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Thanks for the link. The congress vote went 66-34. The congressional delegation, 79-21. There is a noticeable gap there, any plan to fix it?

qqqwerty 5y ago
I don't think anyone on either side really thinks this is a problem. Look at Utah for a counter example, 75% of delegates with 60% of the congressional vote. No one on the left is complaining about Utah. When elections are winner take all, big majorities result in oversized representation. And there are still ways for minority party voters to exert influence in these states. For example, they can vote for the more moderate candidate in the other parties primary. The problem is when a state is voting closer to 50-50 like Wisconsin. The Republicans hold a near super majority in the state legislature despite receiving fewer total votes. And because the legislature controls redistricting, Republicans can essentially maintain permanent control of the legislature. That is not healthy for Democracy. But if you really wanted to fix the CA delegation representation, I would fully support moving to a system where the congressional delegation is determined by statewide popular vote. But that introduces a whole set of issues. For example that means folks would vote for the party instead of candidate, which means we could see further entrenchment of party insiders. The flip side is it would probably make it easier for third parties to get representation in congress. I think this generally would be a hard sell in the US though. I think both core left and core right are too distrustful of their respective party bosses to trust the selection process, and we are a very diverse country, geographically and culturally. So having local representation is meaningful (for example, neither AOC or Taylor Greene would survive a process like this, but both of them have very passionate followers that deserve some representation in congress).
- freeopinion 5y ago
  How about we eliminate party affiliation on voter registration, census, etc. Make it as difficult as possible to gerrymander with confidence. Of course, that would destroy party primaries, party nominations, etc. Hmmm... even better. Who ever thought it was a good idea for a private club to control who can or cannot participate in elections?
joveian 5y ago
The plan to fix it would be proportional representation (independent redistricting is also a good plan for most states but California already has that). It seems to be getting a bit more attention recently but nowhere near a major push for it that I've seen, even here in Oregon where unaffiliated voters outnumber Republicans and are getting closer to outnumbering Democrats as well. I think we have a decent chance of getting independent redistricting in the next few years and hopefully the state supreme court will improve the districting passed by the legislature. Edit: We also don't have the top two system that California and Washington have and that high number of unaffiliated voters is even under a closed primary system. Edit2: Unaffiliated voters in Oregon do include most non-voters, unlike some states.
ska 5y ago
> There is a noticeable gap there, any plan to fix it? A gap doesn't necessarily mean there is a problem, unless you believe that proportional representation is important enough to do away with seats having a regional tie completely. If you don't want to go all that way, algorithmic/automatic redistricting goes a long way to address issues. [edit since I was obviously not very clear. I'm not suggesting you do actually want to get rid of all districts, just making the point that by nature regional representation and proportional representation are in conflict in pretty fundamental ways. You can hack around it with ideas like floating representatives, super-regions, etc. but you can't really solve it. Gerrymandering, otoh, is an issue in its own right. I probably should have said "not a problem, or at least not a problem addressable at this level of the system"]
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > A gap doesn't necessarily mean there is a problem Yes, it does. > unless you believe that proportional representation is important enough to do away with seats having a regional tie completely. Two problems here: (1) it prevents a false dichotomy that the only way to address the gap is erasing regional ties completely, and (2) it confuses the question of “does a problem exist?” with the question of “is there a means of fixing the problem that doesn't have it’s own, equally or more significant problems?”
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    > Yes, it does. For a concrete scenario: a 50/50 split state with three Congressional seats. One party will likely get one seat, the other two. Potentially by tiny margins. There will be a major gap in representation, even with perfectly fairly drawn districts.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      Heck, even with three seats with PR you get that result; that's a proportionality problem from limited granularity. This is also why strong, independent, unitary executive systems are themselves an additional proportionality problem on top of any that exist in the legislative branch, as a one-member body is the extreme limit case of granularity-limited proportionality. Of course, granularity-limited proportionality in a representative body has a fairly obvious trivial approach for mitigation to any arbitrary extent desired, so proportionality gaps from this source are neither non-problems or problems without corrections available.
pmyteh 5y ago
Gerrymandering and disproportionality are separate issues: the former implies the latter, but the First Past The Post voting system (where the winner is the person with the plurality of votes in a given district, irrespective of magnitude) tends to generate the latter even if apportionment is fair. Example: the United Kingdom. We have independent redistricting, and the Boundary Commission are genuinely not in anyone's pocket. The criteria are debatable in some areas, but gerrymandering is essentially absent. And yet, if you look at the most recent general election, the SNP won the overwhelming majority of the seats in Scotland with only 45% of the vote! [0] Now that's partly because there are four effective parties in Scotland, but they would have done very nearly that well against any single opposition party. FPTP magnifies the seats for the more popular party. Bluntly, if the votes are distributed completely evenly, 51% of the votes gets you 100% of the seats. See the Eisenhower/Stevenson presidential election in 1956: Eisenhower got 86% of the electoral college votes for only 57% of the popular vote, because he was (a bit) more popular nearly everywhere. There are systems which aim to have seats and votes be proportional: they're very popular in democracies beyond Great Britain's former colonies. So the gap you mention is, in principle, fixable. But it's not in either party's interests to do so, so it's likely to persist. [0]: https://i0.wp.com/ballotbox.scot/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Results-with-Changed-Seats-scaled.png https://i0.wp.com/ballotbox.scot/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/...

qqqwerty 5y ago

I don't think anyone on either side really thinks this is a problem. Look at Utah for a counter example, 75% of delegates with 60% of the congressional vote. No one on the left is complaining about Utah. When elections are winner take all, big majorities result in oversized representation. And there are still ways for minority party voters to exert influence in these states. For example, they can vote for the more moderate candidate in the other parties primary. The problem is when a state is voting closer to 50-50 like Wisconsin. The Republicans hold a near super majority in the state legislature despite receiving fewer total votes. And because the legislature controls redistricting, Republicans can essentially maintain permanent control of the legislature. That is not healthy for Democracy. But if you really wanted to fix the CA delegation representation, I would fully support moving to a system where the congressional delegation is determined by statewide popular vote. But that introduces a whole set of issues. For example that means folks would vote for the party instead of candidate, which means we could see further entrenchment of party insiders. The flip side is it would probably make it easier for third parties to get representation in congress. I think this generally would be a hard sell in the US though. I think both core left and core right are too distrustful of their respective party bosses to trust the selection process, and we are a very diverse country, geographically and culturally. So having local representation is meaningful (for example, neither AOC or Taylor Greene would survive a process like this, but both of them have very passionate followers that deserve some representation in congress).

freeopinion 5y ago
How about we eliminate party affiliation on voter registration, census, etc. Make it as difficult as possible to gerrymander with confidence. Of course, that would destroy party primaries, party nominations, etc. Hmmm... even better. Who ever thought it was a good idea for a private club to control who can or cannot participate in elections?

joveian 5y ago

The plan to fix it would be proportional representation (independent redistricting is also a good plan for most states but California already has that). It seems to be getting a bit more attention recently but nowhere near a major push for it that I've seen, even here in Oregon where unaffiliated voters outnumber Republicans and are getting closer to outnumbering Democrats as well. I think we have a decent chance of getting independent redistricting in the next few years and hopefully the state supreme court will improve the districting passed by the legislature. Edit: We also don't have the top two system that California and Washington have and that high number of unaffiliated voters is even under a closed primary system. Edit2: Unaffiliated voters in Oregon do include most non-voters, unlike some states.

ska 5y ago

> There is a noticeable gap there, any plan to fix it? A gap doesn't necessarily mean there is a problem, unless you believe that proportional representation is important enough to do away with seats having a regional tie completely. If you don't want to go all that way, algorithmic/automatic redistricting goes a long way to address issues. [edit since I was obviously not very clear. I'm not suggesting you do actually want to get rid of all districts, just making the point that by nature regional representation and proportional representation are in conflict in pretty fundamental ways. You can hack around it with ideas like floating representatives, super-regions, etc. but you can't really solve it. Gerrymandering, otoh, is an issue in its own right. I probably should have said "not a problem, or at least not a problem addressable at this level of the system"]

dragonwriter 5y ago
> A gap doesn't necessarily mean there is a problem Yes, it does. > unless you believe that proportional representation is important enough to do away with seats having a regional tie completely. Two problems here: (1) it prevents a false dichotomy that the only way to address the gap is erasing regional ties completely, and (2) it confuses the question of “does a problem exist?” with the question of “is there a means of fixing the problem that doesn't have it’s own, equally or more significant problems?”
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > Yes, it does. For a concrete scenario: a 50/50 split state with three Congressional seats. One party will likely get one seat, the other two. Potentially by tiny margins. There will be a major gap in representation, even with perfectly fairly drawn districts.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    Heck, even with three seats with PR you get that result; that's a proportionality problem from limited granularity. This is also why strong, independent, unitary executive systems are themselves an additional proportionality problem on top of any that exist in the legislative branch, as a one-member body is the extreme limit case of granularity-limited proportionality. Of course, granularity-limited proportionality in a representative body has a fairly obvious trivial approach for mitigation to any arbitrary extent desired, so proportionality gaps from this source are neither non-problems or problems without corrections available.

pmyteh 5y ago

Gerrymandering and disproportionality are separate issues: the former implies the latter, but the First Past The Post voting system (where the winner is the person with the plurality of votes in a given district, irrespective of magnitude) tends to generate the latter even if apportionment is fair. Example: the United Kingdom. We have independent redistricting, and the Boundary Commission are genuinely not in anyone's pocket. The criteria are debatable in some areas, but gerrymandering is essentially absent. And yet, if you look at the most recent general election, the SNP won the overwhelming majority of the seats in Scotland with only 45% of the vote! [0] Now that's partly because there are four effective parties in Scotland, but they would have done very nearly that well against any single opposition party. FPTP magnifies the seats for the more popular party. Bluntly, if the votes are distributed completely evenly, 51% of the votes gets you 100% of the seats. See the Eisenhower/Stevenson presidential election in 1956: Eisenhower got 86% of the electoral college votes for only 57% of the popular vote, because he was (a bit) more popular nearly everywhere. There are systems which aim to have seats and votes be proportional: they're very popular in democracies beyond Great Britain's former colonies. So the gap you mention is, in principle, fixable. But it's not in either party's interests to do so, so it's likely to persist. [0]: https://i0.wp.com/ballotbox.scot/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Results-with-Changed-Seats-scaled.png https://i0.wp.com/ballotbox.scot/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/...