North Carolina Congressional Map Ruled Unconstitutionally Gerrymandered (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: A panel of federal judges struck down North Carolina's congressional map on Tuesday, condemning it as unconstitutional because Republicans had drawn the map seeking a political advantage (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source). The ruling was the first time that a federal court had blocked a congressional map because of a partisan gerrymander, and it instantly endangered Republican seats in the coming elections. Judge James A. Wynn Jr., in a biting 191-page opinion, said that Republicans in North Carolina's Legislature had been "motivated by invidious partisan intent" as they carried out their obligation in 2016 to divide the state into 13 congressional districts, 10 of which are held by Republicans. The result, Judge Wynn wrote, violated the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. The ruling and its chief demand -- that the Republican-dominated Legislature create a new landscape of congressional districts by Jan. 24 -- infused new turmoil into the political chaos that has in recent years enveloped North Carolina. President Trump carried North Carolina in 2016, but the state elected a Democrat as its governor on the same day and in 2008 supported President Barack Obama.

Comments

Wow, really?

[VitrosChemistryAnaly]

Purposely changing election maps in order to effectively disenfranchise citizens is unconstitutional? You've got to be kidding me.

In all seriousness, I do hope that something like this will be implemented in its stead:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

...however, I'm not holding my breath.

Re:Wow, really?

[jedidiah]

Sure. But this stuff has been going on so long that it's part of history class. Even the term gerrymander goes back to the earliest days of our republic.

That said, the fact that a state (or a voter) went for Obama and then Trump is no proof of nefarious meddling.

This idea that the system is broken because it produced a result you don't agree with is even MORE dangerous to democracy than gerrymandering.

Short of a simple geometric algorithm, any attempt to redraw districts will generate objections. Both parties will seek to alter the result to benefit them.

Re:Wow, really?

[penandpaper]

In all seriousness, I do hope that something like this will be implemented in its stead:
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]

Whenever voting comes up the inevitable solution to 'fix' the elections follow. It maybe a great idea and the best idea ever to come up in civics and elections. You would go much further in convincing me that it's a great idea by implementing in your state. Elections are controlled by state and local governments and leading by example is a better way to prove your idea is good. I don't care what other countries do, they have no political stake in our elections and organize their elections according to their own needs. I want you to risk your political power to prove your idea works by actually practicing what you preach.

Re:Wow, really?

[brianerst]

I prefer multimember districts with cumulative voting like they had in Illinois up to 1982.

Re:Wow, really?

[imgod2u]

The actual evidence they used (had you RTFA) is to measure the number of registered Democrats/Republicans in a State in aggregate and then compare it with congressional seats.

It's not going to be exactly equal but you'd expect a State with 70% of the population as registered Democrats compared to 30% Republicans to roughly have a 7:3 (or 6:4, even 5:5) mix of elected Congress-people.

Instead, NC has a heavy 10:3 ratio of Republican vs Democrat Congress-people. And it moved this way after the maps were redrawn after the 2010 census.

Re:Wow, really?

[imgod2u]

So when it comes to Gerrymandering, most of the more "liberal" or even "purple" States have long had laws against it. Many (including CA) have independent councils that must have representatives from both parties in roughly equal proportion drawing the maps.

Only a handful of States (which all happen to be battleground States for elections) have this kind of gerrymandering where the majority legislature controls the maps as well. And they almost all are Republican controlled.

Democrats gerrymander too, don't get me wrong. But they haven't abused it to the extend like the Republicans in NC did. The State has 2.7M (as of 2016) registered Democrats and 2.0M registered Republicans. Yet has 10 R congressmen vs 3 D congressmen.

Re:Wow, really?

[greenwow]

It isn't, and the courts support it because, like in the case of NC and where I lived in Chicago for a while, the districts are minority majority in order to give us a voice. They are a good thing, and some judges think it is Constitutionally required. To do away with it harms minorities.

Re:Wow, really?

[VitrosChemistryAnaly]

I didn't bring up political parties, Obama or Trump. My objection to gerrymandering goes beyond my political beliefs.

And just because this stuff has been going on for a long time doesn't make it right. Just because the party that I may support is directly benefitted doesn't make it right.

This idea that the system is broken because it produced a result you don't agree with is even MORE dangerous to democracy than gerrymandering.

The results with which I don't agree is that citizens are effectively disenfranchised regardless of who wins. And when did I ever say that I didn't support the party that directly gained from the redrawn districts?

Re:Wow, really?

[Urist McSlashdot]

I like the general idea, but I don't think "compactness" as defined there is the best option, where it's based on a 2D map. Geography matters. It'd be pretty silly to have a "compact" district that requires some of its residents to drive around a mountain range to go meet with their representative, for example. Even in that article it's obvious that Harrisburg is bizarrely cut in two, and one of the "compact" districts in Maryland spans both sides of Chesapeake Bay. I think it'd be better to choose some population centers or the like -- the district seat -- and then define compactness based on driving distance.

Re:Wow, really?

[Nidi62]

Short of a simple geometric algorithm, any attempt to redraw districts will generate objections. Both parties will seek to alter the result to benefit them.

Divide the state up into sections for as equal a percentage of population as possible, grouped along county lines. If a county holds a large city or in some other way is unbalanced relative to other counties, then that county is split to equal out the numbers. This also has the benefit of equally weighing each person's vote.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd "expect".

Ahh...there is that "disparate outcome" argument.

A coward's and manipulator's tool to achieve by force what they cannot achieve by legitimate means.

Re:Wow, really?

[penandpaper]

Gerrymandering has been an issue since the start of the Republic. Even California has issues with it's redistricting. Great, they have an unelected commission to decide their districts. Which has been highly unfavorable to the GOP party even though it was initially promoted by the GOP in California. They risked their political power because they thought it a good idea. My initial point.

I am not convinced the democrats have solved the issue particularly so because you now can have a democrat run against a democrat. A real choice in the election!

Re:Wow, really?

[AlanObject]

Democrats gerrymander too, don't get me wrong. But they haven't abused it to the extent like the Republicans in NC did.

Are you aware of any Democratic-majority states that were under the Consent Degree? (At least until Roberts court gutted the VRA last year).

Re:Wow, really?

[Wycliffe]

>

It's not going to be exactly equal but you'd expect a State with 70% of the population as registered Democrats compared to 30% Republicans to roughly have a 7:3 (or 6:4, even 5:5) mix of elected Congress-people.

No, I would not expect that at all. If political affiliation was equally distributed across the state, then with 70% democrats, you would expect every district to go democrat every time. But because we know that democrats tend to clump in cities and districts are divided by population not area, I would expect democrats to win most of the small area districts and republicans to win most of the large area districts. In some ways slight gerrymandering can actually give better representation for everyone so that the 30% minority actually gets a representative. Another way to accomplish this would be to have all representatives elected at large and the top N candidates with the most votes get a seat. Ideally this would probably work best with some form of ranked voting system so that if the top person gets more votes than they need, those extra votes trickle down to the next candidate.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, it's not as simple as drawing maximally compact districts.

There is no unique way to do that, and there are many issues. For example:

* People would have to agree on seed points for growing districts in some algorithm, or at least on the basic algorithm.

* There is a tradeoff between keeping people with similar interests together in a district so they maintain voting power vs. cramming them all into a single district so as to minimize their voting power. Simply optimal compacness does not address that.

* What do you do about natural boundaries, like rivers, ridge lines, city and county lines, freeways, railroads, etc.? Again you have to define some weighting coefficients among following those boundaries vs. compactness vs. keeping like-minded people together, etc.

Ultimately, there has to be some agreement on the algorithm in order to have computer-drawn districts. That will not happen until the people who decide this (legislators and judges) are sufficiently reasonable and sufficiently literate in the mathematical considerations. I think it's gonna be a long long time before the latter happens, so don't get your hopes up, even if the people miraculously become reasonable.

Re: Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gerrymandering is bad no matter who does it.

But let's also not use false equivalents. The GOP once again is clearly the more immoral of the two.

https://www.apnews.com/fa6478e10cda4e9cbd75380e705bd380

TLDR statistical analysis shows that Rs abuse the system 4 time as often.

Currently If you put an R next to your next to your name you are an immoral sack of shit who is willing to corrupt the most basic principles of our electoral system.

*Note "R" not conservative.

Re:Wow, really?

[Wycliffe]

I prefer multimember districts with cumulative voting like they had in Illinois up to 1982.

I agree. Something like this would be much preferred. The problem with districts is that even if you get rid of gerrymandering, if every district is an equal split 70% one party and 30% the other party then that second party never gets any representation. In some ways, slight gerrymandering is actually preferred over perfectly equal districts but something like all candidates voted for statewide and take the top N with the most votes would better represent the minority parties.

Re:Wow, really?

[ShanghaiBill]

If a county holds a large city or in some other way is unbalanced relative to other counties, then that county is split to equal out the numbers.

Umm ... this is exactly what the NC Republicans did. By splitting up the cities, thus dividing the urban vote, and then combining each urban section with rural and suburban voters more likely to vote Republican, they dilute the Democrat votes.

Re:Wow, really?

[Strider-]

Gerrymandering is one of the many reasons why I'm glad to live in a country where the establishment of electoral boundaries is done by a non-partisan organization, based on a set of rules and census data. The rules are basically:

1) The riding must be as compact as possible
2) Where reasonable, the boundaries should follow natural boundaries (rivers, bays, ravines, etc...) and/or major man-made boundaries (Major roads, highways, municipal borders, etc...)
3) in urban centres, the boundaries should try and respect neighbourhood boundaries

All in all, it actually works, and is part of the check and balances on the power of the politicians.

Re:Wow, really?

[EndlessNameless]

Divide the state up into sections for as equal a percentage of population as possible, grouped along county lines.

There is a lot of variation in populations between counties. Counties are not a good starting point.

There are mathematical measures for the compactness of a region. I would specify that each district must be as compact as possible while containing a nearly-identical number of voters. Hand over the census data to a computer or a handful of mathematicians, then wait for the results.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

That makes no sense. How is simple enumeration and exploitation of animal herding instincts in humans "disenfranchisement"? Can't the people in the new districts talk to each other and vote for someone else? This "gerrymandering" thing is a bunch of blame passing bullshit. The voter and no one else is responsible for the people they elect. This little charade needs to stop.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Purposely changing election maps in order to effectively disenfranchise citizens is unconstitutional? You've got to be kidding me.

In all seriousness, I do hope that something like this will be implemented in its stead:

https://www.washingtonpost.com... ...however, I'm not holding my breath.

algos have their own problems. Like they're data prejudiced. And a lot of people don't properly consider data for one. His maps (from my skimming) seem to be based on census data and since the census is under it's own form of attack that just presents it's own type of problem. This just effectively moves the goal from the map itself to the census. the second issue that jumped out was the bloby shape of his districts and one thing I learned when I was reading about districts a year or so ago was that it isn't always best to have blocky districts. I actually saw one of the examples on one of the last night shows once.

Now, some argue that compactness isn't a very good measure of district quality. Districts should also respect "communities of interest" — that is, there should be some common denominator among a district's residents. But defining a "community of interest" is another problem altogether. As Jonathan Bernstein wrote last year, a community of interest could be defined based on rural/urban divides, shared cultural background, economic interest, ethnic background, demographic similarity, political boundaries, geographic boundaries and on and on.

And therein lies the problem: You can define a "community of interest" pretty much however you want. If you're a politician in search of a figleaf justification for putting voters from disparate corners of the state into the same congressional district, you can always find one. Communities of interest are a great ideal, but in practice they're so fuzzy that they open the door to all manner of redistricting shenanigans, as we've seen.

and here we have a baby bathwater thing. Just because it's abused doesn't mean it serves no value. Community of interest can give marginalized people representation. Throwing that out for data based again just assumes the data is fair when it might not be. Just because it's faster doesn't mean it's better.

Found it. The video was a John Oliver video: (12:44) Gerrymandering

Re:Wow, really?

[ShanghaiBill]

Democrats gerrymander too, don't get me wrong. But they haven't abused it to the extend like the Republicans in NC did.

That is because they can't. Gerrymandering works inherently better for Republicans.

Political polarization is NOT symmetrical. If you go to the reddest of the red, say a rural county in Utah, it will still have only about a 70%/30% Republican/Democratic split. But you can easily find urban districts that are 95%/5% Democrat/Republican.

So it is easier to concentrate Democratic voters into a few districts, leaving the Republicans to sweep the rest.

Re:Wow, really?

[penandpaper]

Expect... Like expecting Hillary to carry states Obama won?

Expectations have the problem of being wrong.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

GO look at the map. That is NOT what they did. Those districts curl in and out of each other like some sort of surrealist painting.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and that added step of combining makes it not at all what the parent suggested.

Re:Wow, really?

[jebrick]

Studies(https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/gerrymandering/) have shown the party primary system does more to cause the issues with the extremes of both parties. Gerrymandering is some of the problems. Gerrymandering plus voter suppression makes it worst. An open primary system would solve a vast majority of the problems.

Re: Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Check out this quote from Rep. David Lewis (R-Harnett):

âoeI acknowledge freely that this would be a political gerrymander, which is not against the law....I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and 3 Democrats, because I do not believe itâ(TM)s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and 2 Democrats."

http://www.greensboro.com/news/government/new-lawsuit-new-argument-challenge-congressional-maps/article_3f89f2a0-c7c7-5d19-9d32-758608124477.html

As a member of the Democratic majority in NC (per the NC Board of Elections) I find his statement profoundly upsetting, and having seen over the past 8 years the lengths to which the Republican Party in this state will go to ride roughshod over anyone who is not a Republican, I will never again vote for /any/ Republican in /any/ election. I used to consider myself a moderate but I no longer have that luxury.

Re:Wow, really?

[Nidi62]

Divide the state up into sections for as equal a percentage of population as possible, grouped along county lines.

There is a lot of variation in populations between counties.

Yes, so rural districts might be made up of multiple counties, urban counties might have multiple districts. But each district would have an as equal as possible number of voters in each.

Re:Wow, really?

[mysidia]

That said, the fact that a state (or a voter) went for Obama and then Trump is no proof of nefarious meddling.

It's interesting that 2 of the 3 judges are democrat appointees, AND political gerrymandering has never been held unconstitutional before despite many challenges
  --- the rules are your districts must each have near identical population, AND your districts must not be drawn so as to dilute the representation of racial minority groups.

Re:Wow, really?

[sexconker]

That doesn't mean the map is unfair. Liberals tend to concentrate in dense metropolises. Conservatives tend to spread out.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's not how it is supposed to work at all. How can you have 50% or more of elected officials accurately representing the will of 30% of the population? Remember that districts are done by population. Area doesn't factor into it at all.

Re:Wow, really?

[Oswald McWeany]

Short of a simple geometric algorithm, any attempt to redraw districts will generate objections. Both parties will seek to alter the result to benefit them.

Geometric algorithm was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the headline too. Surely there is some way to set up a standard for setting up districts based on shape of state and population densities. Might be a challenge to set up the first time, but if every state follows a set formula, or procedure for drawing up districts then people can't gerrymander.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's gotten to the point where politicians pick their voters, because they can leverage big data to draw these maps. I'm in charge of drawing a map, I'm gonna lump my opponents into as few districts as possible given registrations and voting history while spreading out my support over as many districts as possible. It's extremely possible to divide 5,000 yellow voters and 5,000 green voters into 10 districts of 3 yellow and 7 green while keeping the population the same in each district. Do you think that representation accurately reflects the will of the voters of that imaginary state?

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Democrats gerrymander too, don't get me wrong. But they haven't abused it to the extend like the Republicans in NC did.

Democrats are using different methods.
Playing dirty with "right to vote", and votes registers , in their dear slum populations.

Re:Wow, really?

[sexconker]

districts are divided by population not area

Not really. That's the entire point of gerrymandering. It's to allow lower density areas to have better representation than they would have otherwise if you just did a flat, per-capita weighting.

You can do a flat, per-capita weighting and have major cities rule the nation.
You can do a fixed grid system and have rural areas rule the nation.
Or you can gerrymander, seeking to corral people in weird ways to strike a balance with a bunch of crazy borders. This is wide open to abuse and manipulation now.

Gerrymandering is necessary, just as the electoral college is necessary and the two senators per state are necessary. But no one involved with any political group should be drawing the lines, and there should be set criteria for drawing the lines as much as possible.

The way the rules are now, they just do whatever the fuck they want so they can box the losing team into pyrrhic victories. 20/80 splits in the districts they lose, but 55/45 splits in the ones they control. They make the losing team waste all their weight on a handful of landslides so they can't win many districts.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they compare that data against how many registered voters of each party actually went to the polls to vote? Democrats are typically lazy welfare trash that can't go anywhere without their mobility scooter and a 5-finger discount.

Re:Wow, really?

[Oswald McWeany]

The State has 2.7M (as of 2016) registered Democrats and 2.0M registered Republicans. Yet has 10 R congressmen vs 3 D congressmen.

I'm not saying that this is NOT down to gerrymandering, but I will point out that this happens a lot elsewhere (perhaps not as extreme), and not just in the US. People on the right (in many democratic countries) are more likely to vote than people on the left. A large vote turn out normally helps the left and a low vote turnout normally helps the right.

Why this is the case is anyone's guess. Is it because the right tend to be richer with more to lose than the left; because the left have to work or watch kids and can't get in to vote. Is it because the right tends to be more of a party for the patriotic, or sometimes nationalistic than the left? Are there more lazy people on the left? Who knows.

Across much of the US you see the same thing, more republicans in office than they statistically make up by supporters. Some of this may be down to gerrymandering, but a lot of it is down to left leaning people being less statistically likely to actually go vote. It's probably worse in States like North Carolina that have districts that are politically evenly split.

Re:Wow, really?

[DaveV1.0]

It is even more complicated than that. Florida has a state law that mandates that districts be as geometrically compact as possible. But, Florida also falls under the Voting Rights Act which requires:

1. a minority population is geographically compact and sufficiently numerous to be a majority in a single district;
2. the minority population is politically cohesive;
3. the majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it usually to defeat the minority-preferred candidate;
4. under all of the circumstances, the minority population has less opportunity than others to participate in the political process and elect representatives of its choice.

When the minority population is overwhelmingly for one party, such as the fact that black Americans in Florida are much more likely to be registered as Democrats, one ends up with de facto political gerrymandering due to racial gerrymandering.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The algorithm is pretty nice, however a better algorithm would minimize the travel time between any two voters in the district. e.g. use a different metric of "compactness".

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

(Same AC here) note that the current algorithm assigns one side of a bay to the district on the opposite shore, because it's using an "as the crow flies" metric of compactness that doesn't take actual connectedness into account. Instead of geographical distance, the algorithm should optimize for a metric based on e.g. "travel cost" between each set of regions (travel cost is a proxy for distance, but one that also takes the webs of human interconnectivity and things like bodies of water, highways, mountains into account. People tend to be more connected to places they can get to more easily, and making optimally "connected" districts minimizes the cost for candidates to tour the whole region, meaning everyone in the district has more chance of being involved and having a say.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Honest to God this sounds like two crack ho's fighting over the last fifty cent john to give a blow job. Who fucking cares who gets what state? The fucking outcome is always the same anyway. The rich get richer and the rest of us take it in the ass.

We don't need to have the gerrymandering fixed, we need a third, fourth and fifth party up in that shit.

The only way we are ever going to fix this is to dilute the influence money brings to politics. As long as there are only two parties anyone with sufficient cash can effectively buy one party and force the other one to play ball. Get four or five parties and that is far less likely to happen.

Re:Wow, really?

[Tulsa_Time]

Bad reasoning...

Voters are free to vote for another party... and often do.

Re:Wow, really?

[pastafazou]

I think your numbers are off. North Carolina registered voters:
Democrat: 2,647,917
Republican: 2,065,507
Libertarian: 34,396
Unaffiliated: 2,093,436
North Carolina has 38.7% of the voters registered as Democrat.

Re:Wow, really?

[DaveV1.0]

The section of that article about the Voting Rights Act will hamstring any attempts at redistricting via algorithm.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly this is why I suggest and often carry-out the murder of Republicans to fix the system.

Re: Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shortest split-line.
Maximally compact.

We have two methods which are immune to manipulation. The results are not necessarily going to be completely fair, but they can't be biased to get a specific result. They will also be inherently more fair than districts which were created to be unfair.

Your claim is refuted.

Re:Wow, really?

[Solandri]

So when it comes to Gerrymandering, most of the more "liberal" or even "purple" States have long had laws against it. Many (including CA) have independent councils that must have representatives from both parties in roughly equal proportion drawing the maps.

Erm, the independent council in California for apolitically drawing congressional maps exists due to the work of Republicans. California was long gerrymandered by the Democrats. The stats I read in the 1980s were something like 55% of votes being cast in elections were for Democratic candidates, but 60% of its Assembly members and 62% of its Congressional representatives and State Senators were Democrats.

The Republicans finally managed to put a stop to it in 1990 by campaigning hard to get Pete Wilson elected as governor. After the 1990 census, the Democrats tried to gerrymander California's districts again. Wilson simply vetoed it. That led to a lot of drama which eventually ended up in the California Supreme Court, who ended up drawing the districts themselves just so there would be districts in time for the 1992 elections. Eventually, the two parties came up with an independent council with representatives from both parties drawing the maps, as a long-term solution.

Democrats gerrymander too, don't get me wrong. But they haven't abused it to the extend like the Republicans in NC did

Probably not to the extent it was done in NC (which was particularly egregious - I oppose election manipulation regardless of party). But Democrats gerrymandered their way into the longest continuous control of the House by one party in history - 40 years. That presented a quandary for the Republicans: How do you stop a system of electoral abuse which gives more votes to the abuser thus allowing them to propagate the abuse? The solution they came up with was to prioritize getting Republicans elected as governors in time for the 1990 census. Then as in California, those governors simply vetoed the districts drawn by the Democrats. (Pete Wilson was a shoe-in to be re-elected as Senator, but they decided winning the governor's office, even for just 4 years, was more important than a Senate seat in DC. They made a strategic gambit, giving up his Senate seat for a better chance at winning the governorship. His seat was eventually won by the Democrat who ran against him for governor - Feinstein, who still holds it today.)

That's why we have the situation today of gerrymandering favoring Republicans. Red governors of blue states are more common than blue governors of red states. The states where Democrats traditionally held power in the legislative branches, the Republicans managed to thwart their gerrymandering with vetoes after the 1990 or 2000 census. And the two parties were forced to compromise on an apolitical way to draw districts. So it's mostly the blue states which have these independent councils drawing districts (thanks to the work of Republicans). Meanwhile, the red states weren't affected as much by any Democrat governorship counter-strategy, so their districts are drawn the same old way as before - by the party controlling the state legislature. Which results in net gerrymandering favoring Republicans.

And as long as we're talking about electoral abuse, let's talk about illegal aliens and apportionment. You see, the Constitution simply states that House "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed." Not voters, not citizens, but "persons." Non-taxed Indians are excluded, but not non-citizens. California's 2.3 million illegal aliens give it 3 extra House seats. And because they're almost unive

Re:Wow, really?

[Gr8Apes]

districts are divided by population not area

Not really. That's the entire point of gerrymandering. It's to allow lower density areas to have better representation than they would have otherwise if you just did a flat, per-capita weighting.

Last I checked, gerrymandering was to dilute political representation of targeted opposition groups (we'll just plunk ethnicity, politics, socio-economic, and all other categorizing adjectives into "opposition") to minimize their ability to gain representation in the next election and maintain power for the status quo. At its core, that's the whole point. It has nothing to do with "areas", low-density or otherwise.

Re:Wow, really?

[Gr8Apes]

It doesn't matter the density, what matters is how the districts are drawn and whether 1 vote truly equals 1 vote. You can flip the map to grant more representation to the dense city dwellers if you wish, or by slightly tweaking it, create more low-density dominant districts. The fact that it's a game played every ten years should tell you how unfair that system is. It has nothing to do with its original purpose which was to ensure districts represented roughly equal numbers of the populace in a time of rapidly and unevenly growing population.

Re: Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh. Show me a democrat in office that wouldnt do the same given the chance. Both sides play to keep their side in power. This guy just might be the most honest politician around.

Re: Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interests tend toward commonality by location. A better district drawing algorithm would be to draw districts based on population clusters using size of population to weight regions. And all regions have similar populations. So districts in cities would be smaller of course and in the countryside larger, just like now. But if you drew the line algorithmically trying to evenly distribute the distance to boundaries based on individuals location youâ(TM)d end up with more or less districts whose size is based on local population density, and whose boundaries were more uniform and much much less irregular. Regions predominately occupied by one party would likely support this. Regions were there is a close division between parties wouldnâ(TM)t. They donâ(TM)t get to influence elections as much then.

Re:Wow, really?

[sexconker]

The point is to prevent dense urban centers from hijacking all influence. It exists for the exact same reasons as the bicameral legislature and the electoral college.

It is absolutely about balancing the representational weight of the populace vs that of each county (be they divvied up by roads, cities boundaries, rivers, railroads, or whatever).

Re:Wow, really?

[Green Mountain Bot]

And it has 30.2% of the voters registered as Republicans.

Re:Wow, really?

[Green Mountain Bot]

Never mind that the third judge was a Bush appointee and concurred on two of the three bases for the decision.

Re:Wow, really?

[Zmobie]

While I hate the current system allowing such easy manipulation of the voting patterns, unfortunately at large elections would not properly represent the state either. Each area geographically has different needs and hence why representatives are supposed to be from different areas. If it were purely at large then it would probably be common in some of the heavily lopsided states for over half the elected representatives to be from one area (likely the capitol or its surrounding area). This would then lead to elected officials representing the needs of people they have never been around nor even lived in the area. The situation has a term in the business world, 'Ivory Tower Meddling.'

Unfortunately as you said there is a bit of a natural skew due to democratic voters tending to clump together more densely. Perhaps a hybridization of the suggestion could be effective? Representative numbers are tied to the population at large now even though needs vary based on location. Perhaps if the areas with shared economic interests were determined to be the districts, etc. larger areas could have multiple representatives proportionate to their size without having to draw further sub-districts within them. Then those districts could vote based on preference as you suggest and the top X number of candidates are given the seats.

You can still skew the districts though, but it at least would be a bit harder. Our current system I feel is very broken regardless though. It invites corruption by the very nature of it. Politics is about getting into a position of power/influence/responsibility. When you allow those already in the majority to make the rules it is in their best interest to stack the deck unfairly to their advantage. And while some of them have integrity and may genuinely be trying to do things in an unbiased manner, again the very nature of it is going to attract dishonest self-serving people.

Maybe it would be better to have the major parties elect an equal number of participants to an independent commission? This would make it substantially harder for them to stack the deck too much. It is definitely better then having the body that is in power rewrite half of the rules that govern how they are elected every few years...

Re: Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, the independent council in California for apolitically drawing congressional maps exists due to the work of Republicans.

Sorry, Soladrni, but Prop 11 was passed by statewide vote. It, like Proposition 20 and Proposition 14, were acts by the people.

Some of those people were Republicans, of course, but the party itself tried to oppose all three. And similar reforms in Arizona.

Your misinformed and false information about the circumstances was already exposed back in November. Sorry, but the truth is out there.

Besides, your complaint about a five percent discrepancy? Bad math, but you may want to check the numbers for North Carolina. Or the testimony of the state legislator who admitted drawing a 10-3 map only because he couldn't rig an 11-2. Other states have similar problems.

Of course, you will be mysteriously reticent about them.

Re:Wow, really?

[mixed_signal]

Then there should be more districts because there are more people in urban centers.

Re:Wow, really?

[mixed_signal]

One of the great fallacies the GOP and their "representatives" are foisting on us is that institutions and people are incapable of ever making a decision not affected by their personal bias. We see this whenever they don't like a decision by a body such as a judicial panel or institutions as large as the FBI. Organizations are comprised of people, and our institutions are designed to have methods (e.g. checks and balances, audits, reviews of detailed reports, etc.) to ensure that on average individual biases do not heavily sway results. While, any good professional should minimize the influence of their personal bias, the governing system is also set up to address human short comings.

Re:Wow, really?

[Ichijo]

and/or major man-made boundaries (Major roads, highways

The problem with using a road as a boundary is that it means someone just a few easy steps away can be in a different voting district. You want to keep people within easy access of each other in the same district, and separate the districts along actual transportational barriers. That means not roads unless it's something difficult to cross like a freeway.

Using actual transportational barriers as a boundary also means these two houses with adjoining backyards might not be in the same district, which makes sense if you look at the 7 mile route between the two!

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having been in a truly bizarre democratic gerrymander, not sure I can quite agree with you. From 2000-2010, I was in a congressional district that started in a eastern Rochester suburb (the home town of the democratic congresswoman), proceeded directly into the urban city of Rochester, NY, then up a sliver of the Genesee river gorge to Lake Ontario and then for a very small strip of land, all the way over to the Niagara gorge (~60 miles), then up the US side of the Niagara river to the urban parts of Buffalo, NY. Putting together 2 distinct and seperated urban areas via a small sliver of land for partisan benefit -- definition of gerrymander. Picking and choosing which states to sue for gerrymandering strikes me as similar to the Gore 200 debacle where Gore's team only seemed to be interested in re-counting the areas of the state that appeared to be able to give them the most additional votes...

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Both parties" neatly encapsulates the problem I would have with that solution, what with being registered to a third party and all. We'd end up with another dog and pony show like the presidential debates specifically formulated to keep any challengers out.

Re:Wow, really?

[Gr8Apes]

According to both wikipedia and various dictionaries, gerrymander was solely to give political gain to the party in power and dilute the representation of the opposition. The word's origin is even listed as being the result of a redistricting effort in Mass, US in 1812 by the Mass gov Gerry and the resulting salamander shaped district.

Re:Wow, really?

[Wycliffe]

large elections would not properly represent the state either. Each area geographically has different needs and hence why representatives are supposed to be from different areas.

Why should geography trump other types of groups. I would venture to say that the people from New York City and San Francisco have more in common
than the people from New York City and rural New York. If representatives were elected at large then the rural voters could clump together to get their
representative elected just the same as the Libertarians, Asians, Gays, etc... could clump together to get their representative elected. Geography made
sense at one time when travelling across the state was difficult but now there are more things that bind people together and define differences than just
geography. You couldn't do a winner takes all voting but some sort of voting at large with runoff could get a higher percentage of people with their first choice
representing them.

Re:Wow, really?

[Green Mountain Bot]

The person who drew the map in question was quite open that his intent was to make that as difficult as he could. His quote on the subject: “I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country.”

Re:Wow, really?

[wisnoskij]

No you wouldn't. As a rule, a pretty concrete rule that is right is 99.9% of all cases. Republicans control The land with a few dense population pockets going to Democrat rule. Since Republicans control about 98% of the geography of the US they get loads of elected officials.

Re:Wow, really?

[naubol]

Short of a simple geometric algorithm, any attempt to redraw districts will generate objections. Both parties will seek to alter the result to benefit them.

While true, I believe this statement to be somewhat misleading. Democracies can probably tolerate 1% corruption, but when it's getting to be 15, 20, or 50 percent... When the advantages return to being mostly marginal, then it won't be so problematic. If we can find a geometric algorithm which is sensible and hard to game, or a structure such as an independent body, ok, but I think our goal should be reducing the advantages to something tolerable, not eliminating them (which is unlikely). The implication, that anything less than perfection means the effort isn't worth it, is wrong.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

How nice. This Republican will be ready for you progtard.

Re: Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Progtard moderators are out in force today.

Re:Wow, really?

[naubol]

Expect... Like expecting Hillary to carry states Obama won?

Expectations have the problem of being wrong.

What an incisive observation about probability.

Re:Wow, really?

[mattventura]

Not necessarily - it depends on the distribution of the population as well as the goals of the districting are. If the Rs and ads were evenly distributed geographically (unlikely, but worth mentioning) and the population was 70% D, then the expected outcome would be that every district would be blue because there isn’t a single R majority district. However, if one party is packed into one region (like how dense cities tend to lean left) then it becomes more of a tossup, possibly with more districts going red than blue depending on the exact numbers. Outcomes alone aren’t enough to prove gerrymandering, because the system isn’t set up in such a way where you’d expect proportional seats. That doesn’t mean the system isn’t bad, but rather that even if you fix gerrymandering, you won’t necessarily get “fair” nor “proportional” outcomes.

Re: Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

strikes me as similar to the Gore 200 debacle where Gore's team only seemed to be interested in re-counting the areas of the state that appeared to be able to give them the most additional votes...

Florida's elections were and still are, operated per county, with no consistent system in place. Gore's legal team had to identify problems in each county and in a court in each county.

They had no legal means to sue for a statewide recount. The factual basis was not there.

Sorry. But good news, if you object to your state's system, you can sue.

Re:Wow, really?

[rahvin112]

Actually, in Utah, the divded the urban area into 3 pieces to neutralize the democratic vote in Utah. Utah is actually a classic example of using gerrymandering to disenfranchise voters.

Re:Wow, really?

[youngone]

Both parties will seek to alter the result to benefit them....

See, there's your problem right there. Proper democracies have more than two parties.
You might as well have one for all the good two does you.

Re:Wow, really?

[kqs]

Wait, you don't try to disenfranchise your political opponents? Sad. I bet you don't put out obvious lies which your party faithful believe even though all facts point the other way, and you probably don't claim that all minorities are inferior but your people, despite having all of the political power, are the real downtrodden oppressed folks. You have soooooo much to learn!

Re: Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia is written and edited by leftists, and no dictionary said that, you fucking imbecile. Dictionaries define words, not historical anecdotes.

Re: Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, dictionaries say that:
"manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favor one party or class."
The word, by definition, is shitty cheating

What you're thinking of is "redistricting" which is normal, gerrymandering is the term for when redistricting becomes deliberately unfair

Re:Wow, really?

[Michael Woodhams]

My plan (not that anyone listens to me):
There is one primary for all candidates, of whatever affiliation.
That primary selects about 3 to 5 candidates for the main election.
In the main election, those 3 to 5 candidates are voted for by some form of preferential voting.

This would
* Tend to elect moderates, whose political views are near the median of the electorate
* Give a good chance to candidates with political positions which do not align with the two party orthodoxies (e.g. a fiscally conservative environmentalist, or an evangelical who favours more state support for health care of the poor.)
* Keeps the advantages of preferential voting, but keeps the number of (post primary) candidates small enough for the electorate to understand the policies of all candidates

The primary system and partisan divide in US politics has expunged centrists from the legislatures, when it is those centrists who would do the best job, able to judge each issue on its merits rather than slavishly following extreme party lines.

Re:Wow, really?

[Michael Woodhams]

Boundaries have to be somewhere, having close neighbours be in different districts isn't avoidable if you have cities too populous to fit in one district.

However your Google Maps example is pretty funny, and is a great example of lousy urban planning.

Re: Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is software that will optimize district maps gerrymandering.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the country you live in the U.S. state of California? Because, what you're describing is pretty much the law there as well.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

and/or major man-made boundaries (Major roads, highways

The problem with using a road as a boundary is that it means someone just a few easy steps away can be in a different voting district.

Yes, no system is perfect. But you have to draw the lines somewhere. Complaining that their system isn't perfect, while having a totally fucked up system (if you're from the US) is a bit insane. Yes, we all know "the good is enemy of the perfect", but not going to good because you want perfect means you stay in the same fucked up system. In the case at hand, the judge didn't also come with a perfect solution. But he said "yours isn't good enough, give it another go"...

Re:Wow, really?

[aquacrayfish]

On top of that, at the time the Electoral College was conceived, giving weight to non-urban areas was not one of the reasons, according to Alexander Hamilton. I don't know that I buy all of his reasons, but I'm also 100% sure he knew way more about this stuff than I ever will.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gerrymandering has been an issue since the start of the Republic. Even California has issues with it's redistricting. Great, they have an unelected commission to decide their districts. Which has been highly unfavorable to the GOP party even though it was initially promoted by the GOP in California.

They risked their political power because they thought it a good idea.

Sorry, but your evidence for that is conspicuously lacking. The current representation of California's legislature is 27-13 in the Senate, in 2008, it was 25-15. In the State Assembly, it was 55-25 and 51-29. This is also rather close to the voter divison, which is close to 3:2 statewide. In contrast, the gerrymandering of North Carolina has been enough that for example, in 2012, the State Legislature had a majority total vote for Democrats, yet a widely discrepant legislative membership. You can look it up yourself.

PS, the GOP's Arizona Legislature in that state opposed the ballot measure.

My initial point.

I am not convinced the democrats have solved the issue particularly so because you now can have a democrat run against a democrat. A real choice in the election!

That wasn't a solution by the California Democratic Party, but an initiative of the people, and it has actually shut out Democrats out of many elections as well.

If you want some other system, fair enough, but don't keep trying to ascribe blame. That only makes you look bad.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

any attempt to redraw districts will generate objections

In general, that's a fair assessment. Look at the NC map, though. This is an egregious example!

Re:Wow, really?

[david_thornley]

The parties tend to separate along geographical lines, urban being heavily Democrat, suburbs and rural tending more Republican. That evens things out.

Re:Wow, really?

[shutdown -p now]

While we're at it, an "open primary system" is properly called runoff voting.

Re:Wow, really?

[pastafazou]

So the post I replied to claimed the state had 70% of the population registered as Democrats compared to 30% Republicans. I pointed out that the 70% claim was wrong, it was only 38.7% Democrat. Thank you for also correcting the fact that he had the republican percentage wrong as well. 30.2% registered instead of the claimed 30%.

Re:Wow, really?

[Ol Olsoc]

This idea that the system is broken because it produced a result you don't agree with is even MORE dangerous to democracy than gerrymandering.

Short of a simple geometric algorithm, any attempt to redraw districts will generate objections. Both parties will seek to alter the result to benefit them.

So what you are saying is that a system that allows a candidate to receive less votes than another should be accepted, and that even mentioning that is bad?

That makes no sense. If candidates who win get less votes overall consistently win, it is a red light that something is terribly broken. Gerrymandering has taken place on a nationwide level.

A House Representative I know showed me a district map that one of the parties had gerrymandered. It looked like a barbell, with two roundish shapes on either side, and a thin sliver about 40 mile long, and 200 feet wide running along a highway that connected the two.

Seems odd that some folks don't want discussion about what look like abuses.

Re:Wow, really?

[Ol Olsoc]

In some ways slight gerrymandering can actually give better representation for everyone so that the 30% minority actually gets a representative.

But then we get this: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org...

In a fit of irony, the district on the left was originally engineered by Democrats who wanted to get a man of African descent into their legislature. But after a while, Republicans realized that North Carolinians being what they are, were happy to keep it since there would be a white backlash ensuring that the people who are not like us were confined. Regardless, the whole process needs fixed so neither party can rig the results.

Re:Wow, really?

[Ol Olsoc]

The point is to prevent dense urban centers from hijacking all influence. It exists for the exact same reasons as the bicameral legislature and the electoral college.

It is absolutely about balancing the representational weight of the populace vs that of each county (be they divvied up by roads, cities boundaries, rivers, railroads, or whatever).

We could avoid all the trouble by electing the candidate that got the least votes.

Re:Wow, really?

[Ol Olsoc]

According to both wikipedia and various dictionaries, gerrymander was solely to give political gain to the party in power and dilute the representation of the opposition.

It's just been co-opted to allow minority rule. If the present political situation was reversed, the party that has benefitted the most from gerrymandering and getting fewer votes overall but winning the presidency, they would be demanding a constitutional amendment, and Fox News would be on an outrage rampage

But for now it suits them, and it is fun to listen to them bloviate on how minority rule is somehow democratic.

Re:Wow, really?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Or Austin, Tx. Which is divided, pielike, into five sections that extend quite a bit into the rural areas.

Re:Wow, really?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Whereever the line is drawn, there will be neighbors in different districts. That's how lines work.

Re:Wow, really?

[Ichijo]

Good point. A city without enough physical barriers (rivers, freeways, etc.) still won't have perfectly flat population density, so you would want to avoid drawing boundaries through the middle of clusters of residents (villages?) but rather draw them through the less populated space between clusters in order to minimize the instances of close neighbors being in different districts.

Re:Wow, really?

[Wycliffe]

The parties tend to separate along geographical lines, urban being heavily Democrat, suburbs and rural tending more Republican. That evens things out.

Not necessarily. If you have a city like chicago and you make the districts pizza slices starting in the center and radiating out then this would make the districts "fair" in that the districts would all be the same area with the same population but it would completely cut out the rural vote. On the other hand, if you did fair by saying smallest circumference possible of each district then this might even out the rural/city vote but could possibly add other distortions as the city districts would be physically much smaller than the rural districts.

Re:Wow, really?

[lsatenstein]

Perhaps the parties that did create the gerrymandering maps should be fined to the level of bankrupsy.

Re:Wow, really?

[AutodidactLabrat]

No.
Any gerrymander which puts the MINORITY in charge is an afront to the 14th Amendment
Equal rights, privileges and immunities you know

Re:Wow, really?

[AutodidactLabrat]

And the PEOPLE would then rule
Every republican't in the world thinks DIRT has a vote
it DOES NOT!
The EC existed solely so under populated SLAVE STATES could rule the nation
To solve it, apply the 14th Amendment forcefully.

Re:Wow, really?

[AutodidactLabrat]

The point is to prevent dense urban centers from hijacking all influence. It exists for the exact same reasons as the bicameral legislature and the electoral college.

...

Instead you demand DIRT have a vote
it has no vote says the 14th Amendment.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The State has 2.7M (as of 2016) registered Democrats and 2.0M registered Republicans. Yet has 10 R congressmen vs 3 D congressmen.

I do not live in NC and have not checked your facts, but they seem reasonable.

However, I know I vote for individual candidates, not along party lines. I know many people that are so fed up with the current system they will not "play for the team" anymore. A few simply vote for whoever is not incumbent. "Kick 'em all out" mentality...

Having no knowledge of any of the at least 26 candidates, how am I to know anything about which ones are petty liars, which ones are honest, etc?

Expecting this "red team / blue team" bullshit to accurately predict elections may be the problem. It's hard enough choosing a good candidate without resorting to the lesser of two evils. Sadly, this is much of what voting is for as long as I can remember.

Re:Wow, really?

[Wycliffe]

No.
Any gerrymander which puts the MINORITY in charge is an afront to the 14th Amendment
Equal rights, privileges and immunities you know

Not the majority in charge but if a state was 70% democrats and 30% republicans and there are 10 reps then if you could somehow construct districts where you ended up with the 70% represented by 7 reps and the 3% represented by the remaining 3 reps then this would be equal representation with zero "wasted" votes.

Re:Wow, really?

[Gr8Apes]

It's just been co-opted to allow minority rule.

That was always its intent - to ensure the party in power stays in power, even if the majority votes otherwise. The Republicans have been extremely successful with this strategy, starting with the states first approach back in the 90s, then redrawing districts to dilute Democratic votes in 2000. You can see the effects in Congress and state legislatures.

Re:Wow, really?

[david_thornley]

You could design districts to get any desired result, but that's gerrymandering. In nonpartisan redistricting, we're not going to get things perfect.

I don't see any need to make districts of equal area as opposed to equal population. Naturally, we're going to want more polling places in spread-out districts, but that's not a problem.

Re:Wow, really?

[AutodidactLabrat]

Of course, that would only work if you believe in proportional representation
Chief Justice John Roberts said in orals he DOES NOT
Thomas and Alito have voted to condemn representation by popular vote several times, Thomas famously in speeches on Bush v. Gore.

What can ya say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Racists gonna racist.

Automation

[ThosLives]

How is this not automated? Should just be a computer program that does "find the N points such that each point is the closest point to exactly P/N people."

That is, make a Voronoi diagram on population, not geometric distance.

No politics involved at all, but probably people wouldn't like it...

Re:Automation

[religionofpeas]

Why not simply add up all the votes over the entire population of interest ?

Re:Automation

[JackieBrown]

I think the problem is how do you do it soley on population since areas are populated so differently? For the towns of 500-2000 that are a hundred miles away from two large cities, where do you put them? Here in Texas, do you combine some of San Antonio with Austin to get to your magic population number even though the demographics of each city is very different?

Re:Automation

[DNS-and-BIND]

Because black people would lose their guaranteed districts. Sad but true.

Re:Automation

[penandpaper]

Lead by example. Do it and tell us how it works.

Re:Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't districts change boundaries based on measuring frequency?

Re:Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this not automated? Should just be a computer program that does "find the N points such that each point is the closest point to exactly P/N people."

That is, make a Voronoi diagram on population, not geometric distance.

No politics involved at all, but probably people wouldn't like it...

People? The ones who won't like it are mostly politicians and I've always thought of politicians as more like bipedal hairless sewer rodents that people.

Re:Automation

[buddyglass]

If it were automated we'd still be arguing over the algorithm to use, what inputs it should have, etc.

I'd like to see a system that features some small number of competing algorithms, each of which must draw districts without using partisan voting patterns as an input, or any other trait that correlates strongly with partisan voting patterns (e.g. race). Maybe three different algorithms. During redistricting, each algorithm is applied to produce a map. Then a 50/50 bipartisan committee of human beings votes on which one to use. I would have the committee using the following process to select map:

1. Each committee member voters for the map they prefer. If the vote is not a tie, then that map is selected.
2. If the vote in #1 is a tie, then there is another vote where each committee member votes for the map he or she least prefers. If this vote is not a tie, then that map is eliminated from contention and the process is repeated from #1 above.
3. If the vote in #2 is a tie, then a map is chosen at random from the set of maps that are still in contention.

Re:Automation

[buddyglass]

Each district is electing its own representative.

Re:Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not simply add up all the votes over the entire population of interest ?

That would cause direct democracy instead of easily steerable blocks of votes.

Re:Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

This conveniently ignores every study of gerrymandering, which shows a net benefit to the Republican Party overall.

There are a few areas where Democrats come out ahead, but by and large it helps Republicans.

Re:Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of all the various ideas people have for simplifying income tax. Anyone can look at the current system and objectively determine that it's definitely bullshit without any reasonable justification. Whoever says that is always right, and everyone says it. It's absolutely uncontroversial and it's one of the things that approximately 100% of Americans agree with.

Then you start talking about how to fix it and make it fair. You might have what seems like good ideas. A lot of people might even agree with you. But then you apply what-if-we-used-this-new-system forecast, and (of course) it differs from the universally-hated status quo. But differs how, and for whom?

There will be people who come out ahead. They'll say the old system was unfair to them, and your new objective, unbiased system removed the injustice.

There will be people who are even worse off. They'll say the old system was unfair, but your new system is even more unfair. Now, here's the thing: they will have compelling arguments. I don't mean their arguments will necessarily convince you or be "right" but some of the arguments won't have the whiff of bullshit. They'll show that the way they came out behind, was an emergent phenomenon that came from your supposedly unbiased algorithm actually having a bias, but you weren't thinking of it as a bias.

"find the N points such that each point is the closest point to exactly P/N people."

They'll say you disenfranchized some people, and they'll be able to show you how. "OMG, you're so geometrically naive, measuring how the crow flies between points, instead of real boundaries. The peoples of North Haverbrook and Ogdenville are nothing alike and we shouldn't be in the same district! Your silly cartesian distance formula is totally inappropriate. People aren't points on a map, you computer-screen-blinded nerd!"

This doesn't mean we can't change. But it does mean that no matter what you do, you are going to get sincere complaints. Let's be ready for that and not immediately label the inevitable griping as being in bad faith. And maybe you can anticipate and counter some of their arguments.

Re:Automation

[religionofpeas]

Each district is electing its own representative.

Well, yes, but my point was to change the whole system. You give each party a certain number of representatives based on percentage of popular vote.

If you want a local representative, then have a local election to appoint one, and give this person some jurisdiction over their own district.

Re:Automation

[Orgasmatron]

This. But it needs to be coupled with a return of Congress to the people. These three parts need to be done together, through an Article 5 convention.

Part 1: We need to return to the original ratio of 1 representative per 30,000 citizens. Yes, that is over 9000 representatives. They don't need to meet in person. Each of them can have an office in their district and a staff that also lives in the same district. They can exchange documents online, and vote online. They can deliver their fundraising speeches in person to local audiences instead of nationally on C-SPAN.

Part 2: Repeal the 17th Amendment. State legislatures need to be able to hire and fire federal senators instantly with a simple majority vote.

Part 3: Districts need to be contiguous, convex and of roughly equal population. Allow some wiggle room in cases when a district boundary is suboptimal because it is following a city, county or township boundary.

Any of these could be enacted alone, but together they'd do more for citizen government than anything since the Bill of Rights.

Re:Automation

[Dog-Cow]

My understanding is that census data is used, and that's not going to change sampling frequency any time soon.

Re:Automation

[MobyDisk]

There are lots of other places in the world that do what ThosLives suggests. One approach is to take all the votes, then setup representation that is proportional to the votes. Suppose a state with 10 representatives that gets 60% dems and 30% repubs and 10% green. You will have 6 democrats 3 republicans and 1 green. Then you need a way to pick individual representatives out of the pool. The trade-off is you get less accurate local representation, but it is immunte from gerrymandering and increases the likelihood of multiple parties sharing power. That last one is real big in many European nations. (And many of those nations are similar in size to US states, so it can work on that kind of scale.)

Re:Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this not automated? Should just be a computer program that does "find the N points such that each point is the closest point to exactly P/N people."

That is, make a Voronoi diagram on population, not geometric distance.

No politics involved at all, but probably people wouldn't like it...

That would lend equal vote weight to everyone. If that would be desired, the whole fscking electoral college system would be unnecessary and popular vote would be used instead. The idea of electoral college and voting districts is to favor the interest of land owners over that of crowded people living in a metropolis. You reflect that by assigning districts based on area rather than populace.

Make no mistake: your proposed system would be "more" fair, but if "fair" was desired, the procedure would be much simpler in the first place.

Re:Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

and that's bad how? did you forget a sarcasm tag ?

Re:Automation

[MagicM]

Consider an area that is to be divided into 10 districts. If the population is made up of 90% horses and 10% cows, and all cows live close to each other geographically, it would be nice (and "fair") to have 1 of the 10 districts be a cow-district with a cow-representative.

Re:Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you insane? You can't do that in the US! Then third parties might get representatives. It would destroy the Republicrat strangle hold on US politics. Move to a country with a Parliament you traitor.

Re:Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess, those "studies" do not go very far in history? Maybe a year and maybe you're lucky 10 years! Because 2 elections for one Senate seat is enough to understand the redistricting of an entire state. But that's like 5 elections for one House seat! That's totally enough to understand the district!

Re:Automation

[TimSSG]

Because that would be illegal I refer you to the (VRA) voting right act. Because about 50 percent of Democrats will not regularly vote for black candidates; the VRA require black districts to be drawn up with about plus 20 percent Democrats.

Tim S.

How is this not automated? Should just be a computer program that does "find the N points such that each point is the closest point to exactly P/N people."

That is, make a Voronoi diagram on population, not geometric distance.

No politics involved at all, but probably people wouldn't like it...

Re:Automation

[laie_techie]

There are lots of other places in the world that do what ThosLives suggests. One approach is to take all the votes, then setup representation that is proportional to the votes. Suppose a state with 10 representatives that gets 60% dems and 30% repubs and 10% green. You will have 6 democrats 3 republicans and 1 green. Then you need a way to pick individual representatives out of the pool. The trade-off is you get less accurate local representation, but it is immunte from gerrymandering and increases the likelihood of multiple parties sharing power. That last one is real big in many European nations. (And many of those nations are similar in size to US states, so it can work on that kind of scale.)

I vote for the candidate and not the party. I'm conservative, but not affiliated with the Republican Party. Most of the time I do vote Republican, but the candidate matters more than party. For example, I wouldn't vote for someone with credible complaints of sexual harassment unless the other candidate is probably guilty of a worse offense.

Re:Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

Now consider that half of the cows live on the side of a city closest to a mountain range while the other half of the cows live on the mountain side of a city on the opposite side of the mountain range, with the horses spread between the two cities and the surrounding countryside. If you put all of the cows together, you're combining two geographically close but separate areas. If you split them, you risk having two 50-50 split districts that could result in 0 cow representatives. If each city (metro area included) is 1.5 districts large, you either have to combine parts of the two geographically separate cities or combine parts of each city with the nearby rural areas. Now, you could make every district part city and part country to keep the population density consistent between them, but the result could be cow minorities everywhere and clear urban horse or rural horse majorities in several of the mixed districts, disenfranchising all cows and many of the urban and/or rural horses. It's not a trivial problem to solve.

Re:Automation

[bluefoxlucid]

I'm running to represent Maryland's 7th district. It looks like a dragon coming out of a volcano, so I'd quite like to not see it changed much at all, except maybe to include the Starbucks in Mt. Washington because it's readily-accessible by public transportation and highway.

The point is to represent these particular people in Congress. I've actually left campaign material on Elijah Cummings's door--I'm running for his seat and I used to live on his street, just a few blocks down. Andy Harris may lose his seat because Allison Galbraith is extremely popular in his own community--she lives right in the same neighborhood.

We have local elections for local legislative districts, putting Delegates and State Senators in place to change State law. Congress changes Federal law. My jurisdiction includes the Baltimore Inner Harbor, and my constituents want me to lobby for Federal money to help restore the Chesapeake Bay due to simple environmentalism and its incredible economic value (lots of fishing, tourism, and the like going on there). Representatives of other districts have less focus on the Bay.

Re:Automation

[Strider-]

How is this not automated? Should just be a computer program that does "find the N points such that each point is the closest point to exactly P/N people."

The issue is that it also makes a certain amount of sense for electoral district boundaries to respect real-world boundaries to a certain extent. The algorithm should be finding the most compact districts possible, centered on neighbourhoods (in urban areas), that respect real-world boundaries as best as possible. Real-world boundaries include things like rivers/ravines/bays/lakes, as well as major highways/arterial roads, municipal boundaries, and so forth. It's a delicate balancing act, but done properly it helps to ensure good results.

Re:Automation

[bluefoxlucid]

Would you be interested in making a modest contribution to my campaign? I'm working to strengthen our social safety nets in a way which avoids tax increases, and on expanding affordable care and implementing a public healthcare option, which costs a lot less and incurs much-lower risk than single-payer medicare-for-all. I also intend to push real criminal justice reform to reduce recidivism rate and, thus, the amount of crime and the cost of our prison system.

I bring a lot of new solutions and align pretty tightly with the Democratic Party's philosophy of government. At the same time, I tend to operate in a manner simultaneously more-progressive and more-conservative than my peers, pushing strongly for next-generation poverty relief while maintaining a balanced budget and reducing taxes.

I hope you enjoy reviewing my platform and can help me reach my constituents and earn their votes in 2018!

Re:Automation

[bluefoxlucid]

Congress has classified hearings regularly. They can't do that over the Internet.

Repealing #17 has merit.

Re:Automation

[Green Mountain Bot]

Why repeal the 17th amendment? How does it advance the interests of citizen governance to allow a legislature to overrule the collective will of the people of the state?

Re:Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi!
I'm a government contractor, and my job is setting up secure networks to transmit classified information all over the world, including to Washington DC. Shockingly, this involves transmitting information over the Internet. We use a lot of tricks, like VPNs, routing whitelists, special secure protocols, and such, but we support all sorts of communication methods. Including Video Conferencing.

And Now You Know!

Re:Automation

[d0rp]

How is this not automated?

Automation is one of the reasons that gerrymandering has been so effective, and generated so much controversy over the last few years. Since the party in power in these states is allowed re-draw the maps, the availability of automation has made this type of behavior easier and more effective.

What we really need if for all states to change their rules so that an independent committee is responsible for re-drawing the maps, with strict rules that the automation being used should optimize for the most balanced distribution based on the census data

Re:Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

Proportional representation would allow 3rd parties to get seats. Seats - plural! Neither of the two parties in power would let that happen.

Re:Automation

[Solandri]

That's the way it's done in parliamentary elections. In the U.S. however, the Founding Fathers decided that legislators needed to be more in-touch with the voters they represented. This resulted in the idea of geographic representation. Each Congressman represents a geographical district - a specific chunk of the country whose voters elected that specific candidate.

Even the proportional representation system used in parliaments has mathematical problems. Imagine a parliament with 4 parties. Party A has 5 seats, Party B has 4 seats, Party C has 3 seats, party D has 1 seat. That's 13 seats in total, with 7 needed to decide a majority. Even though D ostensibly has 8% of the seats, it has zero power. It cannot change the outcome of any vote. A+B can generate a majority (9). A+C can generate a majority (8). B+C can generate a majority (7). Party D cannot change any of these outcomes, and thus it holds no power. It might as well not exist.

Mathematically, a representation system where the proportion of votes received is mapped onto the equivalent amount of power in government (ability to change decisions) would be ideal. But that would violate the "one person, one vote" ideal that people really seem beholden to, so will probably never happen.

Re:Automation

[jeff4747]

That 50/50 vote doesn't help.

For a very long time, California had a de-facto agreement between the two parties that certain districts would be Democratic, and certain districts would be Republican. So the 50/50 commission that did redistricting voted to continue that informal agreement. The Democratic party had a large majority, but not a supermajority due to their agreement with the Republicans.

Then a referendum passed that replaced the 50/50 body with a non-partisan commission. The informal agreement was gone, and both parties panicked at losing seats. When the dust settled, the state had a Democratic supermajority, but far more competitive elections - the landslide re-elections under the old system were gone.

That referendum also changed a bunch of other aspects of statewide elections (like top-two go to the general election, regardless of party). So it remains to be seen what happens in the long run.

Re:Automation

[jeff4747]

Congress has classified hearings regularly. They can't do that over the Internet.

Yeah, that's not really a problem.

There are devices such as STEs that make this possible, as well as isolated wide area networks like SIPRNET.

Re:Automation

[jeff4747]

1 per 30k seems a bit too extreme, IMO. Communications have significantly improved over the 1700s. Plus that's a whole lot of salaries we're adding for reps and their staff.

I'd argue the 1 per 200k we had when we stopped expanding the size of the House would probably be sufficient, yielding about 1750 seats.

Re:Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because gerrymandering helps the Party which is more in control of a State and the Republicans have been elected by the voters to control the vast majority of their States.

It was the opposite back 20-30 years ago when the Democrats had more control of State governments, but they mostly ran them into the ground and lost them via elections, leaving their last bastions of power as primarily big cities which they've run into the ground over time...

Re:Automation

[buddyglass]

For one, in the system I proposed the committee would only be able to choose from a small number of algorithmically drawn maps that should, in theory, be non-partisan. So, their ability to form "agreements" like the one alleged in California would be somewhat limited. With respect to "non-partisan" vs. "50/50" my underlying assumption is that nobody is truly non-partisan and the best you can do is a committee where partisans on each side are equally represented.

The ideal situation is one in which none of the algorithmically generated maps is obviously preferable to one party or the other. Allow me to change the voting process to this instead:

1. Committee members are chosen in such a way that each member's partisan bias is well known.
2. Each partisan bloc has an odd number of members.
3. A first vote is taken in which each set of partisans, independently, votes on the map they'd like to see stricken from contention. Each group's winning map is stricken from contention. If there is only one map remaining, then that map is chosen as the official map. If there is more than one map remaining, then repeat step #3. If there are two maps remaining and both are slated to be stricken from contention, choose one at random from those two and it becomes the official map.

Re:Automation

[rahvin112]

There is a very simple solution to state house gerrymandering. Restore the original consitution's house district size of 32,000 people. Let the house vote for bills via the internet, let each states representatives vote on a certain number of people to go to washington to negotiate.

In this day and age with our video, phone and internet capabilities there is no reason at all not to restore the original house district sizes.

Re:Automation

[dcooper_db9]

Why apportion geographically at all? I don't see anything in the US Constitution that requires it. The fairest solution would be to apportion districts by date of birth.

Re:Automation

[Orgasmatron]

Where does the legislature come from again?

Senators make a few hundred thousand dollars salary per year. Most of them who have been there for more than a term or two are now worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. This is really easy because there are 100 of them.

If the senators were appointed and recalled by state legislatures on a whim, the corrupting influence would need to be spread to thousands of state legislators instead of 100 people. This is also one of the advantages to having 10,000 congressmen - anyone with corrupt ambitions would need to spread their effort throughout the country.

Re: Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh ... As the nerds here on slashdot say, what the tldr ... As you didn't say anything, but espouse facts ...

Re:Automation

[Michael Woodhams]

I've met two ways of dealing with this.
Mixed member proportional representation has some elected representatives tied to a specific electorate, and others are 'at large' and whose party affiliation makes the assembly's overall makeup proportional. Germany and New Zealand do this.

You can have each electorate elect multiple representatives, by some form of proportional representation. Canberra does this, having five electorates each electing five members.

There are bound to be other methods I haven't yet met.

Re:Automation

[argStyopa]

Because the United States is not, and never should be, a democracy.
It's a democratic republic.

There's a pretty significant difference.

Re:Automation

[dave420]

Yes, a representative democracy (or "democratic republic" as you put it) is a form of democracy. The two are not the same, but the latter is a form of the former.

Re:Automation

[bluefoxlucid]

So Congress just needs local secure facilities in their campaign offices?

Re:Automation

[jeff4747]

Basically, yes.

If I was implementing it, I'd probably set up one SCIF per metro area, so that you did not have to set up 9000 SCIFs. It's not unreasonable for those congresspeople to commute to the nearest city/town.

Re:Automation

[bluefoxlucid]

Considering the amount of flying back and forth on official business, this could save the American taxpayer pennies per year.

Also, annoy Washington and Hawaii Congressmen a lot less, and avoid putting everyone in one known coastal location where a conventional strike can take out our entire legislative body.

Re:Automation

[Green Mountain Bot]

Where does the legislature come from again?

Typically, politically gerrymandered districts which are elected every two years.

Senators were given 6 year terms for a reason - they are supposed to counter the fickleness of the electorate. The same reason we had the filibuster for so long, and that the Senate, and not the House of Representatives, confirm executive appointees.

Also, if you think state legislators are less corruptible than senators, you haven't spent much time watching state legislators.

Re:Automation

[shutdown -p now]

And the reason why it does so is because the Congress passed a law mandating single-seat districts. The Constitution itself allocates House seats to the states, but it doesn't say how exactly those seats are to be filled - a state might decide to fill those seats on the basis of the state-wide popular party vote, for example.

Re:Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

When someone says "there is no reason" for something, it usually means they have never tried to think of the reasons, or they refuse to acknowledge them.

Re:Automation

[jrumney]

You seem to be arguing for a mixed member proportional system - where the overall representation for the state is proportional, but individual districts have local representation. Some percentage of the representatives are local representatives, the rest are party representatives to make up the proportions. The main problem with this is that it allows unpopular career politicians (aka the swamp) to remain in Congress/Senate, since they are not directly elected individually, but carried through by their party to make up the numbers.

Re:Automation

[jrumney]

I vote for the candidate and not the party.

Mixed Member Proportional representation lets you do both. You vote for a candidate to represent your area, and usually you get a completely separate vote for a party which goes towards allocating how many seats the party will get. I say usually, because there are one or two places where this system is used that automatically allocate the party vote to the local representative's party, but the separate votes are important in cases where the local candidate for your preferred party is a complete arsehole, or the local candidate for the party you don't prefer is actually a good candidate that will do a lot for your community.

The downside is that the parties control who goes into the extra spots to pad out the numbers to make them proportional, so some politicians end up being not directly elected by the people - in the US there are party primaries, so voters can at least influence this, but in general the pool of voters in primaries is much smaller, and the exact rules for primaries are made up by the party themselves. But this downside is also true to a greater extent for pure proportional representation with no local representation, which is the most popular system worldwide.

Why is this here?

[alvinrod]

I understand that some political stories have a technology angle, but this has fuck all to do with technology and doesn't even make the barest effort to dress it up in such a way as to make it belong. At least throw in something about someone calling for districts to be drawn up by computers or using some algorithm that ensures fairness so we can argue about that.

Re: Why is this here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn.

Re:Why is this here?

[swan5566]

Indeed. Mod parent up.

Re:Why is this here?

[Dog-Cow]

Slashdot has never been 100% about technology. Why don't you shove a hot soldering iron through your eye? That way there will be a technology angle in your obit that Slashdot could report on.

Re: Why is this here?

[Anonymous Coward]

This falls under "Stuff that matters"

You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[rsilvergun]

they went along with the Gerrymandering because the R's carved out some safe districts for them. If this keeps up (and if we don't let voter suppression happen) it'll change the political landscape drastically. The part that worries me is the Rs just got out from under that court order that lets them send poll watchers. I some how doubt the reason for that order (voter intimidation) really went away. I know in the last two presidential elections there were armed police stationed outside predominately black precincts... OTOH there's been motions to force paper trails nationwide.

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[PeeAitchPee]

they went along with the Gerrymandering because the R's carved out some safe districts for them

Indeed . . . and in blue states, the roles are reversed and Democrats directly gerrymander just as vigorously. E.g., deep blue Maryland's horribly gerrymandered map is on the Supreme Court's docket for this term.

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[dwillden]

The Dems don't just go along because the R's give them some districts, they also do it unabashedly in states they control. In fact the practice named after a Democratic Governor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#Etymology) that really started the practice. Yes the GOP Gerrymanders, so does the Democratic Party.

And what about the Precincts with Armed Black Panthers "Protecting" the voters. Police providing security in high crime areas is not racist.

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[Anonymous Coward]

Good, I hope they ALL get burned for these sleezy tactics.

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[DNS-and-BIND]

"Armed police"? What kind of ridiculous fear mongering is this? What kind of cop isn't armed? Seriously, WTF. "ZOMG teh police are here and they HAVE GUNS everybody panic!"

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[JDAustin]

After the 2000 census, the R's went along with the D's gerrymandering in CA as is gave most the existing members safe seats...but they became a even smaller minority because of it.

Dem's only think something is unfair when the R's use there own game against them.

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[penandpaper]

Could be worse. They could have been mall cops.

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[dinfinity]

1. Tu quoque.
2. The Democrats are late to the party and as such the Republicans have benefited significantly more from the practice: https://www.theguardian.com/us...
3. But yes, gerrymandering is terrible and should be banned. Redistricting should be an entirely apolitical process.

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[LeftCoastThinker]

Armed police outside of voting places? Sounds like a good idea to me. Feel free to have your own poll watchers with cameras to watch the cops. Police are representatives of the government entrusted with enforcing the laws, and criminal activity (you know, the black panthers with clubs roaming outside of other polling places) tends to flee in the face of the police. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I want lot's of armed police who have just attended a seminar on the laws around polling places as well as citizens recording the police at every polling place. I would be happy to see a few cops at my polling place. The only people who have something to fear from the cops are criminals...

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[Anonymous Coward]

The vote for the current maps for the state legislature was 65-47 in the House and 31-15 in the Senate. The House was 74 Republicans and 46 Democrats at the time, while the Senate was 35 Republicans to 15 Democrats. The Republicans have a veto-proof super-majority in both chambers, and didn't need or ask for the support of the Democrats.

As for the federal congressional maps, your premise makes no sense. In all but the most wildly tilted states (and NC is pretty close to a swing state), definitionally, gerrymandering creates safe districts for the opposition party (it's not throwing the other party a bone, it's the whole point; you make a bunch of safe districts for your party by making a few very safe districts for the opposition; you can't actually will the voters out of existence, just make sure that they can't elect as many of their preferred party). That doesn't mean the opposition party (in general) supports it; while the legislator being bolstered is surely happy, the party has obviously just lost several potential seats. Getting four 85% Democratic districts in exchange for nine 65% Republican districts is clearly terrible for the Democratic party; literally the only Democrats who benefit are the four Democratic congressmen, and they aren't the ones drawing the map (the state legislature does).

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[Nidi62]

I know in the last two presidential elections there were armed police stationed outside predominately black precincts...

It's a lot less scary and ominous when you say what they were most likely there for, which was to direct traffic. We had "armed police" outside my polling station, and I live in a district that has $500k new construction going up.

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[penandpaper]

Late to the party? How far back do you think the issue of gerrymandering goes?

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[Anonymous Coward]

Maryland Democrats shouldn't have done it, but don't use them to justify Republicans doing it; if anything, Maryland could be seen as a reaction to abuses by the Republicans. Back in 2012, the top 9 states for partisan discrepancy had only a single state where the maps were drawn by Democrats and favored Democrats (Illinois), and the partisan discrepancy there was 1.7 seats out of 18. By contrast, that top 9 set of states included six states controlled by Republicans, with a partisan discrepancy of 13.2 extra Republican seats (out of 79 seats in those six states). Overall, the country voted 50.4% for Democratic candidates, and 49.6% for Republican, but the House ended up 46.2% Democratic to 53.8% R; a 0.8% margin of victory in vote became a 7.6% margin of defeat in results. A small part of that is structural (Democrats living in tightly packed, highly Democratic areas without gerrymandering being needed), but the majority is only explainable through intentional gerrymandering.

The point is, all the gerrymandering is wrong, and it would be best to eliminate it wholesale (e.g. sweeping Supreme Court decision to at least limit the degree of gerrymandering), not in piecemeal court decisions. But that doesn't change the fact that Republicans have abused it far more; Republican-controlled redistricting after the 2010 census led to at least a 26 seat swing in the House margins, while the effect of Democratic party controlled redistricting was low single digits at most. Pretending it's okay for the Republicans to steal a whole cake because a couple Democrats stole a slice later on is sophistry.

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[Green Mountain Bot]

On the Democratic side:
Maryland
Illinois

On the Republican side:
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Wisconsin
Michigan
Ohio
Florida
Texas
New York
West Virginia
Virginia
Alabama

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the R party is completely racist, it isn't at all unreasonable to simply forcefully remove them from the populace in the name of progress.

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, both parties scream bloody murder when one side does exactly what the other side just finished doing. This sort of thing is like speeding, everyone does it, but sometimes a particular stretch of road gets out of hand, and the police have to show up and start handing out tickets until the speeding is brought back under control.

In the last round of re-districting the parties got drunk with power (and I am sure chanting to themselves "the other guy is doing it too!!' to justify their immoral activity) and now their shit is getting called.

Re: You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact the practice named after a Democratic Governor

You mean Eldridge Gerry, the Democratic-Republican whose political beliefs do not map up with any single party today?

You should read actual history, not just sputter over labels.

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[rahvin112]

The term Gerrymandering comes from a congressman running in Maryland called Gerry whose district was constructed to look like a salamander. This all occured in the early 1800's. But it also existed before him, the egrigiousness of his district it was created the name for it but it existed right back to the republic's founding.

Gerrymandering was something the founders didn't forsee, it's a threat to democracy and it should be banned like florida's law that requires that all districts be as compact as possible. That gives the court easy terms by which to invalidate bad district maps.

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[penandpaper]

was something the founders didn't forsee,

I disagree because they gave the states control of the election and it was argued in the Federalist Papers. They understood well the ramifications of a "wrong" system.

"Every government ought to contain in itself the means of its own preservation. ... a departure from so fundamental a principle, as a portion of imperfection in the system which may prove the seed of future weakness, and perhaps anarchy. It will not be alleged, that an election law could have been framed and inserted in the Constitution, which would have been always applicable to every probable change in the situation of the country; and it will therefore not be denied, that a discretionary power over elections ought to exist somewhere. It will, I presume, be as readily conceded, that there were only three ways in which this power could have been reasonably modified and disposed: that it must either have been lodged wholly in the national legislature, or wholly in the State legislatures, or primarily in the latter and ultimately in the former. ". - Alexander Hamilton

I think you underestimate the extent to which the Founders understood government and politics even if they didn't have the word 'gerrymandering'. You don't create a democratic system without understanding the potential risks of what happens in an election.

it's a threat to democracy

I disagree. We have a unique history of expanding the rights of the individual. We have trended toward more open and freer government even if there are instances of bad governance. There are ways around gerrymandering through gubernatorial elections to veto district maps (which apparently was the GOP strategy in 90's election to break the ~40 year hold of democrat power in legislatures and their gerrymandered districts, is what started CA to a non-partisan committee). You are closer to your local and state government which you are more apt to change. You have a tough job to justify such threats when the trend has been considerably favorable.

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[Anonymous Coward]

The term Gerrymandering comes from a congressman running in Maryland called Gerry whose district was constructed to look like a salamander. This all occured in the early 1800's. But it also existed before him, the egrigiousness of his district it was created the name for it but it existed right back to the republic's founding.

Eldrige Gerry was actually Governor of Massachusetts, and the district was for the State Senate. Surprisingly, however, that same year, the Federalists won a majority of the State House AND the Governorship, leading him to take the offered job of Vice President since he was considered no threat to the preferred successor of James Madison. Which was true, because he died from an unspecified illness anyway.

BTW, Gerry pronounced his name differently, and there's evidence that the spread of the term was driven by the political influence of the Federalist party, not that it mattered much, as they were very quickly moribund anyway.

Gerrymandering was something the founders didn't forsee, it's a threat to democracy and it should be banned like florida's law that requires that all districts be as compact as possible. That gives the court easy terms by which to invalidate bad district maps.

I would not say they could not foresee it(and even if they couldn't, a majority of them were alive in 1812), I would, however, say they lacked the appreciation of the technological advancements of this day.

And unfortunately, Florida's still not following its own constitution very well, and it's important to remember that it was voted in by the state ballot measures, not the legislature.

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it sounds like a good idea to you. It is well documented that a large police presence outside of a polling station prevents many minorities from voting, and they tend to vote Not Republican.

Re:You can thank the corporate Dems for this too

[shutdown -p now]

Both parties gerrymander, but there's also ample evidence that Republicans do it more often and on a broader scale. Democrats never had a "Project REDMAP".

Republicans are cowards, who is surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't win unless they cheat.

Re:Republicans are cowards, who is surprised?

[Train0987]

Gerrymandering has been done forever by both parties. Don't be a partisan hack.

Re:Republicans are cowards, who is surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems the Democrats didn't win even though they DID cheat...

Re:Republicans are cowards, who is surprised?

[Bartles]

They can't win unless they change the rules. Fuck off.

Re:Republicans are cowards, who is surprised?

[mpercy]

Ummm, to get to do the gerrymandering, you pretty much have to control the Statehouse which implies you've already won. Gerrymandering makes it easier to win next time.

The irony that burns is that Republicans were able to put forth "We're happy to create majority-minority districts to help our state comply with the Voting Rights Act..." knowing full well that the side effect strengthened any Republican hold on the remaining districts.

Re:Republicans are cowards, who is surprised?

[mpercy]

Again, to get to do the gerrymandering, you pretty much have to control the Statehouse which implies you've already won.

Losers don't get to gerrymander. Winners get to gerrymander once a decade, which does make it easier to win the next time.

Republicans gerrymander for Republicans AFTER winning the various Statehouses. Just like Democrats gerrymander for Democrats AFTER winning Statehouses (or do you not think that the California districts were gerrymandered by Democrats???).

Re: Republicans are cowards, who is surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

(or do you not think that the California districts were gerrymandered by Democrats???).

Well, since the people of California voted in their ballot measures to take control over the process from the legislature, as well as the top two nonpartisan blanket primary, I find it rather dubious as a premise.

Of course since the partisan proportional turnout in California is nearly congruent with the partisan representation in the legislatures, you are going to have to recognize the difference from North Carolina.

You ought to look for better examples mpercy. We know you scream your rage over California, so you aren't credible.

Automate it

[JackieBrown]

I'm sure it more complex than x number of people per district but it seems like there could be some formula and consistency across all states or at least for each state.

That said, I can see some easy troubles with this since states have difference population structures (and vastly different geographic sizes.)

Re:Automate it

[TheRaven64]

It's difficult to do. The gerrymandered districts will have a similar number of people in them, but that's not the problem. Imagine you have 10,000 people voting for teams A and B, with a 50:50 split. It's possible to arrange 10 districts where each one will have 500 A voters and 500 B voters, but it's also possible to have 8 districts with 600 A voters and 400 B voters and two districts with 100 A voters and 900 B voters. In the first configuration, you'll end up with some tough campaigns and probably average 5 A seats and 5 B seats. In the second, you'll always have 8 A seats and 2 B seats. That's the essence of gerrymandering: you distribute your voters to maximise the number of seats.

You can automate creating constituencies with even numbers, but that's also biased. The real solution is to move away from single-representative constituencies and closer to an electoral system where every vote counts.

Re:Automate it

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked into it a little. Yeah, there's more to it, and there's a handful of algorithms to draw the map. Some sillier than others. (Get this, one plan resursivly divides the state in two until you have the right number of districts.... which mean in a place like Colorado with one big city, everything is a pie slice and downtown Denver is subdivided into 12 districts...) Geography PHDs, sociologists, and data scientists can argue all day about which is better or worse.

But the biggest issue is that there's the same SORT of problem as right now with gerrymandering. Whomever is in power gets to pick the algorithm. They can run the numbers just like anyone else and you can bet your ass they're going to pick whatever gives them the most seats. And as long as they can get one scientist or academic sort to claim it's the best algorithm they'll claim to be totally unbiased.

Republicans fear democracy, or want to destroy it

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that you'd have to have very little faith in the strength of your political ideas to feel it necessary to go to such lengths. The only other explanation I can come up with is that they want to create a single-party system in which opposition has no chance, no matter the numbers.

What about Illinois NY or CA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we to accept that this is a one way street?

Re:What about Illinois NY or CA?

[Cajun Hell]

If you're able to find a quote where someone says that, then we can eviscerate their claim. I bet you can't find one, though.

Unless.. hey, are you taking the position that gerrymandering in those states is a good idea, as some kind of Devil's advocate thing, since no one else has taken it? Like, you're volunteering to be a strawman? Dude, go for it, but I can't guarantee you'll have a fun argument. OTOH that strawman would be so hilariously unrealistic, that maybe you're looking for abuse.

Anyway, one nice thing that's happened, is that these people got caught in NC to such a degree, that they're going to get kicked around a little. That's going to make kicking the same kind of people a little easier in other states, perhaps one of the ones that you mentioned.

News for Nerds! Stuff That Matters

[jwhyche]

And this doesn't.

Balance

[Anonymous Coward]

Because once this completely neutral algorithm starts favoring one group over another via standard distribution, people will freak out and start gerrymandering again.

Low tech

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just go by counties or towns?

Re:Low tech

[Anonymous Coward]

that would be too simple. KISS is overrated /s

Headline

[Scarred Intellect]

So what's Constitutional Gerrymandering?

Re:Automation... with what data?

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens if you find that the concentration of registered citizens doesn't match the list of votes cast? So what you are really arguing is Voter ID, that will verify a person to location mapping.

You have district to vote totals today, but the premise is that the district geo-boundary was manipulated in a way that the vote total could be manipulated to result in certain outcomes. Without verifiable citizen locations, how could this automation be trusted?

Because People & Politics

[orlanz]

Because Technological solutions can not solve People problems. And it has no chance against political ones.

It has become a recent issue because of automation. We could have done this for more than a century. manually Just don't present the independent math guy with political affiliation as part of the data set. Automation, we could do for decades.

But what political group would want to lose that attribute as a weapon? So humans did it... along with all their biases. But when humans were doing it, they messed up enough that the results didn't follow intent. Not a big deal. Now with big data and computers, the intent has been programmed in on top of the population constraint. Its automated to give the current party the benefit.

Gerrymandering?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Democrats won in nine of the 10 most-gerrymandered districts. But eight out of 10 of those districts were drawn by Republicans. Both parties love to create districts - or agree to create districts - that guarantee safe seats. And when the fact is that "Maryland and North Carolina are essentially tied for the honor of most-gerrymandered state." but only North Carolina - a GOP State - is mentioned but Maryland - a Democrat State - is not, it's pretty clear that /. is also pretty gerrymandered...

Re:Gerrymandering?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they did, that is the point of the gerrymandering.... Did you not read your own link again!!

Contrary to one popular misconception about the practice, the point of gerrymandering isn't to draw yourself a collection of overwhelmingly safe seats. Rather, it's to give your opponents a small number of safe seats, while drawing yourself a larger number of seats that are not quite as safe, but that you can expect to win comfortably.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course - did you not read the post? Again - they are saying it's not OK in NC, but OK in Maryland based on who is in power.

That is because the federal judiciary is biased against conservatives and Republicans, and for liberals and Democrats. It's why Trump and Bush and Reagan were always challenged while Clinton and Obama got away with whatever they wanted.

They allow Ds to get away with this bullshit practice, but spank the Rs.

The federal bureaucracy, the media and the legal system are completely biased. That is why Trump got elected. To thrash both of these institutions and shake out the left wing bias. Which is why the reaction against him is so intense. He is fighting an uphill battle against decades of an entrenched structure that resorts to outright lying, theft, and murder to keep its power base.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[PopeRatzo]

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

That's how gerrymandering works. You don't create districts for your own party to win, you create single safe districts for the other party to win to "contain" the opposition votes in one district so they don't affect the others.

For example, the most common type of gerrymandering in North Carolina is to put all the black voters into one district. By sacrificing that one district, you improve your chances in the five surrounding districts. This is from the article you cited:

"Contrary to one popular misconception about the practice, the point of gerrymandering isn't to draw yourself a collection of overwhelmingly safe seats. Rather, it's to give your opponents a small number of safe seats, while drawing yourself a larger number of seats that are not quite as safe, but that you can expect to win comfortably. "

Re:Gerrymandering?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it could be that this court ruling had nothing to do with Maryland?

Either way I hope both parties get burned.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[Anonymous Coward]

whataboutism at it's finest.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[LeftCoastThinker]

This is honestly a necessary evil in personal politics. If you are going to have individual seats where voters elect their specific representative (as opposed to a parliamentary system, where voters only get to vote for party and then party politics selects the representatives), then you have to define the districts, and the districts must each contain X number of people, where population densities vary along with regional political leanings.

This asinine court ruling will probably be overturned since gerrymandering is just a reality and the only question is who does it.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[Anonymous Coward]

Judge James A. Wynn Jr. was nominated by Clinton and renominated by Obama. He has been the democrat's 4th Circuit court go-to for political activism since 2011 and he personally has been accused of playing politics in law since 2001.

Please take into consideration that I am a politically independent academic researcher. If anything I should be pro democrat, but critical thinking comes first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2...
http://www.baltimoresun.com/ne...
https://www.nccivitas.org/2016...
http://www.charlotteobserver.c...
http://www.nationalreview.com/...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05...
http://womblencappellate.blogs...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://www.lawfareblog.com/ju...

When the democratic party wants something political done by the judicial branch. His name and opinions come up. He puts aside the law in favor of party. Lawyers and jurisprudence experts have been talking about it for a long time. This is merely the most recent and high-profile. Either he feels emboldened to ignore his duty (Why did he not go after the equally Gerrymandered democratic states while citing the equal protections clause?) or feels that he is at risk of being replaced.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[Freischutz]

Democrats won in nine of the 10 most-gerrymandered districts. But eight out of 10 of those districts were drawn by Republicans. Both parties love to create districts - or agree to create districts - that guarantee safe seats. And when the fact is that "Maryland and North Carolina are essentially tied for the honor of most-gerrymandered state." but only North Carolina - a GOP State - is mentioned but Maryland - a Democrat State - is not, it's pretty clear that /. is also pretty gerrymandered...

Well Maryland is mentioned in the Wapo article you linked to so you must be complaining about the Slashdot summary which is about North Carolina's congressional map being ruled unconstitutionally gerrymandered so I'm not particularly surprised that Maryland is not mentioned since it is not a party to that lawsuit (Fun fact: The article the Slashdot summary links to actually mentions Maryland and the republican's complaints about that state's election map). Complaining that Maryland is not mentioned in the summary of an article whose primary topic of discussion is gerrymandering in North Carolina is like complaining that the summary of an article about rotten apples does not spend half of it's column space talking about rotten oranges .... (hint: it's because the article was about rotten apples).

Re:Gerrymandering?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are too stupid to be allowed to vote. You can't even read your own article which directly contradicts what you are claiming. Your knee jerk reactions and shallow understanding of the problem is exactly what is wrong with this country. People like you take superficial facts as gospel without true knowledge or understanding of the subject and spout off as if you are an expert... effectively letting other people use you as a mouthpiece. Congratulations comrade, you are now part of President Putin's media team.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[bigpat]

The solution is the hard part. Courts are now tasked with finding some principle of law that states can use going forward to figure out what is allowed and not allowed. Up until now gerrymandering on political grounds has survived. Only race has really been made off limits by the courts.

Just doing the opposite... ie making districts that have even numbers of partisan inclined voters doesn't sound like a great solution either. You could very well have gerrymandered looking spaghetti districts as a result of that mapmaking.

Partisan affiliation should just be put out of bounds as a consideration just as race has been. And then as long as the districts don't look gerrymandered (meaning they don't have long thin parts sticking into other districts.) then whatever the results are should be acceptable.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[cascadingstylesheet]

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

That's how gerrymandering works. You don't create districts for your own party to win, you create single safe districts for the other party to win to "contain" the opposition votes in one district so they don't affect the others.

For example, the most common type of gerrymandering in North Carolina is to put all the black voters into one district. By sacrificing that one district, you improve your chances in the five surrounding districts. This is from the article you cited:

"Contrary to one popular misconception about the practice, the point of gerrymandering isn't to draw yourself a collection of overwhelmingly safe seats. Rather, it's to give your opponents a small number of safe seats, while drawing yourself a larger number of seats that are not quite as safe, but that you can expect to win comfortably. "

Oh dear. You accidentally left out Maryland when you quoted him.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[Cajun Hell]

Are you saying that the same federal judges also just found Maryland to be in violation, and ordered them to redistrict too? Or..

And when the fact is that "Maryland and North Carolina are essentially tied for the honor of most-gerrymandered state." but only North Carolina - a GOP State - is mentioned but Maryland - a Democrat State - is not, it's pretty clear that /. is also pretty gerrymandered...

Oh, I get it. You're saying /. is biased toward reporting what the court ruled on, instead of reporting on what should have been in court. Is that the bias, that ./ doesn't engage in enough fantasy or subjunctive news reporting?

That's .. an idea for a website. One of today's headlines could be that cold fusion was finally invented and your new $99 car can run on it. But I think at some point it would get boring and people would switch to doing humor stories all the time, and you'd just end up with The Onion. Perhaps /.'s unintentional bias toward telling us about facts and reality, instead of aspirations and dreams, is what keeps people here.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[EndlessNameless]

Slashdot gerrymandered? Are you insane? It's basically reposting a news article.

The court case involved recent actions by the state of North Carolina. So yeah, Slashdot is talking specifically about North Carolina. Relax that persecution complex a bit, chief.

If you live in Maryland and believe you are affected by unjust gerrymandering, you can pursue a case against the state. In fact, this decision may have set the precedent that allows you to win.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[PopeRatzo]

The solution is the hard part.

Not really. The most common proposal is using independent or non-partisan commissions for re-redistricting, which is done in several states including Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, and Washington.

You could say, "how do we know if a commission is non-partisan?" and the answer would be "by their results". If the courts see these tortured-looking districts again, they can be thrown out, just like the North Carolina ones were.

Re: Gerrymandering?

[bigpat]

Unless discrimination for or against partisan affiliation is disallowed as a consideration the same way race is disallowed then we aren't really making much progress.

I don't trust an "Independent" unnaccountable whatever to be some committee of angels.

Yes, the results matter but also we shouldn't be gerrymandering simply to seek the most number of competitive races either... Some districts are going to not be competitive because people with similar political leanings choose to live near one another... The gerrymandering of geographically disperse areas together using partisan affiliation or demographic tendencies to vote one way or another is the issue.

Legislatures can follow the rules the courts come up with as well as any "Independent" committee could.

  If the legislature wants to make a city and immediately surrounding areas it's own district then it should be allowed to do so.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[Anonymous Coward]

> For example, the most common type of gerrymandering in North Carolina is to put all the black voters into one district.

But that's called a majority-minority district and is actually encouraged by some legislation or policy. The idea was to increase the number of black and other minority representatives in Congress and that was done by combining all the voters into districts.

The alternatives would be to slice up the black vote so it i always a tiny minority in white districts. You then lose the black representative.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[PeeAitchPee]

If you live in Maryland and believe you are affected by unjust gerrymandering, you can pursue a case against the state.

It's already been done, and is currently on the Supreme Court docket for this term.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

That is because the federal judiciary is biased against conservatives and Republicans, and for liberals and Democrats. It's why Trump and Bush and Reagan were always challenged while Clinton and Obama got away with whatever they wanted.

They allow Ds to get away with this bullshit practice, but spank the Rs.

Just spitballing here but maybe the R's tend to try shit that is truly unconstitutional more often than the D's so get themselves slapped down more often.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh dear. You accidentally left out Maryland when you quoted him.

I'm sure it was very intentional, since this article is about North Carolina.

Here, I'll save you the trouble of starting your rebuttal: "But Antifa..."

You're welcome.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[nine-times]

That's how gerrymandering works. You don't create districts for your own party to win, you create single safe districts for the other party to win to "contain" the opposition votes in one district so they don't affect the others.

Actually it's both, and they kind of work together. To make it simple, let's say you have a 100 voters that you need to break into 5 equal-sized "districts" of 20 people. Your party has 40 voters on your side, and your opposing party has 60. Let's assume for the sake of simplicity that everyone always votes for their own party. So how do you want to divide things up?

If you pick people at random, you'll tend toward getting districts that are representative of your entire population, i.e. a 60/40 split. If each district is divided approximately 60/40 (12 people vs 8 people), then your opponents will control all of the districts. Another option is to pack all of your opponents into districts together, and then they'll have 100% control over 3 districts and you'll have 100% control over 2 districts. You still lose.

Another option is to divide it so that you divide things so that, as much as possible, you have a very slim lead. Put 11 of your people in the first district, and 9 of your opponents. You control the district-- just barely, but you control it. That leaves you with 39 people, and your opponents with 51. Do that 2 more times, and you control 3 districts. You're left with 7 people, and your opponent has 33. It doesn't matter much what you do with the last two districts. You're going to lose them both, overwhelmingly. But... you'll notice that the result of this strategy is that you control 60% of the districts even though you only control 40% of the population.

It gets more complicated in real life, but that's the general strategy being employed. You try to divide things so that your opponents have a large minority in as many districts as possible, but in cases where your opponent has more people, it's only possible by packing your opponents votes into overwhelming majorities in a small number of districts.

I'm guessing it's a particularly useful strategy for Republicans, since Democrats tend to be city-folk who are already packing themselves into dense areas with overwhelmingly liberal populations.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are informative posts with a long list of citations from a spectrum of sources downmodded on slashdot and speculation or petty arguments upmodded?

At least argue against claims you don't believe or dislike. Simply clicking -1 does nothing but worsen the discourse here.

Is this another editor abusing unlimited mod points again?

What is the point, what is the motivation of ignoring and functionally censoring facts?

Re:Gerrymandering?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dindo's gonna do what dindo do!

Re: Gerrymandering?

[PopeRatzo]

Good points. I don't think we need a "committee of angels" to make sure congressional districts are created fairly, though. Another solution would be proportional representation, where you break down the number of votes for each party and seats are assigned based on proportion. That's far superior to a situation where the majority of the voters in a state vote for one party, but the other party gets to send the most legislators. Many democratic legislatures in the world use this approach and it works fine.

Right now we have a situation where both houses of congress and the presidency are all controlled by the party that got fewer votes.

Re:Gerrymandering?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you and I know that. But the lynnwood liar was hoping to frame it in a way that both parties were equally to blame, or if you were gullible enough, even blame Democrats more.
Everyone but you saw through his not so cunning plan and now you are both at -1.

PoiticsDot: Politics for Nerds

[DirkDaring]

Stuff that Matters to Media and Hardly Anyone Else

Re:PoiticsDot: Politics for Nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, here you are.

Re:Republicans fear democracy, or want to destroy

[orlanz]

I don't think anyone has much faith in the strength of political ideas. People don't even vote for "their party" here, they blindly vote against the "other guy's party". They rarely vote for the actual ideals & feasibility of the candidates nor hold them accountable. If it was the other way around, there would be more parties than just the three. The fact we lump "other" into "Independent" shows how messed up it is.

I think the US has a great political system when compared to other Democracies but in this area, we are far behind. In many other systems, the gridlock we see would result in government disbandment and re-elections! That rarely happens because those parties figure out how to compromise and work things out.

Someone said the Republicans

[Anonymous Coward]

Get about a 10-15% bump in election performance due to illegal actions like this.
 
  As a Canadian who regularly reads Slashdot that sounds about right. Some of the things the Republican party does are cause for disenfranchisement. Ugly politics down south there.

I lived there

[Anonymous Coward]

From about 1998 to 2005-- it was great. The state seemed to be becoming increasingly progressive and very proud of it's environmental resources and preserving them. Since I've moved away, the vibe seems that everything positive was rolled back and the environment takes a back seat to hog farmers using the rivers as a toilet.

Liar much?

[mi]

in order to effectively disenfranchise citizens

The intent to disenfranchise is not even alleged in TFA, much less proven.

Re: Liar much?

[Anonymous Coward]

The intent to disenfranchise is not even alleged in TFA, much less proven.

So what? The article is just what some journalist wrote. The actual pleading, the evidence before the court, and the order itself would reflect that.

Not that is intent is required in this case, but happily for you, the North Carolina legislature's own records were subpoened and referenced in the final order.

Re:Liar much?

[Green Mountain Bot]

The intent was to create a permanent majority of one party. That's about as antidemocratic as you can get.

attempt to force gerrymandering that favors Dems

[robkeeney]

While I'm not a fan of it, let's be honest. Democrats only hate gerrymandering when Republicans do it successfully. This lawsuit is an attempt to force gerrymandering that favors Democrats.

Unprecedented

[mi]

The ruling was the first time that a federal court had blocked a congressional map because of a partisan gerrymander

This may be the first time a federal court has intervened, but such cases do happen all the time — one just reached Supreme Court in Texas last September — and a federal court may get involved there as well.

That the federal judges intervened in a matter of how a State decides on voting should be troubling to anyone, who claims to support States' Rights...

Re:Unprecedented

[EndlessNameless]

The individual right to equal representation is the primary concern. If a state attempts to suppress the political will of its people, its justification for state powers vanishes.

It's sad that the federal government needs to address this at all. There are both red and blue gerrymanders out there, and they are both morally wrong.

Re:Unprecedented

[Anonymous Coward]

Morally? District lines are also drawn to keep communities together in voting blocs. Mathematically it might makes sense to carve up a community into four zones, but that dilutes the voting power of the community to vote in their own interest. Put another extreme way, if want your Congressional Rep to address a problem in your neighborhood, but then it gets cut into two Representative districts by an algorithm, your vote loses power: now you and your neighbor in a different district have to lobby TWO congressional reps to affect change.

There are some solid human reasons why districts are drawn to keep communities together which algorithms do not observe. But I'm not defending radical gerrymandering.

Shocker Clinton Appointee

[Crashmarik]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

Re:Shocker Clinton Appointee

[Yunzil]

It was a three-judge panel. Wynn just wrote the opinion.

Re:Shocker Clinton Appointee

[Crashmarik]

Oh you're right it was a 3 judge panel. 2 out of 3 Democrats go figure, Obama and Carter Appointees.

Tell me did you bother to check before you made your comment ? Or were you acting on blind faith ?

Re:Shocker Clinton Appointee

[dave420]

Take a look at whether the republican agrees... If you dare!

Plenty for nerds here

[ferguson731]

For example, check out the work of Moon Duchin and the Matrix Geometry and Gerrymandering Group at Tufts: http://sites.tufts.edu/gerryma... Chronicle of Higher Ed profile: https://www.chronicle.com/arti... And other mathematicians also: http://www.ams.org/publication...

Re:Republicans fear democracy, or want to destroy

[penandpaper]

I think the US has a great political system when compared to other Democracies but in this area, we are far behind. In many other systems, the gridlock we see would result in government disbandment and re-elections! That rarely happens because those parties figure out how to compromise and work things out.

The US is a lot more diverse than those you are comparing to. As those other countries become more diverse with ideas and people the more cracks we see. Elections are messy affairs. If there are problems, I don't think the answer should default to 're-election' as it seems so common in Europe. There is nothing stopping a state from adopting some solution for their elections (for the most part). Lead by example and risk your political power.

By Definition

[sycodon]

Gerrymandering is, by definition, the manipulation of the Congressional districts in a way to assure an outcome beneficial to one party of another.

What makes it "insidious" or not is beyond speculation. That is is just a stupid, inflammatory adjective on the Judge's part.

BTW, Gerrymandering has been happening since the beginning of the Republic.

Re:By Definition

[Hal_Porter]

BTW, Gerrymandering has been happening since the beginning of the Republic.

Before actually

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:By Definition

[bigpat]

Gerrymandering is, by definition, the manipulation of the Congressional districts in a way to assure an outcome beneficial to one party of another.

What makes it "insidious" or not is beyond speculation. That is is just a stupid, inflammatory adjective on the Judge's part.

BTW, Gerrymandering has been happening since the beginning of the Republic.

Well at some point it does become obscene in the extreme. Looking at these maps and reading a bit at how they are formed... ie throw as many Democrats as possible into a few districts and then spread the remaining Democrats out in all the other districts. I don't really see how this is any different than the prohibition on using race as part of drawing new districts.

The courts should make this simple and delegitimize partisan affiliation and voting history as a valid consideration. The only legitimate data that are used to draw the maps should be where people live and then the districts should be draw to closely match the existing underlying political boundaries (ie cities, towns and counties) in a geographically compact area.

Re:By Definition

[sycodon]

No, the "Courts" should not.

If you want that, change the Constitution. Strictly speaking, the courts involvement in this at all is unconstitutional. Redistricting is a task left to the Legislature in the Constitution.

There is a political solution to all of this that has worked many times. It worked in 1994 when the Republicans won back Congress despite Democrat Gerrymandering.

You can't have the courts always stepping in because you don't think something is "fair".

"Fair" has nothing to do with Law once it is passed.

Re:By Definition

[AlanObject]

"Fair" has nothing to do with Law once it is passed.

Maybe you should review the equal protection clause.

Re:By Definition

[jittles]

Strictly speaking, the courts involvement in this at all is unconstitutional. Redistricting is a task left to the Legislature in the Constitution.

Where does the constitution restrict the judicial branch from making a ruling in any matter involving either the legislative or executive branch? If the judicial branch did not have the constitutional authority to put a check on how the legislature creates its districts then there would be no check against the legislative branch in this matter. As long as someone has the standing to raise a civil matter before the court, the court has every right to hear the case and make a ruling.

Re:By Definition

[ShanghaiBill]

BTW, Gerrymandering has been happening since the beginning of the Republic.

That doesn't mean that we should just continue to accept it as "the way things are".

Several states have placed redistricting in the hands of non-partisan panels of citizens or retired judges. This is more common in western states which have citizens' ballot initiatives, since the politicians have no incentive to reform the process while they are on the "winning" side, and no power to do so when they are in the minority.

Even better would be to get rid of "districts" entirely, and elect representatives by interests rather than geography. So anyone could vote for any representative, and the top 435 get elected. Each rep's voting power would be proportional to how many voters backed him or her. There should also be a website where voters can switch their preference to a different rep at any time, as an "instant recall" to ensure they keep their promises.

Re: By Definition

[bigpat]

"Fair" isn't the concern... The constitutional principle at stake is freedom of association... Using people's association with a political party to disenfranchise them.

Re:By Definition

[sycodon]

Admittedly this is from my mere two semesters of Business Law, but the Courts are limited to ruling on Legal issues...laws.

Redistricting is an administrative thing. The process is not a law, but simply rules of the legislative body...similar to rules on filibuster for instance.

But that is only two semesters of business law.

Re:By Definition

[sycodon]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Political affiliation isn't a protect class.

To insist that the redistricting somehow represents the greater population is the usurpation of redistricting task by the courts.

I admit this is a fairly fundamentalists interpretation, but what objective measurement are the courts using to discern Good O'l Gerrymandering from "Insidious"?

Redistricting is not like pornography.

Re:By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you DONT know what your talking about, and are referring to your understanding of two classes you took what 10, 15, 20 years ago?

Re:By Definition

[sycodon]

Ahh...but those states did it themselves, not by the order of the courts.

That is a crucial difference.

As for your suggestion, that is diametrical opposed to the entire structure of a Republic. What you suggest could leave a single area of a state with a majority of the representation. Since this is Federal Representation, needs to follow the Federal structure of a Republic. Feel free to elect your state legislatures this way.

Re: By Definition

[sycodon]

No one has ever been denied the ability to associate with members of their own party. And they are not disenfranchised:

Definition of disenfranchise
transitive verb
: to deprive of a franchise, of a legal right, or of some privilege or immunity; especially : to deprive of the right to vote

        disenfranchising the poor and elderly

Re:By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

United States. Think about those words for a minute.

Re:By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

Here they were having a nice conversation and the asshole AC chimes in.

Go Fuck yourself.

Re: By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

That may be the dumbest thing I have ever read. If we voted for our elected representatives on an entirely at-large basis and the 435 highest vote tallys were selected all of our elected officials would come from major metro areas most would come from NYC, LA, Atlanta, DFW, Chicago, San Francisco, Denver and Houston based on city size and regional political flavor. How would anyone from any smaller area have a chance in hell of winning?

Re:By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

This is fucking stupid. Court have, and should have, all the power to make things un-stupid

Re:By Definition

[sg_oneill]

Strictly speaking, the courts involvement in this at all is unconstitutional.

That is extremely poor understanding of how courts and constitutions works.

The constitution is a framework for the courts to use to keep the executive and legislative branches in order. The executive branches and legislative branches can kind of do what they want, but the courts can then review it and throw it out if it violates the constitions.
To put it more bluntly, without courts, theres no constitutions, thus the court is *always* a party to questions of constitutionality, as no other body really has the power to enforce it (Even the DOJ etc, they can only refer stuff to the courts)

Re:By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

Show me exactly where the constitution gives the courts that authority.

Re: By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Political affiliation isn't a protect class.

You're wrong. Go read Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims.

To insist that the redistricting somehow represents the greater population is the usurpation of redistricting task by the courts.

Yes, that is what the administration of justice requires. They also have to take children from their parents, seize private property and order people imprisoned.

I admit this is a fairly fundamentalists interpretation, but what objective measurement are the courts using to discern Good O'l Gerrymandering from "Insidious"?

This mystery is revealed in the court order.

Re:By Definition

[Rob Y.]

Funny how people always resort to "Change the Constitution if you don't like it" whenever two conflicting Constitutional principles have to be weighed by the courts - and the court doesn't pick their choice.

The Supreme Court has jumped through hoops to pretend that, for example, "money is speech" is a more important American value than "government by the people" or "equal protection". And as regards gerrymandering, it has in the past come down on the side of "we can't police partisanship" over "everyone's vote should count". They've yet to rule on the issue since it became possible to mathematically show how gerrymandering causes votes to be effectively rendered useless - and there's still every possibility that the Kennedy will join with the rest of the conservatives and choose the convenient answer that happens to favor their side..

But to say the court shouldn't have a voice when there's such a conflict is to say "I like things the way they are, so fuck you - change the Constitution if you don't like it".

Re:By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

So you want those often responsible for gerrymandering districts to solve the problem of gerrymandered districts. And I suppose you think if district boundaries are so broken, voters can just vote in their gerrymandered district to put new representatives in to fix the problem?

Fair has everything to do with the law once it's passed.

We live in a country where laws can be completely changed, including the Constitution itself. Framers of the Constitution understood that a society needs to be able to change the way it's governed when and how it chooses to do so if 'law' doesn't fit anymore. If we want to turn into a dictatorship, we can do so. The law is not eternal and is always subject to change.

Re:By Definition

[mysidia]

Where does the constitution restrict the judicial branch from making a ruling in any matter involving either the legislative or executive branch?

A specific restriction isn't necessary, because the judicial is only empowered to do the things which the constitution and the law states the judiciary is empowered to do. The Judicial branch is ONLY able to make their rulings on what is law and Orders enjoining against furthering harm from violating the law or the constitution based on the dispute before them --- the Legislative and Executive branches have their own agency (Independent judgement), and the Judicials are not superior to the Legislative or the Executive branch in their power or authority: Fundamentally the judiciary IS RESTRICTED and cannot order around other branches, And if there is a disagreement --- it's called a constitutional crisis, because they are 3 equal branches of government.

Our constitutional form of government is NOT a hierarchy with the Judiciary branch at the top, and our supreme court is not a "Ruling Committee" who can hand down any order desired to alter or delete any law at will or increase or decrease or change the enforcement of any law in whatsoever manager as the committee desires. The Judicial branch makes orders based on law, and it is up to the elected leaders and bureaucrats in other branches of government to follow lawful orders (or to ignore them, as they have in some cases)

In the same manner that the president cannot order the court to rule X on case Y, or order the court to consider case Z, and the legislature cannot pass a law that the court must never review law Y and the feds can't pass a law that state laws about X be held unconstitutional; the Judiciary has its own independent agency that cannot be taken on by other branches of government -- its rulings on cases.

In exactly the same way the Legislative and Executive branches of government have specific agency in the powers granted them by the constitution --
the judiciary does NOT have the power to override the agency of other branches of government and take actions on their behalf, And the judiciary does not have the power to Order another branch of government to do X with their agency ----- for example, the court cannot order congress to pass law Y, or create tax Z. Although the court CAN invalidate law Y or provide taxpayer relief by declaring debts under tax Z invalid.

The Judicial branch is not empowered to take over any legislative or executive duty and exercise that role on its own.

If the law doesn't say the court can draw their own map, then the court does not have the power to simply draw their own map, and that is true even if the legislature fails or refuses to draw a new map on its own that satisfies the court.

Re:By Definition

[ClickOnThis]

Admittedly this is from my mere two semesters of Business Law, but the Courts are limited to ruling on Legal issues...laws.

Which is what the court did. The judge ruled that the gerrymandering was unconstitutional.

As for your law courses ... ask for your money back.

Re:By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

Die in a fire apeshit retard, AC is absolutely correct here

Re: By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

You asked to be corrected if you were wrong. You were on both counts. You should thank your betters for doing so, not expound more on your lack of knowledge. Everyone has already seen your ignorance, no need for the show.

Re:By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you seriously just suggest that the people responsible for and who benefit from gerrymandering should be the only ones allowed to fix gerrymandering??? Regardless of whether you think that's how the constitution is supposed to work or not, that's the dumbest thing I've heard in a very long time.

Re:By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh...but those states did it themselves, not by the order of the courts.

Actually, the Supreme Court ordered the Arizona Legislature to obey the laws that the people of the state demanded.

As for your suggestion...

You didn't understand it either. It's OK, you probably don't know that apportionment isn't constitutionally defined either.

Re:By Definition

[DaveV1.0]

You seem to forget that the three branches of government are designed to provide checks and balances for each other. The courts have the ability to overrule laws that are deemed unconstitutional or discriminatory or illegal under higher law.

While enumeration of the representative is included in the constitution, districting is not. As it is not specifically granted to the federal government, it devolves down to the state governments, see Art 6 sect 2.

You can't have the courts always stepping in because you don't think something is "fair".

Actually, one can and that is actually how the law and courts work. If one believes a law is unfair, one can go to the courts and the courts will determine if it is fair and legal. This is how the Miranda rights came about. Someone claimed it was unfair for the police to not inform a suspect of his rights. This is also how the "fruit of the poisoned tree" principal concerning illegally obtained evidence came about.

Re: By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it the duty within the law for the legislature to draw district boundaries?

Yes.

Is the court empowered to create new law?

No.

The courts can overturn a law as unconstitutional, but they canâ(TM)t legitimately modify the law to change its purpose. They can impose restrictions on its application based solely on constitutional requirements.

So did the court modify an otherwise constitutionally conforming law?

In my opinion yes. Gerrymandering to extremes has long precedence.

Re:By Definition

[dryeo]

That wasn't so much gerrymandering as simply not redrawing districts to reflect population changes. It was actually worse, with ridings (districts) becoming depopulated to the point where there were only a few voters and new population centres with no representation.
This is why modern democracies have regular censuses and redraw the lines to try to balance the size of the districts, ideally by an independent non-partisan committee. Works well here in Canada where gerrymandering is mostly unheard off. Our number of legislature members also increases as population increases to help ensure equal representation. Currently we have about 3/5ths the number of Federal legislature members as America with about 1/10th the population.

Re: By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

The Supreme Court enforces constitutionality. And the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land. So courts can only modify legislated behavior, no matter how stupid, by judging it violates the constitution. That is the law violates the constitution, not the actions taken under color of that law.

Re: By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

The court was explicitly designated by Congress to do this for a handful of southern states following the civil rights movements to ensure no racial disenfranchisement. The court didnt just poke their nose in for fun. At this point, it is outdated and does not respect the states rights.

Re: By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a great plan for the Democrats to advance. They already want popular vote rather than the electoral college to determine the president, thus doing as you indicate, disenfranchising the whole of middle America. âoeSo the cities need reviving, weâ(TM)ll just legislate a new frontage tax on any road plus a private road tax. That way weâ(TM)ll easily fund it.â So dwellers of 30 story apartments are effectively uneffected, farmers with huge amounts of frontage and networks of private roads are effectively the ones paying for the hypothetical city revival funding. Suburban homeowners and large corporate campuses fill in even more funding. So concentration of power to the liberal held urban areas is a bad thing ripe for abuse.

Re:By Definition

[Hal_Porter]

The UK has bipartisan line drawing too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Does it work? Well not so well

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/2...

The abortive 6th boundary view was largely justified on the need to address some bias in the electoral system. You will notice this fairly quickly if you have a quick play about with the swingometer - if you leave the Liberal Democrat share of the vote unchanged then the Conservatives need a lead of 11 percentage points over Labour to win an overall majority, while the Labour party can achieve an overall majority with a lead of about 3 percentage points. Equally illustrative are the last two general election results - in 2005 Labour had a lead of 3 points over the Conservatives, and got a majority of over 60 seats; in 2010 the Conservatives had a lead of 7 points over Labour, but did not have an overall majority at all. Prima facie this appears unfair.

This is a different issue from proportionality. The currently electoral system, "First Past the Post", is not supposed to be a proportional system. The proportion of total votes received does not necessarily resemble the shares of votes case, and smaller parties in particular tend to struggle to get representation unless their vote is geographically concentrated. The fact that FPTP favours larger parties and punishes small ones is very much a feature, rather than a bug - its defenders would argue that the system is supposed to lead to a strong two-party system, with the winning party having a majority of seats, while its detractors would say that we would be better having a proportional system, such as STV. First Past the Post is intrinsically "unfair" towards smaller parties, and intrinsically favours the winning party - that's a different issue. This page looks only at the reasons why, even if both parties have the same level of support, the system apparently favours Labour more than the Conservatives.

Re:By Definition

[nasch]

If the law doesn't say the court can draw their own map, then the court does not have the power to simply draw their own map,

And they did not.

Re:By Definition

[mikael]

Labour seats have high density low income groups living in rented units (high rise tower blocks, terraced housing). Conservative seats have low density wealthy high income groups in privately owned homes (semi-detached/detached units), country estates and farms. The MP's wanted it this way. Labour didn't want to lose their core voters and have their influence "diluted" by being moved out into Conservative areas. The Conservative voters didn't want them because of the increase in crime.

Re:By Definition

[dryeo]

Interesting. It is hard to actually be fair even when striving for fairness. Do the people consider it is fair enough? One thing about America is a lot of bitching about gerrymandering which doesn't happen in Canada.
As for the first past the post system, it is a matter of opinion. I like minority governments as the parties have to work together compared to a majority where the winning party can push through their agenda.
There seems to be a lot of support here for getting rid of the first past the post system. The winners of the last Federal election won partially on the promise of no more FPTP elections (which they reneged on) and my last Provincial election was similar with a 44-43-3 result leading to a very good chance that things will change as the Greens with their 3 seats have agreed to support the government on the condition of moving to some form of proportional representation.

Re:By Definition

[Hal_Porter]

Well it depends. Most people don't know the system has an inbuilt bias. Of the people who do Labour supporters think it's fine and Conservative supporters do don't.

Re: By Definition

[FuzzyDaddy2]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
In the recent Virginia house of delegates race, Democrats as a whole had a 9 point lead over Republicans, and the Republicans still maintained their majority.
That seems screwed up to me.

Re: By Definition

[bigpat]

Political affiliation is a protected right. As in the right to associate with a party.

Using knowledge of people's individual political affiliations to harm those people is definitely unconstitutional. In this case, and more broadly, the gerrymandering clearly makes it less likely that a party's candidate will be elected to office and less likely the interests of those people will be represented.

It is a simple remedy... Don't allow party affiliation or any demographic that could be taken as a proxy for party affiliation to be overtly part of the decision making.

Re: By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the way things are -- fuck you in your vagina

Re: By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

That there is any serious defence of gerrymandering is just one of the reasons the USA electoral system is a shining beacon to the rest of the world, of what not to do.

Re:By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

And what is the clause of the Constitution that mentions it? Seems unlikely, as the word was invented later...

Re: By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

I would argue the judge understands gerrymandering laws better than you.

Re: By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently we have about 3/5ths the number of Federal legislature members as America with about 1/10th the population.

That quantity of politicians isn't something to be proud of. Quality is what matters.

Re: By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, he said invidious, not insidious. Invidious is a word meaning "unjustly discriminating"
Which is what the gerrymandering was

Re: By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange, I thought districts had to be at least geographically contiguous where possible.

Virginia doesn't even pretend to be anything other than a partisan divide and conquer carving up of the state.

Re:By Definition

[ravenshrike]

Democrat voters tend to concentrate in high density areas. So, unless one wants the districts in a state to look like a bunch of ISBN numbers with the districts narrow and stretching wayyyyyyyy out into rural and suburban areas you're not going to be able to achieve a balance through district design. A truly neutral geometric setup would have much the same effect as the current setup except for the areas with black majority districts directly next to them. As for the majority black districts, the reason they look so fucking weird is because it is racial gerrymandering mandated by the Voting Rights Act in order to guarantee a certain amount of black politicians in the south and there have been a bunch of SCOTUS cases explicitly affirming its legality to assist in that endeavor.

Re:By Definition

[ravenshrike]

Given that the same judge recently got slapped around like a bitch by SCOTUS 9-0 in an expedient opinion the probability this survives challenge is minuscule.

Re: By Definition

[guruevi]

How could you possibly do that though. Draw any random map and I can find you an overt political or sociological affiliation.

Black people, Muslims, poor people, rich people, farmers, they all tend to live together in the same area.

What's more surprising is that gerrymandering didn't prevent either Obama or Trump from becoming president even though nobody in the established political climate really wanted them there.

Re: By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

Make all districts consist of a square with four 90* corners. Deviation from this is allowed on any one corner subject to it occupying only area within that traced squared, i.e. You can cut a corner but not reach past it.
Exceptions are otherwise prohibited unless similarly trimmed by a navigable waterway (aka ocean, river, not a season puddle).

Re: By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

Dah! Website is good idea! EVoting make America great again! Friend Dimitri give good price for website!

Re:By Definition

[OneAhead]

BTW, Gerrymandering has been happening since the beginning of the Republic.

Oh, then it's OK. Like slavery.</sarcasm>

Re: By Definition

[OneAhead]

Not to mention English... invidious != insidious .

Re:By Definition

[jittles]

Admittedly this is from my mere two semesters of Business Law, but the Courts are limited to ruling on Legal issues...laws.

Redistricting is an administrative thing. The process is not a law, but simply rules of the legislative body...similar to rules on filibuster for instance.

But that is only two semesters of business law.

Historically the supreme court has refused to deal with gerrymandering because it is a "political" problem and not a legal one. However, if one considers that gerrymandering could be used to prevent people from voting, there are avenues that the courts can use to curtail its use. In fact, the supreme court has made rulings on more than one occasion in recent history (last 30-40 years). It all depends on how they are setting up these districts.

Re:By Definition

[jittles]

A specific restriction isn't necessary, because the judicial is only empowered to do the things which the constitution and the law states the judiciary is empowered to do. The Judicial branch is ONLY able to make their rulings on what is law and Orders enjoining against furthering harm from violating the law or the constitution based on the dispute before them --- the Legislative and Executive branches have their own agency (Independent judgement), and the Judicials are not superior to the Legislative or the Executive branch in their power or authority: Fundamentally the judiciary IS RESTRICTED and cannot order around other branches, A

Except I said that the court can only rule if someone has standing to bring the issue before the court. And gerrymandering could be brought before the court if someone can show that the legislature intentionally created a district to impair their constitutional right to vote, for instance. So I stand by what I said. There is nothing preventing the court from making a ruling on this matter if the matter can be brought before the court.

Re:By Definition

[aquacrayfish]

Good there were 3 judges making this decision instead of just one, right?

Re:By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

What's magical about 435? The House should be doubled in size. Each rep is responsible for "representing" too many people already, and the population is growing.

Re:By Definition

[stoatwblr]

"It was actually worse, with ridings (districts) becoming depopulated to the point where there were only a few voters and new population centres with no representation."

This is the textbook explanation of 18th century "rotten boroughs"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:By Definition

[stoatwblr]

"The fact that FPTP favours larger parties and punishes small ones is very much a feature, rather than a bug - its defenders would argue that the system is supposed to lead to a strong two-party system, "

Yes, but it ONLY works as intended where there _are_ two parties.

As soon as you introduce a strongish 3rd or several smaller parties the representation model intended in FPTP falls apart - which is why the UK has had several sitting governments in a row which only achieved 33% of the total votes cast.

The reason for this is that FPTP originated in an era _without_ political parties.

The UK attempted to palm off a slight tweak on FPTP about a decade back as "proportional representation" (it was the least proportional and most opaque of the 12 competing PR models but specifically did not disadvantage the 2 main parties) in a referendum on change, when the actual referendum questions should have been:

1: "Should we change away from FPTP?"
2: "If we do change away from FPTP, what model should we move to?"

Moving to a Mixed Member Proportional system as used in New Zealand or Germany would still provide stable government and encourage moving away from "Combat Politics" towards getting things done by concensus and the good of the country rather than vested interests.

Re:By Definition

[Hal_Porter]

Here's the 2010 UK general election under different systems

https://i.imgur.com/YFhke.gif

The interesting thing is that under anything with a lower Gallagher Index than FPTP, the third largest party can form a coalition with either of the first two parties.

This leads to a situation where the third largest party can choose who is Prime Minister!

It's the objection to AV that David Deutsch raises here - that it grants too much power to the third largest party. And that power isn't even good for the third largest party

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

It's very hard to do anything about this for the voters. Most of them don't vote for the third largest party anyway. In fact only the rise of the fourth largest party can evict the third largest party from a permanent place in government - something that Deutsch points out in the comments happened in Germany.

And if you work out the terms for the Gallagher Index you notice something strange about the above results

You get these results

FPTP

CON: 306
LAB: 258
LIB: 57
Other : 28

AV

CON: 281
LAB: 262
LIB: 79
Other : 28

AV+

CON: 275
LAB: 234
LIB: 110
Other : 31

STV

CON: 246
LAB: 207
LIB: 162
Other : 35

Notice the way the seats for 'Other' and the Gallagher index term for 'Other' doesn't change as much as the 'Lib' figure. I.e. the proposals are designed to be more proportional for the third largest party but not for the others - they are designed to entrench the third largest party as permanent part of government! Needless to say the Liberal Democrats are very, very keen on 'electoral reform'. Still if you look closely at what they say, they often say that electoral reform 'would keep extremist parties out of government' - e.g. by having a high threshold for STV. Of course an extremist party means 'any party with less support than us'.

I would consider electoral reform so long as it didn't have this misfeature though - it needs to be more proportional for all parties - 1,2,3,4,5. Not just more proportional for 1,2,3.

Re: By Definition

[ravenshrike]

Which, again, would result in Dem heavy districts and more balanced Republican districts. The entire brouhaha is the Dems whining that they ignored the ground game in the states for at least a decade and arguably a bit longer and so lost all their previous gerrymandering advantage to the Republicans.

Re:By Definition

[ravenshrike]

There is a LARGE difference between passing laws agaisnt gerrymandering and some asshole attempting to declare it unconstitutional.

Re:By Definition

[ravenshrike]

There were three judges making that decision too.

Re:By Definition

[dryeo]

While interesting, your above analysis is missing the fact that voters are likely to vote differently under systems besides first past the post. Less strategic voting, voters that currently vote for the opposition party due to wanting to remove the government instead of their first choice (or visa versa) and possibly more or at least different turnout as the voters who don't currently bother voting due to living in a safe seat or such actually voting as now they feel their vote counts.

Re:By Definition

[Hal_Porter]

Deutsch's point is that under AV or any low Gallagher Index systems there's no way for voters to vote to remove the third party from government.

And he's right. You can see here that the winning party hardly ever gets more than 50% of the vote

https://researchbriefings.parl...

See PDF

http://researchbriefings.files...

On page 7 you can see in only two elections did the winning party get more than 50% of the vote - the Conservatives in 1931 and 1935 though Labour came close in 1951 and 1966

So you'd end up with 1st/3rd party coalitions almost all the time.

And - as he points out in the comments - that's what has happened in Israel and Germany.

In Israel religious parties typically hold the balance of power and extract subsidies unpopular with the great majority. In Germany for 49 years the FDP with

Saying 'well people might vote differently' doesn't affect his argument. People vote differently from the UK in Germany and Israel and differently between Israel and Germany. However both Israel and Germany have the same problem where smaller parties can extract unpopular concessions from the larger ones as a price for entering a governing coalition.

Re:By Definition

[Anonymous Coward]

Strictly speaking, the courts involvement in this at all is unconstitutional

It seems the people in charge of applying the Constitution disagree with you. Perhaps you are a blowhard?

You can't have the courts always stepping in because you don't think something is "fair".

Given your claim quoted above, it is apparent that you do not understand the role of the courts. You should consider sitting on the sidelines more often.

Re:By Definition

[cthulhu11]

Or does it make more sense to eliminate the antiquated framework of representative democracy, which AIUI is a holdover from the days when communication and travel were spotty at best. When there are no representatives, there can be no gerrymandering. And no gaming of the system like the cheeto did in 2016.

Re:By Definition

[dryeo]

Perhaps it is the governing coalition idea that creates problems? Personally I like it when the government can not do whatever it wants and some important legislation (single payer healthcare) has been passed due to the need to keep the 3rd party happy. Currently, due to the need for a supply and confidence agreement between my Provinces government and the Greens, we'll probably get some form of proportional representation, something the people seem to want based on the last referendum, which saw the pro side lose with 59% support (60% threshold).
Supply and confidence agreements allow the passing of laws that the government does not agree with whereas coalitions mean the parties always voting as a block and needing more concessions.
At least in Canada, the voters also have a habit of punishing parties that abuse the minority government, forcing too early of an election. Knowing this, the parties try harder to work together.
Personally, I like government by consensus, though the major parties don't.

Re: By Definition

[Rakarra]

More representatives means fewer people each rep has to represent, meaning you have more of a chance of ever being able to talk to your rep, or get him to hear you.

Re:By Definition

[stoatwblr]

"Deutsch's point is that under AV or any low Gallagher Index systems there's no way for voters to vote to remove the third party from government."

And yet in New Zealand - a country which moved from FPTP to MMP - this _did_ happen. Voters _DO_ change the way they vote in a proportional system, even in a Westminster Democracy.

Even more illustrative of Deutsch's claim being entirely out to lunch is the fact that under MMP the New Zealand voting public managed to vote in such a manner that one party received an absolute majority (greater than 50% of the party votes cast) for several elections in a row.

FPTP elections are decided in a small number of marginal seats. People living in those have wildly disproproprotionate power over who governs a country and as a result one of the ways to throw elections is to encourage people sympathetic to your cause to move into such areas (This has been done - a kind of reverse Gerrymandering)

MMP is a mixture of two voting systems. The first is a seat-level "local" representation (FPTP) which selects about half the seats in parliament and the second a proportional vote to decide the "national" makeup of the government, where each party's proportion is topped up from the seats they won directly to the proportion of the votes received with seats allocated from a list. In prcatice, it is extremely rare for any politician who ends up in parliament to not have been competing for a seat somewhere even if they didn't win the seat in question (In practice, it's even rarer for them not to have been the second place in the seat they ran in and for the margin between 1 and 2 to have been close.)

MMP provides proportionality down to the "threshold" level (usually 2-5% of votes) and the threshold is usually chosen to provide stability - if set too low (below 2%) then you end up with a large number of single representatives from the whacky fringe and instability of the government (this is why the Italian government is unstable) due to changing alliegances.

The argument against 3rd parties is constantly bought up by people who think that there should only be 2 parties in parliament. The reality is that in the UK, the 2 "main" parties only account for 1/3 of the total vote each and the differences between them being in power are 1-2% (ie, 32 vs 34%) - meaning that whoever's in power, 2/3 of the electorate voted AGAINST them.

This decrease in seating from ~ 1/2 to ~1/3 of the total in the chamber is why the main two parties are traditionally deadset against MMP or other systems which provide good proportionality. It would mean the end of being able to drive through ideological extreme policies without needing the broad agreement of most of the chamber.

In practice, MMP and other proportional representation systems prevent governmental policies lurching between elections, due to the need for broad support on the more contentious policies.

You know when people are losing the argument on this because they bring up the issue of "Voting for the prime minister" - which is something that ONLY the members of parliament do.

Under all systems, voters vote for a _party_. The party selects its prime minister and is free to change that selection at any time. Some countries have a separate election for president, but that still has no bearing on who selects the Prime Minister (who is the parliamentary chosen delegate to report to the president or monarch).

In the UK (or any westminster democracy), as a technical matter parliament or voters do NOT select its prime minister anyway. The monarch/president does.

The monarch selects an individual parliamentarian, requests that he/she be the prime minister and asks him/her to form a government. The fact that parliament has already decided who will go and see the monarch to receive the question is a matter of expedience as the monarch is not going to ask anyone who doesn't have enough support in the first place.

Re:By Definition

[stoatwblr]

I forgot one to mention one other advantage of MMP.

Because of the low threshold to entry, it is inevitable that some of the "less whacky" of the whacky fringe get elected into parliament, which means they're now in the spotlight without having any political power to speak of.

This has usually resulted in the policies of these parties and the antics of their politicians being closely inspected - which has usually resulted in the removal of those politicians and in some cases the subsequent self-destruction of the parties.

In particular, many of these radical fringe parties with "moralistic" electoral platforms have been shown to be extremely hypocritical and exposure of these activities has been beneficial for the country as a whole, allowing national discussion of previously "taboo" subjects.

New Zealand's Christian Democrats rather famously "erased" all mentions of a couple of disgraced politicians (after they were found to have been involved in dodgy sexual activities with minors), resulting in the party effectively ceasing to exist in the following elections as their voters realised they'd been scammed and selected other, less extreme parties.

Re:attempt to force gerrymandering that favors Dem

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I happen to hate when both Republicans and Democrats gerrymander. Thus I support this particular suit. When the Republicans find themselves regularly winning the popular vote, yet consistently losing big by seat count, I will listen to them, too.

Gerrymandering = disenfranchisement

[sjbe]

The intent to disenfranchise is not even alleged in TFA, much less proven.

Gerrymandering by definition disenfranchises some group of people. If gerrymandering occurs then it is proven and the court found that it had occurred in this case so it is proven in the legal sense as well. Since gerrymandering doesn't occur by accident then it has to be intended. Whenever you make someone's vote effectively meaningless that is the very definition of disenfranchisement.

Re:Gerrymandering = disenfranchisement

[mi]

Gerrymandering by definition disenfranchises some group of people

No such thing in the actual, you know, definition .

Whenever you make someone's vote effectively meaningless that is the very definition of disenfranchisement

No, it is not. To disenfranchise is to deny the very right to vote. From your own link:

Disfranchisement (also called disenfranchisement) is the revocation of the right of suffrage (the right to vote) of a person or group of people, or through practices, prevention of a person exercising the right to vote.

The "effectively meaningless" part is your attempt to redefine the term to mean, what you want it to mean. You are arguing semantics — incorrectly.

My vote in New York is meaningless, for example, but I am not disenfranchised.

Re:Gerrymandering = disenfranchisement

[Your.Master]

The original term, which you yourself quoted, was "effectively disenfranchise", not just disenfranchise. That lines up very well with the term "effectively meaningless" which you are objecting to. The adjective can't be ignored when you're quoting the definition if Disenfranchisement.

Re: Gerrymandering = disenfranchisement

[Anonymous Coward]

My vote in New York is meaningless, for example, but I am not disenfranchised.

You should go to court then, in American Law, disenfranchisement includes not having a meaningful vote.

A town in New York was sued because of that.

Re: Gerrymandering = disenfranchisement

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, mi's argument is even worse.

American jurisprudence already covers the matter as described. Courts are not fooled by the shams of Slashdot trolls. Well, not all of the time.

Re:Gerrymandering = disenfranchisement

[Anonymous Coward]

A definition is not "effectively" what something means, it is "precisely" what it means.
Argo.

Re: Gerrymandering = disenfranchisement

[Anonymous Coward]

The phrasing was quoted. Effectively.

Look up its definition mi.

Re:Automation... with what data?

[EndlessNameless]

What happens if you find that the concentration of registered citizens doesn't match the list of votes cast?

This is not relevant. A lot of registered voters don't actually go out and vote.

So what you are really arguing is Voter ID, that will verify a person to location mapping.

Most states already have this. You report to a designated polling station based on your home address. I've never lived in a state that worked differently.

If being at the right place on election day is difficult, you can submit an absentee ballot instead.

Without verifiable citizen locations, how could this automation be trusted?

Voter locations are determined based upon their legal residence. Basing it on anything more detailed is going to be both expensive and intrusive.

This is completely orthogonal to the question of gerrymandering anyway.

So what you are really arguing is Voter ID

Once your factual errors are corrected, you have no rational support for Voter ID.

It benefitted the wrong party

[Anonymous Coward]

Maryland does the same thing, but since it benefits Democrats, it's OK.

Re:It benefitted the wrong party

[Urist McSlashdot]

Yeah, that's why there's no legal challenges to Maryland's gerrymandering at all. Oh, wait...

Supreme Court agrees to hear Maryland redistricting case

Re:It benefitted the wrong party

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree. I used to live in Maryland. My congressional district included parts of the state on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay. This effectively made my votes not count. 75% of the district was in Prince George's county and 25% was on the Eastern Shore. It carved up three counties on the shore to include us. The county commissioners would sue every year and courts would refuse to hear it. So I guess It's OK to have things that look like splattered geckos on your map if you control the courts. Everyone in Maryland wonders why we Eastern Shore Idiots wanted to join Delaware. We just wanted to have been able to get a say in where our taxes went. Living in an under-served county tends to make you bitter about sending more of your money to the state than the federal government. Then have the state turn around and give you almost nothing to run the county.

Define the population

[sjbe]

Why not simply add up all the votes over the entire population of interest ?

The problem is in how you define the entire population of interest. Gerrymandering is the act of politicians (or political parties) having the power to choose the population that is most likely to ensure they get elected.

Re:Define the population

[religionofpeas]

The problem is in how you define the entire population of interest

No, that's easy. The population of interest is all the people that would fall under the jurisdiction of the chosen government.

Re:Define the population

[Kierthos]

That's the problem right now.

Okay, look, when someone is voting for a state-wide office, like Governor or Senator, it literally does not matter if or how their district is gerrymandered. That is because all the votes across the state are tallied and if you get more than 50% of the votes, you win.

But when it's for something like a state legislator or a Representative in Congress, you are voting in a district in that state. Now, your district for a state legislator is likely to be different than your district for a Representative because there are a lot more state legislators in any given state than that state has Representatives in Congress.

But you're voting in a district for a candidate on that district's slate of candidates. Only the voters in that district count towards which candidate on that slate wins. And that's where gerrymandering plays a factor. Districts can be drawn to favor one party or the other. And that happens all the damn time. With the right demographic data, it's relatively simple to draw the districts in a state to ensure that even though one party has more registered voters, the other party stays in power.

Hell, North Carolina has a history of this. There was someone involved with the North Carolina elections who, for an interview on The Daily Show, inadvertently admitted that the recent laws that they had passed were targeting voters that traditionally voted for the Democratic party.

The 2 Key Reforms Needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Gerrymandering is bad for democracy, as is unlimited money. Reform both and you'll get better outcomes.

Beware of those who say it "cannot" or "should not" be done. They have ulterior motives.

A Perfect Application for Artificial Intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

Mapping congressional districts is a perfect application for artificial intelligence.
Of course, some politicians might lose their jobs.
No politician should lose his job because of artificial intelligence, because intelligence has no place in politics.

Democrats are cheaters

[mi]

It is not Republicans, who want illegal immigrants counted when allotting Congress seats and other benefits.

Re:Democrats are cheaters

[Anonymous Coward]

Al Franken won his seat by 300 votes when there were 1100 illegal votes from convicts. Terry McAuliffe pardoned thousands of convicts in the past two years just to bolster voter rolls.

Ostrichism

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Oooooh boy. The governmental weaponization of social ostracism.

It's bad enough in the west knee-jerk social lemmingism rules the day with fear. Here, it will be used by those in power as yet another lever to keep down challengers to their power.

Re:A Perfect Application for Artificial Intelligen

[Dog-Cow]

Who gets to train the AI?

This matters

[sjbe]

And this doesn't.

What color is the sky on your planet where gerrymandering doesn't matter?

Re:This matters

[jwhyche]

Not on a technical nerd news site it doesn't.

Re:This matters

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

Since the Republicans have gotten very good at Gerrymandering through the use of Big Data and computer mapping I think maybe it does belong on a site for nerds.

Re:attempt to force gerrymandering that favors Dem

[pezpunk]

i never understood this crybaby complaint. "wahhhh but the other guys probably do it too". so fucking what. you should still be against gerrymandering if you have any tiny shred of moral decency. instead you just want to cry like a baby and hope you can get away with it next time.

Packing and cracking

[sjbe]

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

That's because of a tactic called "packing" whereby you try to concentrate the opposition into the fewest districts possible. The other major tactic is "cracking" which dilutes the voting power of the opposition across multiple districts. So it wouldn't be shocking at all to find a highly gerrymandered district drawn by the losing party. They do that so that they can win more seats elsewhere.

Newsworthy?

[cyberspittle]

When this is done in California, it isn't news.

Re:attempt to force gerrymandering that favors Dem

[EndlessNameless]

Regardless of the supposed intent, a legal precedent applies across the board. If gerrymandering is upheld as unconstitutional (I'm assuming there will be appeals), then both parties can rely on that precedent in court.

If you care about true representation of the people's will, then you very much want this decision to go to the Supreme Court and be upheld there. That way, it will be binding across the entire country.

This could be a hugely important case.

The new rigged

[micahraleigh]

How are judges going to impartially determine a party gerrymandered (as opposed to "redistricted to make it fair again")?

How can we be sure judges are not the new mechanisms of corruption here?

When the districts were political football at least we knew both parties could work it to their advantage when they get into office.

Now it just looks like the judges give into the party that whines or threatens or annoys the most.

Re:Republicans fear democracy, or want to destroy

[Anonymous Coward]

As a foreigner this sounds exactly like the republican party as I understand it.

But it's okay to gerrymander for Democrats?

[mschuyler]

Take a look at a legislative district in say, Georgia. Notice how the districts look kind of like snakes crawling across the landscape. That's because they include precincts that represent predominantly Black neighborhoods and avoid predominantly white neighborhoods. The theory is that this gives Blacks a more "fair" representation by ensuring Black voters get to choose "their" candidate, more often than not a fellow Black. The fact that they are more likely to be a Democrat, well, that's just an "accident."

Re:But it's okay to gerrymander for Democrats?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, it's not "gerrymandered for Democrats." It's gerrymandered to give Dems as little representation in state government as possible, by shunting them off into a single district. It's the exact opposite of what you're saying.

Re:But it's okay to gerrymander for Democrats?

[mschuyler]

In the particular instance in North Carolina it is, but other places around the country it is the exact opposite, which is precisely what I was pointing out. . What about what I said above is not true? Are you telling me those "snake-like" legislative districts do NOT exist? You can't ignore one and not the other. You can call the big elephant in the room "flamebait" if you want, but that is what gerrymandering is--drawing legislative lines to favor one constituency over another. And it is not confined to the GOP.

Re:attempt to force gerrymandering that favors Dem

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm seeing it more as in response to the "moral outrage" that the Democrats are putting on about it, rather than gerrymandering itself.

Look at Wisconsin

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

From this: https://www.brennancenter.org/...

"At a statewide level, Wisconsin is a quintessential battleground where races are often decided by only a few percentage points. Contrast that to the state assembly map the Republicans drew: In 2012, they won 60 of the 99 seats in the Wisconsin Assembly despite winning only 48.6% of the two-party state-wide vote; in 2014, they won 63 seats with only 52% of the state-wide vote."

Don't get me wrong, this is not a partisan issue as both sides have historically tried to use gerrymandering to influence elections, it is just that lately the Republicans have been particularly aggressive and good at it.

Re:Look at Wisconsin

[JackieBrown]

I just don't know if population count should be the sole decider on how to draw the map. In smaller states, it would give all the power to one or two cities.

Re:Look at Wisconsin

[mpercy]

"At a statewide level, Wisconsin is a quintessential battleground where races are often decided by only a few percentage points. Contrast that to the state assembly map the Republicans drew: In 2012, they won 60 of the 99 seats in the Wisconsin Assembly despite winning only 48.6% of the two-party state-wide vote; in 2014, they won 63 seats with only 52% of the state-wide vote."

Democrats seem to self-select for denser urban population centers, which causes even more "natural" districts--e.g., when created by "colorblind" algorithms that just try to create equal-sized (population-wise), contiguous districts--to have Democrat votes way overbalanced so that you get a small number of VERY solid D districts, leaving the rest up for grabs for the rural voters, who tend to vote Republican.

The Atlantic (2013)

Many analysts incorrectly blame this partisan tilt on the extreme gerrymandering of legislative districts for partisan advantage. While gerrymandering contributes a bit to this bias, its impact is marginal -- the big culprit is single-seat, winner-take-all districts themselves, combined with the over-concentration of Democratic voters. These partisan demographics have made it far easier for GOP map drawers in Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere not only to pack Democratic voters into fewer districts but also to pick off many white Democratic House members and "racialize" the Democratic Party. In 1991, white Democrats held 81 of 133 House seats in the South, but today that number has dwindled to 18 out of 145.

Re:Look at Wisconsin

[Just Some Guy]

Why should that not be the case? Remember, land doesn't vote: people do. I lived in Nebraska where about 60% of the population lived in Omaha. Any arrangement where the rest of the state were allowed to outvote that small, heavily populated corner is inherently disenfranchising the Omahans.

Similarly, it's insane that people in Wyoming have four times the electoral voting power as New Yorkers. "But Wyoming is so big on the map!" Sure, but it has the about the population of Staten Island.

There is no justifiable reason why those one or two cities shouldn't have all the power if that's where all the people live.

Re:Look at Wisconsin

[JackieBrown]

Similarly, it's insane that people in Wyoming have four times the electoral voting power as New Yorkers. "

Should we take away their senator's as well and give them to New York?

Re:Look at Wisconsin

[Just Some Guy]

That's a great question. Probably not, but the Senate was originally a nod to slightly smaller states who didn't want to be ignored. However, the state population range at the time was much smaller: Virginia was about 12 times more populous than Delaware (which by land is 1/9th the size of Virginia, so their densities are very similar).

Today, California is 68 times more populous than Wyoming (but only 1.7 times bigger, which works out to about CA being about 41 times more densely populated). There's absolutely no way that a Senate being crafted today would give Wyoming 68 times the proportional representation of California.

Re:Look at Wisconsin

[JackieBrown]

I think we just see things different. Based on what your writing, I'm assuming you feel like states are more an artificial line on a map and shouldn't get equal representation just for being a state. Otherwise, we wouldn't be talking about proportional representation (that's what the House is for.)

Re:Look at Wisconsin

[Just Some Guy]

I don't feel that way at all, and have in fact spent lots of time in low-population states. I have nothing against them. But suppose for the sake of argument that a county in west Texas split off to be their own state. Why should that small land area county with 25 people have the same number of Senate votes as the giant (land a people-wise) remainder of Texas?

Re:Look at Wisconsin

[JackieBrown]

If they are legally able to - glad you mentioned Texas since we did obtain that legality when we accepted statehood status - they should get the same number of senate votes.

It's part of the contract of representation guaranteed when becoming a state.

Re:Look at Wisconsin

[Just Some Guy]

Yes, it's part of the contract, but that doesn't mean it's fair or just. It's an obsolete legacy that we're stuck with, not something to hold up as good.

Anti-Trump Judge?

[iMadeGhostzilla]

The Judge in question opposed Trump's travel ban -- later mostly upheld by the Supreme Court -- on the account of Trump's campaign comments:

"Several judges expressed skepticism about the idea that the court would blind itself to Trump’s comments about Muslims. “Don’t we get to consider what was actually said here and said very explicitly?” asked Judge James A. Wynn Jr., who was appointed by President Barack Obama." (http://www.news-herald.com/article/HR/20170508/NEWS/170509400)

In 1999 an LA Times article described the Judge as a "well-regarded moderate".

My speculation is that indeed he was, but that he really can't stand Trump and that may influence and to some degree motivate his work today. Fact is, very few people are able to stay detached when it comes to being pro or against Trump. I haven't met anyone such yet.

Re:Anti-Trump Judge?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone with even a figment of basic human decency is anti-Trump.

Re:Anti-Trump Judge?

[jeff4747]

So your argument is Trump is responsible for gerrymandering North Carolina in 2011 and again in 2014, and this judge ruled to undo Trump's work?

Methinks you're looking a tad too hard to find the connection you want to find.

Re:Anti-Trump Judge?

[iMadeGhostzilla]

No, only that the judge is, consciously or not, motivated to work against anything that could help Trump and Trump-supporting Republicans. (I won't say TDS, it's an ugly phrase.)

Re:Anti-Trump Judge?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, only that the judge is, consciously or not, motivated to work against anything that could help Trump and Trump-supporting Republicans. (I won't say TDS, it's an ugly phrase.)

Well, Trump Defensiveness Syndrome is a real problem, it's even pernicious in the White House, to the point where they're trying to make the argument that Trump's own words merit consideration and examination when it comes to examination of his decisions.

I mean, your quote is quite literally: "Don’t we get to consider what was actually said here and said very explicitly?”

So you're endorsing the idea that Trump can say things, and yet we're not supposed to take meaning from it, yet you are taking a meaning from those words to the point where your own subject line is "Anti-Trump Judge" with your admitted speculation that he is unable to stand Trump. Yet your evidence is rather scanty.

Hence your actual problem, your own endorsement, tacit though it may be, of the deranged defensiveness coming out of the White House itself.

That, as jeff4747 mentioned, the rulings are in a long line of such, discredits your own argument further.

You're not helping yourself here. Unless you're making such a poor argument in order to discredit Trump by defending him so poorly. In which case, you should stop, because your behavior is not appropriate.

Try a bit more detachment of your own.

Disenfranchisement

[sjbe]

No one has ever been denied the ability to associate with members of their own party.

Not sure what point you are trying to make but you certainly missed the one in the discussion. Gerrymandering utilizes the association with a political party to remove the power of their vote by rigging the system. So if Party A draws the districts to favor Party A then members of Party B are being disenfranchised as a result. Members of Party B are effectively being deprived of their vote because their vote will not matter in the outcome of the election. The fact that they actually cast a ballot does not change the fact that their vote won't have any chance to affect the outcome because the electorate has been rigged.

Re:Disenfranchisement

[sycodon]

I don't think disenfranchised means what you think it means.

See the provided definition.

Hint: Just because you LOSE an election doesn't mean you didn't get a say.

Re: Disenfranchisement

[Anonymous Coward]

Losing an election?
No.
Rigging the election so that it is effectively impossible for the voting public to change the outcome.

The right to vote is a protected right

[sjbe]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Political affiliation isn't a protect class.

No but the right to vote and to have your vote count IS protected. Don't confuse the mechanism with the result. Gerrymandering doesn't just affect members of a given political party.

To insist that the redistricting somehow represents the greater population is the usurpation of redistricting task by the courts.

Not even slightly. Courts are the only (ostensibly) neutral party here and their job is to ensure that voters rights are not trod upon. I'm not a member of either the republicans or democrats but I live in a gerrymandered district and so my right to vote is de-facto disenfranchised if I happen to not like the ruling party's candidate. That is a perfect use for a court to protect people like me who otherwise would effectively lose their vote.

Re:The right to vote is a protected right

[cayenne8]

I'm not a member of either the republicans or democrats but I live in a gerrymandered district and so my right to vote is de-facto disenfranchised if I happen to not like the ruling party's candidate.

But, no matter how you draw the district, no one's vote is locked in stone.

If you or other influences (say, even the candidates message) is good enough to sway the opinion of the district, then no one is losing their vote.

People can and will change their minds on how to vote if persuaded.

Just trying to play devil's devil's advocate....

Re: The right to vote is a protected right

[bigpat]

The question to me is harm. Is the state harmfully interfering with freedom of association by using people's party affiliations to draw district maps that harm those people and their parties chances at election... The answer is unquestionably yes because that is the whole point of Gerrymandering.

  Gerrymandering should be ruled unconstitutional on freedom of association grounds. People exercising their right to freely associate should be considered similar to the way any protected class would be.

Re:The right to vote is a protected right

[Anonymous Coward]

Your vote can’t represent fractions of a representative, and if districts go away so all like voters across the state can be summed up and rounded off to whole representatives then we lose all geographic relationships between voters and reps beside state boundaries.

That doesn’t sound so bad until we start talking about things like border walls, nuclear waste storage, federal funding and every other damned thing that has a local impact... which is nearly everything.

Re:The right to vote is a protected right

[Anonymous Coward]

No but the right to vote and to have your vote count IS protected. Don't confuse the mechanism with the result. Gerrymandering doesn't just affect members of a given political party.

Gerrymandering affects:
1. The opposite party. The whole point is to pack or distribute opposition votes to change the outcome of the most seats.
2. The party gerrymandering. The process of making seats essentially safe, or much safer, means the vote that matters is the primary, hence you get more and more extreme candidates in primaries to match up with the voters that vote in primaries.

Yes, you can vote, but it is quite likely that for many races you would have to vote in the primaries to have a significant chance to make change, and if your not matching the party that redrew the districts you have to vote in the opposite parties primaries.

Tip: We really should start voting in whatever primaries matter the most and not necessarily our party's unless they have a shot. Pick the least bad candidate, not the one you think will be beatable, since, as Trump has shown, that isn't necessarily the outcome.

I consider the way electoral votes and senate seats go one of the original forms of gerrymandering, even if it isn't the original intent. A single vote in a small state goes a lot further than one in a large state, and if your state is hard left/right then that single vote seldom even matters for national races.

Re:The right to vote is a protected right

[catprog]

The ideal gerrymander from the point of view of a party is too make your seats safe while your opponent seats ultra-safe soaking up as many of their voters as possible.

1000 voters in 10 districts, 500 for each party.

1)you could have 50-50 in each district or
2)51-49 in 9 districts for you and 59-41 in the other district.

Re:The right to vote is a protected right

[stoatwblr]

One of the most effective way of stopping Gerrymandering is to have representation decided by state or nationwide proportional representation systems such as MMP - even if individual districts are gerrymandered the _overall_ proportionality of representatives is based on the votes of the body politic.

This kind of PR pretty much ensures no group can gain an absolute majority, which in turn requires cooperation and concensus to get things done and defangs Combat Politics

Why are you here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to argue?
If you have an idea, spell it out.

Weaponized gerrymandering

[sjbe]

Gerrymandering has been an issue since the start of the Republic.

True but it's only been relatively recently that the parties have tried to basically weaponize it to an extreme degree. The Republicans in particular have been quite effective at utilizing it to their benefit. I don't doubt the Democrats would do so too but I think they just got beaten to the punch. Gerrymandering to my mind is one of the greatest threats to our democracy and plays a very large role in the shifts of both parties (particularly the republicans) to extreme candidates.

And just because it's always been an issue doesn't mean it should not be dealt with. Gerrymandering cannot go away fast enough.

Which has been highly unfavorable to the GOP party even though it was initially promoted by the GOP in California.

That has a lot to do with the fact that Democrats outnumber Republicans rather heavily in California. You'd have a hard time drawing a set of districts which would result in a Republican majority in that state. The California system might not be perfect but it's a lot better than the one in my state.

Re:Weaponized gerrymandering

[penandpaper]

relatively recently that the parties have tried to basically weaponize it to an extreme degree

I disagree. Elections and redistricting have always been a messy. I might agree with a boom/bust type cycle for gerrymandering but "weaponizing" is not new. This is the same idea that the challenges we face today are some how novel and different from historical norms when in reality it's always been a challenge. Another example of this is communications and journalism. Human nature doesn't change because we can communicate faster and farther with yellow journalism just as elections are always contested and flawed in some way.

Gerrymandering to my mind is one of the greatest threats to our democracy

Again, I disagree. A nuisance and problem but not a threat or even one of the greatest threats to our democracy. Regardless that democracy was never the goal and was to be tempered by undemocratic means and in spite of gerrymandering we still have a functioning republic that has the unique history of expanding the rights of the individual. Because of the decentralized method in which we run our elections, this is an issue that must be handled by the people directly affected by this on a case by case basis. People in the west are not directly impacted by NC gerrymandering aside from the court opinion establishing a precedent to interpret the law.

A few examples of bigger threats IMO are the national debt and thinking that democracy is the end all be all of proper governance thereby making everything democratic (17th amendment did more harm then good).

Re:Weaponized gerrymandering

[Coryoth]

I disagree. Elections and redistricting have always been a messy. I might agree with a boom/bust type cycle for gerrymandering but "weaponizing" is not new.

The detailed data, particularly demographic data, and modern computerised data analysis, has weaponized it in a way that wasn't possible before. Historically there was a certain amount of guesswork in Gerrymandering -- you could use, say, racial demographics because they were reasonably visible, but it was still fuzzy. These days we have a whole lot more data available with a whole lot more detail (just look at the level of analytics Facebook and Google can do solely for the sake of advertising), and a lot more compute power to analyse, slide, dice, infer and predict. Modern Gerrymandering looks very different indeed.

But majority-minority districts are just fine??

[mpercy]

Remember back when Democrats were happily using racist assumptions that blacks could only get elected from majority-black districts, which they were all too happy to gerrymander into existence?

The current Republican antics are a direct result of those racist efforts...and redrawing the districts will almost certainly dilute those majority-minority districts (again, which are racist constructs in the first place). And lots of folks will not be happy at all about districts drawn by "colorblind" algorithms that are simply trying to map equal numbers of people into right-sized districts, so the algorithms will have to be made "fair". Good luck with that.

The Atlantic (2013)

Acting under the legal strength and moral authority of the Voting Rights Act, the Democrats led the charge to draw so-called "majority-minority districts" -- ones packed so full of minority voters that they usually resulted in electing a minority representative, as intended. The number of minority representatives jumped exponentially from the 1960s through the 1980s, with the number of black House members increasing from five to 24 by 1989.

But just in time for the redistricting in 1990, some enterprising Republicans began noticing a rather curious fact: The drawing of majority-minority districts not only elected more minorities, it also had the effect of bleeding minority voters out of all the surrounding districts. Given that minority voters were the most reliably Democratic voters, that made all of the neighboring districts more Republican. The black, Latino, and Asian representatives mostly were replacing white Democrats, and the increase in minority representation was coming at the expense of electing fewer Democrats. The Democrats had been tripped up by a classic Catch-22, as had minority voters: Even as legislatures were becoming more diverse, they were ironically becoming less friendly to the agenda of racial minorities.

Newt Gingrich embraced this strategy of drawing majority-minority districts for GOP advantage, as did the Bush Administration Justice Department prior to the 1991 redistricting, even as GOP activists like now-Chief Justice John Roberts campaigned against the VRA because they opposed any race-based remedies. The tipping point was the 1994 midterm elections, when the GOP captured the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 35 years and Gingrich because speaker. Many experts on both the left and the right, from The Nation's Ari Berman and prominent GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsberg (who spearheaded the 1991 effort to maximize the number of majority-minority districts), attribute the Republican success that year to the drawing of majority-minority districts; indeed, African-American membership in the House reached its highest level ever, at 40.

VRA districts undoubtedly played a role in the GOP takeover, but they were not the only factor, since Republicans made big gains that year in lots of places outside the South. But in the hardscrabble battles of the 50-50 nation, any advantage at all was embraced, and prominent Republicans like Ginsberg and Gingrich became the loudest proponents of drawing majority-minority districts.

Re:But majority-minority districts are just fine??

[sysrammer]

Outstanding, thanks for that. Another lesson that politics is often a double-edged sword. For a little more history from wikipedia...

The word gerrymander (originally written Gerry-mander) was used for the first time in the Boston Gazette on 26 March 1812. The word was created in reaction to a redrawing of Massachusetts state senate election districts under Governor Elbridge Gerry (pronounced /ri/; 1744–1814). In 1812, Governor Gerry signed a bill that redistricted Massachusetts to benefit his Democratic-Republican Party. When mapped, one of the contorted districts in the Boston area was said to resemble the shape of a mythological salamander.[4]

and

Gerrymandering is used most often in favor of ruling incumbents[15] or a specific political party—the one drawing the map. Societies whose legislatures use a single-winner electoral system are the most likely to have political parties that gerrymander for advantage.[citation needed] Most notably, gerrymandering is particularly effective in non-proportional systems that tend towards fewer parties, such as first past the post.

For years I had been misled by a bit of fake news from some article claiming that Jerry Brown invented jerrymandering. Actually, it wasn't until wikipedia came out that I found the actual history.

Cue arguments about...
Democrats
Republicans
Democratic-Republican Party (bet you didn't know about that)
Republicrats
Demoblicans
Jerry Brown, Jerry Brown the Reboot, Jerry Brown the Sequel.
FPTP
Fake news
Salamanders
Did I miss any buzzwords? Oh yeah.
Bitcoin.

Re:But majority-minority districts are just fine??

[penandpaper]

You forgot AI!

Re:But majority-minority districts are just fine??

[Anonymous Coward]

And as usual, the context that the Democrats back then were the racist Republicans now is conveniently excluded :)

Why are Republicans so afraid of context? Is it because facts undermine their narrative?

Re:A Perfect Application for Artificial Intelligen

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I would say it would be best done as unsupervised clustering tied into a GIS system. I have written my local reps at my state house and state senate about it several times but they never want to hear it because it takes away their power to help ensure they have a safe seat.

Basically my proposal has been:
1. Initially all districts are centered at their current representative's house. If there are fewer seats this time then last then district centers are removed randomly until the correct number is reached. If there are more seats this time then last then district centers are added randomly until the correct number is reached.
2. The district with the lowest population picks first.
3. Areas (houses, town homes, apartments, etc) are added to a district such that the closet one available to the center added first. If there are 2 equal distance then preference is given for the ones that are on the same side of the road, in the same town, then in the same county. If neither of those are better satisfied then pick one at random and add it to the district.
4. Repeat steps 2&3 until all areas have been chosen.
5. Calculate the new center of each district.
6. If the new center of any district has changed areas from where it was in step 5 of the previous run (step 1 if this is the first run) then save the new centers and clear out the districts assigned to each district and start at step 2.
7. if the new centers of all districts have not changed areas from where it was previously this is your new district map.

I am sure that there are a few more tweaks that are need to ensure that each district has the same (I believe MN law is +/- 1) number of people in it but this seems like a much more reasonable solution instead of the bickering that happens every 10 years. As an added bonus this requires writing the program once and then every 10 years drop it on a computer (really any somewhat modern desktop would be able to do this) and let it run for a bit. You no longer need to pay for the old human process and likely would get result much quicker.

Depends entirely on whose ox is gored

[Mike Van Pelt]

http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/...

California is virtually a case study in the politics of gerrymandering.

When they controlled all the levers in 1981 during Jerry Brown’s first governorship, Democrats gleefully grabbed every legislative and congressional district they could.

The late Congressman Phil Burton drew congressional maps so partisan and convoluted that he described them as “my contribution to modern art.”

After the 1970 and 1990 censuses, Republican Govs. Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson refused to sign the Democrats’ gerrymanders and threw the issue to the state Supreme Court, which drew the maps itself.

A rose by any other name

[sjbe]

No, it is not. To disenfranchise is to deny the very right to vote. From your own link:

A vote rendered meaningless by gerrymandering IS denying the right to vote for all practical purposes. The fact that I technically cast a ballot in a heavily gerrymandered district effectively denies my voice from being heard - i.e. the entire point of a vote. That is disenfranchisement. If you want to call it something else fine but the effect is identical to armed thugs stopping me from casting my ballot in the first place.

My vote in New York is meaningless, for example, but I am not disenfranchised.

That depends on where in New York you live but since Democrats naturally outnumber Republicans in the state you are correct for statewide offices. But if you live in a gerrymandered district then you possibly are disenfranchised for purposes of congressional election. My congressional district is gerrymandered and I definitely have been disenfranchised for purposes of that vote. You cannot gerrymander for state wide office if the votes are cast by popular vote but for any district with boundaries drawn by partisan hacks you easily can disenfranchise people. The fact that they actually cast a ballot doesn't make any difference in whether or not they have been disenfranchised because the effect is identical to preventing them from casting a ballot.

You are arguing semantics — incorrectly.

You have that backwards and even if it were just semantics, semantics matter. Gerrymandering renders votes meaningless that otherwise would not be meaningless. If you want to call that something other than disenfranchisement I don't care but the effect is identical. It makes the election rigged which is wrong.

Re: A rose by any other name

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really felt that way, you would have your political advisor's counsel chat with your rep. Oh? You don't have counsel or an advisor? Then Yiu must not be a very good Christian, because God rewards those who are good with prosperity. You must be a leech. Get a job.

Not just technical nerd news

[sjbe]

Not on a technical nerd news site it doesn't.

You've been here long enough to know that this has never been just a technical nerd news site. And if you cannot find the reasons why this is news that matters they you are simply just not using your brain.

If it seems like a good idea

[rsilvergun]

you're not thinking it through. Minorities fear the police, often with good reason. The point is to make them too scared to vote. It's a Jim Crow law. And unless you're very wealthy (or going to be after inheritance) you want these people voting. They, like you, are members of the working class. And their interests align with yours.

You don't need riot gear

[rsilvergun]

to direct traffic; which many of the ones in black neighborhoods had. They were there to threaten and scare minority voters, who have a long history of oppression by police.

Don't kid yourself. If you actually believe that you're being hopelessly naive. If you don't believe that then you have an ulterior motive for saying it, and it can't be a good one. If that's the case, stop it. I don't know what you think you're doing, but it's not helping you or anyone you know and love...

People live near people with similar ideas

[mpercy]

Washington Post article on gerrymandering in California...

"California just proved how cracking down on gerrymandering isn’t all it’s cracked up to be"

For the fourth time in 12 years, not a single one of the state's 50-plus congressional districts switched parties. Just as in 2010, 2008 and 2004, every single seat returned to the party that previously controlled it.

And if you exclude the post-redistricting election of 2012, only two California districts have flipped parties since 2004. That's two out of 314 individual races — 0.6 percent. (And one of the two was a fluke in which the GOP briefly held a blue-leaning seat thanks to two Republicans advancing to the general election in 2012.)

So why do we bring this up now? Well, partly because it wasn't necessarily supposed to be this way again. Before the last round of redistricting, Californians voted for a redistricting commission to take the process out of lawmakers' hands.

But in the end, California might be Exhibit A in the limits of redistricting reform's impact on competition. The state's population is very segmented, and drawing competitive districts isn't easy given the self-sorting that people have done.

California's districts were actually drawn irrespective of competitiveness and partisanship. The commission decided not to even look at such data when drawing its districts, preferring to focus on what it called "communities of interest" and other demographics.

Paul Mitchell, a Democratic redistricting expert based in California, said that means the results since then are no real surprise. “When you draw lines to keep communities of interest together, you wind up creating districts that, by proxy, are partisan — as partisan as if you drew them with party labels — because you’re drawing them with values that are definitive of partisan labels themselves," Mitchell said.

And that's real the takeaway here. Gerrymandering is increasingly viewed as a political ill that must be dealt with. And there is generally considerable public support for redistricting reforms whenever they are on the ballot. But given our increasing tendency to live around people with whom we share a worldview, creating competitive districts often requires its own brand of gerrymandering that doesn't jibe with grouping people who share things in common.

Re:News for Nerds! Stuff That Matters

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't been following the interesting mathematical work going on in defining gerrymandering and how mathematicians have taken this up as a political cause. You, sir, are a poor excuse for a nerd. Probably don't even know the first thing about metric geometry.

No surprise here

[Locke2005]

Republicans cheat because they no they are a shrinking minority that can't win without cheating.

Politicians should not draw districts

[dskoll]

In Canada, politicians don't get to decide on the ridings (what you call districts in the US); that's done by a non-partisan agency called Elections Canada. The US and US states need to set up independent bodies to draw electoral districts, possibly with equal numbers of representatives from the two main parties and then make these bodies immune from being sanctioned by politicians.

I'm not so sure about that

[rsilvergun]

and neither is this guy. He's done his research and it's pretty well backed up. You can read about it on his site and in his book (you could probably pirate it if you can't bear to give money to him). The theory is that Hilary was too shocked at losing to challenge the results.

One thing I _am_ sure of is this: Dems need to win by large margins. At least 1.5-3% (yes, in a 2 party system that's 'large', such is the nature of statistics). Dems need to win by enough that shenanigans are too obvious. Either that or you need to do what Obama did: Send lawyers. Lots and lots of Lawyers. In the run up to his first win nobody could figure out what the hell he was doing sitting on all his campaign funds. Then two weeks before election 2000+ lawyers descended on Florida. Obama took Florida. Hilary did not.

choice inversion

[epine]

Bill Maher once described gerrymandering as "when politicians choose the voters."

Probably not original to Maher, but bullseye nevertheless.

Re:A Perfect Application for Artificial Intelligen

[Anonymous Coward]

There should be an active contest (non controlled by Congress) to promote ideas like yours. I would gladly contribute prize money to the winner if it was done in a completely open arena and the detailed results made public.

It shouldn't take many years to find a replacement for the current system.

Re:Gerrymandering != disenfranchisement

[mi]

The original term, which you yourself quoted, was "effectively disenfranchise", not just disenfranchise.

First of all, thank you for admitting, no actual disenfranchisement has taken place — and sjbe, with his appeals to "definitions", is wrong.

Now, about "effectively disenfranchising"... Everyone living in a State where one party has an overwhelming majority is already "effectively disenfranchised". Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, your vote in NY, for example, does not matter — you are effectively disenfranchised.

Same is true about polities lesser than States. As long as our voting is based on geography, the only way to give the minority-supporters any voice at all is with the district-carving like this. Yes, I'm sure, it could get ridiculous at times. But there is nothing automatically wrong about it either — and it certainly is not about "disenfranchising".

Anyone here *look* at the maps?

[whitroth]

One district runs about 80 or 90 miles, and for a lot of it, is less than 10 mi wide, connecting several "liberal" areas as one.

And, of course, we're talking about NC, that when a Democrat won the governor's race last year, the Republican supermajority in the state house started trying to take away powers that had belonged to the governor for a long time.

PR

[dacaldar]

Gerrymandering would become irrelevant if you used some form of Proportional Representation system, instead of a First-Past-The-Post One-Winner-Per-Riding system which inherently buries and "rounds" the true aggregate intent of the voters, multiple times, as results are tallied.

A Step in the right direction

[Zeekort]

Looks like the court ruling is a step in the right direction. Gerrymandering has been out of control for a long, long, time. I'd also go so far as to blame it for the reason why we haven't broken out of the two party system we're stuck in now where it's almost impossible for other parties to get any seats in office.

When politicians lose the ability to choose their voters, they'll have to start listening to the people for a change.

Try looking at ALL Congressional district maps....

[WeezulDK]

If you looked at enough Congressional district maps, you'd understand that Gerrymandering is RAMPANT on BOTH sides. This isn't surprising in the LEAST that it happens, because it's been going on but NOBODY is saying anything about it.

Re:attempt to force gerrymandering that favors Dem

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean like responding with but but hillary or but but obama!! Hmm.. I wonder who keeps doing that?