
This is the best explanation of gerrymandering you will ever see - knoxa2511
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/01/this-is-the-best-explanation-of-gerrymandering-you-will-ever-see/?utm_term=.e97b685de285
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waqf
If people are even thinking about gerrymandering, then it's apparent that the
system of having one representative elected by each district no longer serves
its supposed purpose of making sure each "community" is represented.

In that case, there's no reason not to switch to some more fairly
representative system, for which there are various possibilities but PR
systems are the best known
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation)).

~~~
davidw
Those can have some serious problems in practice too.

I spent a number of years in Italy, and several come to mind that I saw there:

* Representatives are beholden to the party, not to some local area.

* Smaller parties can play 'kingmaker'.

~~~
Lazare
Yes, and yes.

It has some real advantages (it's nice being able to vote for someone that
actually agrees with you AND not have your vote be wasted), but my experience
in New Zealand is that:

1\. It enhances the power of parties and thus increases partisanship

2\. It allows small parties to play kingmaker. In the NZ case, the perennial
kingmaker party is corrupt and virulently nativist.

If, hypothetically, you were concerned about the partisanship, corruption, and
nativist policies of current American politics, PR may not be the panacea you
hope. I think it was quite unlikely for the American system to yield Trump as
president (we just got very unlucky) but it would be quite likely for a PR
system to yield Trump as a kingmaker with a vastly outsize influence on the
policy of the resultant government. That's not obviously better, on balance.

~~~
waqf
> _Trump as a kingmaker with a vastly outsize influence_

Hmm, now you mention it, didn't something like that happen to the Weimar
Republic?

~~~
dragonwriter
Arguably, it's what failed to happen; Hitler ended up leading a minority
government with the largest party (well, tied with the Communists), no one
acted as kingmaker with a small party putting some other coalition over the
top extracting concessions for that boost.

There was kingmaking of a more personal kind going on behind the scenes, but
not of the minor-party-exercises outsized influence kind.

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e28eta
Obviously the title is hyperbole, but in order to be the "best explanation"
I'd like to see some of the reasonable arguments that are used to justify
"non-compact, non-fair" districts.

Maybe that's because I remember reading this article (TBF, it is linked),
particularly the section about "community of interest":
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/06/03/this-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/06/03/this-
computer-programmer-solved-gerrymandering-in-his-spare-time/)

Essentially the graphic shows how compactness can be unfair, but doesn't tell
us what reasonable explanations can be used for non-compact districts.

~~~
tunesmith
Even the word "fair" implies the belief that a state's district breakdown
should track with the state's population breakdown. This is not necessarily
axiomatic. If you want competitive districts with a smaller incumbency
advantage, then maybe you don't want that. IOW it depends on how you define
"fair".

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favorited
Fun fact: "gerrymander" is a portmanteau of the name "Gerry" and "salamander."
Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed the state's initial electoral
districts into law (which his party had drawn in their favor), and one of the
districts looked like a salamander.

~~~
caf
Compared to the utterly indefensible PA-7, the salamander district looks like
a model of propriety ( [http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-
fba/Globe_Graphic/2007/05/31/...](http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-
fba/Globe_Graphic/2007/05/31/1180605109_1489-1.jpg) )

~~~
tunesmith
Can PA-7 be deemed indefensible for reasons other than how it looks? Not a
leading question, I wonder if there are statistical data about it. You could
argue that if you drew proportional representation as districts (basically:
pointillism) it'd make PA-7 look wonderful in comparison.

~~~
caf
It is abundantly clear that that district has been drawn in the way it has for
nakedly political reasons, and not to group together contiguous communities of
interest.

 _You could argue that if you drew proportional representation as districts
(basically: pointillism) it 'd make PA-7 look wonderful in comparison._

If you argued that, you'd be wrong. Proportional representation districts
should group together communities of interest in exactly the same way as
single-member districts - the only difference is that PR districts are
represented by more than one representative.

~~~
tunesmith
Sure, if you just completely redefine my point. But if you take a PR
"district", like a state, with multiple representatives, and imagine them a a
collection of single-representative districts, they're about as far from
contiguous as you get.

I'm not arguing PA-7 isn't a problem. But I don't think "looks" is a good
standard. What's better is something like the standards being argued in the
current Wisconsin case that I think might still be going to the Supreme Court.

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mymex1
It won't solve the problem of "how" to redistrict, but as far as finding out
if gerrymandering IS happening it seems like there are good ideas out there
such as the "efficiency gap" used in a recent Wisconsin case.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/wisconsin-
redistrictin...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/wisconsin-
redistricting-found-to-unfairly-favor-republicans.html)

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my_first_acct
Even "compact, fair" districts can lead to outcomes that one party, at least,
would find unfair.

For instance, in the US, Democratic voters tend to be clustered in cities, so
urban congressional districts (even "compact, fair" ones) vote overwhelmingly
for Democrats. This means that there a lot of "wasted" Democratic votes
contributing to landslide victories in urban districts, instead of bringing
about Democratic victories elsewhere.

Even if the Republicans have only a narrow majority in the suburban and rural
districts, and are an overall minority of voters in the state, they are able
to win the majority of congressional districts.

See this 2014 article (sorry, behind NYTimes paywall) for more details:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/opinion/sunday/its-the-
ge...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/opinion/sunday/its-the-geography-
stupid.html)

~~~
dragonwriter
Right. Any method of drawing single-member FPTP districts will, unless voters
of different persuasions are perfectly uniformly distributed, will:

(1) Produce disproportionate advantage for some party, and/or

(2) Produce some number of safe seats where the general election is a forgone
conclusion and the mechanism that selects candidates decides the winner in
practice.

You can select methods to choose which of these effects predominate, and which
party benefits from either disproportionate representation or safe seats
(there's a certain tension -- you get disproportionate representation for your
party by giving the other party super safe seats), but you can't avoid them
unless you throw out FPTP, and really single-member independent districts
entirely.

------
tunesmith
There isn't really yet an operational definition of gerrymandering. Such that,
if x conditions exist, it's gerrymandering, and if they don't, it's not. You
can't do it without pointing at results and going, "Well that's clearly
unfair."

I believe there _is_ a recent legal case that is still in the courts where
they are trying to arrive at a legal standard. Something about the percentage
of unrepresented voters in a state's average district. So there might be
progress on that point.

But even politicians that complain against gerrymandering are inconsistent.
Some politicians complain about "safe" districts not being competitive enough,
and also complain that house elections don't mirror the popular vote breakdown
enough. Those are actually on opposite sides of the loose tradeoff.

As you move towards your house results mirroring the popular vote (like if
today's House were 48.2% Democratic and 46.1% Republican), then you move
towards less competitive districts (except for primaries), like the "perfect
representation" example in the article. Because, in order to guarantee that
your state's district breakdown will mirror your state's vote breakdown, you
basically would want all Republican-voting people in their districts, and all
Democratic-voting people in their own.

So, what do you want? Do you want a House that is overall representative of
the national popular vote? Do you want districts where the maximum number of
citizens are represented? Do you want competitive districts? Do you want
compact, contiguous districts? Do you want districts that respect traditional
neighborhood boundaries, district history, and geography? Because they all
imply different districting strategies. And saying "let's just let a computer
split-line it!" means explicitly rejecting some of these principles - you
can't get past making choices about tradeoffs, because it is inherently messy.

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devdoomari
another explanation of gerrymandering by CGP grey:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mky11UJb9AY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mky11UJb9AY)

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molmalo
This video was really simple to understand too:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mky11UJb9AY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mky11UJb9AY)

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justinzollars
Gerrymandering results in more competitive districts. So it will be a fact a
life because every party wants more.

From the point of view of actual Representation it does not make sense. For
example, my former Congresswomen was personally heartbroken to lose the town
of Bowling Green, in Ohio. Her new district isn't really representative of any
logical organization of people, so its hard to be responsive to the needs of
the people.

I think my preference is that a computer cut it in a way that considers the
geography and land topology and types of communities whether cities or towns -
with the goal of being as square as possible.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Gerrymandering results in more competitive districts.

Only when the goal of gerrymandering is to maximize competitive districts, but
it's usually not; it's usually to maximize safe districts and districts in
which one party has an electoral advantage. (Also, frequently, it's designed
to create particular benefits or problems for particular incumbents.)

------
egwynn
[2015]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9235619](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9235619)

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coldcode
While I like the article, do modern newspapers have editors? "But the only won
5 out of 18 House seats".

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bhauer
On the subject of districting, the ideal is shortest splitline [1]. Combine
this with Approval or Score voting and I'd be a very happy voter.

[1] [http://scorevoting.net/SplitLR.html](http://scorevoting.net/SplitLR.html)

~~~
hibikir
While I am no friend of gerrymandering, arguing that there is a geographic
ideal is disingenuous: Voters clump up, and thus any automated mechanism that
just looks at geography will be skewed, and, in the US today, Very often
skewed towards republicans compared to the ratio of voters in a state.

There is no such thing as a fair way to assign representatives without making
some judgement call on what fair means. If you prefer short split line, that's
because of your very personal preferences, which might have something to do
with good looking maps, but they absolutely have nothing to do with making
sure that groups of people are epresented in a way that will match
proportional representation. Shortest split line will still give you a state
that is 50/50 in a senate vote, but hands you a congress that is a 7/3 split.

