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It doesn't even have to be a complex mathematical equation. Gerrymandering is a particularly acute American problem which isn't present in most other industria
by frandroid 9y ago
It doesn't even have to be a complex mathematical equation. Gerrymandering is a particularly acute American problem which isn't present in most other industrial democracies, because in most cases, an independent commission is picked to define district boundaries, and they are mostly guided by common sense and fairness, which seems to work well enough. The problem the U.S. has is to leave this task to people who have an inherent conflict of interest in the outcome of the process.
- FireBeyond 9y agoIt's certainly not an issue recently, but the UK used to have lots of issues with it, see rotten and pocket boroughs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs).
- stordoff 9y agoThat's in some sense the opposite problem - constituency boundaries _didn't_ change so became manipulable, rather than the boundaries being deliberately drawn to introduce bias.