8 ms·

The root of the issue is that the US doesn't separate elected lawmakers from district distribution. The fact[0] elected officials can redraw their own electoral

by BbzzbB 4y ago

The root of the issue is that the US doesn't separate elected lawmakers from district distribution. The fact[0] elected officials can redraw their own electoral map is just beyond belief, in a tough competition with Citizen's United for the worst political bug (well... feature) in the US. Cherry on top is calling/dubbing one such major and catastrophic instance of gerrymandering "REDMAP". So brazenly rubbing it in while openly chipping at US democracy. As long as that holds true, theoretical solutions don't really matter when those using them will pry any model into their favor. Not that a mathematical solution even makes sense for a district map that accounts of cultural ties for local representation (short of going for proportional elections, which I think is desirable with some form of local representation). In Canada, and I presume most countries of the G7, it's an independent entity[1], which one would think goes without saying. That's not incorruptible of course, but I wager it's held it's own for over 60 years here, modern district maps are quite reasonable. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP 1: https://www.vox.com/2014/4/15/5604284/us-elections-are-rigged-but-canada-knows-how-to-fix-them https://www.vox.com/2014/4/15/5604284/us-elections-are-rigge...

tialaramex 4y ago
It's crazy that local elected legislators end up able to manipulate this, but you can't really prevent the government of the sovereign entity, in this case the Federal Government (which will presumably be elected in a democracy otherwise what's the point) from being able to seize this power if it determines to do so. If it can't then it's not much of a sovereign government. For example in England an independent Boundary Commission draws these lines. But, they only exist because the government allows them to exist, Parliament can (and often does) ignore what the Commission says, indeed it's perfectly normal for a party who expect to lose seats to complain that it's unfair, and if that party happens to be in government they will stall boundary reforms. In practice the Commission acts as some sort of bulwark against gerrymandering overall, but it's for local stuff that this is more important, because local government just can't seize that power for themselves. That's where the US approach is crazy. The extra crazy thing in the US is that its sovereign government acts as though it is permanently beholden to dusty old documents (a written "Constitution"), or rather, to the very modern interpretation of those documents by partisan hacks in its "Supreme Court". This makes no sense, and Americans shouldn't put up with it.
- throwawaymaths 4y ago
  > It's crazy that local elected legislators end up able to manipulate this, but you can't really prevent the government of the sovereign entity, in this case the Federal Government (which will presumably be elected in a democracy otherwise what's the point) from being able to seize this power if it determines to do so. They arguably have. The voting rights act took away redistricting power from... Bad acting districts. Some (certainly not all) of those districts have arguably made reasonable amends and are at low risk of 'stealing votes from minorities' but are stuck having the feds draw their lines due to a shitty history and no desire of the feds to give it back, while arguably racist northern districts get away with some bullshit Scott free because they aren't southern.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  Why wouldn't a Constitutional Republic act as if was beholden to its Constitution? It seems beyond odd to me to think "eh, this paper is dusty; let's just do what we want".
  - tialaramex 4y ago
    It is strange to pretend to be a democracy, and then give power to long dead men to decide what the rules are, offering a veto to a handful of unelected people to "interpret" what those men decided long ago. A democracy should make its own rules as it goes. Americans living today ought to decide the rules under which those Americans live, not hope that somehow slavers who lived centuries ago magically determined the correct rules to live by forever. I don't think writing some of the rules down in bigger type and calling those a "Constitution" helps much at all, and so I'd argue against it as a practice, but certainly a situation in which most Americans weren't born until after the constitutional rules in place today were fixed is not a success. The last successful new Constitutional Amendment to be written was in 1971. If you were born after 1971 your "democracy" never really decided any of these rules, if you were born after 1950 you never voted for the rules you live under. In its early days the American Republic fiddled with the Constitution a great deal, and that's much less objectionable. Even as late as a century ago, there was some flexibility left in this vital joint, but today it's gone.
johannes1234321 4y ago
> In Canada, and I presume most countries of the G7, it's an independent entity Most countries have a proportional system, not a winner takes it all system. With a proportional system where X% of the votes results in X% of the seats (corrected by 3% or 5% barrier and rounding effects) gerrymandering in some cases can effect who exactly is the MP for a region, but party association matches the vote. In France two weeks ago they elected the president and the guy who in the second round got most votes nation-wide got the job. No counting per state/depardement/region. No electoral college, simple summing up. In Germany there is an interesting system that a each electoral district has a candidate elected and then parliament is filled up to match proportion. Some gerrymandering there can lead to some party benefiting from direct mandates, but that has little effect in the end. (There is some weirdness as direct mandates are supposed to be 50% of seats, but if a party gets a lot more direct mandates than proportional weight the compensation is weird) Generally the issue with giving districting away is that such commission have no democratic legislation, so if citizens are unhappy they have no way to vote them out. The University of Manitoba president is "unreachable" by the electorate. These core issues of core elements of the state (similar to rules for parliamentarians, election of supreme court justices, ...) are always problematic and rely on responsible individuals ...
- nl 4y ago
  Proportional vs winner takes all is a separate issue.
  - winstonewert 4y ago
    Yes, but actually no. Gerrymandering is an issue precisely because of winner take all. In a proportional system the definition of districts (if they exist at all) doesn't have the same effect on the outcome of the election. In fact, the best solution to gerrymandering is adopting an electoral system (proportional) that isn't susceptible to gerrymandering.
    - ajuc 4y ago
      Proportional isn't one system, there are further details and depending on them gerrymandering can still be possible (but less important than in winner take all). For example the mandates might be distributed proportionally globally or per district. In the latter case gerrymandering works when you have rounding problems (10 mandates per district and one party has 9% of support). There are also usually thresholds under which you don't get to the parliament altogether, and the "wasted" votes are distributed proportionally between the other parties - so again, gerrymandering still works when this is done per-district rather than globally. This is exactly the situation in my country (Poland), and gerrymandering isn't a thing mostly because of people looking at it as corruption and protesting whenever some government tries to do it (last time it was PIS trying to change voting borders to add a lot of PIS-voting countryside to the capital city to finally win elections there :) - after protests they didn't do it).
PolygonSheep 4y ago
> The key difference is that Canada's commission members are all nonpartisan — they're mostly judges, political scientists, or retired civil servants. Judges don't strike me as particularly nonpartisan these days...
- nl 4y ago
  In most of the G7 they are. Because they aren't voted on by elected officials, again...
rayiner 4y ago
It’s funny that you link an article about Canada “ending gerrymandering” when in 2019 Trudeau’s party won the election while losing the popular vote! You actually just proved the article’s point that gerrymandering exists in any political system that uses geographic districts. Given that fact, maybe SCOTUS wasn’t so dumb in kicking that futile exercise to the states
- ska 4y ago
  > You actually just proved the article’s point that That doesn't logically follow. Even "perfectly" distributed districts, you can win an election like this without having the most popular votes; all you need is for the districts that vote the 2nd/losing party to overwhelmingly vote that party, while the districts they lose be more narrow. Gerrymandering is a separate issue, and will arrive pretty much any time encumbants can affect district boundaries, as there is an incentive to either create "safe"districts, or to dilute the effect of areas unlikely to vote for you.
  - lkrubner 4y ago
    You’re defining gerrymandering as a deliberate act, but a looser definition includes the entire effect of geographic districts on the outcome of elections, including non-intentional effects. The article gives an example identical to yours.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    > Gerrymandering is a separate issue SCOTUS was asked to lay out a standard for courts to follow in deciding gerrymandering cases. A court can't know a priori whether a partisan skew in a particular map was deliberate or the result of geographic factors. So you can’t just treat it as a “separate issue.” Among other things, even if there’s evidence of intent, there might not be causation. You can intend to do lots of things that you don’t actually end up accomplishing. You can kick the problem to a "neutral commission"--but that's giving tremendous power to unelected people. If "commissions of neutral experts" were a real thing that exists we could just dispense with democracy and rely on them! The Constitution is all about asking "who has the power?" but on issues like this people overlook that and get mired in "who would come up with the best answers under unrealistic assumptions about bias?" Put differently, having legislatures draw districts might make it harder to "vote the bums out." But gerrymanders are actually pretty fragile. Democrats had massive geographic and gerrymandering advantages throughout the 1970s and 1980s: https://crystalball.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/content/images/SM2019091202-figure1.png https://crystalball.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/conten.... But Republicans still managed to break through that in 1994, and since then it's flipped back and forth quite a bit. With a "neutral commission," by contrast, you've created a body with a lot of power that can't be voted out. Also, what target are the experts shooting at anyway? That’s difficult to tell for the same reason it’s hard for the court to tell. Are the experts supposed to be leveling natural partisan skew due to geographic factors?
treeman79 4y ago
It’s not possible to separate. Most everyone has a political opinion. Only those loyal to a party are going to be in a position to make decisions. Expecting those people to be neutral is absurd. Best you can hope for is appearance of neutrality. Remaining options is for one side to try and be perfectly neutral usually the weaker side. The other side will definitely take advantage of this. Or both sides will try and get as much as they can without it being too blatant. In a tug of war game. It’s all of nothing.
suifbwish 4y ago
Allowing politicians to own property is a big mistake. If someone wants to be the president or a similar high up office, permanent lifelong loss of property rights should be required. Upon rising to a high governmental office, all property is sold and donated to charitable causes. This helps weed out selfish people.

by BbzzbB 4y ago

tialaramex 4y ago

It's crazy that local elected legislators end up able to manipulate this, but you can't really prevent the government of the sovereign entity, in this case the Federal Government (which will presumably be elected in a democracy otherwise what's the point) from being able to seize this power if it determines to do so. If it can't then it's not much of a sovereign government. For example in England an independent Boundary Commission draws these lines. But, they only exist because the government allows them to exist, Parliament can (and often does) ignore what the Commission says, indeed it's perfectly normal for a party who expect to lose seats to complain that it's unfair, and if that party happens to be in government they will stall boundary reforms. In practice the Commission acts as some sort of bulwark against gerrymandering overall, but it's for local stuff that this is more important, because local government just can't seize that power for themselves. That's where the US approach is crazy. The extra crazy thing in the US is that its sovereign government acts as though it is permanently beholden to dusty old documents (a written "Constitution"), or rather, to the very modern interpretation of those documents by partisan hacks in its "Supreme Court". This makes no sense, and Americans shouldn't put up with it.

throwawaymaths 4y ago
> It's crazy that local elected legislators end up able to manipulate this, but you can't really prevent the government of the sovereign entity, in this case the Federal Government (which will presumably be elected in a democracy otherwise what's the point) from being able to seize this power if it determines to do so. They arguably have. The voting rights act took away redistricting power from... Bad acting districts. Some (certainly not all) of those districts have arguably made reasonable amends and are at low risk of 'stealing votes from minorities' but are stuck having the feds draw their lines due to a shitty history and no desire of the feds to give it back, while arguably racist northern districts get away with some bullshit Scott free because they aren't southern.
sokoloff 4y ago
Why wouldn't a Constitutional Republic act as if was beholden to its Constitution? It seems beyond odd to me to think "eh, this paper is dusty; let's just do what we want".
- tialaramex 4y ago
  It is strange to pretend to be a democracy, and then give power to long dead men to decide what the rules are, offering a veto to a handful of unelected people to "interpret" what those men decided long ago. A democracy should make its own rules as it goes. Americans living today ought to decide the rules under which those Americans live, not hope that somehow slavers who lived centuries ago magically determined the correct rules to live by forever. I don't think writing some of the rules down in bigger type and calling those a "Constitution" helps much at all, and so I'd argue against it as a practice, but certainly a situation in which most Americans weren't born until after the constitutional rules in place today were fixed is not a success. The last successful new Constitutional Amendment to be written was in 1971. If you were born after 1971 your "democracy" never really decided any of these rules, if you were born after 1950 you never voted for the rules you live under. In its early days the American Republic fiddled with the Constitution a great deal, and that's much less objectionable. Even as late as a century ago, there was some flexibility left in this vital joint, but today it's gone.

johannes1234321 4y ago

> In Canada, and I presume most countries of the G7, it's an independent entity Most countries have a proportional system, not a winner takes it all system. With a proportional system where X% of the votes results in X% of the seats (corrected by 3% or 5% barrier and rounding effects) gerrymandering in some cases can effect who exactly is the MP for a region, but party association matches the vote. In France two weeks ago they elected the president and the guy who in the second round got most votes nation-wide got the job. No counting per state/depardement/region. No electoral college, simple summing up. In Germany there is an interesting system that a each electoral district has a candidate elected and then parliament is filled up to match proportion. Some gerrymandering there can lead to some party benefiting from direct mandates, but that has little effect in the end. (There is some weirdness as direct mandates are supposed to be 50% of seats, but if a party gets a lot more direct mandates than proportional weight the compensation is weird) Generally the issue with giving districting away is that such commission have no democratic legislation, so if citizens are unhappy they have no way to vote them out. The University of Manitoba president is "unreachable" by the electorate. These core issues of core elements of the state (similar to rules for parliamentarians, election of supreme court justices, ...) are always problematic and rely on responsible individuals ...

nl 4y ago
Proportional vs winner takes all is a separate issue.
- winstonewert 4y ago
  Yes, but actually no. Gerrymandering is an issue precisely because of winner take all. In a proportional system the definition of districts (if they exist at all) doesn't have the same effect on the outcome of the election. In fact, the best solution to gerrymandering is adopting an electoral system (proportional) that isn't susceptible to gerrymandering.
  - ajuc 4y ago
    Proportional isn't one system, there are further details and depending on them gerrymandering can still be possible (but less important than in winner take all). For example the mandates might be distributed proportionally globally or per district. In the latter case gerrymandering works when you have rounding problems (10 mandates per district and one party has 9% of support). There are also usually thresholds under which you don't get to the parliament altogether, and the "wasted" votes are distributed proportionally between the other parties - so again, gerrymandering still works when this is done per-district rather than globally. This is exactly the situation in my country (Poland), and gerrymandering isn't a thing mostly because of people looking at it as corruption and protesting whenever some government tries to do it (last time it was PIS trying to change voting borders to add a lot of PIS-voting countryside to the capital city to finally win elections there :) - after protests they didn't do it).

PolygonSheep 4y ago

> The key difference is that Canada's commission members are all nonpartisan — they're mostly judges, political scientists, or retired civil servants. Judges don't strike me as particularly nonpartisan these days...

nl 4y ago
In most of the G7 they are. Because they aren't voted on by elected officials, again...

rayiner 4y ago

It’s funny that you link an article about Canada “ending gerrymandering” when in 2019 Trudeau’s party won the election while losing the popular vote! You actually just proved the article’s point that gerrymandering exists in any political system that uses geographic districts. Given that fact, maybe SCOTUS wasn’t so dumb in kicking that futile exercise to the states

ska 4y ago
> You actually just proved the article’s point that That doesn't logically follow. Even "perfectly" distributed districts, you can win an election like this without having the most popular votes; all you need is for the districts that vote the 2nd/losing party to overwhelmingly vote that party, while the districts they lose be more narrow. Gerrymandering is a separate issue, and will arrive pretty much any time encumbants can affect district boundaries, as there is an incentive to either create "safe"districts, or to dilute the effect of areas unlikely to vote for you.
- lkrubner 4y ago
  You’re defining gerrymandering as a deliberate act, but a looser definition includes the entire effect of geographic districts on the outcome of elections, including non-intentional effects. The article gives an example identical to yours.
- rayiner 4y ago
  > Gerrymandering is a separate issue SCOTUS was asked to lay out a standard for courts to follow in deciding gerrymandering cases. A court can't know a priori whether a partisan skew in a particular map was deliberate or the result of geographic factors. So you can’t just treat it as a “separate issue.” Among other things, even if there’s evidence of intent, there might not be causation. You can intend to do lots of things that you don’t actually end up accomplishing. You can kick the problem to a "neutral commission"--but that's giving tremendous power to unelected people. If "commissions of neutral experts" were a real thing that exists we could just dispense with democracy and rely on them! The Constitution is all about asking "who has the power?" but on issues like this people overlook that and get mired in "who would come up with the best answers under unrealistic assumptions about bias?" Put differently, having legislatures draw districts might make it harder to "vote the bums out." But gerrymanders are actually pretty fragile. Democrats had massive geographic and gerrymandering advantages throughout the 1970s and 1980s: https://crystalball.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/content/images/SM2019091202-figure1.png https://crystalball.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/conten.... But Republicans still managed to break through that in 1994, and since then it's flipped back and forth quite a bit. With a "neutral commission," by contrast, you've created a body with a lot of power that can't be voted out. Also, what target are the experts shooting at anyway? That’s difficult to tell for the same reason it’s hard for the court to tell. Are the experts supposed to be leveling natural partisan skew due to geographic factors?

treeman79 4y ago

It’s not possible to separate. Most everyone has a political opinion. Only those loyal to a party are going to be in a position to make decisions. Expecting those people to be neutral is absurd. Best you can hope for is appearance of neutrality. Remaining options is for one side to try and be perfectly neutral usually the weaker side. The other side will definitely take advantage of this. Or both sides will try and get as much as they can without it being too blatant. In a tug of war game. It’s all of nothing.

suifbwish 4y ago

Allowing politicians to own property is a big mistake. If someone wants to be the president or a similar high up office, permanent lifelong loss of property rights should be required. Upon rising to a high governmental office, all property is sold and donated to charitable causes. This helps weed out selfish people.