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Simple math can help scheming politicians manipulate district maps and cruise to victory. But it can also help identify and fix the problem.
Imagine fighting a war on 10 battlefields. You and your opponent each have 200 soldiers, and your aim is to win as many battles as possible. How would you deploy your troops? If you spread them out evenly, sending 20 to each battlefield, your opponent could concentrate their own troops and easily win a majority of the fights. You could try to overwhelm several locations yourself, but there's no guarantee you'll win, and you'll leave the remaining battlefields poorly defended. Devising a winning strategy isn't easy, but as long as neither side knows the other's plan in advance, it's a fair fight.
Now imagine your opponent has the power to deploy your troops as well as their own. Even if you get more troops, you can't win.
In the war of politics, this power to deploy forces comes from gerrymandering, the age-old practice of manipulating voting districts for partisan gain. By determining who votes where, politicians can tilt the odds in their favor and defeat their opponents before the battle even begins.
Anyone for a game of RISK?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday October 22 2017, @10:33PM (6 children)
I had to read 90% of TFA to actually figure out what they were proposing. And it's dumb... or, rather, somewhat trivial. There's all this language of an "efficiency gap" and how minimizing it would lead to fairer elections. But what is "fair"?
After reading almost to the end, we finally discover what "minimize efficiency gap" really is after:
Ah, so the real goal is: we want a split in state representatives equal to the split in voter party demographics. So, if there's 50% of voters in each party, we want each party to win half of the seats. If the split is 70-30 in favor of Party A, we want 7 reps for Party A and 3 reps for Party B.
Which sounds reasonable until you recognize that negates the entire point of geographic districts. If you want THAT outcome, you don't bother with geographic districts at all. You have a general slate of reps for each party and allocate them on a state level according to the percentage each party gets in the election. (Some parliamentary systems effectively do this.) Obviously, a reform like that would require Constitutional amendments and such, but that's really what you want if your goal is "minimize efficiency gap."
But that's NOT the U.S. goal. The U.S. has districts to create representatives who are supposed to be tied into a geographic region's interests, say a metro area, or a large rural area. That goal is orthogonal to the "efficiency gap" metric. Not saying the latter can't be kept in mind, but the whole system is set up for another purpose entirely.
Not to mention that the efficiency gap goal is only temporary -- because as voter demographics change from election to election, you'd need to redistrict constantly. And what to do about those pesky "moderate" voters who might swing back and forth? How do we calculate their "efficiency" or "gap"?
TFA gives a hint at some vague idea, but it's severely lacking in details or insight about it... not to mention lacking any serious "math" as advertised in the headline.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @10:44PM
Fairness is definitely not an outcome measured in simple party dick measuring contests, in the USA system. Regionalism was explicitly, deliberately baked into the system.
In fact, parties have no official, constitutional existence except as a nebulous consequence of freedom of association, but the states as units, with political interests, definitely explicitly were. Something all-too-conveniently forgotten ...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by rylyeh on Monday October 23 2017, @01:18AM (4 children)
No.
The efficiency quotient they talk about is based upon the fewest wasted votes, not the % of representation. You said you read TFA but methinks you didn't 'get' it.
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @03:32AM (2 children)
For example, maybe many people actually liked the new candidate even though they were voting for the other side before Then would the big margin in the new candidate's victory count as "wasted votes" and thus a sign of gerrymandering according to this system?
(Score: 2) by rylyeh on Monday October 23 2017, @03:42AM (1 child)
It could affect the way the boundaries are drawn, but this would not likely invoke a gerrymandering challenge as that involves manipulating the boundaries intentionally.
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @11:32AM
If no, why not (using the reasoning of this research)? ;)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 23 2017, @02:10PM
And, that "efficiency quotient" is complete and utter bullshit.
The laws never should have been written that give preference to either and/or both of our dominant parties. It would be perfectly alright if two or six enclaves around the country regularly voted Whig - and another dozen enclaves routinely voted Socialist, while another dozen voted Libertarian. If gerrymandering is somehow "good" for the two dominant parties, then it only makes sense that every other interested party be given special districts, which will vote for them.
IMHO, there should be no districts at all. A county should be counted as a unit, and every county counted equally. Congressional "districts" should be composed of some number of counties - whether that number be one, or twenty, or whatever. But, EVERY DISTRICT should follow county lines.
Every scheme that I have looked at is rigged to favor someone. There are no non-partisan districting schemes. Counties make the most sense, because almost everyone in the same county has overlapping and similar concerns. A district that cuts across several counties is entirely bogus, each and every time it happens. It is a case of the "ruling class" divvying up the proles between them. And, it has nothing to do with democracy.