6 ms·

Let Math Save Our Democracy

45 points by coloneltcb 11y ago

nickff 11y ago
It seems that this analysis disregards important aspects of the electoral system in favor of simplified red vs blue partisan thinking. This article is based on the unspoken assumption that allocating the right number of seats to Democrats, and the right number to Republicans is the goal of the voting system. If this is the objective of congressional voting, it should be a party popularity contest at the state level for congressmen and senators, with a national popularity contest for the presidency; and all of these should be run through telephone, mail, or internet polls (which are cheaper and sufficiently accurate) to save money and voters' time. I do not agree with this premise, as it assumes that the two-party dynamic is either unavoidable or desirable, and that the only thing that matters about elected representatives is their party affiliation. The proposed measures could greatly damage the importance of third party candidates (because they are not taken into account), greatly impact the importance and dynamics of primaries (because they are not regarded with the respect which is given to elections), and impact non-partisan issues which the representatives often act on.
- sidarape 11y ago
  The US has a strange concept of democracy sometimes.
cryoshon 11y ago
I've come to expect this kind of painfully unhelpful commentary from the rag that is the NYT. On par with their myopic mainstream-ism, this article's purpose is to confuse and pacify readers with a narrative that states we can continue on our current government's course, if only we were to allow for a minor change of our political system's vote-counting partitions. We cannot save or rekindle democracy with such pathetic incremental changes, nor are "we" as citizens empowered to make such changes anyway-- purge this article's idiotic train of thought. To be explicit: changing who gets elected via more neutral partitioning won't change a single thing, because the titanic problems of American "democracy" (in realistic terms, oligarchy or perhaps autocracy) occur post-election outcome, and occur regardless of whether it is Democrats or Republicans who win. Redistricting won't save democracy; at best, algorithmic or "mathematical" (a fool's term for neutral and objective) redistricting will allow for the voters to pick candidates that are proportionally and geographically anchored to their districts. Geographical picking of representatives isn't broken beyond repair within the political system, nor is the physical counting of votes to determine which representatives win, though the electronic voting systems leave the latter terrifyingly unverifiable and unquestionably anti-democratic. The slaughter of democracy in our time is an intentionally engineered result of post-election corruption as effected by bribes of lobbyists, raping the power of the vote in the name of capital flow to those that are already morbidly obese with riches. You cannot have democracy when money is allowed to have a coercive power that eclipses any feasible democratic comeuppance. Let the banishment of money from the election component of political activity exist as an iron law in any new democracy which is established. That would be the start of having a fighting chance for democracy, which America has long since discarded.
- visarga 11y ago
  Maybe a redistributing tax on inheritance would reduce the influence of the top 1%, but as long as they become even richer, there is little chance to have democracy.
- dnautics 11y ago
  "Let the banishment of money from the election component of political activity exist as an iron law in any new democracy which is established." I think this is incredibly short sighted. Money is a means to access a political voice for the dispossessed as much as the wealthy. What will happen without money is that policy will be crafted by and for solely the politically privileged. Backroom deals and dark access will be even more important than otherwise. A tighter, more difficult to disrupt oligarchy will emerge. I doubt this is what you would want.
  - cryoshon 11y ago
    Currently, money equals political voice, and the rich are the ones running the show because they have an overwhelming amount of money. Money is not rallied in sufficient quantities (millions to billions) by anyone other than the rich. Political privilege means access to cash flow from the people who tell you how to vote if you want re-election support. Ripping this system out by the root and replacing it with public election funding and no ability to receive bribes is precisely what I want.
    - timtas 11y ago
      By "rich" I assume you mean the teachers unions. [1] So long as the state appropriates and controls a vast share of resources all the people will vie for a share of it. They will find innumerable innovations. Those who have the means (money and influence) on their own always find a way in. So many of those of lesser means find ways to band to together to push themselves up to the trough. This leaky boat cannot be made seaworthy. [2] "Public election funding" is another way to say, "Let's give the current incumbents monopoly control of the financing of elections." You can bet that whatever initial formulas they devise for distributing this cash (which confers the power to decide elections) while everyone is watching will be creatively "improved" soon after the public has shifted is gaze. Even when the initial formulas are evenhanded, we see unintended consequences. [3] [1] http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php [2] https://mises.org/library/politics-cannot-be-fixed https://mises.org/library/politics-cannot-be-fixed [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/01/15/how-public-funding-of-elections-makes-politics-even-more-polarized/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/01/...
thaumasiotes 11y ago
There's a funny contradiction in the setup of this piece. It starts off like this: > PARTISAN gerrymandering is an offense to democracy. It creates districts that are skewed and uncompetitive, denying voters the ability to elect representatives who fairly reflect their views. But the issue they're talking about is actually the opposite of this! Further down: > Partisan redistricters stuff voters of the opposing party into a smaller number of districts, while spreading their own voters over a larger number of districts to eke out as many bare wins as possible. It is possible for a party to win more than half of the popular vote in a state, yet control fewer than one-third of the legislative seats. This is not a theoretical problem: Precisely such a thing happened in 2012 with the congressional delegations of Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The charge here is that the party controlling districting wants to make it as easy as possible for voters in the enemy party to elect the representative of their choice, by taking away all of their opposition. At the same time, the controlling party is trying to make the districts it wins as competitive as possible (while staying above 50%). Any votes you earn above the 50% threshold would be put to better use in some other district. Now, the strategical analysis is perfectly sound and this is a reasonable complaint to make. I just think it's funny that the rhetoric of the piece is actually opposed to the policy complaints.
- jedharris 11y ago
  I think I understand your point but actually the two statements are consistent. Your phrase "competitive as possible" is wrong or at best very misleading. If a district intended to be a "bare win" actually turns out to be competitive then the restricting process has gone wrong from the point of view of the controlling party. The goal of gerrymandering, often achieved in practice, is to disenfranchise as many voters of the other parties as possible -- to ensure that their vote has no effect on the outcome of the election. So the first statement you quote is accurate. The second statement you quote just explains how this can be done.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    > The goal of gerrymandering, often achieved in practice, is to disenfranchise as many voters of the other parties as possible -- to ensure that their vote has no effect on the outcome of the election. So the first statement you quote is accurate. Packing all the democrats into a single district could be described this way; most of the votes in such a district will be wasted democratic votes. But that opening statement was > [Gerrymandering] creates districts that are skewed and uncompetitive, denying voters the ability to elect representatives who fairly reflect their views. (my emphasis) This can't describe the phenomenon the article is actually about. It's about segregating people such that they can easily elect a representative who caters to them. And in fact this kind of redistricting is often legally mandated, specifically so as to give minority voters an uncontested district from which they can elect a minority congressman. Enemy party concentration can give the boundary-drawing party extra representatives counted at the state level compared to expectation. But it obviously reduces the number of enemy-party voters who suffer from being unable to elect their own representative. The skewed districts created by gerrymandering make it easy for voters to elect a representative who reflects their views; the close districts make it more difficult.
lordnacho 11y ago
If the US has proportional representation, there might be more than two opinions on every issue.
- jacques_chester 11y ago
  The US Congress has, by standards of other Parliamentary bodies, weak party discipline. The parties in the Australia's Parliament exercise almost totally complete voting discipline (formally or informally). The UK somewhere in-between with the concept of the three-line whip. In that sense the USA already has a coalition party structure: various voting blocs form within the two parties and occasionally defect against the rest. In Australia we call them "factions", but their role is to seize control of the party and then enjoy the fruits of party in discipline. In the USA they can instead directly exercise their votes on the floor of Congress. This is partly a consequence of the ability to mix appropriations with other bills and for amendments to happen in committee. In Australia neither of these is possible: appropriations bills can only deal with appropriations or they become totally invalidated, and amendments have to be moved in the open. Party discipline becomes necessary under such conditions, but the Parliament as an institution is arguably more functional. Another cause is the primaries system. Members of Congress are answerable firstly to a constituency that represents outliers of outliers, not to the general electorate. They are motivated to occasionally defect. In any case, even if you introduce multi-member electorates, gerrymandering doesn't vanish. And the USA needs a number of other electoral reforms, too: independent electoral commissioners, replacing first-past-the-post with another counting method and so on.
  - walshemj 11y ago
    Switching away from primary's to OMOV One Member One Vote - would improve the USA's political system no end.
    - jacques_chester 11y ago
      I don't agree. It looks a lot like a primary held after an election. It retains one of the core problems with primaries, which is that they are a voluntary vote. Australia has mandatory voting; Hotelling's Law causes the major parties to consistently converge on the median voter. Voluntary voting radically changes the dynamics. The more apathetic the median voter is, the more powerful the motivated outliers are. The more powerful the outliers are, the more discouraged the median voters become, creating a nasty feedback loop. If anything, the major reform I'd introduce in the USA would be compulsory voting. It's also the least likely to be introduced, given the prevailing political mythology.
guard-of-terra 11y ago
Geograpical district should be on their way out. Why think I share terribly much with people that live around me? This may be a bit true in some cases (historic city centers, good suburbia) and wrong in other cases (outskirts of large cities where everybody is a stranger). Let people create districts themself, vote in those. Occupation-defined, lifestyle-defined, not just geography-defined. Let everybody vote in, say, three districts. This way I'll be voting in software developers' "district" and choose between five awesome candidates, not between girl I loathe and guy I merely find acceptable. Also will vote in independent music "district" and finally my city district.
- jedharris 11y ago
  I like this. But how would it work in practice? You need a mechanism for keeping these virtual districts balanced. Also these districts could use ranked voting (single transferable vote) so could avoid most of the negative aspects of the current system. One way to start with this would be to create "fantasy legislatures" based on this kind of districting / voting. Initially these would be just a hobby but if the process worked it would draw people in and become a way for under-represented groups to get a voice. Maybe it could become a stepping stone to electoral politics and possible even influence reforms to the system. I'd be happy to work on this if others want to as well. Or possibly it is already underway, if so provide a pointer.
  - guard-of-terra 11y ago
    What do you mean by unbalanced districts? If district undersubscribes, it doesn't elect anybody; if it oversubscribes, maybe two people are elected from it instead of just one? I would be happy to work on this too.
lyschoening 11y ago
The US would do a lot better with mixed-member proportional representation: It would solve gerrymandering outright; money in politics would be less than an issue, because money would have to be spent everywhere and not just on swing states/districts; and soon there would be more than two parties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_representation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_repr...
- snarfy 11y ago
  I still think the cap on the number of representatives is the problem. The current number of 535 should be more like 10,000+ considering the current population size. This would also solve gerrymandering and help with the money problem.
  - a3n 11y ago
    Yeahbut, the building won't hold 10,000 members.
    - bobwaycott 11y ago
      Sounds like a good opportunity to create some jobs and score points with the electorate. :)
  - lyschoening 11y ago
    It could/should be a bit more, yes, but you also have thousands of representatives in the state governments and that isn't working out much better with respect to gerrymandering. The advantage with the mixed-member system is that you get to elect both a representative and a party, so even if you don't end up getting the representative you've hoped for your vote still matters.
- ant6n 11y ago
  Extreme Gerrymandering can skew even mmp via overhang candidates.
- qfwfq_ 11y ago
alienjr 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...
andrew-lucker 11y ago
This article seems to assume that our current system is an imperfect attempt at populist democracy and that somehow we just got the numbers wrong. The history and current opposition is still that populist democracy is not good for rural politics. The argument is simple, most people live in dense cities, and if you counted votes evenly then nobody would ever care what country-folk care about at any level of government. If the article is meant to be a persuasive essay then it may be good to at least acknowledge that dissent exists, particularly when that dissenting opinion designed or heavily influenced the current system. "the commission says that its main objective was to give Latinos and Native Americans the ability to elect representatives of their choice" even the article acknowledges the partisan nature of districting, but instead of recognizing that openly the author chooses to begin with the thesis "PARTISAN gerrymandering is an offense to democracy." Partisan gerrymandering was a founding principle of our democracy. By definition, as long as districts exist in elections, they will be partisan.
ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
The US is not a Democracy, was never meant to be a Democracy, and the founders went to great lengths to ensure the citizens of the US were protected from a Democracy by the framework of the Constitution. Maybe some day the average citizen of this nation will be informed and intelligent enough to participate in a functioning Democracy. Until then politicians will continue to manipulate the misinformed masses and throw around the word Democracy to make the plebs feel as though they matter.
qfwfq_ 11y ago
I'm a PhD student studying gerrymandering, and I think it's cool this is getting written about in the NYT. But, there are very good models of gerrymandering built off of well-informed counterfactual analysis of generalized linear modelling that can provide both easy to understand indicators of gerrymandering and bias, as well as provide an indication of the uncertainty in those measures. One thing that's been getting on my nerves in the road to the big D(issertation) is the complete lack of value some in the domain place on that uncertainty. Elections in single member district systems, at the geography where gerrymandering study becomes meaningful, has to be modelled as a Stochastic system. These kinds of "accounting methods" can vary wildly in their estimates from election to election, and almost always fail to really express how uncertain the indicator is.

45 points by coloneltcb 11y ago

It seems that this analysis disregards important aspects of the electoral system in favor of simplified red vs blue partisan thinking. This article is based on the unspoken assumption that allocating the right number of seats to Democrats, and the right number to Republicans is the goal of the voting system. If this is the objective of congressional voting, it should be a party popularity contest at the state level for congressmen and senators, with a national popularity contest for the presidency; and all of these should be run through telephone, mail, or internet polls (which are cheaper and sufficiently accurate) to save money and voters' time. I do not agree with this premise, as it assumes that the two-party dynamic is either unavoidable or desirable, and that the only thing that matters about elected representatives is their party affiliation. The proposed measures could greatly damage the importance of third party candidates (because they are not taken into account), greatly impact the importance and dynamics of primaries (because they are not regarded with the respect which is given to elections), and impact non-partisan issues which the representatives often act on.

sidarape 11y ago
The US has a strange concept of democracy sometimes.

cryoshon 11y ago

I've come to expect this kind of painfully unhelpful commentary from the rag that is the NYT. On par with their myopic mainstream-ism, this article's purpose is to confuse and pacify readers with a narrative that states we can continue on our current government's course, if only we were to allow for a minor change of our political system's vote-counting partitions. We cannot save or rekindle democracy with such pathetic incremental changes, nor are "we" as citizens empowered to make such changes anyway-- purge this article's idiotic train of thought. To be explicit: changing who gets elected via more neutral partitioning won't change a single thing, because the titanic problems of American "democracy" (in realistic terms, oligarchy or perhaps autocracy) occur post-election outcome, and occur regardless of whether it is Democrats or Republicans who win. Redistricting won't save democracy; at best, algorithmic or "mathematical" (a fool's term for neutral and objective) redistricting will allow for the voters to pick candidates that are proportionally and geographically anchored to their districts. Geographical picking of representatives isn't broken beyond repair within the political system, nor is the physical counting of votes to determine which representatives win, though the electronic voting systems leave the latter terrifyingly unverifiable and unquestionably anti-democratic. The slaughter of democracy in our time is an intentionally engineered result of post-election corruption as effected by bribes of lobbyists, raping the power of the vote in the name of capital flow to those that are already morbidly obese with riches. You cannot have democracy when money is allowed to have a coercive power that eclipses any feasible democratic comeuppance. Let the banishment of money from the election component of political activity exist as an iron law in any new democracy which is established. That would be the start of having a fighting chance for democracy, which America has long since discarded.

visarga 11y ago
Maybe a redistributing tax on inheritance would reduce the influence of the top 1%, but as long as they become even richer, there is little chance to have democracy.
dnautics 11y ago
"Let the banishment of money from the election component of political activity exist as an iron law in any new democracy which is established." I think this is incredibly short sighted. Money is a means to access a political voice for the dispossessed as much as the wealthy. What will happen without money is that policy will be crafted by and for solely the politically privileged. Backroom deals and dark access will be even more important than otherwise. A tighter, more difficult to disrupt oligarchy will emerge. I doubt this is what you would want.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Currently, money equals political voice, and the rich are the ones running the show because they have an overwhelming amount of money. Money is not rallied in sufficient quantities (millions to billions) by anyone other than the rich. Political privilege means access to cash flow from the people who tell you how to vote if you want re-election support. Ripping this system out by the root and replacing it with public election funding and no ability to receive bribes is precisely what I want.
  - timtas 11y ago
    By "rich" I assume you mean the teachers unions. [1] So long as the state appropriates and controls a vast share of resources all the people will vie for a share of it. They will find innumerable innovations. Those who have the means (money and influence) on their own always find a way in. So many of those of lesser means find ways to band to together to push themselves up to the trough. This leaky boat cannot be made seaworthy. [2] "Public election funding" is another way to say, "Let's give the current incumbents monopoly control of the financing of elections." You can bet that whatever initial formulas they devise for distributing this cash (which confers the power to decide elections) while everyone is watching will be creatively "improved" soon after the public has shifted is gaze. Even when the initial formulas are evenhanded, we see unintended consequences. [3] [1] http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php [2] https://mises.org/library/politics-cannot-be-fixed https://mises.org/library/politics-cannot-be-fixed [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/01/15/how-public-funding-of-elections-makes-politics-even-more-polarized/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/01/...

thaumasiotes 11y ago

There's a funny contradiction in the setup of this piece. It starts off like this: > PARTISAN gerrymandering is an offense to democracy. It creates districts that are skewed and uncompetitive, denying voters the ability to elect representatives who fairly reflect their views. But the issue they're talking about is actually the opposite of this! Further down: > Partisan redistricters stuff voters of the opposing party into a smaller number of districts, while spreading their own voters over a larger number of districts to eke out as many bare wins as possible. It is possible for a party to win more than half of the popular vote in a state, yet control fewer than one-third of the legislative seats. This is not a theoretical problem: Precisely such a thing happened in 2012 with the congressional delegations of Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The charge here is that the party controlling districting wants to make it as easy as possible for voters in the enemy party to elect the representative of their choice, by taking away all of their opposition. At the same time, the controlling party is trying to make the districts it wins as competitive as possible (while staying above 50%). Any votes you earn above the 50% threshold would be put to better use in some other district. Now, the strategical analysis is perfectly sound and this is a reasonable complaint to make. I just think it's funny that the rhetoric of the piece is actually opposed to the policy complaints.

jedharris 11y ago
I think I understand your point but actually the two statements are consistent. Your phrase "competitive as possible" is wrong or at best very misleading. If a district intended to be a "bare win" actually turns out to be competitive then the restricting process has gone wrong from the point of view of the controlling party. The goal of gerrymandering, often achieved in practice, is to disenfranchise as many voters of the other parties as possible -- to ensure that their vote has no effect on the outcome of the election. So the first statement you quote is accurate. The second statement you quote just explains how this can be done.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > The goal of gerrymandering, often achieved in practice, is to disenfranchise as many voters of the other parties as possible -- to ensure that their vote has no effect on the outcome of the election. So the first statement you quote is accurate. Packing all the democrats into a single district could be described this way; most of the votes in such a district will be wasted democratic votes. But that opening statement was > [Gerrymandering] creates districts that are skewed and uncompetitive, denying voters the ability to elect representatives who fairly reflect their views. (my emphasis) This can't describe the phenomenon the article is actually about. It's about segregating people such that they can easily elect a representative who caters to them. And in fact this kind of redistricting is often legally mandated, specifically so as to give minority voters an uncontested district from which they can elect a minority congressman. Enemy party concentration can give the boundary-drawing party extra representatives counted at the state level compared to expectation. But it obviously reduces the number of enemy-party voters who suffer from being unable to elect their own representative. The skewed districts created by gerrymandering make it easy for voters to elect a representative who reflects their views; the close districts make it more difficult.

lordnacho 11y ago

If the US has proportional representation, there might be more than two opinions on every issue.

jacques_chester 11y ago
The US Congress has, by standards of other Parliamentary bodies, weak party discipline. The parties in the Australia's Parliament exercise almost totally complete voting discipline (formally or informally). The UK somewhere in-between with the concept of the three-line whip. In that sense the USA already has a coalition party structure: various voting blocs form within the two parties and occasionally defect against the rest. In Australia we call them "factions", but their role is to seize control of the party and then enjoy the fruits of party in discipline. In the USA they can instead directly exercise their votes on the floor of Congress. This is partly a consequence of the ability to mix appropriations with other bills and for amendments to happen in committee. In Australia neither of these is possible: appropriations bills can only deal with appropriations or they become totally invalidated, and amendments have to be moved in the open. Party discipline becomes necessary under such conditions, but the Parliament as an institution is arguably more functional. Another cause is the primaries system. Members of Congress are answerable firstly to a constituency that represents outliers of outliers, not to the general electorate. They are motivated to occasionally defect. In any case, even if you introduce multi-member electorates, gerrymandering doesn't vanish. And the USA needs a number of other electoral reforms, too: independent electoral commissioners, replacing first-past-the-post with another counting method and so on.
- walshemj 11y ago
  Switching away from primary's to OMOV One Member One Vote - would improve the USA's political system no end.
  - jacques_chester 11y ago
    I don't agree. It looks a lot like a primary held after an election. It retains one of the core problems with primaries, which is that they are a voluntary vote. Australia has mandatory voting; Hotelling's Law causes the major parties to consistently converge on the median voter. Voluntary voting radically changes the dynamics. The more apathetic the median voter is, the more powerful the motivated outliers are. The more powerful the outliers are, the more discouraged the median voters become, creating a nasty feedback loop. If anything, the major reform I'd introduce in the USA would be compulsory voting. It's also the least likely to be introduced, given the prevailing political mythology.

guard-of-terra 11y ago

Geograpical district should be on their way out. Why think I share terribly much with people that live around me? This may be a bit true in some cases (historic city centers, good suburbia) and wrong in other cases (outskirts of large cities where everybody is a stranger). Let people create districts themself, vote in those. Occupation-defined, lifestyle-defined, not just geography-defined. Let everybody vote in, say, three districts. This way I'll be voting in software developers' "district" and choose between five awesome candidates, not between girl I loathe and guy I merely find acceptable. Also will vote in independent music "district" and finally my city district.

jedharris 11y ago
I like this. But how would it work in practice? You need a mechanism for keeping these virtual districts balanced. Also these districts could use ranked voting (single transferable vote) so could avoid most of the negative aspects of the current system. One way to start with this would be to create "fantasy legislatures" based on this kind of districting / voting. Initially these would be just a hobby but if the process worked it would draw people in and become a way for under-represented groups to get a voice. Maybe it could become a stepping stone to electoral politics and possible even influence reforms to the system. I'd be happy to work on this if others want to as well. Or possibly it is already underway, if so provide a pointer.
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  What do you mean by unbalanced districts? If district undersubscribes, it doesn't elect anybody; if it oversubscribes, maybe two people are elected from it instead of just one? I would be happy to work on this too.

lyschoening 11y ago

The US would do a lot better with mixed-member proportional representation: It would solve gerrymandering outright; money in politics would be less than an issue, because money would have to be spent everywhere and not just on swing states/districts; and soon there would be more than two parties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_representation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_repr...

snarfy 11y ago
I still think the cap on the number of representatives is the problem. The current number of 535 should be more like 10,000+ considering the current population size. This would also solve gerrymandering and help with the money problem.
- a3n 11y ago
  Yeahbut, the building won't hold 10,000 members.
  - bobwaycott 11y ago
    Sounds like a good opportunity to create some jobs and score points with the electorate. :)
- lyschoening 11y ago
  It could/should be a bit more, yes, but you also have thousands of representatives in the state governments and that isn't working out much better with respect to gerrymandering. The advantage with the mixed-member system is that you get to elect both a representative and a party, so even if you don't end up getting the representative you've hoped for your vote still matters.
ant6n 11y ago
Extreme Gerrymandering can skew even mmp via overhang candidates.
qfwfq_ 11y ago

alienjr 11y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...

andrew-lucker 11y ago

This article seems to assume that our current system is an imperfect attempt at populist democracy and that somehow we just got the numbers wrong. The history and current opposition is still that populist democracy is not good for rural politics. The argument is simple, most people live in dense cities, and if you counted votes evenly then nobody would ever care what country-folk care about at any level of government. If the article is meant to be a persuasive essay then it may be good to at least acknowledge that dissent exists, particularly when that dissenting opinion designed or heavily influenced the current system. "the commission says that its main objective was to give Latinos and Native Americans the ability to elect representatives of their choice" even the article acknowledges the partisan nature of districting, but instead of recognizing that openly the author chooses to begin with the thesis "PARTISAN gerrymandering is an offense to democracy." Partisan gerrymandering was a founding principle of our democracy. By definition, as long as districts exist in elections, they will be partisan.

ZoeZoeBee 11y ago

The US is not a Democracy, was never meant to be a Democracy, and the founders went to great lengths to ensure the citizens of the US were protected from a Democracy by the framework of the Constitution. Maybe some day the average citizen of this nation will be informed and intelligent enough to participate in a functioning Democracy. Until then politicians will continue to manipulate the misinformed masses and throw around the word Democracy to make the plebs feel as though they matter.

qfwfq_ 11y ago

I'm a PhD student studying gerrymandering, and I think it's cool this is getting written about in the NYT. But, there are very good models of gerrymandering built off of well-informed counterfactual analysis of generalized linear modelling that can provide both easy to understand indicators of gerrymandering and bias, as well as provide an indication of the uncertainty in those measures. One thing that's been getting on my nerves in the road to the big D(issertation) is the complete lack of value some in the domain place on that uncertainty. Elections in single member district systems, at the geography where gerrymandering study becomes meaningful, has to be modelled as a Stochastic system. These kinds of "accounting methods" can vary wildly in their estimates from election to election, and almost always fail to really express how uncertain the indicator is.