There was the guy who wrote a computer program to compute, not super long and thin slices like in @LSLGuy 's proposal, but the exact opposite: “compact” districts where the average distance of a person to the centre of the district is minimized. So he ends up with results like
[the map on the right is the relevant one]:
Anyway, the point is
New York should have six districts, four five-member districts and two three-member districts. Then (A) we wouldn’t care how the districts were sliced up and (B) the state delegation would probably come out somewhere close to 14-12.
And either of those setups makes every election noncompetitive. There ought to be as many as possible of districts that might go either way, if voters are really to have any sort of choice.
So there is at least a third definition of “fair standard” in this case.
I feel the only people who benefit from districts being competitive are tv reporters. I think it’s better when a large majority voted for the candidate who got elected; that indicates the minimum number of people in the district are dissatisfied with their representative. The ideal is for there to be a unanimous vote for the chosen representative.
Which is in no way going to happen. Most people live way too intermixed for that; often intermixed in the same household.
What you’re proposing means that a large (although minority in any given district) percentage of people would never stand any chance at all of having their preferred candidate elected: they are in effect disenfranchised. This happens to some extent now; but it’s a problem, and a large one; not a solution.
It also means that there’d be no reason for candidates to moderate positions, or for more moderate candidates to prevail over more extreme ones in the primaries. That most certainly is happening now, and it’s a very large problem right in our faces at the moment. Very much not a solution.
And it would not make American politics any better.
Oh and thiand the title is called “poisoning the well”.
I know. That’s why I said it was only an ideal.
But I feel an good actual standard should be to try to minimize dissatisfied voters. I think it’s good when people feel they are represented by somebody they chose for the job.
Your system seems designed to go the opposite way. You seem to want to have as many dissatisfied voters as possible. And I can’t see any advantage in such a system.
I"m free to have my own opinions. I was starting this thread with the assumption that the founding fathers were deeply flawed, and we’ve had to spend 240 years fixing the damage they caused, and we will need to continue fixing the problem.
If you want a thread where people discuss whether the founding fathers were good or not you’re free to start your own.
More checks on the President’s power. They are few and weak at this point, and someone with less than honorable intentions can literally wreak havoc in the country.
Totally agree with NO to 16-year old kids voting. Totally agree with motor-voter type registration and really like mail-in ballots like they have in Oregon.
Disallow bill riders unless they are specifically related to the intent of the legislation. Get rid of the filibuster. Make insider trading by legislators expressly forbidden and punishable by law.
Choke collars on the SCOTUS. NO bribes, NO gifts, NO favors.
I want as many voters as possible to have an actual choice in each election. Your system decides the issue for everybody in advance. (Or tries to. People move around.)
And I believe I explained the other advantages above. No politician in your system has to in any way consider the other party’s positions in order to get elected; they can be as extreme as they please as if their party’s in the majority in that district they’re guaranteed to be elected. For that matter, your system encourages candidates to wind up running unopposed, as the candidate for the minority party has no chance. It amounts to having no election at all.
I feel that if third party candidates starting getting elected into office, a lot of their current supporters would start switching to fourth party candidates. I feel there is a significant group of people who like to vote for third party candidates now because they know there’s no chance they’ll actually get elected. This allows people to feel like they’re participating in politics without having to take the risk that their ideological beliefs will ever have to be tested by reality. The history of communism shows what happens when you take a political theory and try to make it work in the real world. I’m pretty sure the same thing would happen if libertarians or platformists or mutualists or anarcho-transhumanists or corporate solidarists or technogaianists ever got a chance to run things.
I don’t know. In other nations with ranked choice voting or other systems that are not first past the post like our system, there are multiple meaningful parties that need to form alliances to get anything done.
OZ1: “Did you see Stranger telling an Aussie that the USA had the most pronounced urban/rural divide in the world?”
OZ2: “Than Australia, landmass the size of the lower 48 and a 90% urbanised population, electoral districts half the size of Texas, that one?”
OZ1: “Yep, that one.”
OZ2 “Yeah, well he’s got domestic world series, this most perfect document, manifest destiny, closed circuit cable TV, two weeks annual holidays, they don’t get out and about much. Not surprising, really.”
OZ1: “Maybe he thinks Australia can’t conduct fair elections?”
OZ2: “Maybe.”
OZ1: “Ya reckon he might figure out you are taking the piss?”
OZ2: “Nah, 'merkins don’t get dat irony.”
I think you’re not seeing the big picture here. Nobody is making decisions for people. People all get to decide who they wish to vote for. And then after they have chosen who to vote for, they are grouped together with like-minded people as much as possible.
Democratic voters will be represented by Democratic officials and Republican voters will be represented by Republican officials. I think everyone will be happier with that.
Your system, as I understand it, is to try to place everyone in districts which are either 51% Republican and 49% Democratic or 51% Democratic and 49% Republican. Which means 49% of the people are always going to be unhappy with their elected representative.
It would also be extremely unstable, with elections being determined more by random chance shifting the vote a percent or two either way than by the collective will of the voters.
Well, isn’t that a gold plated rationale for hyper-partisanship and gerrymander??!!!
And they’re stuck there. They can’t change their minds unless they pack up their lives and move.
Plus which, quite a lot of them didn’t choose where to live based on their politics.
And you haven’t remotely addressed any of the other issues I brought up.
Stability’s what you get from a system with effectively no voting, sure.
That potential instability is what keeps politicians paying attention to their constituents; what allows citizens to throw out of office politicians who are screwing up; and what gives people an actual choice.
Exactly.
Which is why single-member constituencies are a dumb feature of the beta version of democracy v1.0 that should be dropped from the product be the time v2.0 is released.
If State X votes 60% R (or D) then 60% of the seated reps should be of that party. And each one represents the entire state.
Cute vignette but I was referring specifically to the political divide between rural and urban (including suburban) voters.
If your underlying point is that US politics is regressive, and the primary reason that few measures are being taken to reduce gerrymandering is because many people are invested in maintaining the status quo…I don’t disagree.
Stranger
The point is this plan follows the results of how people vote. So if there’s hyper-partisanship, the districts lines will reflect it. But those lines will be the result of hyper-partisanship not the cause of it.
And I’m not sure how you think this is gerrymandering. The point of gerrymandering is to “hide” voters of the opposing party in a district where your party has a majority - like thorny locust’s plan to have districts that are 51% one party and 49% the other party. My plan seeks to go in the opposite direction - create, as much as possible, districts where the largest possible majority agrees with the representative for the district.