4 ms·

In this era, the whole idea of having many small winner take all districts is the problem. Gerrymandering is small by comparison and removing gerrymandering won

by erentz 9y ago

In this era, the whole idea of having many small winner take all districts is the problem. Gerrymandering is small by comparison and removing gerrymandering won’t result in much change. The solution is to moved to STV and expanding the size of districts to elect 3 to 5 representatives instead.

stevenwoo 9y ago
In this particular case in Wisconsin it was so egregious that the idea that gerrymandering as exploited here wouldn't make a difference is ludicrous. How would you answer Sotomayor's question? http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/10/sonia_sotomayor_s_simple_devastating_question_in_gill_v_whitford.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudenc...
- erentz 9y ago
  My answer would obviously be there is none. You may have misread my comment as some defense of Gerrymandering when clearly it isn't. Gerrymandering is a byproduct of a broken concept: having tiny little districts in a world where people live in one, work in another, eat lunch in a different district, visit their parents in a fourth district, etc. This made sense 200 years ago, but not today. And any fix to Gerrymandering doesn't overall make a dent in the problem of fair representation. My counter-question might be something like: "Could you tell me what difference fixing these individual cases of Gerrymandering would make to outcomes across our congress as a whole over the past 20 years? What helps our democracy more, fixing the technical problem of gerrymandering but not improving representation, or removing the technical feasibility of gerrymandering to exist and so doing provide a fix to the problem of representation?"
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    I can agree that First Past the Post is suboptimal. I can also believe that we must improve the current system until First Past the Post is replaced, which might be never in the United States and certainly going to be a difficult state by state issue. The leap from the First Past the Post to STV seems insurmountable in the face of how hard the GOP is clinging to power with voter disenfranchisement with the same old tricks of hurdles to voters of color along with this 2010 50 state strategy that led to the extreme gerrymandering. (Having the Democrats be incompetent enough to have the GOP loudly proclaim their strategy in the editorial page of the New York Times pre election and still not react is another issue.)
walshemj 9y ago
STV has its uses but larger multi rep constituencies 1 breaks the relationship between voter and politician and 2 allows extremist parties to act as king makers see the DUP in the UK and much more so in Europe
- tspiteri 9y ago
  The DUP as king makers in the UK has nothing to do with STV; in fact it is an example of king makers with no STV. There are no STV or multi rep constituencies in British general elections. (In Northern Ireland, STV is used for local elections, but that's something else.)
  - walshemj 9y ago
    Large Multi representative constituencies do even with STV eg UKIP getting MEP's but Not MP's
criddell 9y ago
Is there any reason to not remove gerrymandering?
- creaghpatr 9y ago
  Lack of an apolitical alternative.
  - pmyteh 9y ago
    In the US, maybe. The UK uses a non-partisan Electoral Commission which has basically eliminated gerrymandering as a factor in UK politics. There are residual disputes about recent Conservative changes to the criteria given to the Commission in setting boundaries, but even so this is way less egregious than the problems in the US.
- andrewla 9y ago
  This is a complicated question, because it isn't defining what the alternative is. Redistricting is the process of setting the boundaries of districts. This has to be done for two principle reasons: 1. To adjust for population changes over time. This is undisputed. 2. It can be argued that this also makes sense to group together areas that have similar concerns -- in an extreme example, separating primarily agricultural districts from primarily urban districts. This is relatively uncontroversial. Gerrymandering is a term that describes a third reason: 3. Redistricting with the intent of producing a bias towards a particular party. This is pretty uncontroversially considered bad. It's difficult to prove that this is happening; that's what this whole case is about, or at least a subset of it. Namely, to establish the "efficiency gap" as a metric on a state-wide basis for saying whether the redistricting is trying to do #3 in the guise of doing #2. Many proposed solutions to the redistricting problem attempt to take some basic heuristic and apply it in an objective way, but although it's possible to solve #1 pretty easily, solving #2 is inherently subjective and that's where the wiggle room for #3 is created.
  - Kevin_S 9y ago
    Thank you for this explanation. I have a basic understanding of the good and bad of gerrymandering, and this really cleared it all up.

by erentz 9y ago

stevenwoo 9y ago

In this particular case in Wisconsin it was so egregious that the idea that gerrymandering as exploited here wouldn't make a difference is ludicrous. How would you answer Sotomayor's question? http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/10/sonia_sotomayor_s_simple_devastating_question_in_gill_v_whitford.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudenc...

erentz 9y ago
My answer would obviously be there is none. You may have misread my comment as some defense of Gerrymandering when clearly it isn't. Gerrymandering is a byproduct of a broken concept: having tiny little districts in a world where people live in one, work in another, eat lunch in a different district, visit their parents in a fourth district, etc. This made sense 200 years ago, but not today. And any fix to Gerrymandering doesn't overall make a dent in the problem of fair representation. My counter-question might be something like: "Could you tell me what difference fixing these individual cases of Gerrymandering would make to outcomes across our congress as a whole over the past 20 years? What helps our democracy more, fixing the technical problem of gerrymandering but not improving representation, or removing the technical feasibility of gerrymandering to exist and so doing provide a fix to the problem of representation?"
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  I can agree that First Past the Post is suboptimal. I can also believe that we must improve the current system until First Past the Post is replaced, which might be never in the United States and certainly going to be a difficult state by state issue. The leap from the First Past the Post to STV seems insurmountable in the face of how hard the GOP is clinging to power with voter disenfranchisement with the same old tricks of hurdles to voters of color along with this 2010 50 state strategy that led to the extreme gerrymandering. (Having the Democrats be incompetent enough to have the GOP loudly proclaim their strategy in the editorial page of the New York Times pre election and still not react is another issue.)

walshemj 9y ago

STV has its uses but larger multi rep constituencies 1 breaks the relationship between voter and politician and 2 allows extremist parties to act as king makers see the DUP in the UK and much more so in Europe

tspiteri 9y ago
The DUP as king makers in the UK has nothing to do with STV; in fact it is an example of king makers with no STV. There are no STV or multi rep constituencies in British general elections. (In Northern Ireland, STV is used for local elections, but that's something else.)
- walshemj 9y ago
  Large Multi representative constituencies do even with STV eg UKIP getting MEP's but Not MP's

criddell 9y ago

Is there any reason to not remove gerrymandering?

creaghpatr 9y ago
Lack of an apolitical alternative.
- pmyteh 9y ago
  In the US, maybe. The UK uses a non-partisan Electoral Commission which has basically eliminated gerrymandering as a factor in UK politics. There are residual disputes about recent Conservative changes to the criteria given to the Commission in setting boundaries, but even so this is way less egregious than the problems in the US.
andrewla 9y ago
This is a complicated question, because it isn't defining what the alternative is. Redistricting is the process of setting the boundaries of districts. This has to be done for two principle reasons: 1. To adjust for population changes over time. This is undisputed. 2. It can be argued that this also makes sense to group together areas that have similar concerns -- in an extreme example, separating primarily agricultural districts from primarily urban districts. This is relatively uncontroversial. Gerrymandering is a term that describes a third reason: 3. Redistricting with the intent of producing a bias towards a particular party. This is pretty uncontroversially considered bad. It's difficult to prove that this is happening; that's what this whole case is about, or at least a subset of it. Namely, to establish the "efficiency gap" as a metric on a state-wide basis for saying whether the redistricting is trying to do #3 in the guise of doing #2. Many proposed solutions to the redistricting problem attempt to take some basic heuristic and apply it in an objective way, but although it's possible to solve #1 pretty easily, solving #2 is inherently subjective and that's where the wiggle room for #3 is created.
- Kevin_S 9y ago
  Thank you for this explanation. I have a basic understanding of the good and bad of gerrymandering, and this really cleared it all up.