22 ms·

Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative

155 points by andreshb 9y ago

ValG 9y ago
There are a ton of important issues, but, I believe that gerrymandering is a core issue in the United States because : Partisan gerrymandering allows for politicians to secure their seats - this leads to less voters being represented (allowing the politicians to become more polarized) e.g. when races are tight, politicians tend to move towards the center. [2] Partisan gerrymandering is strongly disliked by both parties and across the political spectrum, the only people fighting for it are those currently in power (on both sides) [3] Partisan gerrymandering disenfranchises a large portion of voters, whose votes end up “not counting” b/c of how district lines are drawn[4] Because of this, I'm currently fundraising (from friends and family) for the legal team in the North Carolina case [1]. I've committed significant amount personally to the fundraise and can say that this is arguably one of the highest leverage ways to spent dollars that you can get to get America back on track as a representative democracy. I've done a lot of research on this - if you want to help (with $$) or just want to learn more, feel free to reach out (valgui [at] gmail.com) [1]http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/sites/default/files/LWVNCvRucho%20One%20Pager.pdf http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/sites/default/files/LWVNC... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/us/politics/in-indiana-tight-senate-race-senate-candidates-move-to-center.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/us/politics/in-indiana-tig... [3]http://www.theharrispoll.com/politics/Americans_Across_Party_Lines_Oppose_Common_Gerrymandering_Practices.html http://www.theharrispoll.com/politics/Americans_Across_Party... [4]http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wang-remlinger-gerrymandering-20170505-story.html http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wang-remlinger-ge...
- ouid 9y ago
  Gerrymandering is not the act of making seats "more secure". This is profound misinformation, gerrymandering is only ever about disenfranchising a voting block by packing them together.
  - ValG 9y ago
    You may have missed point three, where I literally say that. Also, they are not mutually exclusive, in fact they are quite causal. Also, there is more to gerrymandering that packing a voting block together; you can split voting blocks up do more sophisticated things to ensure your goals are met (the primary objectives generally being "get re-elected"). My email is in the comment and my profile, happy to chat more.
    - ouid 9y ago
      They aren't "mutually exclusive". If your voters have been packed into a district, making your seat more secure, then you are a victim of gerrymandering. It's not simply an alternative type of gerrymandering. The misunderstanding of who stands to benefit from redistricting has allowed republicans to propagate a narrative that "democrats do it too". In 2012, despite Republican house candidates receiving less of the popular vote they walked away with an extra 30 seats[1]. That's not a bipartisan effect. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Represe...
      - ValG 9y ago
        It seems like you're not reading what I'm writing at all. I literally said "they are not mutually exclusive. Also, you are misinformed, both parties 100% do this [1](or attempt to) - It just happens that Republicans are way better at it. Way better.[2] Either way, I don't care who does it, it must be stopped b/c it's not good for a democracy like ours. [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/06/republicans-and-democrats-both-try-to-gerrymander-but-only-one-of-them-is-any-good-at-it/?utm_term=.352dec1c0967 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/06/repub... [2]http://election.princeton.edu/2012/12/30/gerrymanders-part-1-busting-the-both-sides-do-it-myth/ http://election.princeton.edu/2012/12/30/gerrymanders-part-1...
        ouid 9y ago
        You misunderstand my criticism. The reason they aren't "mutually exclusive" is because one of the things that you are calling gerrymandering isn't gerrymandering.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  One of my professors at UT Dallas has a book that argues that districts in fact should be partisan. It's been a few years but the logic is something like if you've got a 50-50 district, you're gonna end up with 50% of the people in the district unhappy. Where as if you intentionally designed districts to be like like 90-10 (or whatever possible), more people are happy. Not sure if I believe him, but it's interesting. Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections are Bad for America https://www.amazon.com/Redistricting-Representation-Competitive-Elections-Controversies/dp/0415964539 https://www.amazon.com/Redistricting-Representation-Competit...
  - nathancahill 9y ago
    That's assuming a polarizing representative (one that 50% like and 50% are unhappy with. Could more balanced districts lead to more centrist representatives?
    - ajmurmann 9y ago
      Maybe even having a system that makes more than two choices viable?
  - ValG 9y ago
    That's a super interesting concept. I will look into it; book ordered! From a quick think through - I think that this argument may fall flat on 2 related ideas. 1. Data shows that when seats are more secure like you say (90-10 instead of 50-50), representatives often go towards the extremes of the political spectrum (on both sides). this leads to issue 2... 2. Voters are generally not strictly partisan - that is to say (purely as an example), while I may have right leaning thoughts on how to run the economy, I may have left leaning thoughts on social issues. If I'm in a district with someone that is far right or far left, a portion of the time they're always going to vote against my wishes. Am I better off in general? Hard to tell without getting more in depth on my preferences.
    - Torwald 9y ago
      Could this be mitigated by having a system with more than two parties?
- yarg 9y ago
  The fact that gerrymandering is even possible is a symptom (albeit an severely exacerbating one) - not the cause - of the problems in the US electoral structure. It could be countered quite effectively by a system using larger jurisdictions each with multiple representitives.
  - jawbone3 9y ago
    Yeah, you can't really do anything like it in a proportional system. For gerrymandering to be possible It is crucial that there is a large number of parallell contests so that winning many contests is more important than winning overall support.
  - fivestar 9y ago
    I would say the biggest problem by far is voter education--people simply are not educated on issues. They listen to idiotic MSM sound bites and narratives and are influenced by identity politics rather than anything of substance.
    - sqeaky 9y ago
      I must disagree. As person with an education and half a wit it doesn't matter how I vote in Omaha Nebraska. We will always vote republican and because of gerrymandering my local reps won't change. No amount of education can be accepted by this crowd that doesn't amount to propaganda or brainwashing.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    Totally agree. The winner takes it all system is the real problem. You can start a third party and get 30 percent of the vote and still end up with zero representation.
  - edko 9y ago
    Large jusrisdictions with multiple representatives has its own set of problems too. In the current system, people, at least, know who their representative is, and there is more accountability.
  - 9y ago
- cryptonector 9y ago
  Gerrymandering is self-limited. The party in power (in a State government) can either maximize the number of seats it has, or make seats safe. It cannot do both at once! Maximizing seats -> minimizing the margin of victory in each district -> increasing likelihood of losing its majority in a future election! Making seats safe -> maximizing margin of victory in each district and minimizing the number of seats by concentrating the majority's voters -> minimizing margin of victory in the popular houses (of the State legislature and Congress) -> increasing likelihood of losing its majority in a future election! That is, no matter how you redraw district borders, as long as population per-district is roughly even (in each State), then you cannot get a long-lasting advantage. This will probably be surprising to some here, but it's clearly true. This means that Gerrymandering is a much smaller evil than one might think. I would further argue that Gerrymandering is not an evil at all. It is part and parcel of the Republican system of government in the U.S.: - the Senate, especially when Senators were selected by State governments, and still now due to its 6-year terms and staggered elections, modulates the popular House - first past the post leads to a small number of parties and reduces party power (you vote for a person, not just a party as in the case of proportional representation systems) - gerrymandering also modulates popular will - juries modulate law and prosecutors - the president is selected by the Electoral College, which also modulates popular will - the States have police power, which modulates Federal power - the Courts modulate Congress and the Executive branch These things were well thought out by the Founders! They were arrived at by compromise. They weren't accidents born of ignorance of mathematics or science. This system has served us well. Changing it requires broad consensus, which requires strong arguments. So far I've yet to see any decent arguments against this structure.
  - dwaltrip 9y ago
    I thought gerrymandering is the art of creatively drawing the lines such that all of the opposing constituents are squeezed into one or a few "throwaway districts", thus preserving comfortable majorities in the remaining districts. How is this self-limiting? Also, I don't quite see how it maps to the rather abstract phenomenon you are talking about? Edit -- wikipedia seems to match up with what I was remembering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
- Shivetya 9y ago
  Partisan gerrymandering takes on many forms. There are also the convoluted voting blocs created to insure minority representation that can actually increase one parties representation over another based on how convoluted it is just so they don't run afoul of the courts; as in you don't make sure the selected group wins you are in court. then the anecdotal bit, got a cousin who is in politics in a mid Western state following in her dad's foot steps. here is the dirty part, at county and city levels and even to state levels the parties negotiate who runs. sometimes they get a wild card but both pretty much work to stop that. she wanted a county seat moving up from her city district, one she got because the guy in both sides hated and no one else wanted it. to get the county seat requires finding a way for the person in it to retire or get into state level politics. she cannot simply go up against this person because she won't have her parties help. politics gets dirty at the earliest possible moment. gerrymandering only seems to be an issue to most when the wrong party manages to overcome it and take power. yet sometimes we need this type of distracting for the same reason how the House is set up. To prevent cities from overpowering the counties and other areas in the state.
- fivestar 9y ago
  I'm not tracking. Are we not a representative democracy? How are less (the word you seek is 'fewer') voters being represented? I need to know if you're one of the many millions of disaffected socialists who is still whining about the election last fall or if there is something of substance here. The "I'm currently fundraising" is kind of a giveaway that you're one of them. While gerrymandering is strongly disliked, I doubt there is much that is going to be done about it. The Constitution allows the creation of districts like this. Much like the electoral college, it is what it is and I don't see how it matters whether districts follow neat lines or whether they are all crazy and chopped up like they are today. This sounds like another feeble attempt at grasping at straws by people whose priorities are completely out of whack.
  - sp332 9y ago
    Gerrymandering is already illegal. It can be fixed relatively easily by redrawing the districts, which is done routinely. And it's not like the electoral college is written in stone either. Since you can't see why it matters, here are some examples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#Effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#Effects
    - taejo 9y ago
      Gerrymandering is not in general illegal. As you say, districts are routinely redrawn - but in a way which results in gerrymandering! To fix it requires that the districts be redrawn fairly, and that's a tougher fix (but a significant number of states already have non-partisan districting procedures).
      - sp332 9y ago
        It might be nearly impossible to litigate, but it is illegal. https://www.wired.com/2017/04/gerrymandering-illegal-mathematicians-can-prove/ https://www.wired.com/2017/04/gerrymandering-illegal-mathema...
  - deleted 9y ago
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- tmaly 9y ago
  To solve this, I think some more universal mathematical truths would have to be employed. If you have 30 different definitions of compactness, the party in power will tend to choose the definition that will benefit them the most. If however, you choose some construct in mathematics where there is only a single option, you may avoid this particular problem. This may not be the perfect example, but something like this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3201424/A-new-way-tile-floor-Scientists-discover-strange-new-shape-trying-solve-one-maths-complex-problems.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3201424/A-new...
frabbit 9y ago
The problem is with the idea of representative democracy at all. If the electorate is smart enough to figure out that Candidate A is _both_ correct on a range of policy matters _and_ of a trustworthy nature, then why are they not smart enough to decide directly on said policy matters? Governments should be composed solely of civil servants drawn from academia and other fields in which they need to prove their knowledge and competence. Their job would be to advise on and implement the policy goals chosen by ballot measures. Figuring out some way to allow direct ballot/referendum securely and efficiently would be more welcome than re-jigging the USA to bring it into line with one of the other countries that has an elite class shuffling between ruling in the interests of businesses and remunerating themselves as leaders of those businesses.
- orthecreedence 9y ago
  Just like I hire a person to fix my car, or hire a person to fly the planes I sometimes travel on, we hire people to handle running the country for us. It's an abstraction of labor. I really don't want to be bothered with every little tiny decision about budget or foreign policy. That said, people in the US are so busy that they don't have any time at all to even make informed decisions on who to elect to run the city/state/country for them. This is a problem...people need to work less, but good luck solving that one with a crippled economy and enormous wealth disparities. In principle, I agree with you...we have the technology to allow referendum voting, and it would certainly make for a more representative government. However, I think time, understanding, and human nature are large barriers. Also, don't think that just because people can vote directly means they won't be easily swayed by ruling-class propaganda. A good example is when cities try to install their own fiber infrastructure and Comcast rolls in and convinces everyone it's somehow communism. That doesn't go away just because people have a more direct rule. I think a representative republic still makes sense for our day and age. Gerrymandering is a huge issue and should be dealt with...along with lobbying and other forms of (very obvious) corporate intervention in our republic.
  - 75dvtwin 9y ago
    I think allowing to specify what percent of your tax goes into what 'pre-canned' list of causes, would allow a way for folks to influence the politicians outside of the 'election process', and, without, full blown on-line-referendum surveys for all the issues. Clearly, the above would bias some of the decision making power away from low-income populous, however this can be addressed by some form of weighting and thresholds.
nocoder 9y ago
Sorry to nitpick, but the headline should be "The mathematicians who want to save the "American" democracy".
ianai 9y ago
I think we need approval voting.
- prodikl 9y ago
  Is this like.. where you choose 1, 2, 3? so if I choose 1. Dem 2. Green 3. Repub and you chose 1. Repub 2. Green 3. Dem They'd all be equal? (four points each)
  - ajmurmann 9y ago
    I think you are moving this up with ranked choice. Approval voting allows you to vote for every option either ones or not at all. So you either approve of the option or not. If you want you can vote for everyone. However, that's the same as voting for nobody. You could however also vote for everybody except for one option. That would be the equivalent of voting against somebody. Example ballots could be: Voter one: Green - yes; dem - yes; rep - no. Voter two: Green - yes; dem - no; rep - yes. This would result in the green party winning in the above example. The vote would be very close if not identical to approval ratings we frequently see for various candidates. This would have probably gotten us Bernie, since he was the only candidate running at all with favorable approval ratings. Both candidates who made it beyond the primaries were disliked by the majority, which is unfortunate to say the least. As an added benefit we could completely leave off primaries if we want. There is very little spoiler effect in this system.
    - thaumasiotes 9y ago
      > There is very little spoiler effect [under approval voting]. Why do you believe this?
      - ajmurmann 9y ago
        Because there is much less reason to strategically vote for your second choice in order to prevent a candidate you definitely don't want. A friend of mine who is very active in this area also claims there are studies about this. But I've honestly never read them. It seems intuitively true to me. Which I acknowledge is not ideal.
acjohnson55 9y ago
To me, the problem is winner-take-all districts to begin with. It all but ensures some constituents are going to be sorely disappointed. Why not consider something like multi-member districts? We could tune it even further by awarding variable voting power. Then the way the borders are drawn becomes far less relevant. I'm sure there are tradeoffs, but it would certainly be more representative.
- labster 9y ago
  Most of the arguments against this center on the fact that ranked systems would be too complex for voters to understand. Which I used to think was pure hogwash, but Americans have since proved that they can't handle even two candidates for a major office. Hint: the worst one was the one with zero government experience.
  - ajmurmann 9y ago
    The parent didn't mention ranked choice voting unless I read it wrong. I read them to argue in favor of multiple representatives per district. You can have that even with the current voting system. The top n candidates get the job with n > 1. There only difference is right now n = 1. That being said there is also the much simpler approval voting.
    - acjohnson55 9y ago
      Yep, you read me correctly. Approval voting is great too, but I don't know that it addresses the issue of district boundaries on its own. And to address the question of complexity from the first person to reply to me, I don't think that's a realistic concern. Basically it would work like this: you vote normally (whether singe vote, approval, ranked, or whatever), then each party gets at most the number of winners proportional to their aggregate share of the vote, with representatives chosen in order of performance.
      - deleted 9y ago
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nhebb 9y ago
This article from 2013 puts it at D+7.1 overall for the House: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/who-gerrymanders-more-democrats-or-republicans/ http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/who-gerrymande... What surprises me, though, is how little attention is given to caucuses in the US presidential primaries. The turnout is very low and they're subject to strong arming and party insider corruption in both major parties.
- letitgo12345 9y ago
  Well speaking just for myself, I honestly would prefer an even more party insiders driven process for the primaries. Too much democracy seems to lead to insane levels of populism leading to characters like Trump. At any rate, US democracy guarantees one a vote in the general -- parties are private orgs and it's not "corrupt" or "wrong" for them to select candidates however they want.
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    Except since there's no chance for a 3rd party, these two parties hold too much power and it suddenly matters much more. If it was like other countries with tons of parties that rise and fall, you'd be correct. Also what do you mean by insane levels of populism? Isn't that just a derogatory way to say "what the people want"?
    - letitgo12345 9y ago
      There would be more of a chance for a 3rd party if people bothered to care about the house rather than just the presidency... But yeah, today there's little chance. But so what? Plenty of progress, far more than today was made in the past before the primary system. Several great presidents (including Lincoln, FDR, TDR) came from the old process. Meanwhile the new process gave us Trump...Not to mention, tons of members of Congress afraid to do anything sensible because they are too afraid of primary challenges by hyper partisan people on their side. UK doesn't have a primary system (mostly -- they did for Labour who are now saddled with Corbyn) and they don't have a stupidly gridlocked govt. Neither does Canada. Both of those countries have politics dominated by mostly 2-3 parties. In fact almost no country on Earth has it to the level that the US does. Re:"what people want" -- for one thing what people want is often contradictory. For another, there's a reason why the US doesn't have mob rule by majority. What people want is not always coherent or wise. IMO our goal as a society should be a functioning govt and a liberal polity for which democracy is a means. But by no means is democracy a good in an of itself for me at least.
skierscott 9y ago
One of the most reasonable rules I've heard IMO for deterring voting districts: > In each section (at first a state, etc), find a dividing line that splits the population in two. This seems somewhat reasonable, and there's no way for humans to bias it. Here's some pictures of what this looks like [1], and the write up of this idea [2] [1]:http://rangevoting.org/alRS.png http://rangevoting.org/alRS.png [2]:http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html
- ouid 9y ago
  First of all, this only allows for a power of two of representatives. Second, any degree of freedom creates variance, and you can optimize it. There are many straight lines that divide a population in two.
  - kirrent 9y ago
    For number 2, there could be any number of solutions to fix those degrees of freedom. Intuitively, a maximum margin separator for determining the division wouldn't seem to be a terrible idea.
    - ouid 9y ago
      That just means that the way of restricting the degrees of freedom is, itself, a degree of freedom, but I wasn't the one arguing that the problem could be solved.
- hibikir 9y ago
  The problem is not bias, but uneven representation. We can get uneven representation without bias quite easily: I've not ran your system in practical terms, but I'd be very surprised if, in the US, this gave you republican house majorities even when they lose the popular vote. The reason is simple: Republican voters are more dispersed geographically, so it's very hard for them to get clumped into a district where they have an overwhelming advantage. This is why plenty of people prefer to do things like maximize the chance that a voter feels well represented, or minimize the safety of incumbents, instead of going for something that leads to simple lines. Another important problem of straight lines is that it ignores the physical limitations of actual voting: Each voting location is expensive (go ask in North Carolina, where magical budget cuts make it harder to vote in areas that tend to vote democratic). inconvenient, mathematical lines will give you higher average costs to get to your own polling place, and will require more polling places, or places that have to corral different people to different booths with different options. Good luck doing that without doing everything fully digitally, which is, IMO, not necessarily a good idea.
bitmadness 9y ago
I knew Jonathan Mattingly when I was an undergrad, cool guy
woopwoop 9y ago
It's easy to gerrymander a surface. It's hard to gerrymander a line, or a circle, where the connectedness requirement has teeth. One solution to gerrymandering is to determine congressional districts by birthday, or last name, rather than by geographic location.
- LaughingGoat 9y ago
  Interesting concept! I wonder if this is hackable based on demographic popularity of last names, by race. According to Wolfram Alpha, the most common last names are: Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, which don't share a common 1st letter. But maybe some ethnic names might: Rodriguez, Ramirez, Chan, Chen, Chang... But ultimately, what political needs would a community of last-name-starts-with-C need?
  - slyfocks 9y ago
    > But ultimately, what political needs would a community of last-name-starts-with-C need? None, which is why that grouping would only make sense in a society of extremely generic robots.
  - deleted 9y ago
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- slyfocks 9y ago
  The U.S. is not a monolith–registered Democrats in West Virginia have very different priorities from those in Massachusetts–so geographical boundaries actually serve a purpose in electing a representative who is (ideally) aware of local needs and committed to fighting for them. In contrast, those with a common birthday or name have no distinguishable political desires in aggregate, so the likely result would be 538 generic congress members. Furthermore, if we assume people exhibit a bias toward candidates from their home state (they do, on average), grouping by birthday or last name is actually a net negative choice since it would likely result in overrepresenation of Californians in congress (assuming first-past-the-post).
- BearGoesChirp 9y ago
known 9y ago
Does it fix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud
tnorthcutt 9y ago
Eliminating first past the post would go a long way.
a_imho 9y ago
Sortition >> Voting
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  I think this is a really interesting idea, and I would love to see it tried in a modern government. There are a lot of potential problems, but possibly less than those involved with voting.
  - a_imho 9y ago
    From what I understand, the US legal system has the jury duty as a form of sortition, who make life or death decisions. It is a solution to make the governing bodies more inclusive and representative, which is the title of the article. No winner takes all, no fake news, no votes buying, no suspicious campaign donations, probably no 2 party system, less oligarchies, corruption and nepotism. What is not to like? Wikipedia [1] does list a couple of points, all debatable and/or easily countered imo. I also happen to like how seamlessly it integrates with the current representative model and remains scalable as opposed to more direct approaches. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition#Disadvantages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition#Disadvantages from the average voter pov, who benefit little to none from the current establishment in this presumption
    - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
      The big difference that I see from juries, is that juries only choose from a fairly limited selection of possibilities, and they have a few specifically identified professionals (the judge and the lawyers for each side) who guide them through the process. With an actual government, there are only a few constraints and everything else is open to them. There are also thousands of interested parties trying to influence them instead of just two. That would make their job much more challenging than being a juror. It could potentially end up handing more power to lobbyists because of the inexperience of the people in power and resulting in more corruption because there are no longer have to hide it to ensure re-election.
deleted 9y ago
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Dowwie 9y ago
Geometry of Redistricting: Summer School http://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/ http://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/ It is open to the public and free of charge
humanrebar 9y ago
The real problem, in my opinion, is that we're making more and more centralized decisions. Federalism properly done lessens the pressure to come up with complex gerrymandering and voting schemes by lessening the election pressure altogether. It adds more power to other important democratic mechanisms: free speech and vote-with-your-feet. The power of free speech is improved because a state legislator has fewer constituents, so each group of 100 with similar interests matters a lot more. And, at the end of the day, if a city or state is really screwing things up, people (not everyone, but enough) can relocate to somewhere that is doing a better job. Eliminating gerrymandering (how? how will it get passed?) and new voting schemes (which? how will it get passed?) are interesting, but federalism already exists (10th amendment), it's just underemphasized.
- Dayshine 9y ago
  The downside is increased governance costs due to duplication of bureaucracy, increased complexity of legal systems, and more confusing everyday laws (as fewer people = less documentation and support services). Which all means "vote-with-your-feet" is actually far harder to do, as all your everyday legal knowledge is useless in other states.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    The counterargument is that increased layers of bureaucracy is also expensive, possibly more expensive. And we already have byzantine regulations, so it's not all that much of a downside. And, at the end of the day, we can talk to our city councilmen about the unfairness of complicated regulations. And cities can brag about their simple and fair legal systems to get people to want to move there.
- arcbyte 9y ago
  Theres probably some kind of quantifiable tendency to centralize over time that arises from some aspect of our system. Addressing that would help better effect federalism.
fivestar 9y ago
Spare me, if Hillary Clinton had won "mathematicians" would be off jerking around doing something else.
ClayShentrup 9y ago
http://scorevoting.net/GerryExamples.html http://scorevoting.net/GerryExamples.html
programminggeek 9y ago
If you redesign the districts to be purely on population you'll skew policy so hard towards urban life that you destroy the rural, agricultural base of the country. If you care at all about being provided with food, it is unwise to ignore those who live outside of a city or you cut your own throat. Democrats don't seem to get this because they care too much about their social issues, and Republicans aren't much better about this for the last decade. Only Trump seems to have figured this out and smartly got rural America on his side.
ende 9y ago
The real solution to preventing gerrymandering is to get rid of congressional districts altogether, and move to proportionally representative delegations from each state. Afterall, there is absolutely no constitutional basis for partitioning states into districts.
EGreg 9y ago
Instead of using math to rewrite districts, do something else: Change the ballot. Ranked voting is better than First Past the Post (what we use) but the one with the BEST statistical properties and simplest exanation is the Approval Vote. Simply be able to mark more than one candidate. This way Bernie or Bloomberg could have run and taken the whole thing. As opposed to staying out because of fear "a vote for X is a vote against Y". Maine did it. They switched! Now 49 more states to go. This can be done at a local level in some places. Any district that does this will become less politically polarized and people won't be so fearful and hate each other less :)
jamesonquinn 9y ago
As others have noted, proportional representation (PR) is the best solution to gerrymandering. (Not arguing that we shouldn't also support second-best solutions like nonpartisan redistricting and court challenges to the worst gerrymanders.) The three PR methods in common use are STV-with-multimember-districts; mixed-member proportional (MMP); and open (or, yuck, closed) list systems. All of these (except closed lists) are decent, but have downsides. STV leads to very complex ballots; MMP leads to "two classes" of representatives; open list focuses your voting power on the partisan choice, but doesn't give you much power to help set the direction of your favorite party. And all three can lead to extreme party fragmentation and thus excess "kingmaker" power for splinter parties, unless there are rules against that. It is, however, possible to design a method without any of these downsides. Perfection is impossible, but the Pareto frontier is, and none of the above methods are on it. Here's one that is: http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Geographic_Open_List/Delegated_(GOLD)_voting http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Geographic_Open_List/Delegat... Here's an article about why it's good: https://medium.com/@jameson.quinn/make-all-votes-count-part-i-pr-225f4aea34bb https://medium.com/@jameson.quinn/make-all-votes-count-part-...
- joveian 9y ago
  Do you have a more detailed desription about how this method works? Your links do not describe it in much detail but it is interesting. Even without the details my sense is that this method suffers from some very serious problems. Picking the two candidates with the highest initial votes seems like a bad idea; this can remove all of the most widely supported candidates if there are enough similar candidates (i.e. if 70% of the voters are split between 10 candidates and 30% between two candidates, but the 70% consider the two that the 30% would elect to be least favored). In general, strategic voting is likely to have a huge effect. I don't understand what the write-in option does, but if it allows you to vote for candidates in a different district than that would allow votes to be used to disloge more influential members of an opposing party against the wishes of the district that candidate actually represents. In any case, always interesting to learn about possible voting methods :). IMO, limiting the effectiveness of strategic voting is one of the most important things a voting method should do, while also not electing anyone who would heavily lose in two candidate races vs. any of the other candidates. I don't think it needs to be strictly Condorcet, but the further away from that a method gets (at least when geographic representation is involed) the less reasonable it seems in a lot of ways IMO. I've been thinking about the possibility of a parallel system where the grographical representation part is non-partisan. I think this might work if geographical representatives are allowed and expected to allocate their vote on a given issue proportionally to how the people they represent would vote on that issue.

155 points by andreshb 9y ago

ValG 9y ago

There are a ton of important issues, but, I believe that gerrymandering is a core issue in the United States because : Partisan gerrymandering allows for politicians to secure their seats - this leads to less voters being represented (allowing the politicians to become more polarized) e.g. when races are tight, politicians tend to move towards the center. [2] Partisan gerrymandering is strongly disliked by both parties and across the political spectrum, the only people fighting for it are those currently in power (on both sides) [3] Partisan gerrymandering disenfranchises a large portion of voters, whose votes end up “not counting” b/c of how district lines are drawn[4] Because of this, I'm currently fundraising (from friends and family) for the legal team in the North Carolina case [1]. I've committed significant amount personally to the fundraise and can say that this is arguably one of the highest leverage ways to spent dollars that you can get to get America back on track as a representative democracy. I've done a lot of research on this - if you want to help (with $$) or just want to learn more, feel free to reach out (valgui [at] gmail.com) [1]http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/sites/default/files/LWVNCvRucho%20One%20Pager.pdf http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/sites/default/files/LWVNC... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/us/politics/in-indiana-tight-senate-race-senate-candidates-move-to-center.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/us/politics/in-indiana-tig... [3]http://www.theharrispoll.com/politics/Americans_Across_Party_Lines_Oppose_Common_Gerrymandering_Practices.html http://www.theharrispoll.com/politics/Americans_Across_Party... [4]http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wang-remlinger-gerrymandering-20170505-story.html http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wang-remlinger-ge...

ouid 9y ago
Gerrymandering is not the act of making seats "more secure". This is profound misinformation, gerrymandering is only ever about disenfranchising a voting block by packing them together.
- ValG 9y ago
  You may have missed point three, where I literally say that. Also, they are not mutually exclusive, in fact they are quite causal. Also, there is more to gerrymandering that packing a voting block together; you can split voting blocks up do more sophisticated things to ensure your goals are met (the primary objectives generally being "get re-elected"). My email is in the comment and my profile, happy to chat more.
  - ouid 9y ago
    They aren't "mutually exclusive". If your voters have been packed into a district, making your seat more secure, then you are a victim of gerrymandering. It's not simply an alternative type of gerrymandering. The misunderstanding of who stands to benefit from redistricting has allowed republicans to propagate a narrative that "democrats do it too". In 2012, despite Republican house candidates receiving less of the popular vote they walked away with an extra 30 seats[1]. That's not a bipartisan effect. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Represe...
    - ValG 9y ago
      It seems like you're not reading what I'm writing at all. I literally said "they are not mutually exclusive. Also, you are misinformed, both parties 100% do this [1](or attempt to) - It just happens that Republicans are way better at it. Way better.[2] Either way, I don't care who does it, it must be stopped b/c it's not good for a democracy like ours. [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/06/republicans-and-democrats-both-try-to-gerrymander-but-only-one-of-them-is-any-good-at-it/?utm_term=.352dec1c0967 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/06/repub... [2]http://election.princeton.edu/2012/12/30/gerrymanders-part-1-busting-the-both-sides-do-it-myth/ http://election.princeton.edu/2012/12/30/gerrymanders-part-1...
      - ouid 9y ago
        You misunderstand my criticism. The reason they aren't "mutually exclusive" is because one of the things that you are calling gerrymandering isn't gerrymandering.
aaron-lebo 9y ago
One of my professors at UT Dallas has a book that argues that districts in fact should be partisan. It's been a few years but the logic is something like if you've got a 50-50 district, you're gonna end up with 50% of the people in the district unhappy. Where as if you intentionally designed districts to be like like 90-10 (or whatever possible), more people are happy. Not sure if I believe him, but it's interesting. Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections are Bad for America https://www.amazon.com/Redistricting-Representation-Competitive-Elections-Controversies/dp/0415964539 https://www.amazon.com/Redistricting-Representation-Competit...
- nathancahill 9y ago
  That's assuming a polarizing representative (one that 50% like and 50% are unhappy with. Could more balanced districts lead to more centrist representatives?
  - ajmurmann 9y ago
    Maybe even having a system that makes more than two choices viable?
- ValG 9y ago
  That's a super interesting concept. I will look into it; book ordered! From a quick think through - I think that this argument may fall flat on 2 related ideas. 1. Data shows that when seats are more secure like you say (90-10 instead of 50-50), representatives often go towards the extremes of the political spectrum (on both sides). this leads to issue 2... 2. Voters are generally not strictly partisan - that is to say (purely as an example), while I may have right leaning thoughts on how to run the economy, I may have left leaning thoughts on social issues. If I'm in a district with someone that is far right or far left, a portion of the time they're always going to vote against my wishes. Am I better off in general? Hard to tell without getting more in depth on my preferences.
  - Torwald 9y ago
    Could this be mitigated by having a system with more than two parties?
yarg 9y ago
The fact that gerrymandering is even possible is a symptom (albeit an severely exacerbating one) - not the cause - of the problems in the US electoral structure. It could be countered quite effectively by a system using larger jurisdictions each with multiple representitives.
- jawbone3 9y ago
  Yeah, you can't really do anything like it in a proportional system. For gerrymandering to be possible It is crucial that there is a large number of parallell contests so that winning many contests is more important than winning overall support.
- fivestar 9y ago
  I would say the biggest problem by far is voter education--people simply are not educated on issues. They listen to idiotic MSM sound bites and narratives and are influenced by identity politics rather than anything of substance.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    I must disagree. As person with an education and half a wit it doesn't matter how I vote in Omaha Nebraska. We will always vote republican and because of gerrymandering my local reps won't change. No amount of education can be accepted by this crowd that doesn't amount to propaganda or brainwashing.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  Totally agree. The winner takes it all system is the real problem. You can start a third party and get 30 percent of the vote and still end up with zero representation.
- edko 9y ago
  Large jusrisdictions with multiple representatives has its own set of problems too. In the current system, people, at least, know who their representative is, and there is more accountability.
- 9y ago
cryptonector 9y ago
Gerrymandering is self-limited. The party in power (in a State government) can either maximize the number of seats it has, or make seats safe. It cannot do both at once! Maximizing seats -> minimizing the margin of victory in each district -> increasing likelihood of losing its majority in a future election! Making seats safe -> maximizing margin of victory in each district and minimizing the number of seats by concentrating the majority's voters -> minimizing margin of victory in the popular houses (of the State legislature and Congress) -> increasing likelihood of losing its majority in a future election! That is, no matter how you redraw district borders, as long as population per-district is roughly even (in each State), then you cannot get a long-lasting advantage. This will probably be surprising to some here, but it's clearly true. This means that Gerrymandering is a much smaller evil than one might think. I would further argue that Gerrymandering is not an evil at all. It is part and parcel of the Republican system of government in the U.S.: - the Senate, especially when Senators were selected by State governments, and still now due to its 6-year terms and staggered elections, modulates the popular House - first past the post leads to a small number of parties and reduces party power (you vote for a person, not just a party as in the case of proportional representation systems) - gerrymandering also modulates popular will - juries modulate law and prosecutors - the president is selected by the Electoral College, which also modulates popular will - the States have police power, which modulates Federal power - the Courts modulate Congress and the Executive branch These things were well thought out by the Founders! They were arrived at by compromise. They weren't accidents born of ignorance of mathematics or science. This system has served us well. Changing it requires broad consensus, which requires strong arguments. So far I've yet to see any decent arguments against this structure.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  I thought gerrymandering is the art of creatively drawing the lines such that all of the opposing constituents are squeezed into one or a few "throwaway districts", thus preserving comfortable majorities in the remaining districts. How is this self-limiting? Also, I don't quite see how it maps to the rather abstract phenomenon you are talking about? Edit -- wikipedia seems to match up with what I was remembering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
Shivetya 9y ago
Partisan gerrymandering takes on many forms. There are also the convoluted voting blocs created to insure minority representation that can actually increase one parties representation over another based on how convoluted it is just so they don't run afoul of the courts; as in you don't make sure the selected group wins you are in court. then the anecdotal bit, got a cousin who is in politics in a mid Western state following in her dad's foot steps. here is the dirty part, at county and city levels and even to state levels the parties negotiate who runs. sometimes they get a wild card but both pretty much work to stop that. she wanted a county seat moving up from her city district, one she got because the guy in both sides hated and no one else wanted it. to get the county seat requires finding a way for the person in it to retire or get into state level politics. she cannot simply go up against this person because she won't have her parties help. politics gets dirty at the earliest possible moment. gerrymandering only seems to be an issue to most when the wrong party manages to overcome it and take power. yet sometimes we need this type of distracting for the same reason how the House is set up. To prevent cities from overpowering the counties and other areas in the state.
fivestar 9y ago
I'm not tracking. Are we not a representative democracy? How are less (the word you seek is 'fewer') voters being represented? I need to know if you're one of the many millions of disaffected socialists who is still whining about the election last fall or if there is something of substance here. The "I'm currently fundraising" is kind of a giveaway that you're one of them. While gerrymandering is strongly disliked, I doubt there is much that is going to be done about it. The Constitution allows the creation of districts like this. Much like the electoral college, it is what it is and I don't see how it matters whether districts follow neat lines or whether they are all crazy and chopped up like they are today. This sounds like another feeble attempt at grasping at straws by people whose priorities are completely out of whack.
- sp332 9y ago
  Gerrymandering is already illegal. It can be fixed relatively easily by redrawing the districts, which is done routinely. And it's not like the electoral college is written in stone either. Since you can't see why it matters, here are some examples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#Effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#Effects
  - taejo 9y ago
    Gerrymandering is not in general illegal. As you say, districts are routinely redrawn - but in a way which results in gerrymandering! To fix it requires that the districts be redrawn fairly, and that's a tougher fix (but a significant number of states already have non-partisan districting procedures).
    - sp332 9y ago
      It might be nearly impossible to litigate, but it is illegal. https://www.wired.com/2017/04/gerrymandering-illegal-mathematicians-can-prove/ https://www.wired.com/2017/04/gerrymandering-illegal-mathema...
- deleted 9y ago
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tmaly 9y ago
To solve this, I think some more universal mathematical truths would have to be employed. If you have 30 different definitions of compactness, the party in power will tend to choose the definition that will benefit them the most. If however, you choose some construct in mathematics where there is only a single option, you may avoid this particular problem. This may not be the perfect example, but something like this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3201424/A-new-way-tile-floor-Scientists-discover-strange-new-shape-trying-solve-one-maths-complex-problems.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3201424/A-new...

frabbit 9y ago

The problem is with the idea of representative democracy at all. If the electorate is smart enough to figure out that Candidate A is _both_ correct on a range of policy matters _and_ of a trustworthy nature, then why are they not smart enough to decide directly on said policy matters? Governments should be composed solely of civil servants drawn from academia and other fields in which they need to prove their knowledge and competence. Their job would be to advise on and implement the policy goals chosen by ballot measures. Figuring out some way to allow direct ballot/referendum securely and efficiently would be more welcome than re-jigging the USA to bring it into line with one of the other countries that has an elite class shuffling between ruling in the interests of businesses and remunerating themselves as leaders of those businesses.

orthecreedence 9y ago
Just like I hire a person to fix my car, or hire a person to fly the planes I sometimes travel on, we hire people to handle running the country for us. It's an abstraction of labor. I really don't want to be bothered with every little tiny decision about budget or foreign policy. That said, people in the US are so busy that they don't have any time at all to even make informed decisions on who to elect to run the city/state/country for them. This is a problem...people need to work less, but good luck solving that one with a crippled economy and enormous wealth disparities. In principle, I agree with you...we have the technology to allow referendum voting, and it would certainly make for a more representative government. However, I think time, understanding, and human nature are large barriers. Also, don't think that just because people can vote directly means they won't be easily swayed by ruling-class propaganda. A good example is when cities try to install their own fiber infrastructure and Comcast rolls in and convinces everyone it's somehow communism. That doesn't go away just because people have a more direct rule. I think a representative republic still makes sense for our day and age. Gerrymandering is a huge issue and should be dealt with...along with lobbying and other forms of (very obvious) corporate intervention in our republic.
- 75dvtwin 9y ago
  I think allowing to specify what percent of your tax goes into what 'pre-canned' list of causes, would allow a way for folks to influence the politicians outside of the 'election process', and, without, full blown on-line-referendum surveys for all the issues. Clearly, the above would bias some of the decision making power away from low-income populous, however this can be addressed by some form of weighting and thresholds.

nocoder 9y ago

Sorry to nitpick, but the headline should be "The mathematicians who want to save the "American" democracy".

ianai 9y ago

I think we need approval voting.

prodikl 9y ago
Is this like.. where you choose 1, 2, 3? so if I choose 1. Dem 2. Green 3. Repub and you chose 1. Repub 2. Green 3. Dem They'd all be equal? (four points each)
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  I think you are moving this up with ranked choice. Approval voting allows you to vote for every option either ones or not at all. So you either approve of the option or not. If you want you can vote for everyone. However, that's the same as voting for nobody. You could however also vote for everybody except for one option. That would be the equivalent of voting against somebody. Example ballots could be: Voter one: Green - yes; dem - yes; rep - no. Voter two: Green - yes; dem - no; rep - yes. This would result in the green party winning in the above example. The vote would be very close if not identical to approval ratings we frequently see for various candidates. This would have probably gotten us Bernie, since he was the only candidate running at all with favorable approval ratings. Both candidates who made it beyond the primaries were disliked by the majority, which is unfortunate to say the least. As an added benefit we could completely leave off primaries if we want. There is very little spoiler effect in this system.
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    > There is very little spoiler effect [under approval voting]. Why do you believe this?
    - ajmurmann 9y ago
      Because there is much less reason to strategically vote for your second choice in order to prevent a candidate you definitely don't want. A friend of mine who is very active in this area also claims there are studies about this. But I've honestly never read them. It seems intuitively true to me. Which I acknowledge is not ideal.

acjohnson55 9y ago

To me, the problem is winner-take-all districts to begin with. It all but ensures some constituents are going to be sorely disappointed. Why not consider something like multi-member districts? We could tune it even further by awarding variable voting power. Then the way the borders are drawn becomes far less relevant. I'm sure there are tradeoffs, but it would certainly be more representative.

labster 9y ago
Most of the arguments against this center on the fact that ranked systems would be too complex for voters to understand. Which I used to think was pure hogwash, but Americans have since proved that they can't handle even two candidates for a major office. Hint: the worst one was the one with zero government experience.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  The parent didn't mention ranked choice voting unless I read it wrong. I read them to argue in favor of multiple representatives per district. You can have that even with the current voting system. The top n candidates get the job with n > 1. There only difference is right now n = 1. That being said there is also the much simpler approval voting.
  - acjohnson55 9y ago
    Yep, you read me correctly. Approval voting is great too, but I don't know that it addresses the issue of district boundaries on its own. And to address the question of complexity from the first person to reply to me, I don't think that's a realistic concern. Basically it would work like this: you vote normally (whether singe vote, approval, ranked, or whatever), then each party gets at most the number of winners proportional to their aggregate share of the vote, with representatives chosen in order of performance.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

nhebb 9y ago

This article from 2013 puts it at D+7.1 overall for the House: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/who-gerrymanders-more-democrats-or-republicans/ http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/who-gerrymande... What surprises me, though, is how little attention is given to caucuses in the US presidential primaries. The turnout is very low and they're subject to strong arming and party insider corruption in both major parties.

letitgo12345 9y ago
Well speaking just for myself, I honestly would prefer an even more party insiders driven process for the primaries. Too much democracy seems to lead to insane levels of populism leading to characters like Trump. At any rate, US democracy guarantees one a vote in the general -- parties are private orgs and it's not "corrupt" or "wrong" for them to select candidates however they want.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  Except since there's no chance for a 3rd party, these two parties hold too much power and it suddenly matters much more. If it was like other countries with tons of parties that rise and fall, you'd be correct. Also what do you mean by insane levels of populism? Isn't that just a derogatory way to say "what the people want"?
  - letitgo12345 9y ago
    There would be more of a chance for a 3rd party if people bothered to care about the house rather than just the presidency... But yeah, today there's little chance. But so what? Plenty of progress, far more than today was made in the past before the primary system. Several great presidents (including Lincoln, FDR, TDR) came from the old process. Meanwhile the new process gave us Trump...Not to mention, tons of members of Congress afraid to do anything sensible because they are too afraid of primary challenges by hyper partisan people on their side. UK doesn't have a primary system (mostly -- they did for Labour who are now saddled with Corbyn) and they don't have a stupidly gridlocked govt. Neither does Canada. Both of those countries have politics dominated by mostly 2-3 parties. In fact almost no country on Earth has it to the level that the US does. Re:"what people want" -- for one thing what people want is often contradictory. For another, there's a reason why the US doesn't have mob rule by majority. What people want is not always coherent or wise. IMO our goal as a society should be a functioning govt and a liberal polity for which democracy is a means. But by no means is democracy a good in an of itself for me at least.

skierscott 9y ago

One of the most reasonable rules I've heard IMO for deterring voting districts: > In each section (at first a state, etc), find a dividing line that splits the population in two. This seems somewhat reasonable, and there's no way for humans to bias it. Here's some pictures of what this looks like [1], and the write up of this idea [2] [1]:http://rangevoting.org/alRS.png http://rangevoting.org/alRS.png [2]:http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html

ouid 9y ago
First of all, this only allows for a power of two of representatives. Second, any degree of freedom creates variance, and you can optimize it. There are many straight lines that divide a population in two.
- kirrent 9y ago
  For number 2, there could be any number of solutions to fix those degrees of freedom. Intuitively, a maximum margin separator for determining the division wouldn't seem to be a terrible idea.
  - ouid 9y ago
    That just means that the way of restricting the degrees of freedom is, itself, a degree of freedom, but I wasn't the one arguing that the problem could be solved.
hibikir 9y ago
The problem is not bias, but uneven representation. We can get uneven representation without bias quite easily: I've not ran your system in practical terms, but I'd be very surprised if, in the US, this gave you republican house majorities even when they lose the popular vote. The reason is simple: Republican voters are more dispersed geographically, so it's very hard for them to get clumped into a district where they have an overwhelming advantage. This is why plenty of people prefer to do things like maximize the chance that a voter feels well represented, or minimize the safety of incumbents, instead of going for something that leads to simple lines. Another important problem of straight lines is that it ignores the physical limitations of actual voting: Each voting location is expensive (go ask in North Carolina, where magical budget cuts make it harder to vote in areas that tend to vote democratic). inconvenient, mathematical lines will give you higher average costs to get to your own polling place, and will require more polling places, or places that have to corral different people to different booths with different options. Good luck doing that without doing everything fully digitally, which is, IMO, not necessarily a good idea.

bitmadness 9y ago

I knew Jonathan Mattingly when I was an undergrad, cool guy

woopwoop 9y ago

It's easy to gerrymander a surface. It's hard to gerrymander a line, or a circle, where the connectedness requirement has teeth. One solution to gerrymandering is to determine congressional districts by birthday, or last name, rather than by geographic location.

LaughingGoat 9y ago
Interesting concept! I wonder if this is hackable based on demographic popularity of last names, by race. According to Wolfram Alpha, the most common last names are: Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, which don't share a common 1st letter. But maybe some ethnic names might: Rodriguez, Ramirez, Chan, Chen, Chang... But ultimately, what political needs would a community of last-name-starts-with-C need?
- slyfocks 9y ago
  > But ultimately, what political needs would a community of last-name-starts-with-C need? None, which is why that grouping would only make sense in a society of extremely generic robots.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
slyfocks 9y ago
The U.S. is not a monolith–registered Democrats in West Virginia have very different priorities from those in Massachusetts–so geographical boundaries actually serve a purpose in electing a representative who is (ideally) aware of local needs and committed to fighting for them. In contrast, those with a common birthday or name have no distinguishable political desires in aggregate, so the likely result would be 538 generic congress members. Furthermore, if we assume people exhibit a bias toward candidates from their home state (they do, on average), grouping by birthday or last name is actually a net negative choice since it would likely result in overrepresenation of Californians in congress (assuming first-past-the-post).
BearGoesChirp 9y ago

known 9y ago

Does it fix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud

tnorthcutt 9y ago

Eliminating first past the post would go a long way.

a_imho 9y ago

Sortition >> Voting

TheCoelacanth 9y ago
I think this is a really interesting idea, and I would love to see it tried in a modern government. There are a lot of potential problems, but possibly less than those involved with voting.
- a_imho 9y ago
  From what I understand, the US legal system has the jury duty as a form of sortition, who make life or death decisions. It is a solution to make the governing bodies more inclusive and representative, which is the title of the article. No winner takes all, no fake news, no votes buying, no suspicious campaign donations, probably no 2 party system, less oligarchies, corruption and nepotism. What is not to like? Wikipedia [1] does list a couple of points, all debatable and/or easily countered imo. I also happen to like how seamlessly it integrates with the current representative model and remains scalable as opposed to more direct approaches. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition#Disadvantages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition#Disadvantages from the average voter pov, who benefit little to none from the current establishment in this presumption
  - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    The big difference that I see from juries, is that juries only choose from a fairly limited selection of possibilities, and they have a few specifically identified professionals (the judge and the lawyers for each side) who guide them through the process. With an actual government, there are only a few constraints and everything else is open to them. There are also thousands of interested parties trying to influence them instead of just two. That would make their job much more challenging than being a juror. It could potentially end up handing more power to lobbyists because of the inexperience of the people in power and resulting in more corruption because there are no longer have to hide it to ensure re-election.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Dowwie 9y ago

Geometry of Redistricting: Summer School http://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/ http://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/ It is open to the public and free of charge

humanrebar 9y ago

The real problem, in my opinion, is that we're making more and more centralized decisions. Federalism properly done lessens the pressure to come up with complex gerrymandering and voting schemes by lessening the election pressure altogether. It adds more power to other important democratic mechanisms: free speech and vote-with-your-feet. The power of free speech is improved because a state legislator has fewer constituents, so each group of 100 with similar interests matters a lot more. And, at the end of the day, if a city or state is really screwing things up, people (not everyone, but enough) can relocate to somewhere that is doing a better job. Eliminating gerrymandering (how? how will it get passed?) and new voting schemes (which? how will it get passed?) are interesting, but federalism already exists (10th amendment), it's just underemphasized.

Dayshine 9y ago
The downside is increased governance costs due to duplication of bureaucracy, increased complexity of legal systems, and more confusing everyday laws (as fewer people = less documentation and support services). Which all means "vote-with-your-feet" is actually far harder to do, as all your everyday legal knowledge is useless in other states.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  The counterargument is that increased layers of bureaucracy is also expensive, possibly more expensive. And we already have byzantine regulations, so it's not all that much of a downside. And, at the end of the day, we can talk to our city councilmen about the unfairness of complicated regulations. And cities can brag about their simple and fair legal systems to get people to want to move there.
arcbyte 9y ago
Theres probably some kind of quantifiable tendency to centralize over time that arises from some aspect of our system. Addressing that would help better effect federalism.

fivestar 9y ago

Spare me, if Hillary Clinton had won "mathematicians" would be off jerking around doing something else.

ClayShentrup 9y ago

http://scorevoting.net/GerryExamples.html http://scorevoting.net/GerryExamples.html

programminggeek 9y ago

If you redesign the districts to be purely on population you'll skew policy so hard towards urban life that you destroy the rural, agricultural base of the country. If you care at all about being provided with food, it is unwise to ignore those who live outside of a city or you cut your own throat. Democrats don't seem to get this because they care too much about their social issues, and Republicans aren't much better about this for the last decade. Only Trump seems to have figured this out and smartly got rural America on his side.

ende 9y ago

The real solution to preventing gerrymandering is to get rid of congressional districts altogether, and move to proportionally representative delegations from each state. Afterall, there is absolutely no constitutional basis for partitioning states into districts.

EGreg 9y ago

Instead of using math to rewrite districts, do something else: Change the ballot. Ranked voting is better than First Past the Post (what we use) but the one with the BEST statistical properties and simplest exanation is the Approval Vote. Simply be able to mark more than one candidate. This way Bernie or Bloomberg could have run and taken the whole thing. As opposed to staying out because of fear "a vote for X is a vote against Y". Maine did it. They switched! Now 49 more states to go. This can be done at a local level in some places. Any district that does this will become less politically polarized and people won't be so fearful and hate each other less :)

jamesonquinn 9y ago

As others have noted, proportional representation (PR) is the best solution to gerrymandering. (Not arguing that we shouldn't also support second-best solutions like nonpartisan redistricting and court challenges to the worst gerrymanders.) The three PR methods in common use are STV-with-multimember-districts; mixed-member proportional (MMP); and open (or, yuck, closed) list systems. All of these (except closed lists) are decent, but have downsides. STV leads to very complex ballots; MMP leads to "two classes" of representatives; open list focuses your voting power on the partisan choice, but doesn't give you much power to help set the direction of your favorite party. And all three can lead to extreme party fragmentation and thus excess "kingmaker" power for splinter parties, unless there are rules against that. It is, however, possible to design a method without any of these downsides. Perfection is impossible, but the Pareto frontier is, and none of the above methods are on it. Here's one that is: http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Geographic_Open_List/Delegated_(GOLD)_voting http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Geographic_Open_List/Delegat... Here's an article about why it's good: https://medium.com/@jameson.quinn/make-all-votes-count-part-i-pr-225f4aea34bb https://medium.com/@jameson.quinn/make-all-votes-count-part-...

joveian 9y ago
Do you have a more detailed desription about how this method works? Your links do not describe it in much detail but it is interesting. Even without the details my sense is that this method suffers from some very serious problems. Picking the two candidates with the highest initial votes seems like a bad idea; this can remove all of the most widely supported candidates if there are enough similar candidates (i.e. if 70% of the voters are split between 10 candidates and 30% between two candidates, but the 70% consider the two that the 30% would elect to be least favored). In general, strategic voting is likely to have a huge effect. I don't understand what the write-in option does, but if it allows you to vote for candidates in a different district than that would allow votes to be used to disloge more influential members of an opposing party against the wishes of the district that candidate actually represents. In any case, always interesting to learn about possible voting methods :). IMO, limiting the effectiveness of strategic voting is one of the most important things a voting method should do, while also not electing anyone who would heavily lose in two candidate races vs. any of the other candidates. I don't think it needs to be strictly Condorcet, but the further away from that a method gets (at least when geographic representation is involed) the less reasonable it seems in a lot of ways IMO. I've been thinking about the possibility of a parallel system where the grographical representation part is non-partisan. I think this might work if geographical representatives are allowed and expected to allocate their vote on a given issue proportionally to how the people they represent would vote on that issue.