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There are factors beyond compactness which merit consideration, the problem being that neither has been well-defined in a quantitative sense. States usually po

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.

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.