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Redistricting, Gerrymandering, and Other Issues of Representation
enlightenedbum
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So there's an extended tangent on these issues in the Obama thread, I thought I would do what our overlord suggests and make a thread for it. Here it is!
The conversation roughly started here:
The conversation roughly started here:
override367 wrote: »Really getting sick of the media making references to the house winning their election too so their policies deserve equal consideration
They didn't win a majority of the vote, they won because of how districts set up. Most of the voters voted against them, ffs media. This should be reported every time a republican opens his mouth about what people want
Yep.
Over 50% of Americans voted Democrat for president, and we got a Democratic president.
Over 50% of Americans voted Democrat for senators up for reelection, and we got a Democrat-controlled senate.
Over 50% of Americans voted Democrat for house representative, and we got a Republican-controlled house.
It's kinda bullshit.
So we should just have three popular elections nationwide I guess and hand over the power to whichever party wins a simple majority! Just let them apportion out "representative" seats as they see fit.
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
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However, as long as you have one vote for one guy in one region, it technically always exists.
I'm personally a huge fan of the mixed system; you'd have two ballots you'd cast for the House: one for a Rep from your area, distributed via SMDP (pretty much exactly like we have now), and a second for a party. The party seats would fill from a list, and be used to make the makeup of the House match a party vote. So if the House had 500 seats, and the Republicans won 190 of the district elections, and got 40% of the party votes (leaving 60% for the Democrats), then they would get 10 of the party seats, and the Democrats would get the other 240 (giving the Democrats 240 + 60 = 300 of the total House seats, matching the 60% of the vote they got).
This would require eliminating independent candidates for House seats, though, which I think would be okay.
There should still be local representation... But maybe districts should be forced into shapes that are driven by population and number of facets.
Like, your district cannot have more than 6 angles (not counting state boundaries) more than X people (where x equals state reprsentative seats / population + 5%), less than the same formula minus 5%, and must be an accurate representation of the demographics in the area within certain tolerances.
That simple rule would nuke most of the negative impacts of how we district.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
What's being said is that we shouldn't be saying that white votes are worth more than other people's votes, simply because white people get to draw the lines. Which is the argument Republicans are making.
I don't view filibuster as effective representation.
Are you talking about what spool said?
Cause no that was just him strawmanning again.
Normally the minority gets input on a bill. That's the way it worked in the 80s, at least. But then Republicans started excluding Democrats from conference committees, and refusing to be cooperative when they were in the minority again.
It is unsurprisingly difficult to pursue both majoritarian and counter-majoritarian goals here. These contradict!
Do you think the current system is a good one, where one party simply hedges out the other one in the main legislative house of the federal government?
I mean, the House, specifically, is supposed to be the most direct representatives of the will of the people, and they're the least-direct. Do you think it's fair that the Republicans draw district lines so that their votes will count for more?
It would also rule out ethnic representation in a number of situations.
no, I don't think they should. and it would be a simple issue for congress to fix (probably similar to the 28th amendment) if either party desired that change. as it stands, it isn't changed for the same reason that filibuster still exists... no one wants to limit the power of a position they may one day be in.
I was simply looking at the initial argument which made a point that I don't agree with.
If you have to draw a district in the shape of a fish hook connected to a blob one county over to get a specific minority represented... it points to a problem with race in this country. It is NOT a reason to allow for districts to be manipulated to achieve desired outcomes, whether those outcomes are "good" or "bad" from your point of view.
I don't care which party wins these places; they should not be and we should strive to get rid of them so that local representation makes sense again.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Yes. Mixed member proportional voting is pretty great. It doesn't eliminate independent candidates either. If they win their first past the post race, they still get in. Same situation if a party wins more district races than proportional seats. You still allow them. These are called Overhang Seats.
There are three options:
1. Add extra seats for the overhang.
2. Add extra seats for the overhang and additional seats to the proportional winner to keep the proportions in balance.
3. Take the extra seats away from the proportional winner.
I like option 1 because it's simple and easy to understand. It ever so slightly throws off the proportionality, but big deal.
That said, we need to NOT tie race to districting. Both sides are doing that and its a bad thing, even if one is striving for a more positive outcome.
I am not saying they are equally bad, just that they are both bad.
Making a "black" district and a "hispanic" district is a form of political segregation, and it allows for red districts to be majority white and capable of winning 60% of the vote every time, no matter how shitbaggy racist they get.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
The US strenuously avoids such solutions for reasons that might be fun to speculate on.
Limit the number of angles allowed when drawing districts. Require the districts to be within 5% of the population of the state divided by the number of representatives the state is given. Do NOT allow for the demographics of a district to be wildly different from the region that the district is carved from.
Racial Enclaves will still exist and there is no way around that, but this kind of setup would have guaranteed a house representation much closer to the will of the people.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Let's play a game then.
New York has 27 districts.
Due to population, 15 of them are in the Metro Area of NYC.
Are you telling me districts can't be drawn in a fashion that represents the population of the region they are cut from and allows for representation other then white men?
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Because we ought to be striving for a citizenry where we're all Americans rather than ethic-Americans. I have some problems with even the basic notion that you need a black person in office in order to represent black people.
Probably not going to fly here, though.
I said region, not state.
It is impossible to expect western new york state to match the racial distribution of brooklyn.
The region needs to be just large enough to protect from racial bullshit.
Doing shit like this so that all the minorities are in one district should be punishable, for instance. Because by giving one guaranteed seat to that minority group (represented by the blue), you are very likely giving the two surrounding districts to the opposition party, as opposed to possibly having three close races.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I was drafting this before I saw your post: "I suspect the problem is that your country wants to show its aspiration to eventually discard its most bitter ethnic division through actualizing it in some way in there here and now, and unfortunately all the ways to do that make the problems of the here and now much worse..."
So, I suppose we agree on the why.
How do you intend to rule out gerrymandering the borders of regions?
It looks like a dude winding up to punch a pig.
Define what you consider to be a natural constituency and I'll show you how horribly gerrymandered that is in comparison to what you think are actually 'sensible' districts that aren't 'manipulated' by arbitrary bits of geometry. Because all non-representational (as in literally drawing rivers) cartography is influenced by what you choose to value.
Wouldn't this to basically the same thing as the NPV, except for the House? Permanent rule by the metropolitan areas, for the metro areas.
Is this what we're calling "ghettos" now?
You have 6 angles plus state borders to work with.
All land must physically touch unless it is an island without any bridges, in which case that island can be a part of the closest district. The island will not impact the radius of the district unless its population accounts for more than 1/3 the total population of the district
You must keep population within 5% of the perfect amount based on state population divided by number of reps.
The region is defined by the radius of the district, plus x number of miles (probably only 2-3 miles... someone with ARCGIS training can figure this part out better than me)
It will be really, REALLY hard to game this system.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Which is fine, since most of America lives in metro areas?
Edit: Also it is fine because this is explicitly what the Senate was designed to compensate for?
Fixed that for you.
Also, 80% of the country lives in metro areas. So, you know, it's already like that. Only it's not. At all. But hey, it's every bit as much of a threat as letting people carried bottled water on airplanes, or voter fraud prevented by mandatory ID systems, so I can see why Republicans would be afraid of it.
It's not really possible to accept that its OK to form districts that will disproportionately represent the will of a group with similar interests and allow them to dominate government, and also disagree with gerrymandering. All you're doing is saying that you like the group you're advocating for a permanent majority.
Unless you want Phoenix to drink all the water in Arizona, a system that doesn't mitigate a permanent control of government by the major metro areas is a bad system.
how is disproportionate if more people live in cities?
Chop the state along rays from the metropolitian core. Trivially, that will tend to make the region around each district demographically similar to the district, since all districts will demographically similar to each other. Yet, depending on whether the state as a whole is majority rural or urban, either all the districts will be majority rural, or majority urban.