Gerrymandering back in SCOTUS

[Elixir]

This can be done using simulated annealing, with a random initial distribution of "seed crystals".

I readily admit that I had to look up "simulated annealing".

After doing so, I agree. That would at least be objective; unfairness could still exist in some locales, but it would be (statistically) distributed so that each party gets its share of unfairness.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I keep wondering if there isn't some universal algorithm that could be legislated ... like maybe a maximum permissible ratio of perimeter/area for any district. (Probably too simple, but that's the jist of what I've been thinking.)

I've seen a group suggesting it. Simply divide the area up with the minimum possible amount of border so that each chunk has as close to equal as possible number of voters. (You can't get perfectly equal because your number of districts probably does not evenly divide your number of voters and voters tend to occur at more than one per address.) I forget what their tiebreaker approach was but they had one.

Absolutely zero gerrymandering but at the cost of district borders slicing through neighborhoods.

Personally, I would prefer a modified version of this. It would be extremely hard to meaningfully manipulate but wouldn't have nearly the slicing problem:

1) Division lines can only occur on main streets or where some feature (freeway, river, park, uninhabited land, mountain etc) divides the land. Instead of looking at it house by house you divide it up into the smallest cells that meet the conditions for dividing lines.

2) The cost of a border goes down as it grows bigger--look at how far you would have to go to actually cross that barrier.

3) Choose the solution that has the minimum boundary cost and no situation where moving a cell to an adjoining district makes them more even.

 

[Bomb#20]

Abolish geographical electoral districts.

That isn't a solution, it just got rid of the House of Representatives. What do you propose replaces geographical districts?

One first must answer the question, "Why are there geographical districts?". I suppose they are there to support the Electoral College, no? So what is THAT there for?

There already exists well established geographical boundaries. They are called State lines. Each state already has additional internal lines that distribute the population. They are called Postal (Zip) Codes. Why are these insufficient for whatever the purpose is?

The Constitution does not specify there must be geographical districts that I can see. The manner of electing representatives is left to the states.

Bingo. An California all we have to do to eliminate gerrymandering once and for all is pass an initiative. Beats me what it would take in your respective states. It wouldn't get rid of the HoR and there are any number of things we could replace geographical districts with; we'd just need to pick one. Non-geographical districts -- on your voter registration card you say which district you want to be in. Proportional representation. Single transferable vote.

The reason there are geographical districts is that in the 18th century it was the state-of-the-art solution to an 18th century communication problem.

 

[barbos]

That isn't a solution, it just got rid of the House of Representatives. What do you propose replaces geographical districts?

One first must answer the question, "Why are there geographical districts?". I suppose they are there to support the Electoral College, no? So what is THAT there for?

There already exists well established geographical boundaries. They are called State lines. Each state already has additional internal lines that distribute the population. They are called Postal (Zip) Codes. Why are these insufficient for whatever the purpose is?

Postmen would be be walking some weird and long routes

 

[lpetrich]

The Constitution does not specify there must be geographical districts that I can see. The manner of electing representatives is left to the states.

I agree with dismal here. There is nothing in the Constitution that mandates single-member districts or first-past-the-post.

There are alternatives to first-past-the-post:

• Runoffs -- used in some states
• Instant Runoff Voting -- preference voting

There are multimember-district alternatives:

• Party-list proportional representation -- each party gets a fraction of seats in proportion to the number of votes it received
• Mixed-member PR -- Single-member districts combined with list seats to make overall proportionality
• Parallel PR -- the list seats are proportional only among themselves.
• Single transferable vote -- like IRV, but not only losers drop out, also winners.

 

[Malintent]

What is the current justification for anything other than a "straight vote"?

If we went by straight population, the candidates would only show interest in the population centers.
If Trump were to promise, say, to lower taxes in the 25 most populous cities (or whatever is the minimum number of cities to reach 51% of the population), and gain voters there, and jack up taxes everywhere else, the disaffected would be powerless to express their discontent or force him to pay them any attention.
Every state would become a fly-over state, except for the biggest cities.

Yes, I have heard that referred to as "tyranny of the majority". What of, "tyranny of the minority", though? also, what mechanism is currently in place that provides for the Federal government to tax one state higher than another? What kind of federal tax can be applied that way?