5 ms·

I'd heard the term before but never looked into it – it was useful to have something to prompt me (partially because this article doesn't even mention what it i

by aidos 11y ago

I'd heard the term before but never looked into it – it was useful to have something to prompt me (partially because this article doesn't even mention what it is). It's when the government manipulates electorates to increase their chances of being re-elected. As someone in the UK this is something I've wondered about a lot over the last year. If you don't follow UK politics, we have a government that was elected with 51% of the seats on 36.9% of the votes. I found this article which explains some of the mechanisms used to manipulate the outcome of these elections. https://medium.com/@georgetaitedwards/is-britain-now-too-gerrymandered-to-be-a-genuine-democracy-fe2fcbd95d14 https://medium.com/@georgetaitedwards/is-britain-now-too-ger...

Siecje 11y ago
Here is a short CGP Grey video on Gerrymandering https://youtu.be/Mky11UJb9AY https://youtu.be/Mky11UJb9AY
- aidos 11y ago
  Good video. Thanks!
- narcissus 11y ago
  The entire "Politics in the Animal Kingdom" series is great, I think... http://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom/ http://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom/
notahacker 11y ago
UK election outcomes have nothing to do with gerrymandering and everything to do with being a multi-party democracy using a FPTP electoral system, which tends to boost the representation of leading parties at the expense of smaller parties. Indeed, you'd actually need gerrymandering for such a system to have any hope of returning seats broadly in proportion to vote share. (the conspiracy theory about disenfranchisement advanced by the blog article is orthogonal to the tendency of the FPTP electoral system to distort shares of actual votes. It's also a little difficult to take seriously an argument which suggests that a short-lived poll tax abolished in 1991 would be a significant factor in the 2015 election. Especially when the party that enacted it spent 13 of the intervening years out of power, with the electoral system and distribution of voters heavily favouring their rivals at the time. The article is equally ludicrous in suggesting Labour would be disadvantaged by a fraction of voters in strongly Labour-supporting boroughs being under financial pressure to relocate)
- bonzini 11y ago
  > UK election outcomes have nothing to do with gerrymandering and everything to do with > being a multi-party democracy using a FPTP electoral system, which tends to boost > the representation of leading parties at the expense of smaller parties. More precisely, FPTP tends to boost the representation of leading national _and local_ parties (the latter being best exemplified by the SNP) at the expense of smaller national parties. Small local parties are usually toast anyway even in proportional systems due to thresholds. During the 2015 elections the system worked exactly as designed, by favoring parties that are strong in one or more nations of the UK at the expense of parties that are a bit meh in all of them.
  - aidos 11y ago
    FPTP is heavily biased though - you end up in a situation where there's little point voting the way you want, because it won't be effective. Take the Greens, 3.8% of the vote with 0.15% of the final representation. And I bet that 3.8% would actually have been higher if people had felt like they wouldn't be throwing away their vote. I understand your sentiment, but I think "bit meh" is maybe a little uncharitable. Half of my voting life has been in NZ (mixed member proportional) and the other half in the UK (FPTP) – so I have a reasonable understanding of the drawbacks of the systems.
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      "you end up in a situation where there's little point voting the way you want, because it won't be effective." How much of that situation is due precisely to that mindset? It seems like circular logic to me. 10 Why not vote for the guy you want to win? 20 Because he won't get enough votes 30 Why won't he get enough votes? 40 Because not enough people will vote for him. 50 So why don't more people vote for him? 60 goto 20 FPTP is arguably broken, but people engaging in "tactical voting" isn't helping matters. You're supposed to vote for who you want to win, period.
      - username223 11y ago
arethuza 11y ago
I've seem a number of comments about that 36.9% - I had a quick look and it is actually higher than the Labour win in 2005 (35.2%) which had a lower turnout as well. http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/uktable.htm http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/uktable.htm [I'm not a Labour, Conservative or LibDem supporter so I have no particular axe to grind here].
mason240 11y ago
One thing to keep in mind is that this is a manufactured issue used by people who refuse to accept election results they don't like, and they use to it delegitimize the outcome. You'll find that the same people who go on about it are the same people who think George W Bush stole the 2000 election.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  My experience is that people go on about it all across the spectrum, including lots of people who not only don't think George W. Bush did steal the 2000 election, but who would have thought it was a good and justified thing if he had. Gerrymandering is a real issue and a real thing that really effects election results, and, simultaneously, an effective distraction from the more serious problem of representation caused by FPTP in single-member districts. So, not only is it a popular target of the disaffected, its something the disaffected are redirected to vent their anger at by both sides of the partisan duopoly in different times and places, because while it is a real thing, none of the methods used to attack it fundamentally change the structures reinforcing the partisan duopoly, and in any given condition certain of the methods for fighting it will reinforce the position of one side or the other of that duopoly against the other within the basic duopoly-reinforcing structure.

by aidos 11y ago

Siecje 11y ago

Here is a short CGP Grey video on Gerrymandering https://youtu.be/Mky11UJb9AY https://youtu.be/Mky11UJb9AY

aidos 11y ago
Good video. Thanks!
narcissus 11y ago
The entire "Politics in the Animal Kingdom" series is great, I think... http://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom/ http://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom/

notahacker 11y ago

UK election outcomes have nothing to do with gerrymandering and everything to do with being a multi-party democracy using a FPTP electoral system, which tends to boost the representation of leading parties at the expense of smaller parties. Indeed, you'd actually need gerrymandering for such a system to have any hope of returning seats broadly in proportion to vote share. (the conspiracy theory about disenfranchisement advanced by the blog article is orthogonal to the tendency of the FPTP electoral system to distort shares of actual votes. It's also a little difficult to take seriously an argument which suggests that a short-lived poll tax abolished in 1991 would be a significant factor in the 2015 election. Especially when the party that enacted it spent 13 of the intervening years out of power, with the electoral system and distribution of voters heavily favouring their rivals at the time. The article is equally ludicrous in suggesting Labour would be disadvantaged by a fraction of voters in strongly Labour-supporting boroughs being under financial pressure to relocate)

bonzini 11y ago
> UK election outcomes have nothing to do with gerrymandering and everything to do with > being a multi-party democracy using a FPTP electoral system, which tends to boost > the representation of leading parties at the expense of smaller parties. More precisely, FPTP tends to boost the representation of leading national _and local_ parties (the latter being best exemplified by the SNP) at the expense of smaller national parties. Small local parties are usually toast anyway even in proportional systems due to thresholds. During the 2015 elections the system worked exactly as designed, by favoring parties that are strong in one or more nations of the UK at the expense of parties that are a bit meh in all of them.
- aidos 11y ago
  FPTP is heavily biased though - you end up in a situation where there's little point voting the way you want, because it won't be effective. Take the Greens, 3.8% of the vote with 0.15% of the final representation. And I bet that 3.8% would actually have been higher if people had felt like they wouldn't be throwing away their vote. I understand your sentiment, but I think "bit meh" is maybe a little uncharitable. Half of my voting life has been in NZ (mixed member proportional) and the other half in the UK (FPTP) – so I have a reasonable understanding of the drawbacks of the systems.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    "you end up in a situation where there's little point voting the way you want, because it won't be effective." How much of that situation is due precisely to that mindset? It seems like circular logic to me. 10 Why not vote for the guy you want to win? 20 Because he won't get enough votes 30 Why won't he get enough votes? 40 Because not enough people will vote for him. 50 So why don't more people vote for him? 60 goto 20 FPTP is arguably broken, but people engaging in "tactical voting" isn't helping matters. You're supposed to vote for who you want to win, period.
    - username223 11y ago

arethuza 11y ago

I've seem a number of comments about that 36.9% - I had a quick look and it is actually higher than the Labour win in 2005 (35.2%) which had a lower turnout as well. http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/uktable.htm http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/uktable.htm [I'm not a Labour, Conservative or LibDem supporter so I have no particular axe to grind here].

mason240 11y ago

One thing to keep in mind is that this is a manufactured issue used by people who refuse to accept election results they don't like, and they use to it delegitimize the outcome. You'll find that the same people who go on about it are the same people who think George W Bush stole the 2000 election.

dragonwriter 11y ago
My experience is that people go on about it all across the spectrum, including lots of people who not only don't think George W. Bush did steal the 2000 election, but who would have thought it was a good and justified thing if he had. Gerrymandering is a real issue and a real thing that really effects election results, and, simultaneously, an effective distraction from the more serious problem of representation caused by FPTP in single-member districts. So, not only is it a popular target of the disaffected, its something the disaffected are redirected to vent their anger at by both sides of the partisan duopoly in different times and places, because while it is a real thing, none of the methods used to attack it fundamentally change the structures reinforcing the partisan duopoly, and in any given condition certain of the methods for fighting it will reinforce the position of one side or the other of that duopoly against the other within the basic duopoly-reinforcing structure.