7 ms·

It's flawed, but why should an area with diverse communities have to settle for one representative when a representative per community could be chosen instead?

It's flawed, but why should an area with diverse communities have to settle for one representative when a representative per community could be chosen instead? Isn't it marginalizing to have electoral districts which are divided politically? Districts should be aligned to the wishes of the residents there in, correct?

paulddraper 9y ago
What is a "community"? Hm maybe we should draw some lines. But who should do it? Why us of course.
siidooloo 9y ago
Actually, if it weren't for gerrymandering these districts would probably be more politically homogenous. The point of the gerrymandering is to split up a district that would have had a majority of some party. Now instead of having a majority in one district, they have a minority in several districts.
- al452 9y ago
  Not quite... the real point of gerrymandering is to concentrate your political opponents' support, so that they have a small number of large majorities, and to spread out your own, so that you have a large number of small majorities. This will presumably tend to make some areas more homogeneous and some less.
  - mhuffman 9y ago
    It's both! One's called "cracking" and the other is called "packing".
airza 9y ago
Because having some kind of matchup between... communities (are you trying to say 'ethnic groups' without coming out and saying it?) doesn't seem as good as having a matchup between the % of people who vote for each party's reps and the actual proportion of reps send, which is what would happen if these districts were chosen at random
mwfunk 9y ago
I think I get what you're saying, although the point of gerrymandering isn't to empower communities by giving them representatives who reflect their residents' political affiliations (although it works out that way for the ruling party). Rather, it's to disenfranchise voters for whichever party is out of power in a given state at that time. I would much rather see a system where a given district is defined in terms of the common needs of its residents, not the political affiliation of the residents. Whichever party wins, they can try to fix the community's problems in their own way, and if they screw up, presumably the community might flip and try the other side for a while. If all anyone cares about is which political party someone is affiliated with, there's no accountability and no alternatives. With the current system, all of this stuff is set in stone- a given representative might end up with with a 15% approval rating but still get reelected for 30 years. Gerrymandering is trying to rig the system to favor a party, not unlike how monopolies have the power to rig a market to favor themselves by subverting free market forces. In the case of monopolies, we have all sorts of antitrust/etc. laws to protect free markets. Some people say they go too far, some say they don't go far enough, but they're there at least. I wish we had many more similar legal concepts for redistricting, so the governance of the mechanics of US democracy is at least in theory geared towards empowering as much of the population as possible. Right now it's not even that way in theory, as politically-based gerrymandering is not only legal but the expected norm in most states.
- int_19h 9y ago
  But how do you define "common needs of the residents"? And what if you ask them, and their answer is basically political affiliation?
erpellan 9y ago
Use a computer to optimise for getting as close to the same number of people in each district with the shortest borders (probably roughly hexagonal districts). Carving up the populace on any other basis than 'number of voters' is sheer sophistry. No amount of weasel words about 'communities' will change that.
- vidarh 9y ago
  The much simpler solution is proportional representation. It takes away the benefit of gerrymandering, while designing a computer solution for this just changes the arguments people must use to justify changes to the algorithms employed.
- int_19h 9y ago
  The problem with this is that it defeats the purpose of having per-district representation in the first place, which is supposed to be about shared geographic interests. If your randomly cut districts end up including parts with vastly different interests, one of them ends up denying representation to the other. You can say that it averages out across the country, but again, the whole point of such districts is to have representation that is unique to their needs. If we're okay with averaging things out, we might as well just ditch the districts, and count party votes on the national level.
_asummers 9y ago
To add on to the other comments, the two techniques used in gerrymandering are "packing" which sounds similar to what you're describing. Imagine if I have 10 districts and pack all the people who vote one party into one district. I've now ensured that my state will be overwhelmingly represented by the opposite party, The other technique is called "spreading" where I take all the people I would put into that single district, but instead put a few in district 1, a few in district 2, etc, but fewer than the demographics for the opposite party indicate. Not only have I made it so that this group underrepresented in their district, but I've ensured that there has to be overwhelming majority in A BUNCH of districts to get represented at the state and national level. Both are rather insidious and do not provide a fair representation to those voters, especially coupled with the layer of indirection that is the electoral college.
GlobalServices 9y ago
Yes. People are only opposed to it when it hurts 'their side'

paulddraper 9y ago

What is a "community"? Hm maybe we should draw some lines. But who should do it? Why us of course.

siidooloo 9y ago

Actually, if it weren't for gerrymandering these districts would probably be more politically homogenous. The point of the gerrymandering is to split up a district that would have had a majority of some party. Now instead of having a majority in one district, they have a minority in several districts.

al452 9y ago
Not quite... the real point of gerrymandering is to concentrate your political opponents' support, so that they have a small number of large majorities, and to spread out your own, so that you have a large number of small majorities. This will presumably tend to make some areas more homogeneous and some less.
- mhuffman 9y ago
  It's both! One's called "cracking" and the other is called "packing".

airza 9y ago

Because having some kind of matchup between... communities (are you trying to say 'ethnic groups' without coming out and saying it?) doesn't seem as good as having a matchup between the % of people who vote for each party's reps and the actual proportion of reps send, which is what would happen if these districts were chosen at random

mwfunk 9y ago

I think I get what you're saying, although the point of gerrymandering isn't to empower communities by giving them representatives who reflect their residents' political affiliations (although it works out that way for the ruling party). Rather, it's to disenfranchise voters for whichever party is out of power in a given state at that time. I would much rather see a system where a given district is defined in terms of the common needs of its residents, not the political affiliation of the residents. Whichever party wins, they can try to fix the community's problems in their own way, and if they screw up, presumably the community might flip and try the other side for a while. If all anyone cares about is which political party someone is affiliated with, there's no accountability and no alternatives. With the current system, all of this stuff is set in stone- a given representative might end up with with a 15% approval rating but still get reelected for 30 years. Gerrymandering is trying to rig the system to favor a party, not unlike how monopolies have the power to rig a market to favor themselves by subverting free market forces. In the case of monopolies, we have all sorts of antitrust/etc. laws to protect free markets. Some people say they go too far, some say they don't go far enough, but they're there at least. I wish we had many more similar legal concepts for redistricting, so the governance of the mechanics of US democracy is at least in theory geared towards empowering as much of the population as possible. Right now it's not even that way in theory, as politically-based gerrymandering is not only legal but the expected norm in most states.

int_19h 9y ago
But how do you define "common needs of the residents"? And what if you ask them, and their answer is basically political affiliation?

erpellan 9y ago

Use a computer to optimise for getting as close to the same number of people in each district with the shortest borders (probably roughly hexagonal districts). Carving up the populace on any other basis than 'number of voters' is sheer sophistry. No amount of weasel words about 'communities' will change that.

vidarh 9y ago
The much simpler solution is proportional representation. It takes away the benefit of gerrymandering, while designing a computer solution for this just changes the arguments people must use to justify changes to the algorithms employed.
int_19h 9y ago
The problem with this is that it defeats the purpose of having per-district representation in the first place, which is supposed to be about shared geographic interests. If your randomly cut districts end up including parts with vastly different interests, one of them ends up denying representation to the other. You can say that it averages out across the country, but again, the whole point of such districts is to have representation that is unique to their needs. If we're okay with averaging things out, we might as well just ditch the districts, and count party votes on the national level.

_asummers 9y ago

To add on to the other comments, the two techniques used in gerrymandering are "packing" which sounds similar to what you're describing. Imagine if I have 10 districts and pack all the people who vote one party into one district. I've now ensured that my state will be overwhelmingly represented by the opposite party, The other technique is called "spreading" where I take all the people I would put into that single district, but instead put a few in district 1, a few in district 2, etc, but fewer than the demographics for the opposite party indicate. Not only have I made it so that this group underrepresented in their district, but I've ensured that there has to be overwhelming majority in A BUNCH of districts to get represented at the state and national level. Both are rather insidious and do not provide a fair representation to those voters, especially coupled with the layer of indirection that is the electoral college.

GlobalServices 9y ago

Yes. People are only opposed to it when it hurts 'their side'