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The problem with the efficiency gap is that relies on voter patterns, but voter patterns are affected by gerrymandering. So if you know that your vote is unlik

by trendia 10y ago

The problem with the efficiency gap is that relies on voter patterns, but voter patterns are affected by gerrymandering. So if you know that your vote is unlikely to affect the outcome, then you won't vote, which distorts the efficiency gap metric. In other words, it incentivizes districts that are so partisan that they discourage the opposition to vote. In contrast, the compactness metric [0] only relies on census data and ignores voting patterns, party membership, or other metrics. Though this has downsides, at the very least it avoids the feedback loop of the efficiency gap. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/06/03/this-computer-programmer-solved-gerrymandering-in-his-spare-time https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/06/03/this-...

gingerbread-man 10y ago
There are factors beyond compactness which merit consideration, the problem being that neither has been well-defined in a quantitative sense. States usually point to two kinds of "communities of interest" with regard to the redistricting process: racial minorities and citizens connected by some lower political boundary ie. city limits. A better re-districting algorithm would have to take those factors into consideration.
- trendia 10y ago
  Let's suppose we want to introduce other factors. We now have to ask: * who gets to choose the factors? * when and how can they be changed? * how do we measure them? Let's suppose we go with the "community of interest" approach. As you pick and choose particular communities of interest to include in the algorithm, it changes the resulting district. This means that the districts resulting from such an algorithm can be adjusted by adjusting the types of communities. Thus, a party with great influence over the process will petition to have communities of interest that it knows will produce districts favorable to it. This will work for a time, until the opposition party realizes that they too can influence the districts by petitioning for particular communities of interest. Then, when the opposition party comes into power, they will also try to get those communities changed. No factor is immune to this -- even the influence of racial categories on districts can be chosen and manipulated (and both parties ARE doing that, including the "good" party). So, while the algorithms could be "better" than the pure compactness approach in an ideal world, it would only work if we could 100% prevent the adjustment of definitions and weights of communities of interest. And given the nature of politics, I think that will be very unlikely.
  - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
    What if instead of worrying about whether the districts are fair, we worried about making it so that the fairness of the districts doesn't matter? If we used mixed member proportional representation, the districts could be draw using any method and we could still be sure that all voters would be represented fairly.
tunesmith 10y ago
I think this may be going for the perfect by sacrificing the good. There is nothing inherently wrong about relying on voter patterns. It's only been wrong to use voter patterns to gerrymander. One could require that a redistricting lead to a layout that averaged 0% efficiency gap for all elections since the last redistricting effort. From that point forward, voter patterns and distribution would change, but that is exactly the reason we periodically redistrict anyway. There would still be some distortions but it would probably be a marked improvement from the status quo. Redistricting without looking at voter demographics would lead to greater efficiency gaps. It's true that it would favor one party or another from state to state, but 50 states (or ~400 districts) is not enough to expect it would cancel out. And there are plenty of other good reasons to look at voter patterns - cohesive neighborhoods, historic geographic personality of districts, etc. It's more complicated than just aiming at contiguousness itself.
smallnamespace 10y ago
The biggest problem with relying on compactness alone is that there are many maps that are equally compact, but have different impact on voter efficiency. So at the end of the day, you'll end up having to look at efficiency anyway to verify that a compact map is 'fair'.

by trendia 10y ago

gingerbread-man 10y ago

There are factors beyond compactness which merit consideration, the problem being that neither has been well-defined in a quantitative sense. States usually point to two kinds of "communities of interest" with regard to the redistricting process: racial minorities and citizens connected by some lower political boundary ie. city limits. A better re-districting algorithm would have to take those factors into consideration.

trendia 10y ago
Let's suppose we want to introduce other factors. We now have to ask: * who gets to choose the factors? * when and how can they be changed? * how do we measure them? Let's suppose we go with the "community of interest" approach. As you pick and choose particular communities of interest to include in the algorithm, it changes the resulting district. This means that the districts resulting from such an algorithm can be adjusted by adjusting the types of communities. Thus, a party with great influence over the process will petition to have communities of interest that it knows will produce districts favorable to it. This will work for a time, until the opposition party realizes that they too can influence the districts by petitioning for particular communities of interest. Then, when the opposition party comes into power, they will also try to get those communities changed. No factor is immune to this -- even the influence of racial categories on districts can be chosen and manipulated (and both parties ARE doing that, including the "good" party). So, while the algorithms could be "better" than the pure compactness approach in an ideal world, it would only work if we could 100% prevent the adjustment of definitions and weights of communities of interest. And given the nature of politics, I think that will be very unlikely.
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  What if instead of worrying about whether the districts are fair, we worried about making it so that the fairness of the districts doesn't matter? If we used mixed member proportional representation, the districts could be draw using any method and we could still be sure that all voters would be represented fairly.

tunesmith 10y ago

I think this may be going for the perfect by sacrificing the good. There is nothing inherently wrong about relying on voter patterns. It's only been wrong to use voter patterns to gerrymander. One could require that a redistricting lead to a layout that averaged 0% efficiency gap for all elections since the last redistricting effort. From that point forward, voter patterns and distribution would change, but that is exactly the reason we periodically redistrict anyway. There would still be some distortions but it would probably be a marked improvement from the status quo. Redistricting without looking at voter demographics would lead to greater efficiency gaps. It's true that it would favor one party or another from state to state, but 50 states (or ~400 districts) is not enough to expect it would cancel out. And there are plenty of other good reasons to look at voter patterns - cohesive neighborhoods, historic geographic personality of districts, etc. It's more complicated than just aiming at contiguousness itself.

smallnamespace 10y ago

The biggest problem with relying on compactness alone is that there are many maps that are equally compact, but have different impact on voter efficiency. So at the end of the day, you'll end up having to look at efficiency anyway to verify that a compact map is 'fair'.