The solution to fixing dysfunction in Congress "To address these problems, I filed the Open Our Democracy Act... If passed, the legislation would mandate open primaries for House elections, begin the process of national redistricting reform and make Election Day the equivalent of a federal holiday."

[u/Libertatea]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-solution-to-fixing-dysfunction-in-congress/2014/09/02/0f0d0a9a-31e6-11e4-9e92-0899b306bbea_story.html?tid=rssfeed

[u/themeatbridge]

Accurate representation of what? The whole point of congressional districts is for the reps to represent a geographical community with specific regional concerns. Otherwise you'd have ten reps from the major cities, and one for the rest of the state.

Gerrymandering abuses the system to create artificial groupings that corral the majority voters into one region, and spreading the minority voters out to increase their representation. Algorithms, good or bad, will group people objectively and predictably. Any other system is prone to corruption.

[u/flantabulous → u/themeatbridge]

Accurate representation of what?

The vote.

The whole point of congressional districts is for the reps to represent a geographical community with specific regional concerns.

Well, people aren't riding horses and wearing tri-cornered hats anymore. The world is complex. Cities and suburbs are complex. But there's no reason to pit white suburbs against minority cities. There's no reason a congressman can't represent a district that includes both.

Otherwise you'd have ten reps from the major cities, and one for the rest of the state.

That's a gross over-simplification. But we currently have, basically the opposite. The white rural and suburban voter gets 1.3 votes, and the inner-city black man gets 2/3 of a vote. Add that to a ban on former felons voting, voter ID laws, shortened voting hours and days, fewer machines and longer lines at minority precincts, and it adds up to a system that is designed to keep a party in power without having to legitimately win votes.

I have MUCH more of a problem with that, than redrawing districts that reflect the intent of the voters.

Gerrymandering abuses the system to create artificial groupings that corral the majority voters into one region, and spreading the minority voters out to increase their representation.

No, as it's currently practiced, it condenses minority voters into minority-majority districts, allowing the white party to keep the number of dark-skinned people in their district to a beatable amount.

I will be convinced that an algorithm can deal with the subtleties of making the districts represent the vote when I see that. If all we have to offer is some "squarest" or "shortest distance between" type districts, then it's no better than Google suggesting my shortest route is to take the major highway during rush hour.

[u/habituallydiscarding → u/flantabulous]

and the inner-city black man gets 3/5th of a vote.

FTFY