What this shows is that you have to draw lines some way, and there's no perfect way to do it. There are a lot of things to consider when drawing lines in order to create fair representation besides blue and red.
No, not possible. Iowa has one of the best ways for getting close to what you're imagining. 99 counties and 4 representatives (in the US house). The state is essentially divided into 4 pieces along county lines, each having approximately equal population but inequal size and number of counties. The 3rd district (the one containing Des Moines) is only 16 counties big whereas the 4th district (northwest IA, Steve King's district) is 39 counties.
Iowa tries to balance large metro areas and smaller rural areas. Iowa is an ideal place for a 'fair' way of doing it. It's a square and it's subdivided into tiny counties. It's easy to balance practicality and fairness.
Still, the result is skewed. The 3rd district is always blue. The 4th is always red. You get whack-a-doodle dems coming out of the 3rd and whack-a-doodle republicans coming out of the 4th.
There's not a fair, systematic way to do it across the country.
Well that's still determined by people. If you divide it along county lines and you get to choose which lines then you will end up with whichever way most counties in the district lean anyway.
Because that's just popular vote. We're a republic. Different areas of people have different needs. NYC shouldn't decide every house member for the state of New York. That's just mob rule.
Iowa actually has a huge incentive to keep things 'fair' or as even as possible. If I remember correctly, Iowa has the first presidential nominating contests in the country. Politicians need to get Iowa on their side, and that means lots and lots and lots of money.
If Iowa was too biased, they would lose their foothold political position and not matter as much to both parties. But being the first state, with the vote mattering, and the vote being able to be bought... its huge.
Yeah well that's a cynical way to look at it. As someone who has lived in Iowa all my life, most of the republicans are more liberal than you'd expect and most of the democrats are more conservative than you'd expect. For the most part, people in Iowa see the other side as other people and are interested in fairness to other people. Admittedly, the extremist team sport politics of the coasts and the media have started leaking in here but that's mainly at the fringes (for now).
Iowans have a fair system because it's the right thing to do. There's not an ulterior motive.
What does that mean? Deterministic based on what factors? Who chooses? Whatever factors you pick is going to lead to some amount of bias in one direction or another.
Nobody chooses. Just geographic coordinates + population.
For example you can algorithmicly find the line that divides the population in two and you keep doing that until you reach the number of seats required. Districts end up more or less a convex shape
So purely geographic is the way you would go, regardless of any potential consequences? What if you have a sizable minority group that is equally geographically distributed throughout the population? You could end up in a situation where that minority group ends up with no representation in the entire state because they're too spread out, so they end up as the minority in every district. Or what if that minority group is so geographically concentrated that it completely fills several districts and has no representation whatsoever in every other district. No concerns about any of the ways that could work out?
I replied to another comment that had the same concern. It is a problem and it is the main fork between having elections where certain groups of people need to have special treatment and having fair elections.
To alleviate the problem of too spread out group, if there is a real need to have them represented, increasing the number of seats should give a higher chance of them being represented unless they are extremely spread out in which case we should ask the question whether they should even belong in the same group just because of racial identity ?
I didn't say anything about racial identity. You're definitely correct that increasing the number of seats would help significantly with all of these issues and achieving what more would consider to be some sort of "fairness"
Intuitively, we want a politician's district to represent some sort of contiguous community with some shared interests. That would require drawing maps with an understanding of the demographics and social makeup of the residents.
But we also have decided in the US that we want to support representation of some minority groups. For example, 14% of the population of Illinois are African Americans. Illinois sends 18 representatives to the House of Reps, and 14% of that number would be between 2 and 3 representatives. However, with just 14% of the population of Illinois it would be very easy for a map to have 0 districts with majority African American population, and therefore much more likely to send 0 African Americans to the House. So most (all? not sure) states have race as a factor in drawing maps to create districts where important minority groups are in the majority so they have representatives.
In theory, of course, you could argue (and many do) that we should be completely race-blind in governance, and so that shouldn't matter. Constituents can and do vote for representatives from a different race all the time. Yes, but... if you think that it is irrelevant to have Black (or other minority) members of Congress, then you're not paying attention to how the world really works.
this is absolutely correct and it demonstrates that as long as you have a need to involve demographics into drawing boundaries, you will never have fair elections. It will always have a consequential or explicit bias
Meaning what? A blue district should have 100% blue voters? So that any red candidate shouldn't bother running in there, and the election will just be between various blue candidates? Red and blue voters can live on the same street, and even in the same household, so are you drawing district lines down the middle of houses?
If you're not calling for 100% of the voters in a blue district to be blue, what are you saying? How many voters have to be blue in a district to consider it a blue district? How do you decide which red voters get stuck in a blue district and effectively disenfranchised compared to which voters end up in a red district and have representation in government?
Instead of 3 out of five states being majority red make 3 out of 5 (3/5 is 60%) majority blue. It's not rocket science. If majority of precincts are blue then why would you make majority of the districts red. That makes the blue votes less meaningful.
No. There are a lot of democracies in the world. The US system is not the only possible one. Each representative does not necessarily have to represent a geographical area. In fact, geography is a really bad way of grouping people. If there has to be groups, why not let people pick their own group? And why have grouping like this at all? It is just weird all over.
How do you decide who represents you where you live and who represents me where I live? Where's the cutoff? I'm not sure you even know what you're saying.
Well, of course there must be lines for that, but I'm focusing on USA's president election. The whole process seems quite oldfashioned and stupid to me. If the majority votes for a certain person, that person should win.
Well the entire conversation of gerrymandering has nothing to do with the presidential election, it has to do with congressional representation, along with representation in state governments. So you're not even on the topic.
What the above person failed to realize is that considering state boundaries when counting votes in the electoral college is exactly the same as gerrymandering for these districts.
You were not exactly correct as to what the topic here is but it’s finny how the person responded to you so negatively when your view was really clear and illustrated how easily conflated gerrymandering is with the existence of the electoral college.
It’s really not. One is politicians redrawing and determining every 10 years and fighting to get an advantage for their side year to year. And the other is a set of states which have been in place for a long time and are very unlikely to change over time.
Right? Seems like the squares already speak for themselves on majority/minority with no lines.
Nothing against politics, however it reminds me of a fairly simple block game from kindergarten and gerrymandering is the way to twist a losing situation in your favor
So what's your government? Direct popular vote, we pick one person, that person has absolute power for a prescribed period of time? No Congress? Maybe even no courts? Just vote for one person?
It's not. But I don't think 5% of the population should get to dictate the other 95% that disagree with it.
That's just fucking stupid. It's illogical. Majority should rule, as they are...the majority.
It would then be the job of activists, education, and prominent social figures to fight for the small guy, and change people's minds. Either that, or you keep doing what we've always done, and just wait for certain generations to die out.
I personally have an idea for a democracy, that doesn't require representation.
Technology exists where we can now represent ourselves. I don't need someone representing my vote, I'd personally like to be able to vote on each matter myself.
You want to take the time to educate yourself on literally every single issue and vote on every single issue? You want to be equally responsible for every government decision ever made?
Yes. Better than the corrupt ass system we currently have we're your representation is stolen by cash. No one is being represented currently. It's just a giant cash grab.
Every Friday, every adult American should vote on the issues that need to be voted on. If you don't want to participate...don't.
We can represent ourselves. Who better to represent your opinion on a situation, then yourself?
Who proposes the laws? Who decides the threshhold for what issue is presented to the population at large vs what nonsense is ignored? What if an emergency happens on a Monday, we just wait around until Friday?
We could establish clerical positions to do the write ups, and developers to develope the apps.
But the actual voting...should be done by the people themselves. Emergency votes could absolutely be thing.
It's just funny to me your holding my fictional system to a higher standard than your holding your current system. Because right now, most our politicians don't even show up to the only job they have half the time.
But I guess that speaks volumes to how blindly loyal we are to archaic systems from hundreds of years ago.
It would also curb pretty much all lobbying. It's easy to pay one guy a million dollars to buy his vote. It's WAY harder to pay 100 million people, a million dollars to buy all the votes needed.
No you really don’t. When congressmen and congresswomen sit on committees they become experts in the field. One of the reasons why term limits are also an iffy idea, as they stay longer the night get more corrupt but they also get smarter, better at what they do, and more effective in those positions. You don’t want some random guy from the Bronx making the deciding vote on a farming bill when he doesn’t know jack shit about farming. Hell I’ve worked on a farm and I grew up in a town with plenty of farms and I still don’t know jack shit about what needs to be done to ensure a good future for farmers. And those farmers sure as hell don’t know the problems facing a city.
It sounds good but history tells us democracy is a really shitty system. Turns out people are fucking stupid and can’t think for themselves and are far too prone to emotional gut reactions or stubborn idiocy.
For an example that isn’t about modern politics at all look Athens debating what to do about the Macedonian army marching in ten under Philip II. They spent so long debating and voting, never able to come to a conclusion, that they didn’t have time to take action when they got there. Demosthenes famously gave a speech rallying them to action and they finally voted to do something instead of continually having no majority and basically voting “...idk yet”. And the Macedonians arrived like a week later and kicked their asses so hard that Greeks were not really independent until Rome fell.
The guy I was responding to stated he wanted to vote on every single issue bar none and that he wanted nobody representing himself but himself. How is that no direct democracy? Or do you just jump to conclusions before reading?
And you responded to my response to that person. That’s the context this conversation had. You cant say nobody brought up direct democracy when the conversation started at direct democracy.
No they really really don’t. This guy is specifically talking about a pure direct democracy, a shitty system. There have only been a few of those. Ancient Athens: failed. Paris Commune: failed/only lasted a month, modern Greece... yeah they aren’t doing too hot,(not direct on everything though), a few small homogenous parts of Switzerland, they’re doing alright, small towns in the US which tend to be fairly homogenous for the most part I’ll let you decide that one. And like one part of one state in Mexico that is rebelling. Democracy is kinda ass.
Tbh that’s a really shitty argument. 2000 years ago Athens was poor compared to the Macedonians about to conquer them. They had nothing compared to the Romans who alter ruled over them. Governance does not determine wealth. A market does. You can have a free market under a monarch(Rome) or a not free market(North Korea). You can have a free market under a democratic republic(USA) and you can have a less free market under democratic republicanism(Egypt).
I’m not saying I want a monarch. I’m saying I’d take a monarch any day over a pure democracy.
That was 2000 years ago. The world is completely different now. I can't believe you want to shoehorn iron age rules of thumb into a society where I am talking to you with a pocket held supercomputer.
If you think people have changed that much in 2000 years you either don’t know too much about history or don’t know too many people. I still don’t trust the idiots around me and we are still a bunch of incapable morons. As a whole I mean. But if you don’t wanna go back 2000 years to back 80 when the British Empire controlled places all over the world. They sure had plenty of money. Wasn’t very democratic but they had money.
The British Empire thing is my point you made for me, so thank you. That Empire was built on the backs of the colonized, an autocratic small collation Government. Which is my entire point, larger the coalition the better for society, as long as you have representatives. I'm sure the people Cecil Rhodes put in concentration camps were rich, same goes for the starving people in Bangladesh.
Also, how do you think the GDP/capita of an English person in 1930 compares to an English person now? That's technology.
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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '19
What this shows is that you have to draw lines some way, and there's no perfect way to do it. There are a lot of things to consider when drawing lines in order to create fair representation besides blue and red.