Gerrymandering by Computer 526
jefu writes "In the latest New Yorker there is an excellent article on redistricting and gerrymandering (more permanent URL). It discusses how recent gerrymandering is being done with the aid of computers. It also discusses how redistricting is polarizing voters and is making many seats in the House of Representatives 'safe seats' which effectively gives incumbents a permanent seat. It is not hard to see how this also tends to leave our 'elected' representatives in a position where voter input is less important to them than things like lobbying." Few articles about gerrymandering really get into how ugly and blatant it is.
Independent electoral commission (Score:5, Interesting)
The Perfect Government? (Score:4, Interesting)
As King Longshanks once said (in Braveheart at least), "The problem with Scotland... is that it's full of Scots!" The problem with U.S. politics is that it's filled with politicians.
In the simplest way, how do we solve this problem (and thus issues with gerrymandering, lobbyists, the inability to elect anyone outside the two party system, etc.)? "Easy"
But wait, I hear you say, that would be rule by "tyranny of the majority."
Here is where my libertarian ideals come in to play. Of course this is all hypothetical, idealistic, unrealistic, and some might say, Unpossible... ahem.
But what if we eliminated this looming threat of tyranny under this truly democratic system? How could this be done? Well think about where tyranny of the majority comes from primarily -- issues related to control of private citizens lives.
Are you allowed to drink alcohol and smoke drugs? Look at porn? Own a weapon to protect your life and property? Practice atheism or a minority religion?
These are examples of issues where the tyranny of the majority could have a negative effect. I think the central thing to all these issues is that they should not be controlled by the government in the first place. If we had an ammendment in the constitution that clarified the constitution, that the federal government shall not make laws that seek to control the behavior of a person not explicitly harming another person, then what is left for the tyranny of the majority to affect?
Then when an issue comes up in front of our tiny, truly democratic government of the citizens of the United States, it's a referendum that we all vote equally on. If there are multiple choices, we use a smart voting style (approval, counting, etc), and not the insane methods used now to pick such unimportant things as our next President.
This is just an idea that has been brewing in my head, can anyone see holes in it and offer constructive criticism?
In the UK (Score:3, Interesting)
What goes around, comes around, unless you can pay enough money to the right people....
Simon
The fair vote initiative (Score:5, Interesting)
You can find the details at Fair Vote 2k2. [westmiller.com]
He's still working on getting it passed into law by the voters in CA. It's tough when it doesn't really benefit the party in power to change the system to make it fair.
Re:Death to Democracy (Score:3, Interesting)
related reading (Score:2, Interesting)
Check out the book "How to Lie with Maps", by Mark Monmonier.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/022
Why yes, I am a geographer...
Gerrymandering not completely evil (Score:2, Interesting)
Solution? An independent commission. The nearer their decisions create equal political fury from both (all) sides, the higher the pay.
It's too bad we can't just register republican... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't register with a party affiliation because I find both parties so distasteful. I think it would be very wise for us independents to figure out for what party our district has been gerrymandered and register in that party, and if we run, run in that party.
It would be cool if the supremes solved this by ruling that all voters have to be able to vote in all primaries.
first derivative (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Perfect Government? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sorry, I didn't try to cover every aspect of the new government in my post.
As a libertarian I don't believe in the federal government collecting taxes for entitlement programs or 95% of what they currently spend taxes on. The government needs money to run the legal system, to jail violent offenders, to run the military capable of protecting our country.
NC 12th district (Score:4, Interesting)
The NC Libertarian Party offered to redraw the districts as a disinterested 3rd party to the process (theirs would have mostly followed county lines), but the Democrats & Republicans would have none of that, and so we have our snake-like boundaries [state.nc.us]. A better view is available in this pdf [state.nc.us] (area in gray).
Chip H.
State Constitutional amendments needed (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe something like this was discussed due to the controversy in Georgia. When the Democrats who controlled the legislature redrew the House districts, they drew them to give Democrats a blatantly unfair advantage. New districts were created that had a slight Democratic majority, while Republican incumbents ran against each other in extremely Republican districts. (Note: Georgia, like much of the South, tends to vote Democrat at a State level, Republican at a National level).
50 State Constitutional amendments like this wouldn't prevent gerrymandering, but it would make it a lot more difficult.
Ratio of area to perimiter (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Districts must be contiguous.
2) No party registration data may be used while assigning districts.
3) Districts must encompass areas equivalent in population within 0.X%.
4) Districts must have a ratio of perimeter to area of no more than Y.
5) Redistricting may not move the geographical center of any district by more than Z miles per census cycle.
We'd need to do a little study to find apprpriate values for X, Y, and Z, of course. But does it really need to be any harder than this? It is about fairness of representation... right?
Re:Gerrymandering is a tradition (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me just throw out a quick observation. The fact that gerrymandering leads to "safe" districts means that more ideologically extreme candidates are viable -- a solidly democratic district is more likely to vote for an extreme liberal and a solidly republican district is more likely to vote for an extreme conservative. This leads to ideological gridlock -- We fill our legislatures with members less wiling to compromise on issues and the swings from left to right and back again grow sharper and sharper. Not really representative of the people's will. And not exactly a formula for long-term stability. THAT would be one potential objection. This really is a problem once you think about it.
Counties? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Ugly (Score:2, Interesting)
How exactly is a redistricting policy that can effectively nullify my vote in my best interest? It say it isn't.
Those in power want one thing...more power. The interests of the people are secondary.
Computer redistricting (Score:3, Interesting)
1) all districts must have X (X is state population/#districts) voters, +-5% (or some number, this rule actually already is used).
2) Divide the state into 1 mile by 1 mile squares, each district consists of neighboring squares, and the total boundary between all the districts must be as short as possible while fulfilling 1.
You'd probably end up with a bunch of basically square or circular districts.
Re:Racial Gerrymandering (Score:2, Interesting)
Exactly! You have the Dems using those requirements (and the other socio-economic factors you mention) to insure an increase in the Dem headcount, plus you have the Repubs using that same logic to cluster their vote.
Both sides should be happy right? 8-)
Fixable, thought not easy (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, that's now backwards and the Senate represents the country better thanks to these stupid redistricting plans. In the last general election, less than 30 of the 530 seats changed (IIRC), but no matter what the number was it was pathetic compared to the way it used to be. Many seats were unopposed. Districts since the last census have been drawn largly like this: the Democrats negotiated so that their candidates got strong "safe" districts with little to no opposition. In exchange, the Republicans got everything else, so congress won't change much untill after the 2010 census.
OK, so how do we fix this? The answer is to take the political parties out of it. Somewhere (Iowa?) a amendment or some such was passed so that when redistricting, the commite can only look at city boundries, population, voter turn out, and other such things to try to make the districts fair, they were NOT allowed to take political party registration and such into account. The result? In the last election almost every seat in that state was well contested and so the citizens there had a good democratic election working for them, while those of us in most of the country basically get force fed some candidate (who may be great, but may be terrible). What we need is to pass laws like this all over the country, so that none of these shenanigans go on.
As we all know the current process works REALLY well. Let's take Texas for example. In Texas, the Democrats didn't like the Republican redistricting (which from what I've heard was unfair, and I'm a Republican, FYI) so they FLED THE STATE just to keep it from getting passed. TWICE. If we fix this process, there would be nothing for them to complain about, because things would be fair (or at least many MANY times closer to fair than they are now).
Please, let's pass some reform!
Re:The Perfect Government? (Score:2, Interesting)
I wholeheartedly agree. I happened to land on C-SPAN while channel surfing in the early morning a few weeks ago when the British Parliament was having some kind of open debate where the representatives (?) all got to stand up and ask the Prime Minister some shockingly direct questions and demand answers. It was totally fucking amazing!
I must say that Mr. Blair is very quick, and was able to respond to everything with answers and logic that was actually relevant to the question... we don't get a lot of that here in the US.
The whole time I kept thinking "Shit, how come we don't have this in the US?!"
It just seems to me looking in from the outside that your political system is one big tv show. Every bill we hear about is the Grady bill or the Patriot Act or some other catchy name. Every politician has some stupid sound byte on tv and then a talking head tells you what to think. I don't know it just seems so plastic compared to our system.
Plastic is very descriptive of the soundbytes and fakeness of today's US politics. It seems that throughout history the nations that get too corrupt find some way to end up in a revolution, or are conquered, or something... I don't see that happening anytime soon here, but it is interesting to think about where this type of corrupt politics is taking our nation...
Gerrymandering Number (Score:1, Interesting)
Have a go yourself (Score:2, Interesting)
As a toy to demonstrate how badly you can change the outcome of an election, I wrote a toy demo a few years ago which still seems to be up and running - you can try it out here [leeds.ac.uk] It only implements simple population-based measures, but it does get the point over.
Re:Ugly (Score:2, Interesting)
Literally, Rule by the PEOPLE, not elected representatives at all. So technically, we don't have a democracy at all, but a REPUBLIC...
In the Ancient Anthenian democracy, all CITIZENS had an actual SAY in making up the laws of the city-state: however, slaves, peasants, women and resident aliens were NOT citizens... anyway this body of citizens was not terribly large, so in fact, they could actually more-or-less MEET and discuss what they wanted for the rule of law, collectively, and by concensus, "rule themselves".
Town Meetings are really the only vestage of this original democracy left in the US.
Plato, in the 4th century BC suggested that the ideal number of citizens is 5040 adult males.
Obviously, things are different in a country with 200+ million "citizens..." so the ancient model needs to be modernized, in some way.
We still, IMO, don't have anything approaching an ideal system, however, given what technology we have available, we certianly could do better than a few hundred neo-aristocratic Congresspeople.
Re:Independent electoral commission (Score:1, Interesting)
British voters are just as apathetic as our much-derided American cousins.it takes a fascist obscenity like Thatcher's Poll Tax to get the British off their arses, and I doubt even that would do it now.
Quite apart from which, what the hell good would it do? Hundreds of thousands protested against the involvement of UK troops in the ultimately pointless invasion of Iraq, and did the government pay any heed? Fuck no.
The notion that the Electoral Commission is free from party pressure is pure shite. I for one do not recall having been invited to vote for any of them. Their presence on the commission, or lack thereof, is not dependent on the mandate of the people in the slightest.Do you really think that advancement in the civil service ignores personal politics?
Much like the House of Lords, they are about as democratic as the College of Cardinals..
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that DeLay has just opened up the game so that it is a continuous process. So instead of having the boundaries fixed at ten year intervals each party will commence redistricting as soon as they take over a statehouse.
I don't think that the idea of fair elections should be a partisan one. If Republicans thought about what could happen when the boot is on the other foot they might realize this as well. With the house, senate decided by tiny majorities and the whitehouse decided on a minority of the popular vote and a lawsuit the GOP can hardly claim a strong hold on power. They could easily find that they have lost everything they now have in 12 months time.
The problem has been with electoral tactics designed to shrink the electorate. Going negative as it is called. The idea of attack ads is not to get your people out to vote, its to keep the other side at home.
Re:Remnants of the Monarchy (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, and civil servants today, everywhere in the world, unless they're 'biased' in favor of one political party or the other, are beholden to the strong 'mother state' concept. They're DEFINITELY not going to support any anti-establishment political movement that seeks to roll back the power of the state (the avowed claim that many small-c conservatives espouse in the US).
Re:Independent electoral commission (Score:1, Interesting)
Impossible to do fairly. In my example above, the "fair" representation of that city would be 1 conservative representative and 4 liberal representatives. Any division that produces results other than that does not accurately represent the people.
You have to base your districts off of something. If population density is your only concern, then do you expand the district to the north or to the south or east or west to reach 100,000? Even if you are completely arbitrary about it, chances are you will piss somebody off.
It sounds like you don't even know the process that your government uses to draw districts. I would bet that a hell of a lot more debate and strategy is involved in their decision than you know. Either that or you canadians really are as simple minded as we think...
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't know what you are referring to here... the census redrawing or the more recent Republican redrawing?
That is not the result of gerrymandering, it is the result of incumbency. Texas has been Democratic for decades
So it is ok to gerrymander as long as it is done by Democrats? Did you ever consider that the Democrats was democratic for so long BECAUSE of gerrymandering? The state as a whole certainly does not reflect the current districting. This is fact, and the Supreme Court has previously ruled that this type of gerrymandering is illegal.
Wrong. (Score:3, Interesting)
No, where did you get that idea? The court created the current district map (essentially a continuation of the previous map) because the legislature was deadlocked and couldn't didn't come up with one. You really might consider finding less biased sources. I'd suggest looking at regional papers - they are occasionally biased but are less likely to get the story so wrong as partisan opinion journals or even national papers.
That is not the result of gerrymandering, it is the result of incumbency. Texas has been Democratic for decades.
Wrong again, In the 1990 redistricting the Democrats who still had the majority in the state house but were seeing the state as a whole trending Republican. So they gerrymandered the districts to give them 70% of the house seats with only 50% of the popular vote, and most recently The only incumbency that helped them was the imcumbent Democratic state legislators doing the redistricting (with the aid of a computer program, I might add). When the state was solidly (conservative) Democrat such aggressive gerrymandering wasn't necessary, they resorted to it as the populace became increasingly Republican.
DeLay and cronies are upset that voters do not want to trade their existing democrats in for republicans to do his bidding.
Actually the voters DID vote to trade democrats for republicans - as I said 57% of the vote went Republican. It's just that the majority sentiment was packed into a small number of overwhelmingly Republican districts while the minority sentiment was spread out the get relatively thin majorities among all the rest. The result, despite losing the congressional vote by a margin that would usually be considered a landslide (14% points down!) the Democrats got MORE of the seats (17 out of 32). That is a gerrymander no matter how you justify it.
Given the corrupt way the bill was forced through - changing the rules to fit the deed there is no moral reason the courts should defer to the legislature on this one.
Exactly what "rules" have been changed? The "rules" say that the STATE not the federal courts has the responsibility to draw electoral lines. If the courts invalidate such lines for some good cause (such as a deadlocked legislature that can't get it done on time) that does not change the RULE that it is the states responsibility. Lines drawn by courts have been redrawn by state legislatures on off years in the past (in California in 1984 for example). Court drawn lines have often changed *multiple* times over the course of a decade. It's hard to see how a body given only general oversight responsibilities (the federal courts) can have complete freedom to redraw districts as it will multiple times while the body EXPLICITY given that responsiblity has it completely taken out of their hands.
The courts should only step in when something goes very clearly wrong. Even when it does when the proper constitutionally mandated body comes back and does it's job right the court should defer to that proper body rather than usurp responsibilities given to others.
As far as I can see the only "rule" changed was the rule that Republican voters should be obligated to send Democratic politicians to Washington. I can understand why Democrats liked that "rule" but I don't think it should stand up in court.