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If every district is 75-25, then the issue is that one party is getting 25% of the votes but 0% of the seats. All of their votes have been split across all dist
by phailhaus 9y ago
If every district is 75-25, then the issue is that one party is getting 25% of the votes but 0% of the seats. All of their votes have been split across all districts, keeping them from winning any one.
- mjw1007 9y agoOne way for that to happen is if party support is evenly spread throughout the region; then however you draw the districts the result will be the same. In that sort of situation it doesn't seem to be reasonable to call what's going on "gerrymandering"; I think the finger of blame should be pointed (if anywhere) at the system of single-member-constituency plurality voting.
- phailhaus 9y agoOur voting system is definitely an issue, but if we want to use the efficiency gap as a metric of gerrymandering then I think this is a big problem. As it stands, the efficiency gap treats a 75-25 split as a "perfect election", which means that it's actually a measure of how far elections are from this ideal. So if we start using the efficiency gap, then there will be a huge incentive for states to draw lines to be as close to 75-25 as possible, which is obviously not what we want. It could even further polarize the country.
- smeyer 9y agoSorry I was a bit unclear. If every district is decided by 50% but some are 75-25 one way and some are 25-75 the other way, the efficiency gap is 0. If all of them are 75-25 the same way, there will be a large efficiency gap.