Various miscellaneous comments about gerrymandering.
(1) I don't remember all the details of this, and I'm not going to Google. But there was a situation a few years ago (2016? or 2018?) in North Carolina(?) that infuriated me. The Republicans gerrymandered their state egregiously; courts kept ruling against the redistricting; the Rs kept stalling or going back to the drawing-board to come up with just an alternate obviously-gerrymandered map. Finally, a judge ruled against the latest effort BUT said that it had to stand because (due to all the stalling and obstruction) there wasn't time to do yet another redistricting.
This infuriated me. When time was running out, the court should have appointed a special master to draw the district lines unilaterally. Once this didn't happen, the judge should have stepped in with some remedy, e.g. don't allow NC to send any Representatives to Washington until a fair election could be held.
(2) There is some gerrymandering which is supported by "liberals" and, indeed, may be ordered by a judge! For example, suppose that several districts each have 30% or 35% Hispanics. Outnumbered in every district, the Hispanics are unable to elect a single legislator despite that their total numbers imply they should have some. To remedy this, some districtings have been mandated to ensure that minorities do get to elect a Representative.
I regard such kluges as just more evidence that proportional representation is good; constituency-based representation is obsolete. It made sense in the olden days; but with high mobility, geographical community is much less meaningful.
(3) One message-board moron proposed an arbitrary districting. For example, to make ten districts from a state one could use the final digit of the Social Security Number to assign districts to voters. Since those digits are random, if the Orange Party had 52% of the voters state-wide, the Law of Large Numbers tells us they would be almost certain to get about 52% in EVERY district. The Purple Party with 48% would get zero Representatives.
Speaking as someone in Australia how is the claim of gerrymandering made?
is it because of the shape of the seats?
In Australia we have some oddly shaped seats but no one claims gerrymandering because of that. Our seats follow population densities so it is to be expected that some seats will have odd shapes.
(4) What criteria should be used to create districts? Many odd-shaped districts result from linking similar areas together. For example Ohio's District 9 lumps many lake-side neighborhoods together. Maybe that's good? If such a districting were the only way to ensure a Representative for some minority it would be applauded!
"Compactness" has been proposed as a criterion. Compactness isn't easy to measure (some definitions need the district perimeter, but — cf fractals — boundary lines that follow a river have no well-defined length) and anyway, districting is about voters, not about land.
Best may be to look at the final results. If the Purple Party has 45% of the voters but gets just one seat, something must be wrong? Again, the conclusion is that
proportional representation would be better. As implied up-thread, to divide a state split 55-45 in favor of the Orange Party into twenty districts, one might theoretically finish with all 20 seats held by Orange, or as few as 2 held by Orange. What split would be fair? 11-9 would be the proportional split, but even if districting were done by a computer algorithm ignorant of party distribution, a result of 12-8 or 13-7 would be more probable than 11-9. (Indeed 20-0 would be the result if party and location are uncorrelated.)
One proposal is to compare the Orangeness of the mean district with the Orangeness of the median district. These numbers should be about the same if districting is "fair." Note, however, that a districting which gives ALL districts to the Orange would usually do quite well on this measure!
(5) The easiest way to know whether partisan gerrymandering is at work, is just to listen to the gerrymanderers themselves. They don't keep their projects secret.
The daughter of one Republican hack waited until her Dad was dead, then "blew the whistle" on him.
(6) R's will be eager to go "Whine, whine, whine. Goose gander. The D's gerrymander also. Whine, whine, lie."
It is certainly true that Ds have gerrymandered in the past, and there is still some D gerrymandering in the present day. But a huge majority of partisan gerrymandering in recent decades is done by the Rs. This is very logical. The essence of D philosophy is fairness, help for minorities, restoring democracy, etc. The Rs are now completely dominated by lying and cheating — their only guiding philosophy is the do whatever it takes to keep the super-rich in charge and exploit everyday Americans.
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Here is a "Redistricting Laboratory". I've not yet clicked on it; someone might want to play there and give a report.
