
Gerrymandering and a cure - shortest splitline algorithm - mmastrac
http://rangevoting.org/GerryExamples.html
======
btilly
A random note for those who might be inclined to think that gerrymandering
does not have a significant political impact. In the 2012 elections,
Republicans carried Congress by 233 to 200 seats. Yet across all Congressional
elections they lost the popular vote by about 1.35 million.
([http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14315/did-the-
de...](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14315/did-the-democrats-
win-the-popular-vote-in-the-2012-us-congressional-elections) is where I ran
across this.)

The cause of the discrepancy is largely gerrymandering.

Unfortunately lots of states have laws about trying to draw boundaries that
put ethnic groups together, etc in non-trivial ways. There are algorithms that
can produce maps satisfying those restrictions, but they are more complicated.
And, for obvious reasons, they often have the goal is producing such maps with
a definite electoral bias...

~~~
danso
So is the 1.35 million number just the absolute difference between all votes
cast nationally? Doesn't there have to be so e adjustment for districts in
which many D voters elected an easy winner but in which excess votes don't
really do much since it is an easy win?

And of course, there's other explanations besides gerrymandering...it could be
that the RNC and its financial allies spent more savvily in tight races and
pulled through. The problem of money is of course its own discussion

~~~
chimeracoder
> And of course, there's other explanations besides gerrymandering...it could
> be that the RNC and its financial allies spent more savvily in tight races
> and pulled through.

Yes, this issue is incredibly complicated to analyze - for example, in the
House, contentious bills like the ACA are oftentimes passed with ~220 votes
(usually ~217 defines a majority). That doesn't mean that only 220 people
would have been been willing to support the bill; just that the winning party
didn't need to waste any resources whipping another ten votes in excess of
what was needed to secure a victory.

Just looking at the final vote tally is misleading, because if the threshold
for passage were higher, it's very likely that the actual vote tallies would
miraculously adjust accordingly.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> That doesn't mean that only 220 people would have been been willing to
> support the bill; just that the winning party didn't need to waste any
> resources whipping another ten votes in excess of what was needed to secure
> a victory.

If they had votes to spare, they'd make the bill worse and lose those votes.
Contentious bills have close vote totals because they do as much damage as
possible while still passing.

~~~
btilly
_Contentious bills have close vote totals because they do as much damage as
possible while still passing._

I think it often works the other way in practice. To secure votes on
contentious bills they have to slip in riders (ie pork) to secure specific
votes. Therefore the fact that it is contentious means that they have to make
it worse.

~~~
seabee
The corollary (and parent's point) is that securing excess votes will worsen
your bill with no benefit to you, so you avoid this.

------
danso
I'm sorry but this is the kind of "solution" that gives analytical thinking a
bad name. Ignoring the political will to implement this, this solution's
biggest problem is its willful ignorance of physical boundaries. A four lane
highway can be as stark a dividing line between groups as miles of physical
space. This article simply dismisses this reality by saying "well politicians
never consistently considered those boundaries either, so there"

Ironically, this ostensibly logical argument ends up going further into anti-
intellectual territory than the politicians it derides. The thinkers behind
this can't think of any other way that math might be used to accommodate or
weight the effect of these different boundaries? Really? Or would the
resulting boundaries be so aesthetically unappealing that its just better to
go for the elegance of straight lines? That is among the stupidest rationales
I've read in the whole gerrymandering debate.

The whole post just smacks of incredible naïveté. No wonder engineers and
scientists have a bad reputation in representative politics.

~~~
gizmo686
Putting aside the problems of districted voting, is this naive attempt really
that bad? Why is it a problem if I am in a different voting district than my
next door neighboor, we both still go to vote, then have our votes evaluated
by the system resulting in a winner. The goal is to make said system as fair
as possible (while maintaing the concept of districts). I do not see why
physical boundries are relevent at all. As cduan pointed out, this algorithm
might have a bias favoring urban or rural voters, which is a problem.

I have an even simpler algorithm that I think solves all problems of bias. Say
you want a state to have N districts. Create N district labels (probably the
numbers 1 through N). Now assign each voter in the state to a randomly
selected district. For each district, take all but the largest contious
regions and re-asign each voter within them. Repeat until all districts are
continuous. Or we could move to a popular vote.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Congratulations, the two of you have aptly demonstrated why these things are
never implemented.

There is more than one way to algorithmically draw district lines. The
different ways will benefit different people. The people who benefit from a
particular method will then conspicuously be found arguing that the way that
benefits them is the One True Way, and hire a bunch of lawyers and the RIAA's
copyright mathematicians to come up with plausible-sounding arguments for why
they're right.

And since neither of them is actually "right" because there is no One True
Way, it immediately degenerates into a cynical political battle to choose the
best automated gerrymandering algorithm for one's own political party.

------
ccleve
Nice sentiment, but the implementation is inept. The courts have determined
that existing boundaries, including county and village boundaries, matter.
Physical features matter. Existing "communities of interest" matter.
Population equality matters. And, sadly, race matters a lot.

The only sort-of mathematical awareness that the courts have concerns
contiguity and compactness. Contiguity is easy. Compactness has a million
definitions, and the courts haven't settled on a meaningful one. Come up with
a compelling, mathematically-sound definition of compactness and you might
have something.

Also, the author ought get at least a basic familiarity with the literature on
political map-drawing. If he had it, he would know that maps are drawn on
census blocks and that houses are never "split".

------
3JPLW
My favorite example is Illinois' 4th Congressional district[1]. But: there can
be positive outcomes to such gerrymandering. Chicago is very strongly majority
democratic. Splitting the city with straight lines would not change this. All
of the congressional districts that include the city are already held by
democratic incumbents.

But this funny shaped district connects the two large latino neighborhoods:
predominantly Puerto Rican in the North and Mexican in the South. And as such,
Luis Gutiérrez has represented the district since 1993, when the district was
defined as such. He was the first Latino to be elected to the House from the
midwest.

More information on the general 4th district wikipedia page[3].

1\.
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/IL04_109...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/IL04_109.gif)

2\. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Guti%C3%A9rrez>

3\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois%27s_4th_congressional...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois%27s_4th_congressional_district)

~~~
frozenport
Its not immediately clear disproportional representation is a positive
outcome.

~~~
mjn
It's closer to proportional rather than disproportional representation in this
case. Latinos make up about 30% of Chicago's population, but they're spread
out so they wouldn't form a majority of any single compact district, so
wouldn't be able, as a community (if indeed it's a coherent community), to
send a representative to Washington to represent their views. However, if you
connect demographically similar areas, then the community gets representation
closer to their actual share of the population.

Of course, we could just use proportional representation outright and achieve
a similar result, or elect candidates from multi-member districts and a slate
of candidates (e.g. put all of Chicago in one district, and elect the top 4
candidates). But that's a more radical reform that's less likely to happen.

~~~
frozenport
This brings up an interesting question. What would happen if the US was
redistricted. Would 51% of every district be white people?

------
nathanstitt
These type of articles annoy me. Not the article necessarily, but the thinking
that goes into it. The solution presented is technically sound and would
absolutely solve the problem of crazy gerrymandered districts.

The possibility of something like this actually being implemented: zero.

Does anyone seriously think that congress would allow their re-election
prospects to be controlled by a software program? It sounds like they are
attempting a ballot initiative route, but good luck explaining this to a
skeptical public while facing negative campaigning that makes it sound like
'computerized death panels' all over again.

I see the same thinking all the time - a new developer shows up all bright
eyed and tries to talk everyone into switching to his favorite
'Framework/Language X' without even considering considering if it's at all
feasible.

I'm not saying that things can't be improved. But if you're proposing a change
you have to be smart enough to consider it's chances and propose ways to
overcome the inevitable pushback.

~~~
graeme
Not to mention that it ignores the motives for Gerrymandering. Politicians
surely know that Gerrymandered districts are 'bad', if a logical electoral
system is your priority.

Politicians Gerrmander because they see an advantage in it, and they don't
have compunctions against it.

I suspect good, non-Gerrymandered districts could easily be generated using
traditional means as well. But the officials in charge have signalled they
aren't interested.

~~~
alexqgb
That's an understatement. Here in California, politicians reacted to the idea
with an incandescent, frothing-at-the-mouth rage peppered with (political)
death-threates aimed at anyone who dared to make an issue of the issue. But
thanks to the direct-initative process, they didn't have to power to actually
block it. The direct initiative system has been the source of a lot of grief,
and frankly, it has a lot to answer for. But in this case, it proved to be
worth its weight in gold. Indeed, it may be the thing that leads to the end of
gerrymandering throughout America.

Until very recently, California was polarized even more sharply than
Washington DC, and seats were filled with ideological firebrands backed by
primary voters who would punish "compromise". This chronic disunity meant we
unable to use the power of our size effectively. But now that we're steadily
replacing those folks with people who can safely operate together, our reps
can safely ignore their parties to vote as a uniform block that only cares
about itself. Coming from a state as big as California, that represents a
major a threat. In another election cycle or two, California will have enough
unity to become the swing vote on anything. And yes, you can expect it to use
this power ruthlessly. Nothing will move unless there's something in it for
California, and given the size and diversity of the state, it'll be a rare
issue that passes without California extracting some major concession from the
other States. It'll be all take and no give, all the time, on everything.

Power this substantial and unchecked will be deeply resented and increasingly
abused. For other big states, the only way to stop the pain will be to start
operating the same way themselves. Florida is well on its way to ending
gerrymandering. Governor Cuomo is starting to make an issue of it in New York.
If they can start operating as post-partisan blocks, they can work together to
neutralize California's power. Once Texas and Illinois get into the game (in
that order, I suspect), the political dynamic will be Big States vs. Small
States Further Disadvantaged By Intractable Partisan Rifts. Applying pressure
of this magnitude to what will be perennial losers should cause the whole
sordid institution to collapse entirely, subordinating politicians to people
rather than parties in all 50 States. In retrospect, the madness we're living
through now will look a lot like the crime-ridden hell scape of New York City
in the 70's, as seen from the 90's on.

------
mikeash
Gerrymandering is only a symptom, and cannot be cured without tackling the
underlying disease. That disease is a political culture in which politicians
will do whatever it takes to win, regardless of popular sentiment. No, I have
no idea how to fix that.

~~~
gizmo686
Set up the system so that the politician's best chance at winning comes from
doing as good a job as possible. This means providing as few oppurtunities as
possible to game the system.

------
cduan
I wonder if this algorithm would still present biases given the fact that
large cities tend to vote differently from less densely populated areas. My
hypothesis is that this algorithm would favor city voters over rural voters,
for the following reasons:

1\. Successfully gerrymandering in favor of one party generally involves
stuffing the other party's voters into one district, while splitting your
party's voters into multiple districts.

2\. The proposed algorithm favors straight-line divisions through regions such
that about half the population of the region is on each side of the division.

3\. Thus, chances are, the straight lines will run through the middles of
cities, cutting cities into multiple districts.

I'd be interested to see someone test this out--it's likely that my hypothesis
is wrong, but it also seems pretty likely to me that there will be at least
some urban/rural bias, one way or another.

------
alwaysdoit
Districts should be deprecated altogether. Instead we should elect
representatives via proportional representation.

When we we had approximately 30,000 citizens per representative there was a
chance at your representative actually knowing you, but at this point we are
more likely to have our views represented by a third party.

~~~
vidarh
Norway is below your 30,000 citizen per representative number, and frankly
even then, while there certainly is a _chance_ , not many people do know their
representative even there.

In Norway, some regional connection is arranged by grouping seats into multi-
seatconstituencies by region. Then more proportional results are obtained by
taking any votes "leftover" for a party after assigning whole seats and
assigning seats from a non-geographic pool with some caveats.

It satisfies those who want a regional link of sorts, and doesn't skew the
proportionality too much.

~~~
alwaysdoit
For the US, I think that electing representatives by proportional
representation within states would work similarly and would work pretty well
with our existing constitutional framework.

------
jacques_chester
In Australia electoral boundaries set by the Electoral Commissions. Officers
of those commissions are by law required to be politically neutral. For
example, because I have been a member of a political party, I am ineligible to
work for them.

There's a modest amount of argy-bargy every time the boundaries are redrawn,
but in general seats are contiguous and have shapes that follow the population
distribution.

------
georgemcbay
If only the immense amount of political problems we have could be solved
through simple, rational technical solutions! What a fantastic world we'd live
in right now!

A bit more on-topic is that I feel some issues like gerrymandering wouldn't be
such a big problem if more root-level problems were addressed, like
implementing instant run-off voting to help weaken the two-party system in the
first place.

~~~
ianb
I don't see how instant run-off voting would change much of anything, unless
perhaps you got rid of the endorsement process at the same time so that people
of the same party could more easily run against each other.

~~~
weeksie
It removes the fear of throwing away a vote on a third party. Look at the
Australian government for example, there are a ton of third parties
represented.

------
Dove
I'm not apologizing for gerrymandering in the _least_ , but . . .

<http://catb.org/jargon/html/koans.html#id3141241>

. . . just because you didn't _put_ bias into a system doesn't mean it isn't
biased.

------
drcube
Why do we have to use geography at all? Can't we apportion representatives
alphabetically, by last name? Or numerically, by SSN? I don't really see what
geographical representation buys us, except gerrymandering and pork.

~~~
freehunter
It gives us neighborhood-specific representation (or at least should). This
neighborhood may have different needs and wants than the neighborhood next to
it, and both should be represented by a politician who understands those
needs.

------
ianb
In the case of a lot of states with one major city, the algorithm basically
just splits that main city, for instance New Mexico:
<http://rangevoting.org/Splitline2009/nm.png> – when the city is big enough to
have a couple districts of its own it's not as bad, like:
<http://rangevoting.org/Splitline2009/mn.png>

I'm kind of unimpressed. There are mechanisms to remove partisanship and
political gerrymandering without making the whole thing into an algorithm.

~~~
brownbat
Splitlines are very likely to cut through urban areas. Since the urban/rural
distinction is meaningful in American politics, this has interesting
consequences.

I'm not sure "arbitrary" always gets you "unbiased," or "unbiased" always gets
you to "fair."

Fairness requires tallying up the numbers of disenfranchised in the new
method, comparing it to the old. Splitline will exclude some urban voters from
the political process for the foreseeable future, and some rural voters. It's
not obvious which group loses more (it's highly contingent on the population
distribution). But it's worth tallying up, just to see.

If disenfranchised is really our concern, why not just try to minimize it more
directly?

Let's say someone is defined as "disenfranchised" if they identify with a
party with no chance of victory, or if they contribute overflow votes that
will never be necessary for their party to win the district. If you're in a
minority party that gets less than 40% of the vote, you're disenfranchised. If
your party has over 60% of the vote, then everyone beyond that 60% is
disenfranchised. (We can quibble over the definition, or generalize it for
more parties, but let's just assume we have some operational definition
approaching "disenfranchised," without any definition, we couldn't evaluate
the success/failure of splitline anyway.)

Now just draw all the constitutional district maps, and pick the one that
disenfranchise the fewest number of voters possible.

Ok, that may be computationally infeasible. So instead, just have each party
draw it's own recommended map, and then pick the one of those offered that
disenfranchises fewer voters (using data from the last election, maybe).

[1] A man-made definition is exactly what splitline recommends against, but
even imperfect but vaguely reasonable definitions of "disenfranchisement" in
this method will tend to be more "fair" (in terms of reducing
disenfranchisement) than purely arbitrary dividing lines.

~~~
ianb
> Splitlines are very likely to cut through urban areas. Since the urban/rural
> distinction is meaningful in American politics, this has interesting
> consequences.

Thinking about it more, in a place like New Mexico (and there are many similar
states) this means rural voters will be systematically disenfranchised, as
they the state ends up being divided into regions around the central city, and
in each region the urban area is larger than the rural area. If combined the
rural area could be at least a seat of its own, even if more overall seats
went to urban/metro districts.

Well... thinking about it, it could also go the other way, depending on what
the overall rural/urban divide is – if there is a larger but dispersed non-
metro population then it could be the urban population that is lost in the
rural population. This might actually be the case in someplace like New Mexico
or Idaho.

New Mexico's actual congressional districts look very reasonable:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexicos_congressional_distr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexicos_congressional_districts)

------
5teev
This article reminded me of a Flash game I played with several years ago:

<http://www.redistrictinggame.org/>

If you work through the levels, you'll see that voting districts sometimes
must have highly irregular shapes to ensure maximum representation of the
various groups of constituents. You'll definitely see cases where "objective"
boundaries leave some groups completely unrepresented.

Gerrymandering definitely happens, and it's a big problem, but it's not a
simple one.

------
mjn
Some interesting mathematical background, on whether formal convexity measures
can work as a gerrymandering metric:
[http://mathdl.maa.org/images/upload_library/22/Polya/Hodge20...](http://mathdl.maa.org/images/upload_library/22/Polya/Hodge2011.pdf)

------
aneth4
Let me challenge some assumptions about gerrymandering. The most common
misconception of gerrymandering is the assumption that close races are
required for the voters to have a choice. While in current practice this may
be true, the reason is due to other factors in our voting habits and electoral
structure, not inherent in gerrymandering. The solution is not to get rid of
gerrymandering, but to make other more fruitful changes to our electoral
habits and systems. Gerrymandering is neither good nor bad.

Gerrymandering works by making certain districts overwhelming in a single
party's favor, leaving few competitive districts. While this may sound like it
undermines voter choice, that is not the case.

A district dominated by one party does in fact have a choice in their
primaries. In fact voters there have a better choice than in competitive
districts. Voters in a single party district get to focus on whether their
representative precisely reflects their views rather than whether their party
can win in the general election. Take for example a 90% Republican district.
We know that this district will be representative of a swath of Republican
voters - that's a good thing. Those voters can now focus on the more subtle
leanings of their candidates during the primaries. Voters and primary
candidates can openly debate about social conservatism and gun control, rather
than what the small percentage of "swing" voters care about. Essentially,
party factions become the choice, exactly what this country needs to evolve
two parties that do not do a good job of representing the country. This is how
I foresee democracy emerging in China, and is common from time to time, though
not necessarily implemented to the voters advantage, in frequently defacto
single party states, such as Mexico, Japan, and Canada.

Pushing the impact of our representative system into more subtle debates in a
primary election is only a bad thing because our primary system has some
fixable issues. Fewer voters participate in primary elections, and there are
not enough primary challengers. Making primaries more competitive and getting
voters more involved in the primaries of the gerrymandered districts would
help, and this leverages the positive aspects of gerrymandering rather than
wasting effort trying to ban the practice.

In some ways the issue should be self-correcting. The more guaranteed a
district is for a given party, the more candidates should emerge in the
primary, the more competitive the primary should be, and the more voters
should care. This is because winning the primary is nearly as good as winning
the general election.

Perhaps a better solution to competitive primaries is something similar to
what is being tried in California - non-partisan primaries. These shift the
more subtle intraparty distinctions in single party districts to the more
widely attended general election where they should be. In the above-mentioned
Republican district, the district would likely have two Republican candidates
in the general election. Such a system does both a good job of representing
the constituents and of providing voter choice. The impact is similar to what
one gets in a proportional representation or many-party system.

The reverse of gerrymandering - engineering all highly competitive districts -
also has major disadvantages, the largest being that every district has a
choice between two distinct parties who could have radically different views.
The winner of the election represents a slim majority, is chosen by a very
small percentage of "swing voters," and small changes in "swing voter"
sentiment can lead to major changes in representation. While that may have the
advantage of throwing the bums out quickly, it can also lead candidates to
appeal to their bases and push for voter turnout rather than having
substantive distinctions. Sounds familiar.

Conclusion? Stop being outraged about gerrymandering and practice some
political Aikido. Push for active primaries and support legislation for non-
partisan primaries. These actions don't require Supreme Court intervention or
Constitutional amendments, are practical, and may have a better result than
banning gerrymandering.

~~~
alexqgb
This is wrong on so many levels.

First and foremost, the idea that "elected representatives" get to pick who
votes for them represents the anthesis of democratically elected
representation. It's like a parachute that opens on impact.

Your second error is thinking that gerrymandering simply seeks to place voters
from each party in their own districts. What it actually aims to do is
advantage one party over the other by marginalizing the other entirely. This
can be the case even when the marginalized party actually represents a clear
majority of the voters, as happened in the last election.

The third problem is that once a party controls a district exclusively, it
inevitably becomes more extreme. Since there's no danger that a firebrand
zealot who goes too far will attract challenger from the other party, the
contests in "safe" districts select for ideological purity rather that the
ability to negotiate with others - which is what's actually the most important
thing in people whose whole job is to identify workable compromises that both
sides can live with.

An even more insidious effect of the "safe" seat is that it aligns the
interests of a party and its donors against those of individual
representatives and the represented. Under the current corruption-facilitating
system, a politician that pisses off donors or party leadership by putting
constituent's interests first can be safely challenged from within his own
party without the party risking the loss of the seat. Enforcing "discipline"
becomes a lot riskier when retaliating against a "wayward" member could hand
the seat to the other party.

You're correct to note that open primaries in California have been a positive
development. But you mustn't forget that they were introduced as part and
parcel of a broader electoral reform effort that also ended partisan
gerrymandering, first for statewide offices, then for national
representatives. Of the two reforms, the end to gerrymandering was the more
important, by a wide margin.

You may disagree, but that's just a reflection of your own limited
understanding. The savviest politicians in the state (correctly) recognized
and end to gerrymandering as the greatest thereat to their illegitimate power,
and fought against that far harder than they opposed open primaries.

Of course when it comes to open primaries and an end to gerrymandering,
electoral reform is not either / or. It's BOTH. And while we're at it, we need
to bounce any Senators who block filibuster reform. Getting all three done
together would give the people vastly more power over Congress, and by
extension, the entire Federal government.

~~~
aneth4
How do we decide on districts? There will always be a possibility of bias and
there is no "fair" way to divide districts. There is more random - that's
about the best we can do. No districting system ensures a majority vote wins a
majority representation, nor is it intended to.

I agree with your point on gerrymandering's biggest issue being the overall
bias toward a party, however a proper primary system I believe moderates the
parties, or at least provides one moderate and one extreme choice from one
side of the electorate rather than two extreme choices from both sides. This
ultimately represents people well.

Frankly I don't want a choice between a right wing extremist and a left wing
extremist. I want a choice between two reasonable politicians, and I believe
fixing the primary system would have a far better impact than worrying about
gerrymandering.

~~~
alexqgb
There's no absolutely fair way to do it. As you note, the best way to do it is
simply the best we can do. California's system isn't simple, but it is viable,
and now that it exists, it can serve as a template for others.

It's not perfect, but here's the thing; what's doable is for better than the
current norm, and is actually fairly good. Certainly good enough to mitigate
the biggest problems created by gerrymandering (i.e. sharpened partisan
divides, undue concentration of power in national parties, unholy amounts of
leverage for corrupt corporate influencers.) Freed from these pernicious
issues, I like to think that the country will reach a level of sanity that
makes the inevitable need for periodic reforms to the redistricting process a
normal and manageable part of governing. The really hard part is persuading
recalcitrant legislators to surrender their undue power over the electorate.
That's obviously easier said than done, but the process that will eventually
force their hands is already unfolding.

For more on that, see here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5001625>

~~~
aneth4
That link is rather optimistic.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer random districts to gerrymandered. However I
don't think gerrymandering is the cause of the problems you mention -
partisanship, corruption, and party power. When there are problems, it's easy
to pick some popular target to take the blame. The root of the problem is the
primary system, which is only attended by the most partisan. An open primary
reduces significantly all of these factors. Parties must attempt to carefully
support two candidates, and lose control of who can run and vote in the
nominating process. Special interests can be weakened since introducing a
primary challenger no longer means the candidate loses the general.
Partisanship is caused by the candidates appealing to the base, who tend to
vote strongly in primaries. If it's possible to come in second in the primary
with the support of more moderate voters, then still win the election, more
moderates will win overall.

Fixing gerrymandering alone will not solve these issues, and has the potential
to make policy erratic and electoral choices too stark. Reasonable districting
along with open primaries could go a long way toward ameliorating these
issues.

Interesting discussion.

~~~
alexqgb
I'm sorry, but this really isn't an either / or proposition. The real bone of
contention isn't one technical change or another. It's the vote itself. Its
power has been steadily eroded, leaving the electorate with less and less
control over their representatives, and by extension, their government. That's
the macro problem. Seeing myriad election rules from this perspective
underscores why it's a mistake to argue for one partial reform (open
primaries) over another (non-partisan redistricting) when really, you should
be seeking to increase the power of the vote; an effort that demands both -
and more.

California's example is especially instructive because the approach that we
took was the comprehensive one. Outlawing gerrymandering and closed primaries
took place at the same time. Again, of the two initiatives the politicians
fought gerrymandering much harder, which should indicate which was seen as the
more painful reform (for them). But the larger point wasn't that Californians
were blaming a scapegoat for the intolerable level of political dysfunction.
It's that they clearly identified wildly out-of-control legislators as the
heart of the problem, along with key structural fixes that would shift the
balance of power away from these idiots, and place it in the the hands of the
voters.

Because that's what this is about: taking power away from legislators and
making them properly dependent on the will of the people.

Gerrymandering is becoming a hot button issue because the electorate has
finally woken up to its insidiousness. That's a good thing. As people work
through it, it focuses thought on just how unrepresentative our Democracy has
become. Once that problem crystalizes, then other related problems snap into
focus (e.g. the primary system, private campaign finance, the filibuster rule)
and the REAL problem - which is the systematic degradation of the vote - rises
to the fore.

This will be a critical development. Until it happens, defenders of the status
quo will be able to play a shell game, where some other problem is THE problem
("Gerrymandering!" "No, closed primaries!"). This goes around in circles, and
change is delayed. But once the overarching theme emerges, and people are
focused on the vote itself, then everything that damages it gets tarred with
the same black brush.

That's the moment we should all be working for.

------
eli
This would have the practical effect of reducing minority representatives.
Some people think this is OK, but it's worth at least mentioning.

~~~
w1ntermute
That could be easily solved by adding some proportionally elected
representatives.

~~~
eli
Wouldn't that then result in less geographic diversity or representatives who
don't represent just your district? Or am I misunderstanding?

~~~
w1ntermute
That would result in some of the representatives being elected on a national
basis. So any voting bloc that makes up 5% of the population nationwide, but
doesn't have a majority anywhere in the country, would still be able to get
representation in Congress - they would have 5% of the proportionally elected
seats.

This would also be a big step towards eliminating the two-party situation
we're currently stuck with and greatly increase political competitiveness. If
you had 100 proportionally elected representatives, for example, any party
with 1% national support could get one representative in the House. This would
allow for 3rd parties to get a political foothold which they could then use
(if they become popular enough) to eventually unseat the Democrats or
Republicans in non-proportional seats as well.

~~~
gizmo686
While we are at it, why not move to a delegative system. Every voter can
directly vote for or against any given bill. They can also 'give' their vote
to any other voter, who can vote on their behalf or pass the vote to yet
another voter. At any point in time, you can change who has your vote, or
overrule them on a given issue. (And the person who you gave your vote to can
do the same if he delegated it to a third person, and so on down the line.)

This has the advantage that if there is a bill that you care about, you can be
sure that your vote goes the way you want. And otherwise, you can give your
vote to the politician whose views most align with your own, and politicians
have power directly proportional to their support.

~~~
vidarh
I like the idea. The biggest problem would be to make it safe against voter
intimidation/vote buying etc. by making it possible to build hierarchies of
delegated votes small enough to chase down individuals.

~~~
gizmo686
Unfourtuantly, the problem of vote buying is even easier to implement than
that, as some could confirm that you actually gave your vote to them. You
might be able to use cryptology to construct a system where it is impossible
to confirm who delegated there votes to you (although this would likely limit
the any-time switching of your vote, or reduce the granularity for which
someone can know how many votes (s)he has).

