

Ask HN: How would you solve redistricting? - jdthomas

I caught part of a discussion on NPR this morning regarding California's newly drawn districts. There seem to be many complaints (most from different groups feeling like they were split, or combined unfairly).<p>While it's an improvement to have been done by an independent commission, the way these maps are drawn still seems archaic. Redrawing district lines, to me, seems like a problem that could pretty easily be solved algorithmically.<p>What do you think? What sort of inputs would you need? What factors would you take into account? Any good articles on this sort of thing? Any existing partitioning algorithms suitable for this? Would simply randomising districts be preferable?<p>Thoughts.
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shadgregory
Turn each state into a multi-member district. Small states with only one rep
can be combined with other states to form three-rep blocks, i.e., North
Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana can be combined into one election. Elections
can be party-list elections. For example, Utah has 3 seats; each party puts
forward a list of 3 candidates, and the voters vote for the party of their
choice. There's no longer a need to redraw lines because there are no more
lines.

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noahth
There is some value in geography-based representation! Idealistically, well,
there's idealistic value. Cynically, considering that many members of Congress
are capable of bringing pork-barrel projects to their home districts, it makes
sense for voters that their representative is accountable to the district.

While the idea of decoupling representation from geography is an interesting
one and it may seem appealing, in practice I would not be surprised at all to
see this result in a rapid deterioration in the quality of representation for
areas in which representatives do not live and a corresponding rise in
legislative effectiveness for the areas housing the representatives.

Following this line of assumptions a little further, it's easy to understand
why Congress is divided into components where representation is based on
different geographical scales.

