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Exhibit A: Gerrymandering

ktRolster 10y ago
I think someone pointed out here that gerrymandering would be useless if people didn't reliably, blindly, vote based on party.
- cperciva 10y ago
  Gerrymandering would be less useful if fewer people voted along party lines, but not useless. Any demographic edge is better than nothing; even if only 5% of voters decide on the basis of party affiliation, that's 5% more than nothing.
- fatbird 10y ago
  In the normal case, wouldn't a person usually vote in the next election the way they voted previously? A party's platform is generally the same election-to-election, and if I voted previously for that platform, I'd tend to continue voting for it unless I had a pretty significant change of heart--and then changed it again for the election following? Unless either the party or the voter swung wildly around, gerrymandering doesn't require "blind" allegiance to a party.
  - ktRolster 10y ago
    The issues favored by one party or another change dramatically over a period of even a decade. "Party" is just a way to make people feel like they're part of a team.
samatman 10y ago
Gerrymandering is also something you can't just 'not do'. There's no natural or fair way to draw districts, it doesn't work that way.
- brownbat 10y ago
  > There's no natural or fair way to draw districts, it doesn't work that way. All maps may be biased, but not all maps are equally biased, so there's still room for refinement. You could define "nothing up my sleeve" measures, similar to the way some cryptographers pick arbitrary constants in ways that are possibly biased, but unlikely to be selected in advance according to that bias. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/10/a_million_rando.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/10/a_million_ran... So for example, there are some systems that automatically divide states into districts, though a looser version would be to accept proposals and choose the one that most effectively satisfies certain reasonable constraints. https://handsoffredistricting.net/opra-explained/ https://handsoffredistricting.net/opra-explained/ http://bdistricting.com/about.html#other http://bdistricting.com/about.html#other It would require a thorough study to determine if these methods biased political power towards or away from population centers. Many political issues have an urban rural split, so that's not a trivial issue. They would be at least an incremental improvement over intentionally gerrymandered districts though, where the probability of bias is approximately 1.
  - samatman 10y ago
    That study has been done, by Chris Fedor. Salient quote: “In both the 2008 and 2010 elections, the actual districts used by the 111th Congress […] were in fact about as fair as you could reasonably expect from a voting system based on contiguous geographies.” https://priceonomics.com/algorithm-the-unfairness-of-gerrymandering/ https://priceonomics.com/algorithm-the-unfairness-of-gerryma...
    - brownbat 10y ago
      Interesting. Mattingly and Vaughan found slightly different results, even looking at the same state: https://politicalwire.com/2014/11/29/study-shows-how-gerrymandering-distorts-election-results/ https://politicalwire.com/2014/11/29/study-shows-how-gerryma... Seems like a contentious issue in political science.
    - brownbat 10y ago

I think someone pointed out here that gerrymandering would be useless if people didn't reliably, blindly, vote based on party.

cperciva 10y ago
Gerrymandering would be less useful if fewer people voted along party lines, but not useless. Any demographic edge is better than nothing; even if only 5% of voters decide on the basis of party affiliation, that's 5% more than nothing.
fatbird 10y ago
In the normal case, wouldn't a person usually vote in the next election the way they voted previously? A party's platform is generally the same election-to-election, and if I voted previously for that platform, I'd tend to continue voting for it unless I had a pretty significant change of heart--and then changed it again for the election following? Unless either the party or the voter swung wildly around, gerrymandering doesn't require "blind" allegiance to a party.
- ktRolster 10y ago
  The issues favored by one party or another change dramatically over a period of even a decade. "Party" is just a way to make people feel like they're part of a team.

samatman 10y ago

Gerrymandering is also something you can't just 'not do'. There's no natural or fair way to draw districts, it doesn't work that way.

brownbat 10y ago
> There's no natural or fair way to draw districts, it doesn't work that way. All maps may be biased, but not all maps are equally biased, so there's still room for refinement. You could define "nothing up my sleeve" measures, similar to the way some cryptographers pick arbitrary constants in ways that are possibly biased, but unlikely to be selected in advance according to that bias. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/10/a_million_rando.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/10/a_million_ran... So for example, there are some systems that automatically divide states into districts, though a looser version would be to accept proposals and choose the one that most effectively satisfies certain reasonable constraints. https://handsoffredistricting.net/opra-explained/ https://handsoffredistricting.net/opra-explained/ http://bdistricting.com/about.html#other http://bdistricting.com/about.html#other It would require a thorough study to determine if these methods biased political power towards or away from population centers. Many political issues have an urban rural split, so that's not a trivial issue. They would be at least an incremental improvement over intentionally gerrymandered districts though, where the probability of bias is approximately 1.
- samatman 10y ago
  That study has been done, by Chris Fedor. Salient quote: “In both the 2008 and 2010 elections, the actual districts used by the 111th Congress […] were in fact about as fair as you could reasonably expect from a voting system based on contiguous geographies.” https://priceonomics.com/algorithm-the-unfairness-of-gerrymandering/ https://priceonomics.com/algorithm-the-unfairness-of-gerryma...
  - brownbat 10y ago
    Interesting. Mattingly and Vaughan found slightly different results, even looking at the same state: https://politicalwire.com/2014/11/29/study-shows-how-gerrymandering-distorts-election-results/ https://politicalwire.com/2014/11/29/study-shows-how-gerryma... Seems like a contentious issue in political science.
  - brownbat 10y ago