538's take on gerrymandering (US politics)

Politics & Elections
81

I was too late to post on the first page, but I’ll try to make the argument for the “most competitive” gerrymander map.

Ultimately, the goal of business, government, economics, science, etc. is to improve the lot of humanity. If they’re a drag on our lives or a negative to society, then the aim is to remove that portion that has that effect and swap in an alternative method that does better. Pure ideals of how things should be, given spherical cows in a vacuum, has no credence versus the actual end effect on the world. If you think you can find one absolute definition of what each and every one of these should be, then you are narcissistic, deluded, and wrong.

In the reality we live in, a lot of people vote based on partisan beliefs that have nothing to do with anything more evolved than the same logic that one uses to decide and support their favorite sports team. That sort of logic really has very little positive to offer humanity.

In general, what makes for good government is to have a larger audience of voters that do some real soul searching, scrutinizing, and evaluation to pick - if not the good candidate - at least the candidate that is less bad. Regardless of what your personal politics might be, some candidates are simply worse. They are stupid, they are corrupt, they are unmotivated, etc. That’s not tied to any one party, but many people will overlook those attributes if that person is on their side.

With a first past the post system, the political parties will always hold half of everything and they will always win half of everything. If you believe that your political party can one day take over everything and drive the other party out, then you are deluded. The platform will change and equilibrium will be reestablished. That’s just true, so what is the value of voting for your party versus voting for the opposition party? If everyone just voted for the best candidates, half of all of the politicians will be Republican and half will be Democratic, just the same as it is today. But it will be Democrats and Republicans who are smarter, law abiding, and motivated. If you live in a blue district, most candidates will be Democratic, because these are people selected from the local populace and the local populace is mostly Liberal. This is the same in the Republican side. The ratio of politicians by party does not change when people vote for the best candidate, it just improves the quality of our government.

Having competitive districts gives the people who actually give a damn about the qualifications and fitness for office of the candidate a greater share of the vote.

It doesn’t change the end result of what land is red or blue, it doesn’t change the ratio of Republicans in office to Democrats in office, it just makes the world better.

82

Well that’s facts not in evidence. The GOP has arguably elevated it to extreme degrees. They have, I think, been more skillful at it.

One thing though that Wang’s analysis is clear on: the frequency and magnitude of extreme partisan gerrymandering have exploded since 2000, likely based on the belief that it is legal to do so. Having a circumstance in which gerrymandering, stacking the deck to create unfairness for partisan advantage, is considered fair game, unavoidably results in a circumstance in which each side must do their dishonest best to stack the deck and cause disrepresentation better and more than the other side does. It’s an arms race with intent to result in one or the other group of voters not getting fair representation.

Can we agree that it is happening and that it should be made clear that contrivances to create partisan over and under representation should be against the rules? Whether the arms race favors one or the other or neither side at any particular moment?

83

From a country which has a neutral, professional body defining constituency boundaries, that doesn’t of course stop the parties producing the most convoluted arguments as to whether the voters of Lower Dribbling naturally think of themelves as belonging to Anytown or Anyothertown, in terms of historic connections, patterns of commuting to work, shop and leisure and so on, when everyone knows the decision will make one or other constituency more or less marginal or safer for one party or the other.

84

As I noted, the current efforts to gerrymander are aided by computer programming. It’s not that the GOP is more “malevolent” in their intent. There’s just more granularity to current efforts.

It should be noted that stopping this is actually hard. I noted California has an “independent” commission to re-district. The California Citizens Redistricting Commission has 14 members, 5 from each party and 4 “non-affiliated” members. To be accepted by the Commission, a map has to garner at least 9 votes: 3 from each of the different groups (R, D and non). Theoretically, this means that the maps should be relatively neutral, and void of gerrymandering.

In actuality, it’s hard to accept that the result matches the glowing praise I’ve read in some places. Yes, California has had turnover in the Legislature, but how much of that is due to the maps, and how much is due to the adoption of the top-two primary system is not clear to me. LOOKING at the districts, one does have to wonder just why the borders are drawn as they are. For example, look at the 32nd Assembly District, held by a Democrat, with this little tail that takes in portions of Bakersfield that are more heavily Democratic (south and east) and curls around the Republican areas of West Bakersfield, which are given to the 34th Assembly District, which, not shockingly, is held by a Republican. So much for the California Constitution’s requirement for geographic “compactness.” :rolleyes:

Why would both Democrats and Republicans agree to a map that does something like that? Because it makes certain that the incumbent is protected, even if it keeps Republican numbers down. And given that “non-affiliated” Californians are more likely to be Democratic-leaning that Republican-leaning, a map that leans Democratic is likely to garner the support of independents. In short, the politicians play the game, regardless of what rules are imposed.

Presumably, the next step is to cede map-drawing to a computer. But, then, one has to program the computer… :dubious:

85

The real end to gerrymanding is to end the one representative = one vote paradigm. Anyone who gets 5% or more of the vote in a district is in, and their vote in the House is worth the number of votes from real live voters they got. Also makes up for population differences in the states. Cut the number of districts in half or so in order to facilitate the necessary doubling of representatives per district; that this would create even more representatives from small states is not relevant, because each would have less voting power. This is “Pass-through” voting, like a partnership or S-corp is a pass-through entity. The representative who holds your vote doesn’t necessarily have to vote the way you wanted him to, but you can be sure this way that your vote at the ballot box is being counted in Washington (unless you used it on someone who doesn’t get enough votes).

86

I would agree that it is “not that the GOP is more ‘malevolent’ in their intent”. Yes, better by the use of improved tools but also because of a sense in more recent times that the behavior is greenlit.

Before one discusses how to stop it there must be broad agreement that stopping it is desirable.

Wang’s suggestion is not to use computers to create the maps but to use statistical tools to identify districts with high probability of having been created as a result of extreme partisan gerrymandering. A court then can rule on intent. The idea is that knowing such identification and challenge will occur may prevent future gerrymanders. Complete prevention and reversal is extremely improbable, but the tools of gerrymandering will only get better and checking them is required.

The desire to create multilateral disarmament, or at least multilateral limitation, should be bipartisan. But correct that the vested interests of incumbents makes doing such difficult through new laws. The hope is that extant law actually can enforce such.
Back to the op is the fact that most of the “unfairness” as defined by partisan under and over representation is structural, a function of GOP support being more rural. Whether to, and if so, how to, address that is a completely other aspect worth discussing. I am not sure it should be. The lay of the land seems to have always been to give rural America power disproportionate to its population size. Both parties know that.

87

I’m sure there are a myriad of problems with this system, and of course they would never implement it even if it didn’t take a constitutional amendment to do so (I’m not sure if it does, actually, I think so but can’t be arsed to check at the moment) but I really like the idea of it.

You’re electing someone to decide how to use your vote, but it’s still YOUR vote being used. And it means that by going to vote, you actually have a vote. It’s not just ‘eh, the guy I like will get in anyway’ but your vote actually increases the power of the guy you like’s voting in congress. As long as we’re trying to do ‘democracy’ and ‘your vote counts’, this actually sounds like a really good way to do it. It means people still get the local representation they want (tangent, but I’d love to see whether that actually does anything in practice. What examples of having a physical district they’re representing are there, where that district’s interests have been represented in a way that couldn’t have been achieved by anyone representing that party?) but people vote, not land. Every individual voter makes a difference.

88

The only downside I can think of is preventing congenality and thus congresspeople working together due to increasing membership, which doesn’t matter since the House is already too big as it is, and could in theory matter in the Senate but there isn’t congeniality to be had anymore anyway. There is also the matter of having to many people in the House to hold reasonable debates but that ship has sailed as well since speeches are just for the audience at home.

I think 5% is a bit too high a threshold, and might put the threshold at 1% since that seems to be the minimum votes for third parties that have any sort of visibility. But every 2/6 years for voting seems about right to me.

89

That’s an interesting idea. It would by-pass the competing arguments as between giving too much power to parties in a list system of PR (since this would still make results depend on the votes for each candidate), or the long drawn-out counting processes for preference-listings as between individual candidates. It could also replace primaries for these seats, if you have those.

But would an elected candidate with, say, 40 votes to cast be able to split their votes if they’re in two minds about a proposition, or know their constituents are?!

90

The idea is pretty unworkable but yes, kind of interesting. I can’t imagine the answer to your last question matters though. Anyone so of two minds could abstain rather than split his vote. And it’s the same game theory problem that got states to go winner take all in electoral college votes: you only dilute your own importance by splitting your vote.

91

Abstaining ends up serving one side anyway, whichever is in favor of the result that those reps who actually do vote select. (Trump’s election and the Bernie types who either stayed home or voted for one of the off-party candidates being a good example of that.) And the other side is disappointed with their representation, with the added perception of the rep being a fence-sitter on both sides.

92

Wow, you managed to talk out of both sides of your mouth in a single post. Utter doublethink.

93

Yes, he would. Have you ever actually studied actual proportional systems, in practice, in the real world?

94

(post shortened)

Then you admit that Democrats commit gerrymandering. The next question is whether you wish to end gerrymandering, Republican gerrymandering, or Democrat gerrymandering?

95

I have been extremely clear here - I would ideally want to end partisan gerrymandering. Period. Full stop.

Partisan gerrymandering is an affront to the basics concept of our representative democracy. That affront does not alter if the result is a gain for my side, your side, ineffective, or comes out in the wash because both sides doing their dishonest best offsets each other. It is an intent to distort popular will and representation reflective of the country’s voting citizenry. Again, there is some distortion of that popular will that is structural and built into the system … the average rural citizen’s vote unavoidably counts for more in this country than does the average urban citizen’s vote. To some degree that was designed in at the Constitutional Convention and I accept that. But partisan gerrymandering is a different thing altogether. It is simply wrong and is cheating. No question that if cheating is routinely ignored then the game becomes who can cheat better and more often; not cheating in that circumstance is naive at best.

We, all of us we, can call it out. The courts can minimally identify extreme cases and disallow them.

96

That tends to be inherent in first-past-the-past single member systems, otherwise getting a fully equal population distribution tends to produce unmanageably large rural constituencies.

97

Good. Then we agree, ewe and eye, that all gerrymandering is bad. As I now understand it, you were just saying that the GOP was better at it. Thanks for the clarification. Let’s all demand that all gerrymandering should be stopped, and that any district that clearly, obviously, and painfully demonstrates signs of political gerrymandering should be reconfigured.