4 ms·

Can you elaborate on this? I am curious to know more about it.

mynameismon 5y ago
Perhaps the most egerious example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois's_4th_congressional_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois's_4th_congressional_d...
ctdonath 5y ago
Some US voting districts are very odd shapes, specifically to include/exclude factors which increase the chances of a particular political party winning.
- zrail 5y ago
  Not to completely defend gerrymandering but districts are also drawn "oddly" to help ensure minority representation within a system with absurd constraints. If there were more representatives districts would be more granular and localized but because representatives are capped at 435 you have this bizarre situation of needing to give opportunities for equal representation across populations that are spread across a city/county/state.
  - MiddleEndian 5y ago
    If someone appointed me as the czar of legislative voting, my way to resolve this and reduce the incentives to gerrymander while improving minority representation would be to replace single district voting with a vote-point system. If one candidate in a district gets 100,000 votes and another 85,000 votes, both would go to congress and each would get that many vote-points. Rather than number of representative votes, voting outcomes would be determined by who has more vote-points. That way if you have three similarly sized districts, District X and District Y where 40% want party A and 60% want party B, and then district Z where you have 90% want party A and only 10% want party B, you'd still end up with .4/3+.4/3+.9/3 (56%) votes for party A rather than 67% for party B, regardless of how you redistrict. Plus you'd have asymmetric interests where opposing parties would represent the same districts so they would be incentivized to work together, and also some representation for minority regional parties who may align with one party on some issues and another on others. To limit budgets, I guess there would have to be a maximum number of candidates per district, maybe filtering out anyone who does not have at least 10% of the vote (or some other number determined by some reasonable formula), an option for candidates who don't meet the threshold to reallocate their vote-points to someone who did (or a ranked choice voting system that keeps going until everyone remaining has the minimum vote threshold), and maybe no matter what you'd at least send two candidates unless literally only one candidate had votes. This would also have a side effect of incentivizing more people to vote and allow people to vote with a bit less strategy and more earnestness.
    - eertami 5y ago
      So... proportional representation? I think without PR you don't really have a full democracy. Things might be "democratic" in spirit, but it's never a fair and transparent democracy without PR.

Perhaps the most egerious example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois's_4th_congressional_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois's_4th_congressional_d...

ctdonath 5y ago

Some US voting districts are very odd shapes, specifically to include/exclude factors which increase the chances of a particular political party winning.

zrail 5y ago
Not to completely defend gerrymandering but districts are also drawn "oddly" to help ensure minority representation within a system with absurd constraints. If there were more representatives districts would be more granular and localized but because representatives are capped at 435 you have this bizarre situation of needing to give opportunities for equal representation across populations that are spread across a city/county/state.
- MiddleEndian 5y ago
  If someone appointed me as the czar of legislative voting, my way to resolve this and reduce the incentives to gerrymander while improving minority representation would be to replace single district voting with a vote-point system. If one candidate in a district gets 100,000 votes and another 85,000 votes, both would go to congress and each would get that many vote-points. Rather than number of representative votes, voting outcomes would be determined by who has more vote-points. That way if you have three similarly sized districts, District X and District Y where 40% want party A and 60% want party B, and then district Z where you have 90% want party A and only 10% want party B, you'd still end up with .4/3+.4/3+.9/3 (56%) votes for party A rather than 67% for party B, regardless of how you redistrict. Plus you'd have asymmetric interests where opposing parties would represent the same districts so they would be incentivized to work together, and also some representation for minority regional parties who may align with one party on some issues and another on others. To limit budgets, I guess there would have to be a maximum number of candidates per district, maybe filtering out anyone who does not have at least 10% of the vote (or some other number determined by some reasonable formula), an option for candidates who don't meet the threshold to reallocate their vote-points to someone who did (or a ranked choice voting system that keeps going until everyone remaining has the minimum vote threshold), and maybe no matter what you'd at least send two candidates unless literally only one candidate had votes. This would also have a side effect of incentivizing more people to vote and allow people to vote with a bit less strategy and more earnestness.
  - eertami 5y ago
    So... proportional representation? I think without PR you don't really have a full democracy. Things might be "democratic" in spirit, but it's never a fair and transparent democracy without PR.