Gerrymandering, mathematically explained

[lpetrich]

Why Republicans May Come To Regret The Gerrymandering Lawsuit They Took To The Supreme Court | ThinkProgress

It is not at all clear how the Supreme Court will decide Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, a lawsuit brought by the state’s GOP-controlled legislature which challenges an independent commission in Arizona that draws the state’s congressional maps.

The case hinges upon the proper meaning of a provision of the Constitution which provides that “[t]he times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the Legislature thereof.” The state legislature, represented by Republican former Solicitor General Paul Clement, claims that the word “Legislature” refers exclusively to a state’s legislative body. The commission, represented by Democratic former Solicitor General Seth Waxman, claims that this word refers more broadly to “the power that makes the laws.”

This sort of hairsplitting I find most annoying. It's a pity that it isn't easier to amend the US Constitution.

The most interesting question, however, came from Kennedy: what about voter ID ballot initiatives and other voter-enacted laws which bypassed the legislature entirely to change a state’s election law? If the Constitution reserves the power to set the “times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives” to elected lawmakers, then initiatives such as Mississippi’s voter ID amendment are unconstitutional.

The TP article concludes:

Should Clement prevail, however, it could be a Pyrrhic victory for the Republican Party. They may win the right to gerrymander Arizona’s congressional districts, only to lose voter ID laws and similar efforts at voter suppression enacted via initiative.

Something that they'd likely yell bloody murder about. Movement conservatives are very sore losers.

Five Reasons Why This Case to End Gerrymandering Is Important | BillMoyers.com

1. Redistricting is required, but hacking democracy is not. ...
2. Politicians are choosing voters rather than the other way around. ...
3. Gerrymandering Rewards Extremism. ...
4. Outcomes Don’t Match Votes. ...
5. Legislators Just Can’t Help Themselves. ...

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Let's take Massachusetts 2014. The Democrats won all 9 house seats. Some of the house races were uncontested, but Markey won his senate seat 62-38 while winning a majority in all 9 congressional districts.

http://www.politico.com/2014-election/results/map/senate/massachusetts/#.VPYDiZ3naUk

Assuming the 38% is representative of the Republican share of the vote, is the progressive view (and the Higgins et al argument) that Massachusetts should if necessary draw up spaghetti districts that give the Republicans 3 or 4 of those house seats?

Massachusetts is a supposed to be a progressive state so they really ought to get after that.

Seems like proportional representation would be a MUCH better solution. Everybody gets represented in proportion to their numbers. No worry about how to draw single-member districts to accommodate them.

Proportional representation is widely used in countries that score high on human development (UN:  List of countries by Human Development Index,  List of countries by inequality-adjusted HDI) and democracy (The Economist magazine:  Democracy Index) and low as fragile states (The Fund for Peace). Furthermore, it is often adopted in constitutional reforms over the last century or so ( Table of voting systems by country).

So what's not to like about it? Is it un-American?

dismal just wants to accept the status quo as long as it helps their party, of which they never vote for.

In 2008 Democrats won 51% of the vote and won 10 of 18 seats. In 2010 Republicans won 50% of the vote and took 12 of the 16 seats. This is why dismal brings up Massachusetts, a predominantly Democrat state, because he can't actually address the blatantly messed up districting in Ohio, which has noncontingous districts, spaghetti, and snaking districts. Ohio is a purple state with abnormally higher Democrat registration in rural areas. So when the Dems won 51% of the vote and 10 of 18 seats, no one is left wondering how that happened. The results seemed quite in line with the state that elected Obama twice. Of course, if anyone dares to question how the Republicans can then take in less votes, but better than a supermajority of the seats two years later... dismal has to shift goalposts.

 

[dismal]

Seems like proportional representation would be a MUCH better solution. Everybody gets represented in proportion to their numbers. No worry about how to draw single-member districts to accommodate them.

Proportional representation is widely used in countries that score high on human development (UN:  List of countries by Human Development Index,  List of countries by inequality-adjusted HDI) and democracy (The Economist magazine:  Democracy Index) and low as fragile states (The Fund for Peace). Furthermore, it is often adopted in constitutional reforms over the last century or so ( Table of voting systems by country).

So what's not to like about it? Is it un-American?

dismal just wants to accept the status quo as long as it helps their party, of which they never vote for.

In 2008 Democrats won 51% of the vote and won 10 of 18 seats. In 2010 Republicans won 50% of the vote and took 12 of the 16 seats. This is why dismal brings up Massachusetts, a predominantly Democrat state, because he can't actually address the blatantly messed up districting in Ohio, which has noncontingous districts, spaghetti, and snaking districts. Ohio is a purple state with abnormally higher Democrat registration in rural areas. So when the Dems won 51% of the vote and 10 of 18 seats, no one is left wondering how that happened. The results seemed quite in line with the state that elected Obama twice. Of course, if anyone dares to question how the Republicans can then take in less votes, but better than a supermajority of the seats two years later... dismal has to shift goalposts.

It's not a "goal post move". Massachusetts is an actual state with actual elections.

If you have principles the principles you claim you have, surely you would apply them to Massachusetts instead of objecting when people bring it up?

 

[Bomb#20]

Now, let's say we need to divide this state into five districts.

No, let's not. Why do we need to do this? Who is it that allegedly has a need for each voter to be "represented" in the legislature by the same person who represents his neighbor? When a person and his neighbor disagree about just about everything, how is it possible for a single legislator to do a good job representing both of them? What is so all-fired important about a guy's bloody street address that makes that a suitable criterion for de facto completely disenfranchising him by insisting that he be "represented" by a person who is in point of fact employed to represent not him but his neighbors?

As you can see, it's easy to cirticize it, but hard to resolve. The author's idea seems promising, nevertheless.

The easiest way to solve this issue, of course, would be to take the redistricting process out of human hands entirely. There is already software capable of doing just that -- good luck getting any politicians to agree to it, though.

No, it's easy to resolve; but even the most ingenious redistricting software would at best only alleviate the symptoms slightly.

A better solution is to get away from single member district type of elections in the first place.

Bingo. That's the easiest way. The possibility of unfair district boundaries is a completely artificial problem from the get-go.

Seems like proportional representation would be a MUCH better solution. Everybody gets represented in proportion to their numbers. No worry about how to draw single-member districts to accommodate them.

That's one workable solution. Another solution, easier in the U.S. context, would be to make "districts" non-geographical. Simply number them from 1 to N for the legislature size and let voters self-select which other voters they wish to be lumped together with when being represented by the same person.

So what's not to like about it? Is it un-American?

Yes; but that's no objection. A bigger problem is that it gives fair representation only to one distinction among voters: party preference. There are within-party differences of views that tend to get bulldozed, with dissidents' views going unrepresented. Doing proportional representation Finland-style, without the party lists arranged in ideological and/or loyalty order by the party bosses, is a good start.

 

[Axulus]

How about the following proposal:

The representative's weight in congress is based on the number of votes they received.

Each state has a primary. The top X vote receivers move on to the general election. They all get a seat in congress, and the power of their vote is based on the total number of votes cast for them. X could be the total number of representatives currently delegated to a state, but it doesn't have to be.

California currently gets 53 representatives. Therefore, you could have it so that the top 53 in the primary move on to the general election. Each of these 53 gets a seat in the House. However, when they vote on a bill or a motion, each of their votes is weighted by the total number of votes they received in the general election. Anyone in the state can vote for any of these 53 individuals. If 53 is too many, it can certainly be reduced. These individuals are free to concentrate on certain areas in the state if they like to get more votes in those areas.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

How about the following proposal:

The representative's weight in congress is based on the number of votes they received.

Each state has a primary. The top X vote receivers move on to the general election. They all get a seat in congress, and the power of their vote is based on the total number of votes cast for them. X could be the total number of representatives currently delegated to a state, but it doesn't have to be.

California currently gets 53 representatives. Therefore, you could have it so that the top 53 in the primary move on to the general election. Each of these 53 gets a seat in the House. However, when they vote on a bill or a motion, each of their votes is weighted by the total number of votes they received in the general election. Anyone in the state can vote for any of these 53 individuals. If 53 is too many, it can certainly be reduced. These individuals are free to concentrate on certain areas in the state if they like to get more votes in those areas.

That doesn't make much sense in today's political climate. You could likely just drop it down to one rep per state and have the same ultimate result and multiply their vote by their EC value minus 2.

 

[Axulus]

How about the following proposal:

The representative's weight in congress is based on the number of votes they received.

Each state has a primary. The top X vote receivers move on to the general election. They all get a seat in congress, and the power of their vote is based on the total number of votes cast for them. X could be the total number of representatives currently delegated to a state, but it doesn't have to be.

California currently gets 53 representatives. Therefore, you could have it so that the top 53 in the primary move on to the general election. Each of these 53 gets a seat in the House. However, when they vote on a bill or a motion, each of their votes is weighted by the total number of votes they received in the general election. Anyone in the state can vote for any of these 53 individuals. If 53 is too many, it can certainly be reduced. These individuals are free to concentrate on certain areas in the state if they like to get more votes in those areas.

That doesn't make much sense in today's political climate. You could likely just drop it down to one rep per state and have the same ultimate result and multiply their vote by their EC value minus 2.

How would you be able to drop it down to one rep per state and get a similar result? Having more reps allows for minority political viewpoints to have representation in congress.

 

[dismal]

My read of the US Constitution would suggest that each state has some flexibility in how it elects representatives but changing the number of representatives and the number of votes they have would require a constitutional amendment.

 

[Axulus]

My read of the US Constitution would suggest that each state has some flexibility in how it elects representatives but changing the number of representatives and the number of votes they have would require a constitutional amendment.

Yep, my suggestion isn't a realistic possibility - just food for thought.

 

[dismal]

My read of the US Constitution would suggest that each state has some flexibility in how it elects representatives but changing the number of representatives and the number of votes they have would require a constitutional amendment.

Yep, my suggestion isn't a realistic possibility - just food for thought.

I'm not sure getting the Democrats in Massachusetts to vote for a system that brings in fewer Democrats is particularly realistic either.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

That doesn't make much sense in today's political climate. You could likely just drop it down to one rep per state and have the same ultimate result and multiply their vote by their EC value minus 2.

How would you be able to drop it down to one rep per state and get a similar result? Having more reps allows for minority political viewpoints to have representation in congress.

How exactly? If the Democrat voter is outnumbering the Republican voter, the Democrats will win each seat on a straight party ticket. The only thing that might happen is a wider spectrum within the liberal viewpoint.

 

[Axulus]

How would you be able to drop it down to one rep per state and get a similar result? Having more reps allows for minority political viewpoints to have representation in congress.

How exactly? If the Democrat voter is outnumbering the Republican voter, the Democrats will win each seat on a straight party ticket. The only thing that might happen is a wider spectrum within the liberal viewpoint.

I don't think you understand.

In the primary election, you could have any number of people running from any party. Let's say that the state gets 10 seats in the House. The top 10 vote receivers in the primary election get a seat. Anyone who votes in the primary can select any eligible person running to move on to the general election. There is no reason to believe that these 10 individuals will ever be from the same party, unless 90%+ of the state is one party or something like that.

Then, in the general election, each voter in the state casts their vote for one of these 10 that they think best represents them, which then determines each of these 10's weighted power in the House.

 

[Tigers!]

The point is that if you have a neutral algorithm that produces compact districts with no attempt to skew districting in a partisan way it can still produce disprportionate representation due to the way population is distributed.

No it cannot, since the whole point of the algorithm is to produce districts with roughly the same population. Districts with higher population densities would automatically be smaller geographically than districts with lower densities.

There's no need to gerrymander at all. Just accept that each district will have X number of people, with X being a portion of the state's overall population. Equal representation, problem solved.

I am surprised that it took only 38 posts for someone to point out the bleeding obvious.
That is the system we follow in Australia.

On 2nd thoughts I am not surprised. The US is full of clever people but when it comes to a simple, consistent voting system you people have no idea.

 

[dismal]

No it cannot, since the whole point of the algorithm is to produce districts with roughly the same population. Districts with higher population densities would automatically be smaller geographically than districts with lower densities.

There's no need to gerrymander at all. Just accept that each district will have X number of people, with X being a portion of the state's overall population. Equal representation, problem solved.

I am surprised that it took only 38 posts for someone to point out the bleeding obvious.
That is the system we follow in Australia.

On 2nd thoughts I am not surprised. The US is full of clever people but when it comes to a simple, consistent voting system you people have no idea.

We have a system with districts of equal population and different areas now. At least within each state.

So it's not particularly surprising it went 38 posts before someone suggested this "fix".

The problem here is the infinite possible ways a districts with equal population can be drawn within a state and most states do it through a political process in which political parties seek advantage.

 

[lpetrich]

There's no need to gerrymander at all. Just accept that each district will have X number of people, with X being a portion of the state's overall population. Equal representation, problem solved.

Crazy Eddie, why don't you review the OP's diagrams? Those are divisions of a population into equal-sized districts. So equal size does not preclude gerrymandering into grotesque shapes and grotesque disproportion.

 

[Jayjay]

There's no need to gerrymander at all. Just accept that each district will have X number of people, with X being a portion of the state's overall population. Equal representation, problem solved.

Crazy Eddie, why don't you review the OP's diagrams? Those are divisions of a population into equal-sized districts. So equal size does not preclude gerrymandering into grotesque shapes and grotesque disproportion.

I think that we might have a case where Crazy Eddie misunderstood Derec's post, which was then further misunderstood by Tigers and now you and dismal in a different way. It's an enigma wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a conundrum.

(Thogh I gotta admit that if you hadn't pointed it out I would have made the same interpretation as Tigers.)