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But why consider geometry itself to be important? Isn't geometry a mere proxy for something else that's desirable? My own suspicion is this: that districting i
by jpfed 9y ago
But why consider geometry itself to be important? Isn't geometry a mere proxy for something else that's desirable?
My own suspicion is this: that districting is an act of partitioning the social graph. The weights of this graph are not necessarily "who socializes with who" but rather "to what extent do these people share common interests". It is not necessarily the case that regions characterized by people of common interests will be shaped in ways that we can express easy geometric criteria for.
- trendia 9y agoGeography does matter within the Constitution. But also consider a counter example using a third party: California, which has 53 representatives. If 5% of the population votes third party, then there is an efficiency gap (since 2 - 3 representatives should be from that party), but to fix this gap would require some very strange districts. You could argue that this gap isn't very important, but to come to this conclusion you would have to use some metric other than the efficiency gap.
- jpfed 9y agoThere's almost always an efficiency gap. To judge whether an efficiency gap is disqualifying for a map depends on what other maps might be drawn- is this efficiency gap unusual given how the voters are distributed?
- trendia 9y ago> To judge whether an efficiency gap is disqualifying for a map depends on what other maps might be drawn This is false. Efficiency has been applied by the Supreme Court to mean precise mathematical equality, rather than an approximate or relative metric [0]. For instance, if the populations of two districts is not exactly equal according to the most recent census data, then the district must be explicitly justified. Quote [1]: > But in Kirkpatrick v. Preisler,288 a sharply divided Court announced the rule that a State must make a “good-faith effort to achieve precise mathematical equality.”289 Therefore, “[u]nless population variances among congressional districts are shown to have resulted despite such [good-faith] effort [to achieve precise mathematical equality], the State must justify each variance, no matter how small.” We would expect that the Supreme Court would apply the same mathematical exactness to the efficiency gap, should they find the efficiency gap a valid measure of gerrymandering. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesberry_v._Sanders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesberry_v._Sanders [1] http://law.onecle.com/constitution/article-1/05-congressional-districting.html http://law.onecle.com/constitution/article-1/05-congressiona...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jpfed 9y agoI don't understand how your first cite says what you say it says. Neither the word "efficiency" nor the notion of [voter] efficiency appear in your link. Do you just mean that SCOTUS has in some cases striven for mathematical precision and this leads you to extrapolate that they will think any non-zero efficiency gap disqualifies a map?
- trendia 9y agoIn the population of districts case, there was an objective measurement: the difference in population of two districts. Then, the defendents made a subjective argument that they were "close enough". However, the Supreme Court doesn't like to replace an objective measurement (population) with a subjective one ("close enough"ness). So, in this case we have an objective measurement -- voter efficiency -- and a subjective one -- "what do other maps look like". If we can sometimes reject the objective measurement in favor of the subjective one, then it's not really ready to be applied as the standard by our highest court.