Because of long standing history of gerrymandering on those lines which needs to be addressed by the judiciary. They were rigging the system on the lines of race, racial based arguments would naturally be needed to undo the damage caused.
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The problem is, other factors far outweigh the efficiency gap.
High precision, low accuracy.
Including confounding real-world issue like actual voting participation vs registered voters vs potential total voters. So do you measure the efficiency vs likely voters or all voters?
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And arguments based on general expertise and scientific knowledge.
Hence we have a defense department trolling the White House about global warning, a CDC which now has restricted words from its communications, a Department of State which is practically in open revolt and a Secretary of Education who attacks education.
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The fact is, gerrymander is necessary to assure minorities have a voice. But those minorities have to live nearby each other so a gerrymandered district surrounds enough minorities to win an election. As I explain in the article, this is perverse. Why should a minority have to live in for example, a poor neighborhood, just so their vote can be counted??
Yeah b is a different project than a.
You need to measure the effect of a gerrymander to first prove that it’s there but also to demonstrate that it’s bad. But if your goal is ultimately to build fairer districts you also need to be able to check if they’re fairer. (where in fair districts are those that correctly represent the population).
So a is sort of a neccisary precursor to b.
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Yet the overwhelming majority of gerrymandering activity involves diluting minority vote, especially those of urban centers. Minorities also tend to be clustered regionally
Because they are a minority in their community. Majority vote involves divining the vote which is most representative of a community
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So only give them three rankings to make. Even if the district has 5 representatives you don’t actually need to give each voter 5 rankings to choose them.
I never even encountered cumulative voting in politics until your articles. On the other hand, ranked voting is very common.
Their proposed solution is ranked voting.
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But maybe the community is not geographic, just like Boing Boing is a community. Or Catholics. And you care more about that community than your neighbors. Imagine Catholics are 20% of the population and are spread evenly across the state. In a cumulative scheme, in a state with 10 reps, they could pool their votes and elect one representative. Maybe two. But none in a state with single-member districts.
I am dealing with the most typical situation, you are giving me hypothetical situations or at best a wild exception not ever meant to be addressed by the system at hand.
"And you care more about that community than your neighbors. "
That’s nice, but its not how representative government is designed. As the old adage says, “all politics are local”. Meaning the most important issues requiring representation are generally geographic and physically close to the voters. Its about voting for the issues that best address you and your neighbors.
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I use exactly that adage in my article, and discuss this issue of geographic vs affinity groups more fully there.
Geographic groups are useful because of things like state and federal funding for infrastructure, policies that could effect the local job market etc. They’re not just representing you, they’re representing where you live.
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Voters learn how to rank candidates quite quickly, as we see on the island of Ireland. The first time I voted in a Belfast City Council election I had 25 candidates to rank for 6 council seats. I started from the bottom - which candidates did I hate or distrust most. That was fun. The middle was a bit hard, as I had to rank a former paramilitary who killed dozens of people 10 years ago but then stopped, versus a woman who cleared up the forensic evidence of a killing two weeks ago. But in the end I ranked all 25 - although you don’t have to go all the way down in elections in Northern Ireland.
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Sorry, I had meant to say proportional voting. There are more than a hundred variations of proportional voting, here are a few https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation
I prefer cumulative because it is simple and transparent and in most circumstances, fair.
Some places experience both. In the UK they have a first past the post system for their imperial elections but for their European elections they use PR. I know from experience in NI that far from finding it difficult to understand the electorate there understands PR very well and votes accordingly.
They also understand gerrymandering very well…
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Use the “How do you Cut The Cake” solution:
You have two kids and a piece of cake you want cut exactly in half. What do you do? Answer: Let one kid cut it witht he knowledge that the other kid gets to pick which half he gets. This will be the most evenly split cake int he world.
Do the same with voting districts:
Let party 1 draw districts with the knowledge that Party 2 will get to pick ONE district to “freeze” and keep. Then, Party 2 redraws the remaining areas outside of the frozen area with the knowledge that Party 1 will get to freeze another district. If there are more than two parties that reach teh critical mass of size to participate, then after each drawing, the next party freeze an area should be chosen at random.
This will create some very even/fair distribution of districts.
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Think I watch too much TV. All I can think of is having each faction, ethnicity, etc dress up in different jackets and fight it out with muskets and swords.
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The trouble with proportional voting it’s fundamentally at odds with the notion of direct representation.
Imagine an majority (90%) Republican / minority (10%) Democrat state, with Dems distributed finely throughout so that all districts skew heavily Republican, no matter how the lines are drawn. Proportional representation assures Dems have 10% seats in the legislature. But where do they come from? Can they claim to represent anyone in particular? They can advance the national Dem party line at the state level, but no particular electee can be voted out later for failing to represent his constituents in Capital City or Rural County or Factory Belt. Their representation is purely virtual, and it’s been understood that leads to questionable governance since the time of the revolution.
And how did they come to be the Dem representatives? The Dem population never got to vote on a person, only a party. The people who became the Dem representatives were probably selected from existing roles, either appointed elected in very small party caucuses under God only knows what kind of procedures. In other words, the system is biased even more toward party creatures, selected by party higher ups and advanced using party-controlled procedures. Whoever ends up at the front of the list is pretty much guaranteed a spot in the legislature somewhere. Generally, we’d expect very milk-toast candidates that preach the party line but don’t really care about do much otherwise.
And what if such a candidate proves himself terrible? (Not criminal, just not good enough that voters want him back next cycle.) How do the people get rid of him? If party creatures get the seats, and the party is guaranteed seats proportional to it’s population base, the only way to get rid of them is if the party itself starts to shrink as people leave it. But since there’s only one alternative (Republicans), which they already didn’t like, that’s probably not going to happen. I supposed it could lead to a party schism where Green Dems and Blue Collar Dems leave and form their own parties. That’s a lot of effort and wasted money thought, so the situation has to be really bad to make that happen. Still, it might appeal to some people out there who want more parties (distinction without a difference).
The system lends itself to corruption for modest gain, and is fundamentally about fairness between multiple large political parties, not between places (and the people or ways of life those places are a proxy for).
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Last October, the Supreme Court heard argument in Gill v. Whitford, a Wisconsin gerrymandering case that has far-reaching implications for the November midterms in 2018; the court is expected to rule next June.
It’s got far-reaching implications, but not for 2018. A June ruling isn’t going to mean new district lines by November.
I wouldn’t take Thomas’s vote for granted in this case either. He sided with the Democrats in Cooper v Harris; Kennedy didn’t.
Sometimes you get the best of both worlds. A little while ago here in NC we had a legislator swearing to the court or the election commission or something that no, as much as it looked like it, they were NOT gerrymandering the state across racial lines, only based on party.
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