
North Carolina Is Ordered to Redraw Its Congressional Map - kyleblarson
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/us/north-carolina-gerrymander.html?_r=0
======
freen
There is a simple, game theoretically optimal solution to gerrymandering: an
iterative process of I cut, you choose.

[https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2017/november/i-cu...](https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2017/november/i-cut-
you-choose-cake-cutting-protocol-inspires-solution-to-gerrymandering.html)

~~~
ZeroGravitas
This seems to assume a two-party system, which is probably pragmatic but maybe
not totally optimal in a bigger sense.

~~~
oconnor663
Is there a way to cut a cake between 3 people with this sort of approach? If
there's not a way in general, could there be a way with the added assumption
that cooperation to screw the 3rd person would be detectable and publicly
shamed enough to disincentivize it?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Apparently there is a way, but it's complicated and probably doesn't translate
from cake to maps (you don't end up with neat slices, but rather a collection
of different sized pieces):

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-algorithm-solves-cake-
cut...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-algorithm-solves-cake-cutting-
problem-20161006/)

And it's not clear if one of the cake cutters could sacrifice their own slice
to benefit one of the others (in return for a bribe).

~~~
mc32
One could almost be certain there would be some underhanded quid pro quo with
this situation.

------
rayiner
The opinion, which does not appear to be linked in the NYT article, is here:
[https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legal-
work...](https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legal-
work/CC_LWV_v_Rucho_MemorandumOpinion_01.09.18.pdf). Interestingly, all three
judges, including Judge Osteen, a George W. Bush appointee, agreed that the
map was unconstitutional and the legislature had to try again. Judge Osteen's
dissent was only in part, and addressed the first amendment claim and the
appointment of a special master to oversee the second attempt at drawing the
map.

~~~
MithrilTuxedo
Thank you, I was looking for that.

Does anyone know: is it typical for the NYT to not link to court decisions?
I'm used to such links in online news stories.

------
matt_s
One article I read said that there is a 30% Republican voter base that is
covered by 76% of the congressional maps. They redrew the maps so they would
have 10 seats and Dems would have 3. In the past I've read the Democrats have
done similar things.

As a software engineer, isn't there some way to draw maps which balance out
demographics programmatically? While taking into consideration population,
rural, suburban, urban areas, etc. Shouldn't there be a national
policy/process that is followed?

It would make some sense to abolish recording what party people affiliate
with. It really serves no purpose. Let people vote in both parties primaries.

~~~
dbatten
Data Scientist with a Master of Public Administration degree here (don't ask).
My proposal for solving this has always been to frame it as an optimization
problem.

You have a certain number of census tracts (essentially, neighborhoods) with
known populations and geographic areas. You know you need to divide the state
into X congressional districts.

You should simply assign census tracts to districts such that 1) you end up
with X districts, 2) each district's total population is within a Y% tolerance
of state population / X, 3) you minimize the average of the lengths of the
district borders (to force maximum geographic compactness).

Given available data from the Census, some mucking around in PostGIS or ESRI,
and a state-of-the-art commercial solver like Gurobi, there's absolutely no
reason this couldn't be done.

It'd also be trivial to add on requirements for balancing demographics or
political affiliation within certain tolerances as well.

~~~
ttul
As it is in most countries...

~~~
dbatten
Is it? I'm admittedly fairly ignorant on how other countries run their
election systems, but... geographic representation seems uncommon (lots of
parliamentary systems) and sophisticated solutions to drawing districts within
countries that have geographic representation would have to be even more rare.

~~~
sangnoir
I am familiar with Parliamentary systems of 5 countries (Britain & former
colonies) and they _are_ mostly geographic, to my knowledge. Each Members of
Parliament is voted in by voters residing within a geographic region/ward.

~~~
dbatten
Interesting... looks like a lot of countries with parliamentary systems use
proportional instead of geographic representation... but not the UK or Canada.
Today I learned.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation#Li...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation#List_of_countries_using_proportional_representation)

~~~
taejo
And some countries manage to achieve proportional representation while still
giving each district their own choice of representative (e.g. Mixed-Member
Proportional Representation in Germany and New Zealand).

------
maxxxxx
What I don't get is that the US seems to be trying to push its political
system to the absolute limit. Since I came to the US there is this constant
push for impeaching the sitting president, disputing election results, extreme
gerrymandering and all the other nonsense going on. This is the climate that
breeds a strongman dictator that "cleans up" all the mess.

Has it always been that way and will get worked out or is the US determined to
destroy its institutions?

~~~
throwawayjava
_> Has it always been that way_

Well, let's analyze each of your questions in turn.

 _> Since I came to the US there is this constant push for impeaching the
sitting president_

When did you come to the USA?

There was a constant push to impeach Obama. There was a constant push to
impeach Bush. The was a constant push to impeach Clinton.

Clinton was elected in 1993, so there are a lot of adult Americans who were
born in the USA and who can also say that "since I came to the US (aka was
born), there has been this constant push for impeaching the sitting
president".

 _> extreme gerrymandering_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#Etymology)

 _> and all the other nonsense_

Congress seems to be more dysfunctional now than it was in the 80's and 90's.
But there have been worse eras, too. At least the congressmen who've been shot
lately weren't shot by other congressmen in duels, for example... :-\

~~~
george3383
>[There is a constant push to impeach Trump.] There was a constant push to
impeach Obama. There was a constant push to impeach Bush. The was a constant
push to impeach Clinton.

Is this considered normal? If so, why? It's like results of an election aren't
final. A candidate wins yet people try to have him kicked out. :/

~~~
throwawayjava
_> Is this considered normal?_

I don't know if it is _considered_ normal, but it _is_ normal.

 _> A candidate wins yet people try to have him kicked out._

Impeachment is in the constitution for a reason. Winning an election is not a
sufficient condition for maintaining a public office. So on face, there's
nothing actually wrong with trying to use a constitutional tool to kick out an
elected official.

That said,

 _> If so, why?_

You're kind of asking for a retrial of very polarizing figures from recent
political history, a dangerous topic on hn, and I suppose that's the reason
for the downvotes. I'm trying, here, to give an honest and historically
accurate answer.

Obama and Bush impeachment advocates were mostly unjustifiable partisans, in
the sense that there were never serious, constitutionally plausible, and
widely-believed-to-be-true justifications for impeachment. That's probably why
neither person was ever actually impeached. Consider this "the system working
mostly as intended"

Clinton was justifiable, at least at one point in time, although we could
fairly ask whether the same accusations would result in an impeachment today.
Again, consider this "the system working as intended"

Trump is an open case, and these things are hard to judge without the benefit
of hindsight. But there are at least serious, plausible accusations of
impeachable conduct. We'll see if those accusations are true, I guess.

However, you'll note that in all of these cases _except_ for Clinton, it was a
minority of elected representatives from the opposition party calling for an
actual impeachment.

The vast majority of opposition representatives _did_ always call for
_investigations_. But that's a checks-and-balances system working as intended
IMO.

~~~
george3383
>Impeachment is in the constitution for a reason. Winning an election is not a
sufficient condition for maintaining a public office. So on face, there's
nothing actually wrong with trying to use a constitutional tool to kick out an
elected official.

Doesn't the fact that there has been a push to get all the presidents kicked
out mean there's something really wrong?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Doesn't the fact that there has been a push to get all the presidents kicked
> out mean there's something really wrong?

Not especially, given that the “push” in the activist base hasn't procedurally
gone very far in most cases. You'd find very few democracies where some
members of the opposition (especially in the electorate) don't claim that any
given leader’s behavior is unacceptable and should result in removal.

I mean, I think something did go wrong—Ford’s pardon of Nixon which was
essentially justified by the argument that prosecuting a President would be
too much for the nation to deal with—which has encouraged subsequent
President's to view violating legal and Constitutional constraints on the
power of the Presidency as safe because they are, in a sense, “too big to
fail”.

But I while I think that has manifested in an increase in Presidential limit-
pushing at least from Reagan on, I don't think that impeachment discussions
are particularly a system if a deep political dysfunction.

------
samch
In related news, the NC Legislature is also trying to completely overhaul the
judicial structure including redrawing the judicial districts.

[http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-
government/politic...](http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-
government/politics-columns-blogs/under-the-dome/article192867294.html)

------
shove
I'm from NC and was arrested (twice -- for 2nd degree trespass) while
protesting these clowns.

Make no mistake, the crass disregard for the democratic process on display in
NC is a model coming soon to a state near you :(

While rulings like this are good news, what of the laws passed by these
unconstitutionally "elected" bodies during the last decade? The damage (to our
school system for example) is lasting and won't be undone by a mere SCOTUS
rulings.

~~~
fortythirteen
What the elected, Republican majority legislature voted for is not "crass
disregard for the democratic process". It's actually _the democratic process_.
If the legislature passes a bill that's unconstitutional, then it's up to the
judicial branch to rectify that.

By population, NC is a 50/50 red/blue state. Even by county, which is what a
non-gerrymandered legislature would look like, it's all red outside of
Charlotte and Raleigh, and 50/50 in places like Greensboro or Fayetteville.

I'm against HB-2 as well, but it's up to the judicial to rectify that.

~~~
stupidcar
Total nonsense. While it's true that in a liberal democracy the judiciary is
supposed to be a check against the power of the legislative and executive
branches, its mere existence doesn't give them carte blanche to ignore basic
principles of sound democracy.

These people are _representatives_. They are supposed to represent the
interests of _all_ their constituents. Deliberately redrawing the electoral
map in an attempt to help voters only of their own party is a gross violation
of basic democratic norms. It is putting party before country in the worst
possible way.

~~~
fortythirteen
Do you have any idea how many laws have been overturned because they were
unconstitutional? It's U.S. Government 101.

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _Do you have any idea how many laws have been overturned because they were
> unconstitutional? It 's U.S. Government 101._

What you're missing is that the laws being overturned here are themselves
directly concerned with the democratic process.

~~~
fortythirteen
Are you surprised that the legislature creates laws about how the democracy
functions? What do you think a constitutional amendment is?

~~~
roywiggins
Well, constitutional amendments aren't laws, for a start.

~~~
dragonwriter
Yes, the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land, and amendments to that
law are themselves laws.

They aren't _statutes_ , which are a lesser and more-common form of law.

------
grzm
538 has recently produced a podcast series† that dives quite deeply into the
question of gerrymandering. I found it really insightful and helpful in
understanding a lot of the issues involved. They address North Carolina in
particular‡, as well as Wisconsin, California, Arizona, among others. I've
come away with a much deeper understanding, from a variety of perspectives.

† [https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/the-gerrymandering-
project/](https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/the-gerrymandering-project/)

‡ [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-gerrymandering-
the-b...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-gerrymandering-the-best-way-
to-make-sure-black-voters-are-represented/)

------
IgorPartola
So I saw one discussion where someone pointed out that gerrymandered districts
tend to backfire spectacularly. Basically as soon as there is any meaningful
shift in population, the districts that were carefully crafted to be safe for
a specific party flip overnight with little warning. It's a thing you do to
win short term gains, but you can't keep doing it over and over.

It's also a great example of politicians choosing their voters. If we are
going for this system, why not just do a state-wide popular vote election and
choose the top N people as winners?

Also, gerrymandering seems responsible for the candidates sliding further into
extremism. Basically if you run in a freshly created district that you are
reasonably sure will go to your party, your real competition isn't the Dem/Rep
who is running against you. It's your opponents in the primary. So if you are
a Democrat running against a Republican in a close to 50/50 split, you might
be compelled to become more centrist to steal some votes. But if you are only
concerned about the primaries, you will try to be the Democratiest Democrat
ever.

~~~
frandroid
> It's a thing you do to win short term gains, but you can't keep doing it
> over and over.

They redraw the map every 10 years, and they do do it over and over.

Sure, sometimes demos shift, but even then it's a crap shoot as to whether
enough people move, and if those people move in are of a different party.

> state-wide popular vote election

That's party-list proportional representation. It's done in many countries,
but not in the U.S. or countries of the British Commonwealth. Any U.S. state
could decide to adopt it though...

------
jay-anderson
Feels like we need to get away from geographic based representation at the
state level. In a hypothetical state where voters of parties are evenly
distributed geographically we would end up with the majority party always
winning anyway no matter how the district lines are drawn. This feels like the
end goal of gerrymandering -- it's just that since party voters aren't
distributed evenly geographically they need to draw odd districts to get the
desired distributions.

Switching to a system where as a state we pick based on party representation
or as a whole pick N candidates (something like they do in parts of Europe I
believe) seems preferable and renders gerrymandering ineffective because there
are no districts to draw. Hopefully we'd get representation based on the
voters being represented with this style of system.

~~~
pas
The important thing is to allow ranked voting, which would help with the
current duopoly in US politics.

And of course drawing lines on a map rarely helps with fairness.

~~~
Armisael16
There has to be some limit. I don't think it's reasonable to expect
Californians to rank every competitor for 53 seats.

------
jzylstra
Regarding the last two paragraphs of the article, what is the typical way that
past presidents are meant to be addressed? Contrast the curt 'Mr. Obama' with
President Jimmy Carter and President George W. Bush.

>In addition to Judge Wynn, an appointee of Mr. Obama’s, Senior Judge W. Earl
Britt of the Federal District Court in Raleigh joined the opinion. Judge Britt
was appointed by President Jimmy Carter.

>Judge William L. Osteen Jr., who was appointed by President George W. Bush
and sits on the federal bench in Greensboro, said he agreed that the existing
map violated the 14th Amendment, but he disputed other parts of Judge Wynn’s
opinion, including the decision to appoint an independent expert to begin
preparing an alternative map.

~~~
nxc18
'President' is proper and correct.

~~~
zeveb
I think it's more appropriate to only refer to someone by his current
position, not by his former positions: President Trump, Secretary Tillerson,
Senator Warren — but Mr. Obama, Mr. Bush, Mrs. Clinton &c.

America is a republic, not a monarchy or aristocracy: titles are for a limited
duration, not for life.

~~~
evgen
You may think that, but it is not how things work. Politicians are formally
addressed according to current office or the highest office they held at any
point in the past if not a current office holder. Probably a silly convention,
but it is what it is. (ordering is Representative < Senator < (ambassador or
cabinet secretary) < SC justice < VP or President)

~~~
zeveb
Emily Post disagrees: [http://emilypost.com/advice/addressing-a-former-
president-of...](http://emilypost.com/advice/addressing-a-former-president-of-
the-united-states/)

Robert Hickey also:
[http://www.formsofaddress.info/FOA_president_US_former.html](http://www.formsofaddress.info/FOA_president_US_former.html)

Miss Manners too:
[https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1030916.html](https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1030916.html)

------
koolba
Is there a particular standard used to determine that a given map is
considered gerrymandered? Or is it like porn, i.e., you know it when you see
it?

~~~
dboreham
As you might imagine, it is possible to consider this as a purely mathematical
problem and to thereby come up with measures of gerrymandered-ness. It is a
widely studied field. e.g.:

[https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/h...](https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/24334/Solbrig_washington_0250O_12376.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)

[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matthew_Dube/publicatio...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matthew_Dube/publication/315772532_Mathematical_Characteristics_of_District_Boundary_Lines_as_Indicators_of_Partisan_Gerrymandering_in_US_House_Elections/links/58e3b74ea6fdcc86ade771a4/Mathematical-
Characteristics-of-District-Boundary-Lines-as-Indicators-of-Partisan-
Gerrymandering-in-US-House-Elections.pdf)

~~~
sliverstorm
The reason it's so fascinating though, is that because it is a many-variable
optimization problem where 1) many of the variables conflict and 2) we haven't
actually agreed on the desired optimum. In the end it still very much has a
"you know it when you see it" quality, and nobody has come up with math that
definitively says "yes this is" or "no this isn't".

Actually, it's maybe a little like spam filtering.

------
nsnick
It seems crazy that we elect representatives based on geography. Can't we
elect representatives based on some other grouping? Why is there an assumption
that my interests are aligned with people in geographic proximity to me?

~~~
framebit
Historically this was to ensure that rural areas had equivalent representation
to urban centers. Agricultural areas, for example, might have very different
opinions about tariffs on foreign products because it would effect their
livelihoods in a significant way whereas the city dwellers probably wouldn't
notice too much.

Our lives and our industries are tied to the land we live on. It's not just
rural and urban: there's coastal and landlocked, desert and forest, tropical
and arctic, etc. Each of these areas have unique concerns when it comes to
policies that effect their land and the industries that their land lends
itself to.

~~~
goialoq
Not _equivalent_ , but _superior_ representation. Rural minorities outvote
urban majorities due to the bias in the electoral college / Senate model.

------
odammit
So I’ve got a question for you legal scholars. If it’s unconstitutional does
that mean the people behind it broke laws or is this simply the court citing
why the map was rejected?

~~~
matt4077
These cases are civil, not criminal. Losing such a case does not by itself
imply "guilt" in the criminal sense, nor does it carry the stigma attached to
a criminal conviction.

And even though in the US such cases are often addressed to a single official,
they ate sued in their professional capability. That means their legal bills,
and any monetary judgements, are paid by the government.

All that doesn't preclude voters to draw their own conclusions. But you would
have to look at every case individually: this case is pretty obvious, and it
fits well with the existing narrative of the Republican party cutting corners
to subvert basic mechanisms of democracy. But even actions that are well-
intentioned and completely benign in their effects will occasionally be struck
down by the courts when, for example, they are enacted by an agency when the
courts believe legislative action is required.

------
seanalltogether
While DailyKos isn't exactly an unbiased source, I did find the maps shown in
their article to help illustrate the issue well.

[https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/27/1579905/-These-t...](https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/27/1579905/-These-
three-maps-show-just-how-effectively-gerrymandering-can-swing-election-
outcomes)

------
cjslep
Born and raised in NC: Can't say I am surprised.

------
tboyd47
Here's a link to the actual opinion, which is pretty interesting if you're
into political history and constitutional law: [http://electionlawblog.org/wp-
content/uploads/rucho-opinion....](http://electionlawblog.org/wp-
content/uploads/rucho-opinion.pdf)

------
mr_toad
As an outsider, two observations:

1\. Letting politicians determine electorate boundaries is just a dumb idea.
Who thought that could possibly work?

2\. Non-proportional representation belongs in the age of horses and
telegrams.

~~~
Clubber
>Who thought that could possibly work?

The politicians that voted it into law, of course.

------
teilo
To be fair, gerrymandering has been practiced by both parties for centuries.
But the NC case was particularly egregious.

------
0xWilliam
Cool politics!

