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California had a statewide ballot initiative (Prop 20) which established the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, which drew districts ignoring party a

California had a statewide ballot initiative (Prop 20) which established the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, which drew districts ignoring party affiliation. The resulting districts lean heavily Democratic (because, duh, California) but are also fiercely competitive; there are very few safe seats and incumbents have to hustle. Frankly it's fantastic, a model for the nation. California has proven out the solution: collect a set of citizens from both parties as well as some unaffiliated, aggressively de-politicize the process, give them broad guidelines on how district lines should be drawn, and let them do their thing. No need for weird cake-cutting machinations.

andrewstuart 8y ago
If you're suggesting that because a system draws from a group of people consisting of both sides of politics (or no side of politics, then it is therefore "functional, fair and apolitical in its outcomes", then I suggest your conclusion is somewhat naive. The idea of "I cut you choose" is an incredibly inspired one because fairness is inherently built in because no participant wants to risk getting the bad side of the slicing and therefore works very hard to make it fair.
- jellicle 8y ago
  Plenty of people are perfectly willing to draw fair districts. 7.4 billion people on Earth right now, and at least 7 billion of them would be perfectly honest and fair in drawing congressional districts. The fact that the US generally picks people from the tiny slice of committed partisans to draw boundaries is idiotic.
  - vibrio 8y ago
    while I like to be optimistic about human nature, the ability to find people that don't have political and/or financial interests involved in those decisions is not trivial. The 7.4 Billon people number is irrelevant. No one is going to someone from Sudan to draw districts in Wisconsin-they won't even go to someone from Illinois or Minnesota for that advice.
    - jamie_ca 8y ago
      They could. Get somebody from out of state, and give them just a raw map with population counts/density/whatever. Heck, do this 3 times, and then get local party affiliates to look them over, and each party can eliminate one of them so the most middle-ground is selected.
    - jellicle 8y ago
      Why not? The only reason for "why not?" is "because I want to bias the drawing process", which is not a good reason.
SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
>districts lean heavily Democratic (because, duh, California) Except that outside of a few cities, California is actually quite red. IIRC would be a red state if LA and SD were underwater. https://www.politico.com/election-results/2018/california/ https://www.politico.com/election-results/2018/california/
- kemitche 8y ago
  Well the majority of California's population is in those cities' metro area. The map only looks that red when it isn't accounting for population.
- ohwaitnvm 8y ago
  I can’t see how you came to that conclusion whatsoever, though I may be biased as an SF-born Democrat. If you’re looking at the governor race, the votes eyeball to 2.8m Dem, 1.7m Rep. As well, it was surprising to me that you would choose to remove SD, as a Republican lead that county, though the Democrat leader there was only down by 10k (of ~400k total) votes. Edit: 400k, not 350
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    He's talking about counties, which are spread across a diverse geographic region. As per the image there it looks like the clear majority of California's counties leaned republican for governor. But the counties that leaned democrat are very densely populated and so end up choosing for the entire state. On a national level this is the reason for the existence of both the electoral college and the senate. Imagine we did not have the college or senate and there was one very heavily populated state with a large group of mostly homogenous voters. Suddenly that state would be deciding every single action for the entire nation. Whether this is a good or bad thing probably depends on your views on what representation means, but it's safe to say that people in many states would feel they lacked such - which was the very reason that we rebelled against the British Empire.
    - JamesBarney 8y ago
hudibras 8y ago
>California has proven out the solution Washington, for one, has had an independent redistricting commission since 1990.
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
Can you elaborate on what guidelines they were given? There is one surprising bias you have to be aware of. It seems if we have a state that is let's say 35% democrat, 30% republican, 20% libertarian, and 15% green then it would seem to be most fair for districts to have a similar composition. But this would be disastrous as in our district driven first past the post system this would mean that the party with 35% of the public support would end up receiving 100% of the congressional seats!! Of course the desired result should be one proportional to the makeup of a state. And this is done most naturally by a system where individuals vote for a party (or individual running as a one man party) at a state level with seats distributed according to the total vote. If a state has 10 seats then 10% of the vote guarantees at least one seat. The parties then distribute their representatives to districts weighted on the vote. E.g. a district that voted for 80% democrat would be prioritized to receive a democrat representative more than one that voted 20% democrat. The 'problem' is that if you do the above all the sudden you'd have socialists, libertarians, pirate party guys, and all other sorts with some minority representation in congress - and we can't have that can we? /s if that wasn't clear. But really, the powers that be would never agree to a system that would meaningfully undermine the establishment and so with that condition, "I Cut You Choose" does seem to be the most reasonable and realistic possibility for fair outcomes. --- More generally here, I think systems that assume bad behavior and find solutions that acceptably in spite of that tend to be vastly better than ones that assume good behavior and result in collapse when undermined. It's basically just finding game theory optimal solutions to problems.
wmeredith 8y ago
“I cut, you choose” is far from weird machinations. My 3 year old and 8 year old are able to grasp the implications in about 10 seconds.

andrewstuart 8y ago

If you're suggesting that because a system draws from a group of people consisting of both sides of politics (or no side of politics, then it is therefore "functional, fair and apolitical in its outcomes", then I suggest your conclusion is somewhat naive. The idea of "I cut you choose" is an incredibly inspired one because fairness is inherently built in because no participant wants to risk getting the bad side of the slicing and therefore works very hard to make it fair.

jellicle 8y ago
Plenty of people are perfectly willing to draw fair districts. 7.4 billion people on Earth right now, and at least 7 billion of them would be perfectly honest and fair in drawing congressional districts. The fact that the US generally picks people from the tiny slice of committed partisans to draw boundaries is idiotic.
- vibrio 8y ago
  while I like to be optimistic about human nature, the ability to find people that don't have political and/or financial interests involved in those decisions is not trivial. The 7.4 Billon people number is irrelevant. No one is going to someone from Sudan to draw districts in Wisconsin-they won't even go to someone from Illinois or Minnesota for that advice.
  - jamie_ca 8y ago
    They could. Get somebody from out of state, and give them just a raw map with population counts/density/whatever. Heck, do this 3 times, and then get local party affiliates to look them over, and each party can eliminate one of them so the most middle-ground is selected.
  - jellicle 8y ago
    Why not? The only reason for "why not?" is "because I want to bias the drawing process", which is not a good reason.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago

>districts lean heavily Democratic (because, duh, California) Except that outside of a few cities, California is actually quite red. IIRC would be a red state if LA and SD were underwater. https://www.politico.com/election-results/2018/california/ https://www.politico.com/election-results/2018/california/

kemitche 8y ago
Well the majority of California's population is in those cities' metro area. The map only looks that red when it isn't accounting for population.
ohwaitnvm 8y ago
I can’t see how you came to that conclusion whatsoever, though I may be biased as an SF-born Democrat. If you’re looking at the governor race, the votes eyeball to 2.8m Dem, 1.7m Rep. As well, it was surprising to me that you would choose to remove SD, as a Republican lead that county, though the Democrat leader there was only down by 10k (of ~400k total) votes. Edit: 400k, not 350
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  He's talking about counties, which are spread across a diverse geographic region. As per the image there it looks like the clear majority of California's counties leaned republican for governor. But the counties that leaned democrat are very densely populated and so end up choosing for the entire state. On a national level this is the reason for the existence of both the electoral college and the senate. Imagine we did not have the college or senate and there was one very heavily populated state with a large group of mostly homogenous voters. Suddenly that state would be deciding every single action for the entire nation. Whether this is a good or bad thing probably depends on your views on what representation means, but it's safe to say that people in many states would feel they lacked such - which was the very reason that we rebelled against the British Empire.
  - JamesBarney 8y ago

hudibras 8y ago

>California has proven out the solution Washington, for one, has had an independent redistricting commission since 1990.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

Can you elaborate on what guidelines they were given? There is one surprising bias you have to be aware of. It seems if we have a state that is let's say 35% democrat, 30% republican, 20% libertarian, and 15% green then it would seem to be most fair for districts to have a similar composition. But this would be disastrous as in our district driven first past the post system this would mean that the party with 35% of the public support would end up receiving 100% of the congressional seats!! Of course the desired result should be one proportional to the makeup of a state. And this is done most naturally by a system where individuals vote for a party (or individual running as a one man party) at a state level with seats distributed according to the total vote. If a state has 10 seats then 10% of the vote guarantees at least one seat. The parties then distribute their representatives to districts weighted on the vote. E.g. a district that voted for 80% democrat would be prioritized to receive a democrat representative more than one that voted 20% democrat. The 'problem' is that if you do the above all the sudden you'd have socialists, libertarians, pirate party guys, and all other sorts with some minority representation in congress - and we can't have that can we? /s if that wasn't clear. But really, the powers that be would never agree to a system that would meaningfully undermine the establishment and so with that condition, "I Cut You Choose" does seem to be the most reasonable and realistic possibility for fair outcomes. --- More generally here, I think systems that assume bad behavior and find solutions that acceptably in spite of that tend to be vastly better than ones that assume good behavior and result in collapse when undermined. It's basically just finding game theory optimal solutions to problems.

wmeredith 8y ago

“I cut, you choose” is far from weird machinations. My 3 year old and 8 year old are able to grasp the implications in about 10 seconds.