
Let Math Save Our Democracy - coloneltcb
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/opinion/sunday/let-math-save-our-democracy.html?referer=
======
nickff
It seems that this analysis disregards important aspects of the electoral
system in favor of simplified red vs blue partisan thinking.

This article is based on the unspoken assumption that allocating the right
number of seats to Democrats, and the right number to Republicans is the goal
of the voting system. If this is the objective of congressional voting, it
should be a party popularity contest at the state level for congressmen and
senators, with a national popularity contest for the presidency; and all of
these should be run through telephone, mail, or internet polls (which are
cheaper and sufficiently accurate) to save money and voters' time.

I do not agree with this premise, as it assumes that the two-party dynamic is
either unavoidable or desirable, and that the only thing that matters about
elected representatives is their party affiliation. The proposed measures
could greatly damage the importance of third party candidates (because they
are not taken into account), greatly impact the importance and dynamics of
primaries (because they are not regarded with the respect which is given to
elections), and impact non-partisan issues which the representatives often act
on.

~~~
sidarape
The US has a strange concept of democracy sometimes.

------
lyschoening
The US would do a lot better with mixed-member proportional representation: It
would solve gerrymandering outright; money in politics would be less than an
issue, because money would have to be spent everywhere and not just on swing
states/districts; and soon there would be more than two parties.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-
member_proportional_repr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-
member_proportional_representation)

~~~
snarfy
I still think the cap on the number of representatives is the problem. The
current number of 535 should be more like 10,000+ considering the current
population size. This would also solve gerrymandering and help with the money
problem.

~~~
a3n
Yeahbut, the building won't hold 10,000 members.

~~~
bobwaycott
Sounds like a good opportunity to create some jobs and score points with the
electorate. :)

------
qfwfq_
I'm a PhD student studying gerrymandering, and I think it's cool this is
getting written about in the NYT. But, there are very good models of
gerrymandering built off of well-informed counterfactual analysis of
generalized linear modelling that can provide both easy to understand
indicators of gerrymandering and bias, as well as provide an indication of the
uncertainty in those measures.

One thing that's been getting on my nerves in the road to the big
D(issertation) is the complete lack of value some in the domain place on that
uncertainty.

Elections in single member district systems, at the geography where
gerrymandering study becomes meaningful, has to be modelled as a Stochastic
system. These kinds of "accounting methods" can vary wildly in their estimates
from election to election, and almost always fail to really express how
uncertain the indicator is.

------
thaumasiotes
There's a funny contradiction in the setup of this piece. It starts off like
this:

> PARTISAN gerrymandering is an offense to democracy. It creates districts
> that are skewed and uncompetitive, denying voters the ability to elect
> representatives who fairly reflect their views.

But the _issue_ they're talking about is actually the opposite of this!
Further down:

> Partisan redistricters stuff voters of the opposing party into a smaller
> number of districts, while spreading their own voters over a larger number
> of districts to eke out as many bare wins as possible. It is possible for a
> party to win more than half of the popular vote in a state, yet control
> fewer than one-third of the legislative seats. This is not a theoretical
> problem: Precisely such a thing happened in 2012 with the congressional
> delegations of Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

The charge here is that the party controlling districting wants to make it _as
easy as possible_ for voters in the enemy party to elect the representative of
their choice, by taking away all of their opposition. At the same time, the
controlling party is trying to make the districts it wins _as competitive as
possible_ (while staying above 50%). Any votes you earn above the 50%
threshold would be put to better use in some other district.

Now, the strategical analysis is perfectly sound and this is a reasonable
complaint to make. I just think it's funny that the rhetoric of the piece is
actually opposed to the policy complaints.

~~~
jedharris
I think I understand your point but actually the two statements are
consistent.

Your phrase "competitive as possible" is wrong or at best very misleading. If
a district intended to be a "bare win" actually turns out to be competitive
then the restricting process has gone wrong from the point of view of the
controlling party.

The goal of gerrymandering, often achieved in practice, is to disenfranchise
as many voters of the other parties as possible -- to ensure that their vote
has no effect on the outcome of the election. So the first statement you quote
is accurate.

The second statement you quote just explains how this can be done.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> The goal of gerrymandering, often achieved in practice, is to disenfranchise
> as many voters of the other parties as possible -- to ensure that their vote
> has no effect on the outcome of the election. So the first statement you
> quote is accurate.

Packing all the democrats into a single district could be described this way;
most of the votes in such a district will be wasted democratic votes. But that
opening statement was

> [Gerrymandering] creates districts that are skewed and uncompetitive,
> _denying voters the ability to elect representatives who fairly reflect
> their views_.

(my emphasis)

This can't describe the phenomenon the article is actually about. It's about
segregating people such that they can easily elect a representative who caters
to them. And in fact this kind of redistricting is often legally mandated,
specifically so as to give minority voters an uncontested district from which
they can elect a minority congressman.

Enemy party concentration can give the boundary-drawing party extra
representatives counted at the state level compared to expectation. But it
obviously _reduces_ the number of enemy-party _voters_ who suffer from being
unable to elect their own representative. The skewed districts created by
gerrymandering make it _easy_ for voters to elect a representative who
reflects their views; the close districts make it more difficult.

------
guard-of-terra
Geograpical district should be on their way out. Why think I share terribly
much with people that live around me? This may be a bit true in some cases
(historic city centers, good suburbia) and wrong in other cases (outskirts of
large cities where everybody is a stranger).

Let people create districts themself, vote in those. Occupation-defined,
lifestyle-defined, not just geography-defined. Let everybody vote in, say,
three districts.

This way I'll be voting in software developers' "district" and choose between
five awesome candidates, not between girl I loathe and guy I merely find
acceptable. Also will vote in independent music "district" and finally my city
district.

~~~
jedharris
I like this. But how would it work in practice? You need a mechanism for
keeping these virtual districts balanced.

Also these districts could use ranked voting (single transferable vote) so
could avoid most of the negative aspects of the current system.

One way to start with this would be to create "fantasy legislatures" based on
this kind of districting / voting. Initially these would be just a hobby but
if the process worked it would draw people in and become a way for under-
represented groups to get a voice. Maybe it could become a stepping stone to
electoral politics and possible even influence reforms to the system.

I'd be happy to work on this if others want to as well. Or possibly it is
already underway, if so provide a pointer.

~~~
guard-of-terra
What do you mean by unbalanced districts? If district undersubscribes, it
doesn't elect anybody; if it oversubscribes, maybe two people are elected from
it instead of just one?

I would be happy to work on this too.

------
andrew-lucker
This article seems to assume that our current system is an imperfect attempt
at populist democracy and that somehow we just got the numbers wrong. The
history and current opposition is still that populist democracy is not good
for rural politics. The argument is simple, most people live in dense cities,
and if you counted votes evenly then nobody would ever care what country-folk
care about at any level of government.

If the article is meant to be a persuasive essay then it may be good to at
least acknowledge that dissent exists, particularly when that dissenting
opinion designed or heavily influenced the current system.

"the commission says that its main objective was to give Latinos and Native
Americans the ability to elect representatives of their choice"

even the article acknowledges the partisan nature of districting, but instead
of recognizing that openly the author chooses to begin with the thesis
"PARTISAN gerrymandering is an offense to democracy." Partisan gerrymandering
was a founding principle of our democracy. By definition, as long as districts
exist in elections, they will be partisan.

------
lordnacho
If the US has proportional representation, there might be more than two
opinions on every issue.

~~~
jacques_chester
The US Congress has, by standards of other Parliamentary bodies, weak party
discipline. The parties in the Australia's Parliament exercise almost totally
complete voting discipline (formally or informally). The UK somewhere in-
between with the concept of the three-line whip.

In that sense the USA already has a coalition party structure: various voting
blocs form within the two parties and occasionally defect against the rest. In
Australia we call them "factions", but their role is to seize control of the
party and then enjoy the fruits of party in discipline. In the USA they can
instead directly exercise their votes on the floor of Congress.

This is partly a consequence of the ability to mix appropriations with other
bills and for amendments to happen in committee. In Australia neither of these
is possible: appropriations bills can _only_ deal with appropriations or they
become totally invalidated, and amendments have to be moved in the open. Party
discipline becomes necessary under such conditions, but the _Parliament_ as an
institution is arguably more functional.

Another cause is the primaries system. Members of Congress are answerable
firstly to a constituency that represents outliers of outliers, not to the
general electorate. They are motivated to occasionally defect.

In any case, even if you introduce multi-member electorates, gerrymandering
doesn't vanish. And the USA needs a number of other electoral reforms, too:
independent electoral commissioners, replacing first-past-the-post with
another counting method and so on.

~~~
dkbrk
> the Parliament as an institution is arguably more functional

This is a very interesting point. I had thought the greater freedom of
Congressmen in the US to vote as they wished, even if it was against party
lines, was strictly more democratic and therefore better, but I'm not sure
that's necessarily the case.

For a given issue raised, there are generally several distinct solutions
proposed. These proposals have advantages and disadvantages, individually each
is probably aligned with the ideology of one of the major parties, but let's
say it is not necessarily obvious that one proposal is strictly better than
the other. There should be discussion and deliberation, but in the end a well-
functioning government should pick one of these proposals and stick with it.

Without strict party discipline a party will have to lobby it's own members
and, since it's generally trying to push through multiple proposals at once,
choose its battles and compromise. As a consequence, rather than one of the
well-thought out original proposals, a compromise combining elements from
several is what will eventually be passed. While either proposal individually
would work well, such a mixture can easily become an incoherent mess, and
strictly worse than either individual original proposal.

With strict party discipline, the party decides in the party room what
proposal to advocate, and then it expects party unity in pushing it through
parliament.

It's somewhat counter-intuitive, but I think that in many situations it's more
important that a coherent and well-considered decision is made than it is that
all viewpoints and positions are accomodated.

~~~
ant6n
The problem is that most of the 'compromises' involve agreeing to spend some
money in the Congressional district.

~~~
jacques_chester
Australia's constitution (S54 and S55) requires all appropriations bills to be
_only_ about appropriations ("supply", as we call it). Anything else in a
money bill causes the entire bill to become invalid.

That and party discipline means that US-style horse-trading is much harder.
There's still pork-barrelling, but it's driven by the party's assessment of
which seats need to be shored up, rather than every single electorate getting
bacon grease, squeaky or not.

------
ZoeZoeBee
The US is not a Democracy, was never meant to be a Democracy, and the founders
went to great lengths to ensure the citizens of the US were protected from a
Democracy by the framework of the Constitution.

Maybe some day the average citizen of this nation will be informed and
intelligent enough to participate in a functioning Democracy. Until then
politicians will continue to manipulate the misinformed masses and throw
around the word Democracy to make the plebs feel as though they matter.

------
cryoshon
I've come to expect this kind of painfully unhelpful commentary from the rag
that is the NYT. On par with their myopic mainstream-ism, this article's
purpose is to confuse and pacify readers with a narrative that states we can
continue on our current government's course, if only we were to allow for a
minor change of our political system's vote-counting partitions. We cannot
save or rekindle democracy with such pathetic incremental changes, nor are
"we" as citizens empowered to make such changes anyway-- purge this article's
idiotic train of thought. To be explicit: changing who gets elected via more
neutral partitioning won't change a single thing, because the titanic problems
of American "democracy" (in realistic terms, oligarchy or perhaps autocracy)
occur post-election outcome, and occur regardless of whether it is Democrats
or Republicans who win.

Redistricting won't save democracy; at best, algorithmic or "mathematical" (a
fool's term for neutral and objective) redistricting will allow for the voters
to pick candidates that are proportionally and geographically anchored to
their districts. Geographical picking of representatives isn't broken beyond
repair within the political system, nor is the physical counting of votes to
determine which representatives win, though the electronic voting systems
leave the latter terrifyingly unverifiable and unquestionably anti-democratic.

The slaughter of democracy in our time is an intentionally engineered result
of post-election corruption as effected by bribes of lobbyists, raping the
power of the vote in the name of capital flow to those that are already
morbidly obese with riches. You cannot have democracy when money is allowed to
have a coercive power that eclipses any feasible democratic comeuppance.

Let the banishment of money from the election component of political activity
exist as an iron law in any new democracy which is established. That would be
the start of having a fighting chance for democracy, which America has long
since discarded.

~~~
dnautics
"Let the banishment of money from the election component of political activity
exist as an iron law in any new democracy which is established."

I think this is incredibly short sighted. Money is a means to access a
political voice for the dispossessed as much as the wealthy. What will happen
without money is that policy will be crafted by and for solely the politically
privileged. Backroom deals and dark access will be even more important than
otherwise. A tighter, more difficult to disrupt oligarchy will emerge. I doubt
this is what you would want.

~~~
cryoshon
Currently, money equals political voice, and the rich are the ones running the
show because they have an overwhelming amount of money. Money is not rallied
in sufficient quantities (millions to billions) by anyone other than the rich.
Political privilege means access to cash flow from the people who tell you how
to vote if you want re-election support. Ripping this system out by the root
and replacing it with public election funding and no ability to receive bribes
is precisely what I want.

~~~
timtas
By "rich" I assume you mean the teachers unions. [1]

So long as the state appropriates and controls a vast share of resources all
the people will vie for a share of it. They will find innumerable innovations.
Those who have the means (money and influence) on their own always find a way
in. So many of those of lesser means find ways to band to together to push
themselves up to the trough. This leaky boat cannot be made seaworthy. [2]

"Public election funding" is another way to say, "Let's give the current
incumbents monopoly control of the financing of elections." You can bet that
whatever initial formulas they devise for distributing this cash (which
confers the power to decide elections) while everyone is watching will be
creatively "improved" soon after the public has shifted is gaze. Even when the
initial formulas are evenhanded, we see unintended consequences. [3]

[1]
[http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php](http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php)

[2] [https://mises.org/library/politics-cannot-be-
fixed](https://mises.org/library/politics-cannot-be-fixed)

[3] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-
cage/wp/2015/01/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-
cage/wp/2015/01/15/how-public-funding-of-elections-makes-politics-even-more-
polarized/)

