Gerrymandering: Quick, Draw!

[joecct]

Thanks, I empathize, but my point wasn't that MI 11 is well drawn, it is that the shape of any given district is an arbitrary measure of whether it works or not. People don't live in geographical squares or any other shape. Presumably MI 11 is that shape as a result of gerrymandering it toward a specific goal. In this case, grouping voters in such a way as to give one party an advantage over another.

My point is that Fade said we should start over, draw squares and adjust them for population. Why? Why draw shapes on a map? What is the goal of that? Suppose that randomly results in districts that give R's +100 house seats? Are we still good?

What do these committees use as a goal when drawing district lines? That it looks nice on a map? That certain kinds of people are grouped together? What is the goal? Define that, then you can draw the lines.

If the registered voters in a state are 50/50 then the districts should line up with half GOP and half D. If there's an odd #, the party in charge of the legislature should draw the odd district to fit them.

60/40 (like we have here), then .6x8 = 5 D and 3 GOP. But given where the population lives DC suburbs are heavily D, rural MD is heavily GOP, that may be difficult.

Boundaries should be logical. The MD-3 is not.

 

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: Gerrymandering: Quick, Draw!

Why? The shape is an entirely arbitrary measure of whether a particular district is well drawn or not. Why squares? Why not triangles or hexagons or trapezoids?

You need a different goal and then gerrymander the districts in favor of that goal. What is it? All like minded people together? All like minded people split evenly? People who like D&D in one and BMX racing in another? What do you want to accomplish?

Thanks, I empathize, but my point wasn't that MI 11 is well drawn, it is that the shape of any given district is an arbitrary measure of whether it works or not. People don't live in geographical squares or any other shape. Presumably MI 11 is that shape as a result of gerrymandering it toward a specific goal. In this case, grouping voters in such a way as to give one party an advantage over another.

My point is that Fade said we should start over, draw squares and adjust them for population. Why? Why draw shapes on a map? What is the goal of that? Suppose that randomly results in districts that give R's +100 house seats? Are we still good?

What do these committees use as a goal when drawing district lines? That it looks nice on a map? That certain kinds of people are grouped together? What is the goal? Define that, then you can draw the lines.

That is a fair point. My "start with a grid" plan may very well be flawed. At the end of the day, what really I don't want is districts drawn so crookedly, as to clearly favor one party over the other, and in some cases put the offices of a Congresshuman in a fairly "dense" district an hour away from some of their constituents. IL-4 is among the most egregious examples. It's a ridiculous-looking jigsaw of Chicago neighborhoods that likely favor Democrats.

I live in the far eastern portion of MI-08 - that little panhandle right on the county line. Rep. Bishop is from my town, but his offices are in Brighton almost an hour away (with no traffic). Geographically, that is about the middle of his district, which also includes most (all?) of Michigan State's campus. MSU is about a 2-hour drive from me (slightly under that).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michi..._US_Congressional_District_8_(since_2013).tif

Is that fair? I don't feel it is, given that I'm in the most population-dense part of his district, but convince me that it is.

 

[Deutsche Gopher Fan]

Re: Gerrymandering: Quick, Draw!

I think that’s correct. Don’t draw a ridiculous jagged line to pack all of one party into another. Clearly in some areas it won’t matter as much

 

[LynahFan]

Re: Gerrymandering: Quick, Draw!

That is a fair point. My "start with a grid" plan may very well be flawed. At the end of the day, what really I don't want is districts drawn so crookedly, as to clearly favor one party over the other, and in some cases put the offices of a Congresshuman in a fairly "dense" district an hour away from some of their constituents. IL-4 is among the most egregious examples. It's a ridiculous-looking jigsaw of Chicago neighborhoods that likely favor Democrats.

I live in the far eastern portion of MI-08 - that little panhandle right on the county line. Rep. Bishop is from my town, but his offices are in Brighton almost an hour away (with no traffic). Geographically, that is about the middle of his district, which also includes most (all?) of Michigan State's campus. MSU is about a 2-hour drive from me (slightly under that).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michi..._US_Congressional_District_8_(since_2013).tif

Is that fair? I don't feel it is, given that I'm in the most population-dense part of his district, but convince me that it is.

Problem is if you DON'T intentionally bias the districts toward one party or the other and every district really does end up 50-50, then one party could easily get all of the seats with just a few hundred vote total advantage - an "electoral college" for the legislative branch. If the goal is to have the congressional delegation split match the total popular vote (say, 5-2 in a 7-seat state), then the surest way to do that is to make 5 and 2 "safe" districts.

New crazy idea: how about each party in that 7-seat state puts forward a slate of 7 candidates, in rank order of the party's preference for who gets to serve. People vote for the slate in a single state-wide election, and if the votes split 5-2, then the top 5 from the majority party are seated and the top 2 from the minority party are seated. If your state only has 2 representatives, then they'd always be split unless one party gets more than 75% of the vote; in a state with 3, you'd only have 3-0 if one party got more than 83% of the vote, and so on.

 

[aparch]

Re: Gerrymandering: Quick, Draw!

... IL-4 is among the most egregious examples. It's a ridiculous-looking jigsaw of Chicago neighborhoods that likely favor Democrats.
...

IL-4 was drawn up because lawmakers were told that there needed to be more Hispanic-Latino representation because of the population makeup of the City of Chicago. So, they combined the heavily Puerto Rican north side of I-290 with the heavily Mexican south side of I-290 into one represented district. So yes it favors Democrats, but it lumps two distinctly different groups into one representative area.

The gap in the middle is the 7th Congressional District and is much more African-American populated, and it also includes the central Loop area, River North, and South Loop into also just one representative district.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Gerrymandering: Quick, Draw!

The easiest way to fix the electoral college for the legislative branch is to simply do a statewide primary for each party recording the same number of top vote getters as there are seats. Then hold a statewide popular vote and divy them up proportionally.

Gerrymandering dies there. Never have to worry about city or rural. Never have to worry about racial packing and cracking. Don’t have to worry about a few hundred seats throwing an entire state.

All my plan needs is an amendment to the constitution

Actually, couldn’t each state decide how it wants to do this?

 

[LynahFan]

The easiest way to fix the electoral college for the legislative branch is to simply do a statewide primary for each party recording the same number of top vote getters as there are seats. Then hold a statewide popular vote and divy them up proportionally.

Gerrymandering dies there. Never have to worry about city or rural. Never have to worry about racial packing and cracking. Don’t have to worry about a few hundred seats throwing an entire state.

All my plan needs is an amendment to the constitution

Actually, couldn’t each state decide how it wants to do this?

If I'm reading this correctly, that's basically what I posted a few minutes ago, but you added the primary as the means of setting the rank order, which is a great idea.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Gerrymandering: Quick, Draw!

Dammit. Sorry. I didn’t read your whole post.

I read the first paragraph and typed my post up as a solution to your first paragraph. I see you solved that about 34 minutes before I did.

 

[Jimjamesak]

Re: Gerrymandering: Quick, Draw!

I prefer the German method: Have directly elected Reps but add seats for parties based on their proportion of the total vote.

Either way the number of seats in the House needs to grow, 435 is ridiculously small for a country this size. It should be closer to 650.

 

[joecct]

The easiest way to fix the electoral college for the legislative branch is to simply do a statewide primary for each party recording the same number of top vote getters as there are seats. Then hold a statewide popular vote and divy them up proportionally.

Gerrymandering dies there. Never have to worry about city or rural. Never have to worry about racial packing and cracking. Don’t have to worry about a few hundred seats throwing an entire state.

All my plan needs is an amendment to the constitution

Actually, couldn’t each state decide how it wants to do this?

Each state decides on how its electors are chosen.

Try this -- vote for each elector. In my case, I'd vote for 8 individuals. The individuals then vote for a candidate for president.

 

[unofan]

Re: Gerrymandering: Quick, Draw!

The easiest way to fix the electoral college for the legislative branch is to simply do a statewide primary for each party recording the same number of top vote getters as there are seats. Then hold a statewide popular vote and divy them up proportionally.

Gerrymandering dies there. Never have to worry about city or rural. Never have to worry about racial packing and cracking. Don’t have to worry about a few hundred seats throwing an entire state.

All my plan needs is an amendment to the constitution

Actually, couldn’t each state decide how it wants to do this?

Each state gets to pick how it determines its electors. It could do it by drawing lots, if it wanted to.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees the people of each state "a Republican form of government." And since "one person, one vote" became a real thing, State senates have to be apportioned by population rather than land. Otherwise, your guess is as good as mine if voting for slates on a statewide basis would pass the "Republican form of government" Constitutional hurdle.

 

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: Gerrymandering: Quick, Draw!

Each state decides on how its electors are chosen.

Try this -- vote for each elector. In my case, I'd vote for 8 individuals. The individuals then vote for a candidate for president.

No thanks. There are too many dorks on the ballot as it is, and a majority of voters are quite ignorant. By a show of posts, how many of us actually care who sits on the Board of Regents at our major public universities? I'll be the first to admit I don't bother to look them up, except to not vote for names I recognize and don't like, such as Mark Bernstein (son of a local ambulance chasing family) when he ran for UMich BoR. Spoiler alert - he won anyway.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Gerrymandering: Quick, Draw!

No thanks. There are too many dorks on the ballot as it is, and a majority of voters are quite ignorant. By a show of posts, how many of us actually care who sits on the Board of Regents at our major public universities? I'll be the first to admit I don't bother to look them up, except to not vote for names I recognize and don't like, such as Mark Bernstein (son of a local ambulance chasing family) when he ran for UMich BoR.

Ha. I was just thinking about that this weekend. I saw a list of them in the football program and thought, “I wish I could elect them. What a bunch of schmucks.” Then the immediate thought was, “Wait, then the rest of these schmucks get to vote for these schmucks and now it’s political.”

To hell with that.

 

[manurespreader]

Re: Gerrymandering: Quick, Draw!

Thanks, I empathize, but my point wasn't that MI 11 is well drawn, it is that the shape of any given district is an arbitrary measure of whether it works or not. People don't live in geographical squares or any other shape. Presumably MI 11 is that shape as a result of gerrymandering it toward a specific goal. In this case, grouping voters in such a way as to give one party an advantage over another.

My point is that Fade said we should start over, draw squares and adjust them for population. Why? Why draw shapes on a map? What is the goal of that? Suppose that randomly results in districts that give R's +100 house seats? Are we still good?

What do these committees use as a goal when drawing district lines? That it looks nice on a map? That certain kinds of people are grouped together? What is the goal? Define that, then you can draw the lines.

According to documents i've seen the goal is to have communities of interest together. The key is what is the definition of community of interest.

 

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: Gerrymandering: Quick, Draw!

According to documents i've seen the goal is to have communities of interest together. The key is what is the definition of community of interest.

The only thing the communities of MI-8 have in common is a lot of 30+ year-old white people, and that Clarkston and Lake Orion both want to be Little Rochester.

 

[Wisko McBadgerton]

Re: Gerrymandering: Quick, Draw!

That is a fair point. My "start with a grid" plan may very well be flawed. At the end of the day, what really I don't want is districts drawn so crookedly, as to clearly favor one party over the other, and in some cases put the offices of a Congresshuman in a fairly "dense" district an hour away from some of their constituents. IL-4 is among the most egregious examples. It's a ridiculous-looking jigsaw of Chicago neighborhoods that likely favor Democrats.

I live in the far eastern portion of MI-08 - that little panhandle right on the county line. Rep. Bishop is from my town, but his offices are in Brighton almost an hour away (with no traffic). Geographically, that is about the middle of his district, which also includes most (all?) of Michigan State's campus. MSU is about a 2-hour drive from me (slightly under that).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michi..._US_Congressional_District_8_(since_2013).tif

Is that fair? I don't feel it is, given that I'm in the most population-dense part of his district, but convince me that it is.

Because you live in a densely populated area, I imagine you feel it would make more sense to group the nearest 700k or so folks around you together from as compact an area as possible, seeing as everyone in a smaller radius is likely to have similar challenges, and similar political issues of interest. I can see that, but you do have to keep in mind that all districts in the state have to be of equal population. So it's entirely likely that no matter how you do it, by necessity there will be some more urban areas connected to large suburban or rural areas in order to balance the numbers evenly. Folks on the borders of some of the districts are probably going to tend not to like it very much, one way or another.
Is it fair? Consider that everyone in your district is an hour from your rep office. In Montana there are some folks 10 hours from their rep office, the Alaska congressional district spans roughly the distance from Gainesville FL to Sacramento CA. I knew a guy who lived in Nome for awhile, literally a 500 mile trip by dogsled to the congressional field office. I'd guess it's roughly a 500 mile drive across the entirety of MI-1 district. I don't know... it's not unfair.

 

[joecct]

No thanks. There are too many dorks on the ballot as it is, and a majority of voters are quite ignorant. By a show of posts, how many of us actually care who sits on the Board of Regents at our major public universities? I'll be the first to admit I don't bother to look them up, except to not vote for names I recognize and don't like, such as Mark Bernstein (son of a local ambulance chasing family) when he ran for UMich BoR. Spoiler alert - he won anyway.

The sad part of your (accurate) post is "...a majority of voters are quite ignorant..."

How do we change it in > 280 characters and 30 second sound bytes?

 

[Wisko McBadgerton]

Re: Gerrymandering: Quick, Draw!

Problem is if you DON'T intentionally bias the districts toward one party or the other and every district really does end up 50-50, then one party could easily get all of the seats with just a few hundred vote total advantage - an "electoral college" for the legislative branch. If the goal is to have the congressional delegation split match the total popular vote (say, 5-2 in a 7-seat state), then the surest way to do that is to make 5 and 2 "safe" districts.

New crazy idea: how about each party in that 7-seat state puts forward a slate of 7 candidates, in rank order of the party's preference for who gets to serve. People vote for the slate in a single state-wide election, and if the votes split 5-2, then the top 5 from the majority party are seated and the top 2 from the minority party are seated. If your state only has 2 representatives, then they'd always be split unless one party gets more than 75% of the vote; in a state with 3, you'd only have 3-0 if one party got more than 83% of the vote, and so on.

If you did make as many competitive districts as you can, while it is possible a small number of votes spread across the country could result in a landslide for one party or another, that party's grip on power would still be very tenuous. In a real 50/50 situation, no one could come to power without a vote from the other side. Seems like this would have the effect of moderating Federal government quite a bit. The Tea Party or the New, New Left, might have a much more difficult time gaining traction. And since we're talking about the House, having 400 R's or 400 D's in power for 2 years at a time is not a huge difference from having 250 of one or the other in practical terms. It could even result in voters looking more to character and credentials of the candidate, rather than Party affiliation. I don't know, I'm not convinced 50/50 is a terrible idea.

As to the slate of candidates, It occurrs to me that one of the things we do have right now is, generally speaking, we elect a rep from our own district. I could see how in states like MN, MI, WI, an "upstate" candidate never gets on the final roster, and the Iron Range, the UP, or the WI Northwoods never have the opportunity for a more local representative to be slated.

 

[SJHovey]

Re: Gerrymandering: Quick, Draw!

If the goal is to have the congressional delegation split match the total popular vote (say, 5-2 in a 7-seat state), then the surest way to do that is to make 5 and 2 "safe" districts.

Why should that ever be the goal?

There should be one goal, and one goal alone. The districts should be created to create, as near as possible, identical population totals in each district, and to do so in the most geometrically normal way. Anything else should automatically be deemed unconstitutional. This idea that we need two "safe" minority districts because we have five "safe" white districts or some such thing is crazy.

 

[unofan]

The sad part of your (accurate) post is "...a majority of voters are quite ignorant..."

How do we change it in > 280 characters and 30 second sound bytes?

So sayeth the guy who constantly links to 280 character statements and 30 second sound bytes (and yeah, Handy does too, and I don't like it anymore coming from him).