. Democrats tend to live in urban centers and Republicans in less densely populated areas. Some attention would need to be paid to the algorithm to be sure it didn't favor one party or the other simply by the technique it uses to group voters.

Re:There is an open source solution

[readin]

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.

Here's the flaw: the people who provide the 'convenient district borders' will be able to choose them in a way that favors one party or another.

You don't allow them to choose, for example, which Interstate Highways can be boundaries - you say they can all be boundaries. The algorithm chooses which ones to use. You don't choose which county roads can be boundaries, you say either county roads can be used or they can't. And you might give them a priority that says they're less important than Interstates but more important than creeks. But ultimately it is the algorithm running two years later that decides based on population which of those roads and creeks to use as boundaries.

Re: There is an open source solution

[vpness]

Great, insightful thinking. Leaves out a few things : politicians and voters are *from somewhere *. The voters know where to go to vote, the politicians have a somewhat stable territory to run from. Though the general concept is frigging brilliant.

Re:There is an open source solution

[readin]

Why not use something like random.org or another "perfect" random number source? That way, nobody choose the seed.

For the same reason we don't trust electronic ballots - too easy to tamper with the process without having any evidence.

A big round tub of ping pong balls on the other hand - there is no obvious way to rig which ball will be selected and if you did figure something out the evidence would be tangible and much harder to dispose of.

Re: There is an open source solution

[readin]

Thanks

I've wondered how district stability (I assume that's what you mean) might be incorporated into the plan. You wouldn't want it as a factor the first time it is used because you want to get rid of any previous gerrymandering effects. But in follow-up years it would be nice for people not to have the districts (and representatives) changing wildly. I don't have an answer for it though. I think the benefits of ending gerrymandering would make up for the district instability.

Unintentional Gerrymandering

[zraider]

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/...

Re:How is that startling?

[marauder68]

What's really startling (not really) is the fact gerrymandering is worse in blue states than red ones, but we only ever hear (on this site) that it's all the evil republicans while the democrats are the poor victims.

Re:How is that startling?

[readin]

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 requirements also include obvious stuff like how spread out or compact districts must be, how many can be disconnected, etc.

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.

Re: How is that startling?

[marauder68]

And which side do you fear? The Republicrats or the Demoblicans?

Both, if you're smart.

Re:How is that startling?

[dave420]

Don't get between a partisan idiot and their argument or you might get your sanity bitten off.

Re: How is that startling?

[Dominare]

Demoblicans would be a great name for the bad guys in an 80s video game. "Commander Keen versus the Demoblicans!" just sounds right.

Needless complexity or necessary evil?

[Dominare]

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.

Re:Needless complexity or necessary evil?

[iceperson]

Imagine the 2 largest cities in a state had 51% of the population. Those cities could and most likely would come together and simply siphon resources from the rural areas. They can just funnel all the funding for schools, police, roads to their cities to buy local votes and ignore everyone else.

At the national level the same can be said of states. In your scenerio all the people in the red area on this map wouldn't have a voice in government at all. http://politicalmaps.org/wp-co...

Re:Needless complexity or necessary evil?

[quantaman]

Imagine the 2 largest cities in a state had 51% of the population. Those cities could and most likely would come together and simply siphon resources from the rural areas. They can just funnel all the funding for schools, police, roads to their cities to buy local votes and ignore everyone else.

At the national level the same can be said of states. In your scenerio all the people in the red area on this map wouldn't have a voice in government at all.
http://politicalmaps.org/wp-co...

Well the current system concentrates the votes of those 2 cities into a handful of districts with assured outcomes. Since the outcome of the city districts is already determined that 51% of the population has almost no voice in government at all.

Re:Needless complexity or necessary evil?

[surd1618]

It's funny that a lot of people who are against regulatory systems, support the free market, and so forth, are all for districting. In a totally laissez faire system, cities ought to dominate, because the way people live in rural areas, especially in the US, is egregiously wasteful compared to city dwelling.

Re:How is that startling?

[Z00L00K]

Just change to a proportional election system instead. Let the percentage of votes decide how many seats a party will get.

It will of course invite other parties to the election party as well.

Stuff like this.

[Truekaiser]

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.

Re:Stuff like this.

[whistlingtony]

You don't vote because you're lazy and don't want to fight. And frankly, half the reason we're in this mess is because of people like you.

Re:Stuff like this.

[fibonacci8]

You don't vote because you're lazy and don't want to fight. And frankly, half the reason we're in this mess is because of people like you.

49.9% of the mess you mean. Even the mess is gerrymandered.

Re:What Does This Mean

[AthanasiusKircher]

This means that, although the Republicans lost the popular vote in the state, and they lost the geographically weighted vote according to 100 randomly drawn electoral maps, they still ended up winning the state overall.

This is true, and I have absolutely no doubt that there is some serious manipulation going on in drawing districts, as there has been by both parties for centuries.

That said, there's quite a big gap of logic in one of the assumptions of this study. From TFS:

"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."

To what extent is this assumption valid, though? The model appears based on the assumption that ALL voters are "straight-ticket" types who just vote Republican or Democrat mindlessly.

In other words, it doesn't take into account whether (1) a voter might actually care about a specific candidate and what he/she says, (2) a voter might actually respond to campaign advertising or other candidate promotions, (3) for incumbents, a voter might actually continue to vote for an incumbent is he/she is perceived to have served well. (Stats generally show that incumbents have a huge advantage in elections -- voters prefer to vote for familiar names.)

Without controlling for such factors (e.g., by looking at previous election vote counts and comparing how "faithful" voters are to a particular party over the course of a number of elections), this study is SERIOUSLY flawed.

Also, candidates run campaigns according to the rules that are in place. They may visit areas in their district because they have to win those areas and make promises they might not otherwise make because those areas are in their district. If the district lines were drawn differently, they would probably campaign differently.

This strikes me as flawed as those who get into arguments about how Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 election. (To be clear, I definitely was never a Bush fan, but I'm interested in rational argument, not fantasies.)

Anyhow, Gore and Bush weren't campaigning to win the popular vote across the country. They were campaigning to win the electoral college vote, which required strategy based on regions and state boundaries. To come back later and say, "But, but... Gore should have won because he got the popular vote" is like some idiot saying, "I know I lost Monopoly, but I had the most properties -- if you changed the rules to allow me to build houses based on the number of properties I own rather than the number of monopolies I had, I could have won!" So what? Those aren't the rules of the game.

The rules of the game may be stupid (and are in the case of gerrymandered districts). But the players choose strategies based on them. The voters may respond to such strategies. None of this appears to have been considered in this model.

Re:How is that startling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Duke is also the university that suspended their Lacrosse team because a bunch of leftwing idiots wanted them to. It is thta part of South Carolina that got gerrymandered into the North.

Re:Don't hear that it's just the Republicans at th

[whistlingtony]

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.

Re:Quit demanding majority-minority districts then

[dave420]

The only way your response makes any sense is if you think most Americans are black...

Re:Quit demanding majority-minority districts then

[frank_adrian314159]

So we'd do better splitting on what people vote on? Bad information and demagoguery? Maybe with a dash of party-line built in?

Actually, that sounds like what we have today.

Re: How is that startling?

[dreamchaser]

Demoblicans would be a great name for the bad guys in an 80s video game. "Commander Keen versus the Demoblicans!" just sounds right.

I prefer to refer to the de facto one party system we have as being run by Demoncrats.

Re:How is that startling?

[macsimcon]

I don’t think you understand how this works. The states draw their own districts, which explains Republicans’ desire over the last several years to capture as many state legislatures as possible.

You’re actually making the OP’s point: Democrats lost so many seats in the House this year BECAUSE of the Republicans’ gerrymandering. Without it, Republicans lose votes each year, as the will of the voters is actually expressed.

Re:How is that startling?

[anegg]

I live in a very liberal state. The powerful majority engages in gerrymandering in order to prevent an "unfortunate outcome" arising from concentrations of conservative voters. So, for example, the county I live in, which is about 50-50 conservative/liberal, is divided in half for federal elections; half is districted with the very liberal county to the west, and half with the very liberal county to our east. The idea that the party with the popular majority doesn't really have to gerrymander seems to ignore the reality that any political party that is in power wants to stay in power and will take whatever legal steps it can to do so. Oh, and the powerful liberals are just as wealthy (if not more so) as the conservatives in my state.

Section 2 of the voting rights act REQUIRES D gerr

[raymorris]

> 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.

Example of U.S. Gerrymandering

[Edgester]

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.

What about switching to a proportional system?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:What about switching to a proportional system?

[Bartles]

The voting system isn't set by the Constitution, the electoral system is. The voting system used to determine electoral votes is entirely left up to the States.

Re:What about switching to a proportional system?

[riverat1]

I think he meant that the Constitution sets 2 Senators from each state and proportional representation by population for the House of Representatives. That limits the ability to have proportional representation by party preference. Personally I think it would make more sense to make the Senate proportional by party preference. That would reduce the power of the states so a low population state like Wyoming wouldn't have the same representation as a high population state like California but it would give a better representation of where the country is politically.

Re:What about switching to a proportional system?

[Bartles]

The house is the only body of congress that was intended to be proportional. Originally Senators were supposed to be appointed by State Legislatures, but the 17th amendment changed that. In my opinion not for the better, as States now have no Federal representation. If you want to make the Senate proportional, why even have a Senate as you have just turned it into another House of Representatives?

Re: What about switching to a proportional system?

[gmiller123456]

It's pretty amazing how little attention proportional representation gets in the us. Too many people would rather argue about things they'll never agree on, than focus on things like proportional representation, which pretty much everyone would agree on (as demonstrated by almost every other democratic country on Earth).

Fairness in the US system

[ITRambo]

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.

Re:How is that startling?

[I'm New Around Here]

How about the district formerly represented by Barney Frank in Massachusetts? It even has the gerrymander look to it.

http://sisu.typepad.com/.a/6a0...

Re:How is that startling?

[ATMAvatar]

It's true that a winner-take-all system essentially hands votes to the "opposing party" if you vote for a third party.

However, in a proportional system, the party you vote for will actually get a proportional number of seats (as you might expect). That third party which is useless to vote for now because they only get 5% of the votes (and hence, zero seats) would suddenly get 5% of the seats.

Keep in mind that even with our winner-take-all system, there is a small percentage of votes for third parties every election. Now those parties would be invited to the table. Once people see that, they might actually starting to vote for the parties they want, knowing that their votes would actually work towards increased influence for their chosen party.

However, that is unlikely to happen in the US, as it works against the interests of those parties in power, and we can't have that.

Re:Section 2 of the voting rights act REQUIRES D g

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:How is that startling?

[tomhath]

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. Unfortunately, some big government politicians insist on sticking the federal government into places it doesn't belong, which is why we have the mess we do.

Quite trying to fix the abused system, stop abusing it instead.

Re:How is that startling?

[timelorde]

How about where I live:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/109938/marylands-3rd-district-americas-most-gerrymandered-congressional-district

Re:How is that startling?

[tomhath]

People don't want "a party" to have seats, they want a local representative who will look after local interests. Your proposal makes it impossible for people to vote for a candidate.

Re: How is that startling?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean how like domestic spying is evil since we have a Democrat in office but it was just fine while Bush was in there? Or how Obamacare is the worst thing ever but it was fine when Nixon proposed it or Romney implemented it?

Really, fuck you and all the lying two faced conservative bastards who've ruined this country, impoverished its workers, and stolen the wealth of generations for their rich friends.

Re: Don't hear that it's just the Republicans at t

[Hardhead_7]

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.

Re:How is that startling?

[gizmo2199]

Every. Time! Most governing in the US is done at the local level. Last time I checked, the cop that gives you a parking ticket works for the city or county where you live, not the federal government. Same goes for building inspectors, sewage, roads, schools--funded and operated by the school district or county--building permits, real-estate transactions, etc. It's all controlled at the city/local level.

Just how is the federal government in your face on a daily basis again?

Re:I don't recall such interest in gerrymandering

[zraider]

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.

Re:How is that startling?

[canadiannomad]

One of the biggest reasons why it matters is that the ratio of population per representative is getting worse. By now there should be at least 5 times more representatives then there are. Every election your vote gets less of a representative, and fewer representatives have to fight for your vote per capita.

Re:Don't hear that it's just the Republicans at th

[I'm New Around Here]

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.

City folk deciding how country folk should live

[Vidar Leathershod]

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).

Re:City folk deciding how country folk should live

[shutdown -p now]

Or you could argue that urban populations contain more people, and therefore any fair distribution of popular vote would favor them - and the attempt to gerrymander to "work around" that is inherently deceptive.

A good example of that is Texas, where Austin is split into several districts, each of which is paired with a chunk of countryside that dominates it in terms of votes. So while the majority of Austin residents vote for Democrat candidates, all those districts end up electing Republicans.

A non-gerrymandered district set in the case that you describe would be a lot of urban districts electing their own liberal representatives (which is perfectly fine - they are supposed to be representatives of those areas where they're elected, not the state population as a whole), and fewer countryside districts electing their own conservative representatives. Which would still result in a liberal majority in the House. Which is exactly as it should be in a one man, one vote system.

Copyright is federal

[tepples]

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.

Re:How is that startling?

[canadiannomad]

Sorry, my math is way off.. should be more like 18 times more representatives... What would your government look like if each district was divided by 18 and there were 7830 seats in congress?
Certainly would change the dynamic....

Re:How is that startling?

[IT-newb]

Low voter turnout is exactly how the Republicans won gubernatorial and senate seats in traditionally Democratic strongholds this year.

FTFY

Re:I don't recall such interest in gerrymandering

[I'm New Around Here]

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.

Re:How is that startling?

[DexterIsADog]

I think you missed the point. The R's have been working specifically to capture state legislatures, from which they can influence the makeup of Congress by gerrymandering. They're quite successful at it.

Re:How is that startling?

[jandrese]

Just how is the federal government in your face on a daily basis again?

Judging from my Facebook feed, President Obama has a personal vendetta against several people and messes with them daily.

Re:What Does This Mean

[wolrahnaes]

There were 13 seats up for grabs in North Carolina in 2012. In the real election, Republicans won nine of these with Democrats getting the remaining four. In Duke's simulations using randomly generated districts the majority of the time more seats went to Democrats than Republicans, averaging apparently in the 7.x range for Democrats and 5.x for Republicans. Almost never did it swing so far in favor of Republicans as to even approach the real world outcome.

Since the real world outcome is unlikely in a map generated by an unbiased algorithm it supports the claim that the districts were drawn in a biased fashion.

Re:Don't hear that it's just the Republicans at th

[dave420]

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.

Re:I don't recall such interest in gerrymandering

[dave420]

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.

Re:How is that startling?

[MachineShedFred]

So we'd be voting for a party rather than an individual with his or her own ideas? That's a step backwards.

Re:How is that startling?

[ShanghaiBill]

The party with the popular majority doesn't really have to gerrymander.

Nonsense. First, the party in power controls the redistricting process, and is the only one that can gerrymander, although they can continue to benefit even after they lose the majority, since redistricting is done only once every ten years. Second, your assumption that politicians are only interested in limited power, and will constrain themselves once they reach a simple majority, is absurd. They always want more power, partly so they can override vetoes, and use a super-majority to change the rules, but also because accumulating power is just human nature.

Redistricting does work better for Republicans, but that is because of demographics, not "wealth". Democrats tend to be more concentrated, and tend to live in compact urban areas. It is easy to find districts that are 90-95% Democrat, in places like Detroit, Harlem, Berkeley, etc. But if you go to the reddest of the red, maybe a county if rural Utah, you will find maybe 70% Republicans. So it is easier to shove most of the Democrats into a few districts, leaving the Republicans to sweep the rest.

Re:I don't recall such interest in gerrymandering

[dave420]

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!

Extremists have nowhere to go

[Bruce66423]

"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.

Re:Don't hear that it's just the Republicans at th

[I'm New Around Here]

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.

Re:How is that startling?

[gtall]

Hmmm...how about social security and medicare, should that be handled by the states so that poor states get shafted...well, their older citizens will. That will cause a migration to a few states and leave rest to the wilderness. How about OSHA and workplace safety regulations? Each state is going to produce their own? FDA? Each state will have its own? The list goes on. We have these government agencies to regulate those well-adjusted nice companies that will cut grannies throat if they thought they could increase their profit by doing so. A collection of polyglot regulatory agencies is how we got the current insurance industry. These are those nice, well-meaning companies that want to cherry pick the healthy people and only insure them.

So your libertarian utopia is an academic exercise in futility.

Re: How is that startling?

[OzPeter]

I prefer to refer to the de facto one party system we have as being run by Demoncrats.

That unfortunately sounds like one of Rush's talking points.

Actually now that I think about it .. it was one of Michael Savages catch phrases.

Re:I don't recall such interest in gerrymandering

[I'm New Around Here]

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.

Party Lines

[Tenebrousedge]

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.

Misleading implied conclusion

[swb]

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.

Re:What Does This Mean

[MachineShedFred]

And they tied individual votes to a geographical address, how? If they couldn't do that (and they couldn't) then they would have had to tie it to precinct results, which is going to decrease 'resolution' so to speak.

Yes, there is gerrymandering. And it's effective, which is why it's been used since the early 19th century. But there's more going on in the balloting booth than two checkboxes for D or R. Maybe some democrats voted for a republican candidate because the democrat was a shrew with no good ideas? Or vice-versa?

This is why we vote for candidates, and not parties.

Re:How is that startling?

[tomhath]

Education, healthcare, EPA, FCC, OSHA, etc, etc. Where are they not involved? Oh, and that ticket? It goes into the FBI's database.

Re:How is that startling?

[david_bonn]

Someone has already implemented a pretty good algorithm for generating congressional districts.

http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR...

While it does ignore geographic features, the algorithm has the virtue of extreme simplicity and does seem to produce quite reasonable results in all but a few cases.

Re:How is that startling?

[quantaman]

What's really startling (not really) is the fact gerrymandering is worse in blue states than red ones, but we only ever hear (on this site) that it's all the evil republicans while the democrats are the poor victims.

You have any evidence for that not startling fact? I have no doubt that both parties do it but the Republicans have always seemed to be particularly egregious when it comes to electioneering.

Re:What Does This Mean

[DexterIsADog]

Okay, this...

100 maps isn't statistically significant..

...Being democrat is a statistical anomaly that tends to plague habitants of big, corrupt cities...

...and this. You are both ignorant of statistics, and a loon.

Re:How is that startling?

[LynnwoodRooster]

How do you capture State legislatures, other than with a majority of the State vote?

Re:How is that startling?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Check out the JAG program which awarded $280 million last year to non-Federal police officers. Meaning State and local cops. The Feds don't have to employ the local police or Government office if they fund it - and use the power of the purse strings to control the office/officer. Same with schools, much of the roads, etc. The Fed uses the power of their purse to get what they want.

Cut the purse strings if you want real local Government. Otherwise there's a good chance your local Government is funded nearly as much by the State and Federal treasuries as it is from the local residents.

Re:How is that startling?

[gfxguy]

Personally it seems more like a liberal media is more likely to point out when republicans do it, ultimately giving the impression that you seem to have.

The both do it wherever and whenever possible. Under current laws, they'd actually be stupid not to.

However, what I'd like to see is a computer algortihm based redistricting that is approved by all parties. The rule of thumb when you cut a cake is that the person who cuts it chooses last... that ensures they make the fairest cuts. Unfortunately you can't apply the same logic here, but you can make it so everyone has to agree... the only way they'd agree is if it were fair.

Then again, I'd like to see instant run off implemented at all levels, including choosing electors in presidential elections... and I'll never see that, either.

Re:How is that startling?

[gfxguy]

Right... we should have instant run off so people can actually vote for who they want without "throwing away" their votes. Since the two parties are so firmly entrenched, and the last thing they want is more competition (especially given they are both two sides of the same coin - very minor differences if you actually look at it), instant run off will never be allowed. And since neither party will ever give up power, you will NEVER see fair redistricting.

Re:How is that startling?

[captain_nifty]

The fed controls the other governing bodies through the simple means of money.

Do you want that federal funding for your state, better not enact laws against the will of the federal masters.
Local cops want some new tech from homeland security, better have policies in place that meet federal standards. (oh and sign this NDA)
Want federal funding for interstate highways, your drinking age had better be 21.

Originally the constitution prevented this by preventing the fed from directly taxing the people, limiting the amount of money they had, the federal income tax is the source of this problem, give enough money to the fed and you give them power over every policy imaginable.

The fed may not be the ones in your face daily, but they are the ones directing a large number of locally enforced policies.

Re: How is that startling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Is the point of the article that gerrymandering is bad, or that the REPUBLICANS did it? This is what pisses me off about slashdot and the general media / MSM. Only crap that reflects bad on the REPUBLICANS is posted.

What has the MEDIA/MSM decided NOT to tell you today?

Re:How is that startling?

[quantaman]

This isn't a software problem.

Just declare that redistricting should be done by non-partisan commissions working with a well defined set of rules.

Sure there will still be biases at work, but non-partisan groups generally work well, and any subtle gerrymandering that does occur won't be sufficient to drastically swing elections.

Re:How is that startling?

[drfred79]

California had such a problem with Democratic gerrymandering (no state seats are essentially Republican regardless of the large swaths of the public that vote Republican) that they had to create a state district commission to try and fix it.

Re:How is that startling?

[phantomfive]

It seems that political power is self-limiting. One side will occupy Congress for a while, until the other side gets fed up and makes a switch.

Ultimately, it is the people who are the check on government. No constitution or rule set will prevent corruption, if the people don't pay attention.

Re:How is that startling?

[dasunt]

Why not include a census question asking people what neighbors they feel they are closest to?

That way, with a few simple rules, it's possible to calculate census areas which are culturally distinct. So a major urban area won't dilute a rural area, a black majority-area won't be diluted by being split up into multiple districts, etc.

Re:What Does This Mean

[Hognoxious]

To what extent is this assumption valid, though? The model appears based on the assumption that ALL voters are "straight-ticket" types who just vote Republican or Democrat mindlessly.

It's based on the weaker assumption that the number within each ward who change won't be significant. Or more accurately the net number.

Not everyone should equal when it comes to voting

[mveloso]

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.

Re:How is that startling?

[Anonymous Coward]

He said "mass D gerrymandering" because pointing at one district isn't a good way of demonstrating anything. In this case you're right, but I've frequently seen North Carolina's twelfth district pointed at as an example of a democratic gerrymander even though North Carolina's legislature has been republican dominated at the last two redistrictings. You have to look at the whole state to see the effects of gerrymandering.

Re:How is that startling?

[rochrist]

Actually, yes, that's exactly what the GOP did. It's not exactly a secret.

Re:How is that startling?

[CaptainLard]

What's really startling (not really) is the fact gerrymandering is worse in blue states than red ones,

Is it? Did you run a similar model on the other 49 states and find that mathematical districting favors republicans 51% of the time? If you could provide your method and data it would certainly illuminate the conversation.

Or are we just taking one line blanket statements at face value now (as the +5 indicates)? AKA the campaign commercial debate style.

based on false assumption...

[kenh]

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?

Re:How is that startling?

[SuricouRaven]

The trick is to turn a brief advantage into a strategic, long-term advantage. So once you've managed to get in power once (by luck, or cheating, or by the rival party having a terrible scandal) you can manipulate things to make it much easier to retain that power, or to regain it quickly if lost.

Ten most gerrymandered districts

[kenh]

Enjoy - from The Washington Post

Re:Ten most gerrymandered districts

[SETY]

Mod Up. This is the #1 problem in the USA. Fix this and many, many other problems with government will magically disappear.

Re:How is that startling?

[SuricouRaven]

And you aren't now? The vast majority of US politics is party politics. It's really quite convenient - one look at the letter beside a politicians name and you can know with a high degree of reliability their positions on everything from gay marriage to gun control to taxation to immigration to environmental protection to healthcare to forign policy. It doesnt matter that these issues have little to no connection - everything is conveniently bundled up into the 'republican package' and the 'democrat package.'

Re: How is that startling?

[ranton]

You could still vote for individuals. When they hand out seats to the parties based on proportions, the individuals with the most votes in that party would get the seats.

Re: How is that startling?

[kenh]

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.

Re: How is that startling?

[kenh]

Ever heard of the Secretary Of State Project?

Re:Section 2 of the voting rights act REQUIRES D g

[TechyImmigrant]

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.

Re: Don't hear that it's just the Republicans at t

[jfengel]

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.

My children used to try the other people did it

[publiclurker]

excuse too. they grew out of it. what's your excuse.

Re: How is that startling?

[DexterIsADog]

Sadly, I don't have time to read that. But hey, Washington Times? Must be true.

Re:How is that startling?

[Bartles]

Are you familiar with something called the Secretary of State Project? No, it wasn't created by Republicans. And seriously, how does gerrymandering affect Senate and gubernatorial races?

Re: How is that startling?

[quantaman]

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.

Re:How is that startling?

[Bartles]

Would you count Tom Steyer and George Soros in that crowd or do you only have a problem with people that help to get Republicans elected? Who is really being obtuse here?

Re:Don't hear that it's just the Republicans at th

[MachineShedFred]

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.

Re:How is that startling?

[athmanb]

This is absolutely untrue, just look at these maps. Control over redistricting by party: http://s1131.photobucket.com/u...
Gerrymanderization of districts: http://www.geoideas.net/wp-con...
WV, IL and MD are truly gerrymandered democratic controlled states. As opposed to the entirety of the southeastern US from Texas to Pennsylvania that are republican controlled and gerrymandered.

Re: How is that startling?

[Bartles]

Holy shit. You are deliberately obtuse, Colonel Klink.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-08-16-secretary-state-democrats_x.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_of_State_Project

http://ballotpedia.org/Secretary_of_State_Project

And of course only places like the Washington Times would report it. The Major national papers are just a unofficial wing of the Democratic party and wothey sork to suppress embarrassing things like this.

Re:How is that startling?

[Bartles]

Haha, so is Harvard. And you think being private, that somehow makes it biased towards Republicans? You idiot.

Re:How is that startling?

[Bartles]

That's because you listen to the media. You only hear and believe one side of the story.

Re:How is that startling?

[Bartles]

Why did the author of the article only run a simulation in NC?

Re:Don't hear that it's just the Republicans at th

[Solandri]

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.

Re: How is that startling?

[rickb928]

For decades the process was called 'redistricting' or 'apportionment'.

That was what Democrats called it, anyways.

Re: How is that startling?

[rickb928]

... And the solution is to concentrate money to the government.

Yeah, nerds are shortsighted too...

Re:How is that startling?

[quantaman]

That's because you listen to the media. You only hear and believe one side of the story.

And you believe the other side because you're listening to different media/blogs.

Which is why I asked for evidence.

Re: How is that startling?

[rickb928]

Both. I used to fear the Republicans less, but that's not a certainty any more.

Re:How is that startling?

[mspohr]

Austin, Texas is the most liberal city in Texas. You would think they would have a liberal, progressive representative but not true.
The Texas Republicans have split Austin's votes as part of six different districts (some of which stretch for 50 miles). The result is that Austin has six Republican representatives, none of which represent the views of Austin. Austin is the largest city in the US without a congressional district anchor.

Re: How is that startling?

[rickb928]

And the Democrats practice this with federal legislation.

If anyone asks me for specific examples, they are either obtuse or ignorant. It should be obvious to any thinking citizen.

Re: How is that startling?

[rickb928]

So less egregious corruption would be OK with you? Or at least not worth note?

Re: How is that startling?

[rickb928]

Well, it's in the Washington Bleep, so it must be true. The Bleep being a wholly owned subsidiary of the Left for at least 42 years.

Re:I don't recall such interest in gerrymandering

[h8sg8s]

Yep. Every time..

Re:How is that startling?

[readin]

I do like how your method avoids what is usually one of my objections to "keeping communities together" which is "how do you define community?"

But I don't agree with what seems to be a consensus among many that having communities represented together is necessarily a good thing. One of the reasons gerrymandering is criticized is that it leads to 'safe' districts and extremely partisan representatives.

Having an algorithm that uses geography but otherwise ignores "communities" will some community representation together and some split up - but in a non-partisan way. I see this diversity of representation types as a good thing.

Re:How is that startling?

[readin]

If you give a "non-partisan" commission (is there is such a thing when they are appointed by partisans?) that much power, it won't be long before they're corrupted by the powers that be.

Look, for example, at our Supreme Court which is supposed to be above partisanship, but as they've gained more power we've all come to know which ones tilt which way and there is talk about justices scheduling their retirements to make sure the right president appoints their successor.

Re:How is that startling?

[readin]

Someone has already implemented a pretty good algorithm for generating congressional districts.

http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR...

While it does ignore geographic features, the algorithm has the virtue of extreme simplicity and does seem to produce quite reasonable results in all but a few cases.

Sounds like a good start.

Sortocracy is the only answer

[Baldrson]

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:

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things; for the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order; this lukewarmness arising partly from the incredulity of mankind who does not truly believe in anything new until they actually have experience of it.

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.

Re:Don't hear that it's just the Republicans at th

[CrimsonAvenger]

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).

Re: How is that startling?

[quantaman]

Well, it's in the Washington Bleep, so it must be true. The Bleep being a wholly owned subsidiary of the Left for at least 42 years.

So someone disagrees with me and cites an article, and now you're criticizing me for referencing the very article they cited?

In Soviet America....

[Celarent Darii]

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.

Re: How is that startling?

[kenh]

Like Voter ID requirements?

Re:How is that startling?

[porkchop_d_clown]

Says teh anonymous coward. Each party gerrymanders to try and preserve their power. Look at what happened in California when the Dems used their experts to bias the supposedly "non-partisan" redistricting committee, or Illinois, for that matter: http://www.csmonitor.com/Comme...

Re:How is that startling?

[alva_edison]

Because it was a Duke study, and that's where Duke is located

Re:How is that startling?

[alva_edison]

There's multiple options, here is a series of videos explaining some options. Each one favors a certain set of goals, so decide what your set of goals are and then you can advocate for that voting system. http://www.youtube.com/playlis...

Re:How is that startling?

[Beck_Neard]

Gridlock also keeps us 'safe' from any real change or progress.

Re: How is that startling?

[JDAustin]

You do know that neither Romney nor Nixon were conservatives right?

Re: How is that startling?

[DigiShaman]

So preventing voter fraud is now "electioneering"?! Well fuck yeah, I'm all in favor of it. If you can't provide ID (DL, passport, etc), you shouldn't be alowed to vote. If the "poor" can at least eat and travel in America, obtaining proper ID is completely doable. So fucking get ID!

Re:How is that startling?

[reve_etrange]

It's true that politicians from both parties are responsible for gerrymandering. That's why, in California, we took redistricting out of the hands of politicians entirely. Legislators from both parties fought the measure - but they failed. I hope other states follow suit - the results have already been positive for representation in California, with many more competitive races (including some between candidates from the same party).

With the citizen's redistricting committee and open primaries, we may even have third party candidates start to win local elections.

Re:How is that startling?

[Trepidity]

I don't recall claiming it was biased towards either Republicans or Democrats. I was simply responding to a post that incorrectly claimed it was a public university.

So far so good

[Bruce66423]

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.

Re:How is that startling?

[MachineShedFred]

No, I am not. I don't identify completely with any of the parties.

If we go to some scheme where I vote for a party rather than a person, you are taking my vote and giving it to an organization that either is opposed with what I think is sound fiscal policy but I agree with on social principles, or giving it to an organization that I agree with their fiscal proposals, but are complete wing nuts when it comes to social issues and the environment.

I'd rather vote for a guy who aligns with my beliefs as much as possible, than vote for the party plank that I hate the least, and then have that party install some person I've never heard of to supposedly represent me. That's not how we play pool.

Re: How is that startling?

[thaylin]

Evidence of actual mass voter fraud please?

So if you dont have something that was not invented when your rights were defined you should not be able to use your rights?

Also most poor cannot get it because they work, and live paycheck to paycheck. They need money and time off to get an ID.

Re: How is that startling?

[rickb928]

I was trying to agree...

Re:How is that startling?

[thaylin]

You can buy any insurance that is offered, and go to any doctor that would take you. If you dont know what the ACA does then dont talk about it.

You can have as many policies as you want, as long as one of them meets the required coverave the others could do nothing, or anything at all. Also the insurance is what dictates who you can see.

Re:How is that startling?

[Weaselmancer]

I don't give a shit who is doing it, it's wrong you fucking numbskull. It's wrong to thwart the will of the people in a Democracy.

Re: How is that startling?

[quantaman]

Sorry, tone can be hard to discern :)

Re:What Does This Mean

[AthanasiusKircher]

It's based on the weaker assumption that the number within each ward who change won't be significant. Or more accurately the net number.

Well, yes, obviously that's a better way of saying it (and more accurate). The effect is somewhat similar, though. The model basically ignores the fact that differences between individual candidates might matter (or candidate's actions, or campaigning, or whatever). While it may not be strictly equivalent to "straight ticket" voting, it assumes voters behave in similar ways, i.e., their party choices would never change (collectively) no matter which candidates were running or how those candidates acted.

While such an assumption may be true for many and likely a majority of voters in many areas, many elections are also won on much thinner margins. If even 10-20% of the electorate might actually vote for a different party if the candidate changes, it could sway this model significantly in many races.

Re:I don't recall such interest in gerrymandering

[zraider]

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.

Re: How is that startling?

[shutdown -p now]

If the "poor" can at least eat and travel in America, obtaining proper ID is completely doable. So fucking get ID!

Do you know what a "poll tax" is, and why it was deemed illegal a while ago?

Re:How is that startling?

[shutdown -p now]

You don't need to run this model, actually. You can just look at popular vote in each state, and compare it to the number of elected representatives for each party. The larger the disparity between those two is, the higher the probability that this particular state is gerrymandered.

This is much easier to run, and if you do so, you'll see that, mysteriously, the disparity favors Republicans far more often than it favors Democrats.

Re:How is that startling?

[shutdown -p now]

Who are those "people"? Most voters I talked to in US are very partisan specifically about the parties.

In any case, parties are a reality, so the electoral system has to take them into account - it can't just completely ignore that fact and say "hey, we're voting for individual representatives here, party affiliation doesn't matter". So what you do then is use a system such as MMP (mixed-member proportional), where people cast a vote for a local representative and for a party, and party lists are used to fill up seats on top of all directly elected representatives until parties are represented proportionally to popular vote. It's a system that's easy to implement and understand, allows for individual representatives, and is much fairer than what US currently has.

Re:How is that startling?

[shutdown -p now]

Parties are a reality of today's politics. You can ignore them, but you would be a fool to, because others won't.

In any case, MMP deals with this issue in a satisfactory manner, allowing you to both cast a vote for your direct representative, and then a separate vote for a party, and reconcile those two when filling the seats in the parliament so that, on one hand, all elected direct representatives are there, and, on the other hand, party representation is proportional.

Re:How is that startling?

[shutdown -p now]

Hmmm...how about social security and medicare, should that be handled by the states so that poor states get shafted

Fun fact: socialized health care in Canada began on provincial level. First one province (Manitoba, if I remember correctly?) did it, it worked for them, then others picked it up. At some point the provinces started to coordinate efforts, and eventually they delegated that task to the federal government, which now handles redistribution between provinces to ensure a common national standard. But even today, the provinces are ultimately the ones responsible for implementation of the system in their territory, and the federal government authority to coordinate is strictly delegated - any province could withdraw from that scheme if they wanted to.

Re:How is that startling?

[shutdown -p now]

Non-partisan commissions seem to be working great in practice in every single state that has adopted them so far.

Re:Not everyone should equal when it comes to voti

[shutdown -p now]

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.

Re: How is that startling?

[Rich0]

Democrats won in nine of the 10 most-gerrymandered districts. But eight out of 10 of those districts were drawn by Republicans.

Keep in mind that gerrymandering isn't always about preventing the opposing side from winning anything.

If the other side has a lot of supporters one tactic is to stick all of them in one district which you basically concede, and then engineer yourself a 55% majority in all the neighboring districts. If you do this with 10 districts the result is a 99-1% landslide in one district and a 45-55% loss in the other 9, which gives you a 9-1 advantage in the legislature. If things were balanced you might have a 60-40 loss in all 10 districts.

Re:How is that startling?

[Rich0]

So we'd be voting for a party rather than an individual with his or her own ideas? That's a step backwards.

It sounds that way, but in practice it seems to work a LOT better than the system in the US.

In the US you get to vote for a specific person you really like and watch them lose. In most of the rest of the world you get to vote for a party you like and watch them actually gain seats, which means that there is incentive for all the other parties to work with them to form a coalition.

Re:How is that startling?

[riverat1]

Now that would get a +1 Funny mod if I had the points.

Re: How is that startling?

[riverat1]

You'd get more sympathy from me if there was enough voter fraud to worry about. The fact is that since 2000 out of 100's of millions of votes cast there have been less than 50 cases of attempted voter fraud of the kind that voter ID would prevent. To illustrate how miniscule that is lets assume they're only catching 1 out of 100 cases of voter fraud than that there were 5,000 cases and that there were 500 million votes cast (it's got to way more than that). That would give you a fraud percentage of 0.01%. In person voter fraud is not a problem.

Re:How is that startling?

[riverat1]

Why did the author of the article only run a simulation in NC?

Obviously because the mathematicians involved are looking for a lucrative grant to extend it to all 50 states (actually only 43 since 7 only have 1 Rep.) /snark

Re: How is that startling?

[gewalker]

Your requested evidence

Since you need relatively few fraudulent votes to tip tight elections, how much vote fraud is OK. It is often accepted that Kennedy won over Nixon due to fraud. Likewise for Johnson in Texas. These are old races. How about Gore v Bush in Florida, only a few hundred votes officially -- well within the margin of fraud as documented by many of the examples in the linked article.

The correct amount of fraud is as little as possible. The correct amount of voter suppression is a little as possible. To a certain degree these are conflicting goals. There are some additional methods to help -- such as provisional ballots. Life is not perfect, but voter ID is clearly effective in reducing voter fraud, but it is not necessarily a tool of voter suppression -- and the Supreme Court has supported this.

This is news?

[tsotha]

As a Republican in California, I'm all too familiar with the effects of gerrymandering.

Re: How is that startling?

[DigiShaman]

You need ID to buy alcohol. Poor people and minorities drink too. So this is hardly an issue for legal US citizens. Secondly, poor people often take more from the government than they pay in taxes. So paying a "poll tax" is the least they can do to preserve democracy .

Re: How is that startling?

[shutdown -p now]

You only need ID to buy alcohol if you look young enough. In any case, buying alcohol is not a fundamental political freedom, while voting is.

If you seriously think that voter fraud is that big of a concern that it justifies such measures, then what's wrong with making the ID free and easy to get? Maybe universally issued even (and dispose with SSN and other numerous IDs for different purposes, and tie it all up with a single proper ID). That would be a solution that would solve the problem entirely, and would not have any other undesirable side effects like vote suppressing. Funny how conservatives are somehow not in favor.

Re: How is that startling?

[riverat1]

Of course there are measures to prevent voter fraud. In the first place you have to register to vote. Any questions about whether a person is eligible to vote should be taken care of when they register. Second when you walk in to vote your name is checked off on the list of registered voters. (Here in Oregon with mail in ballots you signature on the outside of the ballot envelope is compared to the signature on your voter registration card.) The people who advocate for voter ID have searched hard for the last decade for evidence to support their contention that voter IS is needed and haven't been able to come up with anything significant. What voter ID amounts to is a poll tax because of the time, effort and cost of obtaining the necessary ID which falls heaviest on the lowest levels of the population and poll taxes are illegal.

Re:How is that startling?

[quantaman]

This. Like having the Black Panthers at telling stations to intimidate voters into voting for their preferred candidate. Wait, that wasn't Republicans!

The funny thing is that your summary isn't even accurate. There's no reason to think the Democrats had anything to do with this, there's not even a reason to think the Black Panthers as an organization had anything to do with it.

The entire incident was three members of the New Black Panthers outside of one polling station!!

Hint: Dems oppose most of that list

[Uberbah]

I love comments like these because they show how wingers have created an alternate reality for themselves where facts need not apply.

I love comments like this. Tell me what is right wing about these positions:

Tell me you've paid an iota of attention to what the Democrats have been doing for the last 30 years?

nationalizing health care

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.

paid college tuition

Where. Nothing has been done nationally, and tuition will have about doubled under Brown.

open borders/immigration amnesty

Obama deported immigrants at a rate far higher than Bush, before pulling a mini-Reagan when it was politically meaningless.

regulation of business, to a detrimental level

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.

union empowerment

"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?

higher taxes on the rich

Most of Bush tax cuts were extended, and they keep wanting to cut corporate tax rates.

more social programs for the poor

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?

Re:Hint: Dems oppose most of that list

[I'm New Around Here]

Let me guess, you voted for Obama twice, didn't you.

Don't hear they're just doing 99% of this.

[Uberbah]

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.

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.

Re: How is that startling?

[Uberbah]

The Major national papers are just a unofficial wing of the Democratic party and wothey sork to suppress embarrassing things like this.

The "biased liberal media" myth died in the 2000 election. First, after the media spent months inventing Gore "exaggerations" only to let Bush take credit in a debate for a patient right's bill he vetoed as governor. The coup de grace was burying the press recount showing Gore winning a statewide recount under any scenario.

After that, anyone spouting the "biased liberal media" canard was obviously wearing clown shoes. After the New York Times held the NSA wiretapping story until after the 2004 elections, they're just a bunch of fucking idiots.

Re:I don't recall such interest in gerrymandering

[Uberbah]

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.

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.

Re: How is that startling?

[Uberbah]

Dumbfuckery. First, where does the Constitution lay out a right to drink alcohol? You no more "need" to show ID to enter a church or to post on Slashdot. Second, voter fraud for all practical purposes simply does not exist. Just about every case that dumbfucks bring up to support ID laws were either cases of someone double voting (in person and absentee), a person with a felony record, or failing to establish residency before voting.

None of which would be prevented by ID.

Redistricting

[brunnegd]

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.

Re: How is that startling?

[Bartles]

Do you actually live on the planet Earth? How has the NYT done with NSA stories since Barack Obama became President?

Re: How is that startling?

[dreamchaser]

That sucks, because I listen to neither and thought it was mine.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

In the States they control the Democrats STILL do

[Bruce66423]

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.

Re:How is that startling?

[nbritton]

It's true that a winner-take-all system essentially hands votes to the "opposing party" if you vote for a third party.

This is why we need move to a instant-runoff voting system.