
Mathematicians looking to make elections in the US more representative - andreshb
http://www.nature.com/news/the-mathematicians-who-want-to-save-democracy-1.22113
======
ValG
There are a _ton_ of important issues, but, I believe that gerrymandering is a
core issue in the United States because :

Partisan gerrymandering allows for politicians to secure their seats - this
leads to less voters being represented (allowing the politicians to become
more polarized) e.g. when races are tight, politicians tend to move towards
the center. [2]

Partisan gerrymandering is strongly disliked by both parties and across the
political spectrum, the only people fighting for it are those currently in
power (on both sides) [3]

Partisan gerrymandering disenfranchises a large portion of voters, whose votes
end up “not counting” b/c of how district lines are drawn[4]

Because of this, I'm currently fundraising (from friends and family) for the
legal team in the North Carolina case [1]. I've committed significant amount
personally to the fundraise and can say that this is arguably one of the
highest leverage ways to spent dollars that you can get to get America back on
track as a representative democracy.

I've done a lot of research on this - if you want to help (with $$) or just
want to learn more, feel free to reach out (valgui [at] gmail.com)

[1][http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/sites/default/files/LWVNC...](http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/sites/default/files/LWVNCvRucho%20One%20Pager.pdf)
[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/us/politics/in-indiana-
tig...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/us/politics/in-indiana-tight-senate-
race-senate-candidates-move-to-center.html)
[3][http://www.theharrispoll.com/politics/Americans_Across_Party...](http://www.theharrispoll.com/politics/Americans_Across_Party_Lines_Oppose_Common_Gerrymandering_Practices.html)
[4][http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wang-remlinger-
ge...](http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wang-remlinger-
gerrymandering-20170505-story.html)

~~~
aaron-lebo
One of my professors at UT Dallas has a book that argues that districts in
fact should be partisan. It's been a few years but the logic is something like
if you've got a 50-50 district, you're gonna end up with 50% of the people in
the district unhappy. Where as if you intentionally designed districts to be
like like 90-10 (or whatever possible), more people are happy.

Not sure if I believe him, but it's interesting.

 _Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections are Bad for
America_

[https://www.amazon.com/Redistricting-Representation-
Competit...](https://www.amazon.com/Redistricting-Representation-Competitive-
Elections-Controversies/dp/0415964539)

~~~
ValG
That's a super interesting concept. I will look into it; book ordered! From a
quick think through - I think that this argument may fall flat on 2 related
ideas. 1\. Data shows that when seats are more secure like you say (90-10
instead of 50-50), representatives often go towards the extremes of the
political spectrum (on both sides). this leads to issue 2... 2\. Voters are
generally not strictly partisan - that is to say (purely as an example), while
I may have right leaning thoughts on how to run the economy, I may have left
leaning thoughts on social issues. If I'm in a district with someone that is
far right or far left, a portion of the time they're always going to vote
against my wishes. Am I better off in general? Hard to tell without getting
more in depth on my preferences.

~~~
Torwald
Could this be mitigated by having a system with more than two parties?

~~~
travmatt
Multi party systems tend to favor the most ideologically driven actors in the
system. An example of this is Israel.

Furthermore, American politics isn't two ideologies. Each party is composed of
multiple groups that compete for dominance. Republicans have business
interests, evangelicals, etc., while democrats have progressives, neoliberal,
etc.

~~~
taejo
I'm not sure I follow. American politics isn't two ideologies, but it does
have ideologies. Is it better to bundle up these dozens of ideologies and
interests into two parties than to have ideologically driven parties?

------
acjohnson55
To me, the problem is winner-take-all districts to begin with. It all but
ensures some constituents are going to be sorely disappointed. Why not
consider something like multi-member districts? We could tune it even further
by awarding variable voting power. Then the way the borders are drawn becomes
far less relevant. I'm sure there are tradeoffs, but it would certainly be
more representative.

~~~
labster
Most of the arguments against this center on the fact that ranked systems
would be too complex for voters to understand. Which I used to think was pure
hogwash, but Americans have since proved that they can't handle even two
candidates for a major office. Hint: the worst one was the one with zero
government experience.

~~~
ajmurmann
The parent didn't mention ranked choice voting unless I read it wrong. I read
them to argue in favor of multiple representatives per district. You can have
that even with the current voting system. The top n candidates get the job
with n > 1\. There only difference is right now n = 1. That being said there
is also the much simpler approval voting.

~~~
acjohnson55
Yep, you read me correctly.

Approval voting is great too, but I don't know that it addresses the issue of
district boundaries on its own.

And to address the question of complexity from the first person to reply to
me, I don't think that's a realistic concern. Basically it would work like
this: you vote normally (whether singe vote, approval, ranked, or whatever),
then each party gets at most the number of winners proportional to their
aggregate share of the vote, with representatives chosen in order of
performance.

------
humanrebar
The real problem, in my opinion, is that we're making more and more
centralized decisions. Federalism properly done lessens the pressure to come
up with complex gerrymandering and voting schemes by lessening the election
pressure altogether.

It adds more power to other important democratic mechanisms: free speech and
vote-with-your-feet.

The power of free speech is improved because a state legislator has fewer
constituents, so each group of 100 with similar interests matters a lot more.

And, at the end of the day, if a city or state is really screwing things up,
people (not everyone, but enough) can relocate to somewhere that is doing a
better job.

Eliminating gerrymandering (how? how will it get passed?) and new voting
schemes (which? how will it get passed?) are interesting, but federalism
already exists (10th amendment), it's just underemphasized.

~~~
Dayshine
The downside is increased governance costs due to duplication of bureaucracy,
increased complexity of legal systems, and more confusing everyday laws (as
fewer people = less documentation and support services).

Which all means "vote-with-your-feet" is actually far harder to do, as all
your everyday legal knowledge is useless in other states.

~~~
humanrebar
The counterargument is that increased _layers_ of bureaucracy is also
expensive, possibly more expensive. And we already have byzantine regulations,
so it's not all that much of a downside.

And, at the end of the day, we can talk to our city councilmen about the
unfairness of complicated regulations. And cities can brag about their simple
and fair legal systems to get people to want to move there.

------
woopwoop
It's easy to gerrymander a surface. It's hard to gerrymander a line, or a
circle, where the connectedness requirement has teeth. One solution to
gerrymandering is to determine congressional districts by birthday, or last
name, rather than by geographic location.

~~~
LaughingGoat
Interesting concept! I wonder if this is hackable based on demographic
popularity of last names, by race. According to Wolfram Alpha, the most common
last names are: Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, which don't share a
common 1st letter. But maybe some ethnic names might: Rodriguez, Ramirez,
Chan, Chen, Chang...

But ultimately, what political needs would a community of last-name-starts-
with-C need?

~~~
slyfocks
> But ultimately, what political needs would a community of last-name-starts-
> with-C need?

None, which is why that grouping would only make sense in a society of
extremely generic robots.

------
jamesonquinn
As others have noted, proportional representation (PR) is the best solution to
gerrymandering. (Not arguing that we shouldn't also support second-best
solutions like nonpartisan redistricting and court challenges to the worst
gerrymanders.)

The three PR methods in common use are STV-with-multimember-districts; mixed-
member proportional (MMP); and open (or, yuck, closed) list systems. All of
these (except closed lists) are decent, but have downsides. STV leads to very
complex ballots; MMP leads to "two classes" of representatives; open list
focuses your voting power on the partisan choice, but doesn't give you much
power to help set the direction of your favorite party. And all three can lead
to extreme party fragmentation and thus excess "kingmaker" power for splinter
parties, unless there are rules against that.

It is, however, possible to design a method without any of these downsides.
Perfection is impossible, but the Pareto frontier is, and none of the above
methods are on it. Here's one that is:

[http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Geographic_Open_List/Delegat...](http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Geographic_Open_List/Delegated_\(GOLD\)_voting)

Here's an article about why it's good:

[https://medium.com/@jameson.quinn/make-all-votes-count-
part-...](https://medium.com/@jameson.quinn/make-all-votes-count-part-i-
pr-225f4aea34bb)

~~~
joveian
Do you have a more detailed desription about how this method works? Your links
do not describe it in much detail but it is interesting.

Even without the details my sense is that this method suffers from some very
serious problems. Picking the two candidates with the highest initial votes
seems like a bad idea; this can remove all of the most widely supported
candidates if there are enough similar candidates (i.e. if 70% of the voters
are split between 10 candidates and 30% between two candidates, but the 70%
consider the two that the 30% would elect to be least favored).

In general, strategic voting is likely to have a huge effect. I don't
understand what the write-in option does, but if it allows you to vote for
candidates in a different district than that would allow votes to be used to
disloge more influential members of an opposing party against the wishes of
the district that candidate actually represents.

In any case, always interesting to learn about possible voting methods :).

IMO, limiting the effectiveness of strategic voting is one of the most
important things a voting method should do, while also not electing anyone who
would heavily lose in two candidate races vs. any of the other candidates. I
don't think it needs to be strictly Condorcet, but the further away from that
a method gets (at least when geographic representation is involed) the less
reasonable it seems in a lot of ways IMO.

I've been thinking about the possibility of a parallel system where the
grographical representation part is non-partisan. I think this might work if
geographical representatives are allowed and expected to allocate their vote
on a given issue proportionally to how the people they represent would vote on
that issue.

------
tnorthcutt
Eliminating first past the post would go a long way.

------
EGreg
Instead of using math to rewrite districts, do something else:

Change the ballot.

Ranked voting is better than First Past the Post (what we use) but the one
with the BEST statistical properties and simplest exanation is the Approval
Vote.

Simply be able to mark more than one candidate.

This way Bernie or Bloomberg could have run and taken the whole thing. As
opposed to staying out because of fear "a vote for X is a vote against Y".

Maine did it. They switched! Now 49 more states to go.

This can be done at a local level in some places. Any district that does this
will become less politically polarized and people won't be so fearful and hate
each other less :)

------
nhebb
This article from 2013 puts it at D+7.1 overall for the House:

[http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/who-
gerrymande...](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/who-gerrymanders-
more-democrats-or-republicans/)

What surprises me, though, is how little attention is given to caucuses in the
US presidential primaries. The turnout is very low and they're subject to
strong arming and party insider corruption in both major parties.

~~~
letitgo12345
Well speaking just for myself, I honestly would prefer an even more party
insiders driven process for the primaries. Too much democracy seems to lead to
insane levels of populism leading to characters like Trump. At any rate, US
democracy guarantees one a vote in the general -- parties are private orgs and
it's not "corrupt" or "wrong" for them to select candidates however they want.

~~~
MichaelGG
Except since there's no chance for a 3rd party, these two parties hold too
much power and it suddenly matters much more. If it was like other countries
with tons of parties that rise and fall, you'd be correct.

Also what do you mean by insane levels of populism? Isn't that just a
derogatory way to say "what the people want"?

~~~
letitgo12345
There would be more of a chance for a 3rd party if people bothered to care
about the house rather than just the presidency...

But yeah, today there's little chance. But so what? _Plenty_ of progress, far
more than today was made in the past before the primary system. Several great
presidents (including Lincoln, FDR, TDR) came from the old process. Meanwhile
the new process gave us Trump...Not to mention, tons of members of Congress
afraid to do anything sensible because they are too afraid of primary
challenges by hyper partisan people on their side.

UK doesn't have a primary system (mostly -- they did for Labour who are now
saddled with Corbyn) and they don't have a stupidly gridlocked govt. Neither
does Canada. Both of those countries have politics dominated by mostly 2-3
parties. In fact almost no country on Earth has it to the level that the US
does.

Re:"what people want" \-- for one thing what people want is often
contradictory. For another, there's a reason why the US doesn't have mob rule
by majority. What people want is not always coherent or wise. IMO our goal as
a society should be a functioning govt and a liberal polity for which
democracy is a means. But by no means is democracy a good in an of itself for
me at least.

------
frabbit
The problem is with the idea of representative democracy at all. If the
electorate is smart enough to figure out that Candidate A is _both_ correct on
a range of policy matters _and_ of a trustworthy nature, then why are they not
smart enough to decide directly on said policy matters?

Governments should be composed solely of civil servants drawn from academia
and other fields in which they need to prove their knowledge and competence.
Their job would be to advise on and implement the policy goals chosen by
ballot measures.

Figuring out some way to allow direct ballot/referendum securely and
efficiently would be more welcome than re-jigging the USA to bring it into
line with one of the other countries that has an elite class shuffling between
ruling in the interests of businesses and remunerating themselves as leaders
of those businesses.

~~~
orthecreedence
Just like I hire a person to fix my car, or hire a person to fly the planes I
sometimes travel on, we hire people to handle running the country for us. It's
an abstraction of labor. I _really_ don't want to be bothered with every
little tiny decision about budget or foreign policy.

That said, people in the US are _so busy_ that they don't have any time at all
to even make informed decisions on who to elect to run the city/state/country
for them. This is a problem...people need to work less, but good luck solving
that one with a crippled economy and enormous wealth disparities.

In principle, I agree with you...we have the technology to allow referendum
voting, and it would certainly make for a more representative government.
However, I think time, understanding, and human nature are large barriers.
Also, don't think that just because people can vote directly means they won't
be easily swayed by ruling-class propaganda. A good example is when cities try
to install their own fiber infrastructure and Comcast rolls in and convinces
everyone it's somehow communism. That doesn't go away just because people have
a more direct rule.

I think a representative republic still makes sense for our day and age.
Gerrymandering _is_ a huge issue and should be dealt with...along with
lobbying and other forms of (very obvious) corporate intervention in our
republic.

~~~
75dvtwin
I think allowing to specify what percent of your tax goes into what 'pre-
canned' list of causes, would allow a way for folks to influence the
politicians outside of the 'election process', and, without, full blown on-
line-referendum surveys for all the issues.

Clearly, the above would bias some of the decision making power away from low-
income populous, however this can be addressed by some form of weighting and
thresholds.

~~~
gizmo686
The problem is, I, and the typical taxpayer, is not qualified to make an
informed decision about budget allocations. When I want to know where to spend
my tax dollar, It is not sufficient to know how I value the causes, but rather
how I value them relative to their existing budget allocations, and how useful
additional money would be to them.

For instance, I may value national defense and our military in the abstract.
However, if I look at the actual budget, think we overspend and that the
_marginal_ value of an additional dollar is small because of diminishing
returns.

In contrast, I am sure that there are government programs that provide me
great benefit but that I do not know or think about. This proposal would
require every government cause to engage in large scale marketing, which is
wastefully expensive, and would likely result in inefficient allocations.

>Clearly, the above would bias some of the decision making power away from
low-income populous, however this can be addressed by some form of weighting
and thresholds.

We could avoid this problem entirely by giving every voter an equal slice of
the government budget to allocate.

~~~
75dvtwin
I think, my recommendation, would create more informed voter base. Mostly
because lobbyist would have to reach out to the voters, rather than to the
politicians. Additionally, perhaps, letting a voter to 'forego' his/her right
for the allocation could be allowed. This way you can choose to forego the
right, while others would keep it.

~~~
pyroinferno
So we're opening a whole new floodgate of lobbyist propaganda?

~~~
frabbit
Lobbyists currently do not even need to use propaganda. They just need to
provide a sufficient monetary reward to the smaller number of people's
"representatives". It is much easier to bribe/suborn a few people than the
entire electorate.

------
skierscott
One of the most reasonable rules I've heard IMO for deterring voting
districts:

> In each section (at first a state, etc), find a dividing line that splits
> the population in two.

This seems somewhat reasonable, and there's no way for humans to bias it.

Here's some pictures of what this looks like [1], and the write up of this
idea [2]

[1]:[http://rangevoting.org/alRS.png](http://rangevoting.org/alRS.png)

[2]:[http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html](http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html)

~~~
hibikir
The problem is not bias, but uneven representation. We can get uneven
representation without bias quite easily: I've not ran your system in
practical terms, but I'd be very surprised if, in the US, this gave you
republican house majorities even when they lose the popular vote. The reason
is simple: Republican voters are more dispersed geographically, so it's very
hard for them to get clumped into a district where they have an overwhelming
advantage.

This is why plenty of people prefer to do things like maximize the chance that
a voter feels well represented, or minimize the safety of incumbents, instead
of going for something that leads to simple lines.

Another important problem of straight lines is that it ignores the physical
limitations of actual voting: Each voting location is expensive (go ask in
North Carolina, where magical budget cuts make it harder to vote in areas that
tend to vote democratic). inconvenient, mathematical lines will give you
higher average costs to get to your own polling place, and will require more
polling places, or places that have to corral different people to different
booths with different options. Good luck doing that without doing everything
fully digitally, which is, IMO, not necessarily a good idea.

~~~
distances
> magical budget cuts make it harder to vote in areas that tend to vote
> democratic

Once and again the divisiveness of the US politics keeps astonishing me. This
would never fly in my home country, even reading this here is repulsive in its
unfairness. Sure the parties push their own ideologies, but luckily a fair
election still seems to be a sacred concept.

------
programminggeek
If you redesign the districts to be purely on population you'll skew policy so
hard towards urban life that you destroy the rural, agricultural base of the
country.

If you care at all about being provided with food, it is unwise to ignore
those who live outside of a city or you cut your own throat.

Democrats don't seem to get this because they care too much about their social
issues, and Republicans aren't much better about this for the last decade.

Only Trump seems to have figured this out and smartly got rural America on his
side.

------
ende
The real solution to preventing gerrymandering is to get rid of congressional
districts altogether, and move to proportionally representative delegations
from each state. Afterall, there is absolutely no constitutional basis for
partitioning states into districts.

------
ianai
I think we need approval voting.

~~~
prodikl
Is this like.. where you choose 1, 2, 3?

so if I choose

1\. Dem 2\. Green 3\. Repub

and you chose

1\. Repub 2\. Green 3\. Dem

They'd all be equal? (four points each)

~~~
ajmurmann
I think you are moving this up with ranked choice. Approval voting allows you
to vote for every option either ones or not at all. So you either approve of
the option or not. If you want you can vote for everyone. However, that's the
same as voting for nobody. You could however also vote for everybody except
for one option. That would be the equivalent of voting against somebody.
Example ballots could be:

Voter one: Green - yes; dem - yes; rep - no. Voter two: Green - yes; dem - no;
rep - yes. This would result in the green party winning in the above example.

The vote would be very close if not identical to approval ratings we
frequently see for various candidates. This would have probably gotten us
Bernie, since he was the only candidate running at all with favorable approval
ratings. Both candidates who made it beyond the primaries were disliked by the
majority, which is unfortunate to say the least.

As an added benefit we could completely leave off primaries if we want. There
is very little spoiler effect in this system.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> There is very little spoiler effect [under approval voting].

Why do you believe this?

~~~
ajmurmann
Because there is much less reason to strategically vote for your second choice
in order to prevent a candidate you definitely don't want. A friend of mine
who is very active in this area also claims there are studies about this. But
I've honestly never read them. It seems intuitively true to me. Which I
acknowledge is not ideal.

------
Dowwie
Geometry of Redistricting: Summer School
[http://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/](http://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/)

It is open to the public and free of charge

------
ClayShentrup
[http://scorevoting.net/GerryExamples.html](http://scorevoting.net/GerryExamples.html)

------
a_imho
Sortition >> Voting

~~~
TheCoelacanth
I think this is a really interesting idea, and I would love to see it tried in
a modern government. There are a lot of potential problems, but possibly less
than those involved with voting.

~~~
a_imho
From what I understand, the US legal system has the jury duty as a form of
sortition, who make life or death decisions.

It is a solution to make the governing bodies more inclusive and
representative, which is the title of the article. No winner takes all, no
fake news, no votes buying, no suspicious campaign donations, probably no 2
party system, less oligarchies, corruption and nepotism. What is not to like
_? Wikipedia [1] does list a couple of points, all debatable and /or easily
countered imo.

I also happen to like how seamlessly it integrates with the current
representative model and remains scalable as opposed to more direct
approaches.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition#Disadvantages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition#Disadvantages)

_from the average voter pov, who benefit little to none from the current
establishment in this presumption

~~~
TheCoelacanth
The big difference that I see from juries, is that juries only choose from a
fairly limited selection of possibilities, and they have a few specifically
identified professionals (the judge and the lawyers for each side) who guide
them through the process. With an actual government, there are only a few
constraints and everything else is open to them. There are also thousands of
interested parties trying to influence them instead of just two. That would
make their job much more challenging than being a juror. It could potentially
end up handing more power to lobbyists because of the inexperience of the
people in power and resulting in more corruption because there are no longer
have to hide it to ensure re-election.

~~~
a_imho
I mean it is already practiced in some form, this is not a whole new concept.

Of course, there are discussions to be held about the implementation details,
including the governments reach and the checks and regulations. A lot can be
argued about what political experience brings to the table (imo bad things for
the very large part, but that is a ugly can of worms). Personally, I would
trust my neighbor more to do The Right Thing, than any career politician.

Nevertheless, a sampling based method is much more representative and more in
line with the rule of the people idea.

------
nocoder
Sorry to nitpick, but the headline should be "The mathematicians who want to
save the "American" democracy".

------
bitmadness
I knew Jonathan Mattingly when I was an undergrad, cool guy

------
fivestar
Spare me, if Hillary Clinton had won "mathematicians" would be off jerking
around doing something else.

------
known
Does it fix
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud)

