SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the the-simple-answer-is-that-there-isn't-a-simple-solution dept.
The problems of gerrymandering are manifold, often debated and lamented. Now, a group of computational geometers from Tufts, MIT and others are working the problem from different fronts. From https://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/
The Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group (MGGG) is a small Boston-based team of mathematicians launched by Moon Duchin of Tufts University. Our mission is to study applications of geometry and computing to U.S. redistricting. We believe that gerrymandering of all kinds is a fundamental threat to our democracy.
Our goals are:
- to pursue cutting-edge research in the practically relevant applications of geometry, topology, and computing to the redistricting problem;
- to foster collaboration with researchers in statistics, supercomputing, law, political science, and other fields;
- to facilitate direct civic engagement by training scholars from a variety of quantitative backgrounds to serve as expert witnesses and consultants in redistricting cases;
- to educate the public, both through direct outreach and by helping college and high school teachers incorporate units on voting, gerrymandering, and civil rights into the mathematics curriculum;
- to build a diverse community of mathematically inclined people around the country and give them the knowledge and the tools to hold map-drawers accountable when 2020 comes around.
And from https://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/get-involved/
We are assembling a team of mathematicians, lawyers, statisticians, and active citizens of all stripes to work on practical metrics and solutions for gerrymandering in advance of the 2020 U.S. Census. If you're interested in joining our community, please fill out our Skills and Interest Inventory form.
For anyone that wants to get up to speed on this complex and important topic, https://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/resources/ is a page of links to a variety of related papers and articles.
SN discussed the math of the gerrymander back in 2014,
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/12/27/1148245
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday July 05 2018, @02:02PM (9 children)
We should just cut this Gordian Knot, and divide everything up evenly, indifferent to where people live. Split everything into 16 squares or something. It won't be fair probably, but apparently our attempts to make it more fair aren't actually fair either, so let's stop playing around. Maybe someone a few generations down the line will find a better solution.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday July 05 2018, @02:39PM
That would take a lot of bulldozer work; I live on the civilized side of the MIssissippi and we have more fresh clean water than we know what to do with, but the other side is a desert where they have kinda crazy sounding laws and regulations to deal with trying to live a watery-lifestyle in a desert.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Thursday July 05 2018, @03:17PM (7 children)
Or, just allow a non-partisan group of citizens (presumably formed of people with many different partisan allegiances, since non-partisan individuals are rare) to draw the lines with the express goal of fairness. It's worked wonderfully everywhere it's been tried.
Gerrymandering only appears to be an issue when politicians get to draw the lines themselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday July 05 2018, @04:45PM
Good idea. But it can still go wrong if the group of citizens are not a fair representation. Or are corrupt -- it happens. Or a majority believe that playing dirty is okay.
That said, it's still probably better than letting the politicians draw the lines.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday July 05 2018, @06:29PM (5 children)
Well, I note the new Study team includes Lawyers.
That's close enough to a corrupting influence to not need actual politicians (most of whom are lawyers already).
As you point out, this has become a basically a partisan task at the very heart of it.
So expecting the absence of partisans is too much to ask. Who exactly ISN'T partisan at some level.
I doubt your solution has worked wonderfully anywhere, and certainly not everywhere.
The basic problem is that the Size of the House of Representatives is fixed and each house member must have a similar sized constituency (without regard to land area), (Except even this requirement is waived in thinly populated states regardless of size, like Alaska.)
And you have to re-draw the lines every 10 years after the census.
So your suggestion that it has worked well everywhere flies in the face of the fact that this set of requirements is rather unique to the US, and it has pretty much of an issue since the beginning.
The earliest often suggested solution was to make all representatives "At Large" (state-wide) representatives, which means that they all become answerable to nobody except deep pockets, and they can safely ignore any group in the state.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday July 05 2018, @06:45PM (4 children)
You don't need an absence of partisans, just a balance of opposing interests so that the final result is reasonably fair. I believe the normal process, is to randomly select a handful of registered voters from each party, give them a map of geographical region to be partitioned, along with fairly granular population densities, and task them with drawing reasonable boundaries as a group. For added integrity make it like a jury - minimal outside contact while they do their job.
It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than letting politicians pick their voters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 05 2018, @06:51PM (1 child)
"Readonably fair"? What the hell does that mean? I seen some strange fucking ideas of fair come from left last 2 decades that take that fucking word and apply 1984 rules to it till it means the exact fucking oppisite.
Not that it really matters as any system you can devise the loser will claim is unfair. Trying to makes things fair is how we got here.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday July 06 2018, @12:07AM
I cut the cake in half, you get to pick which piece to take. Reasonably fair, though not perfect, since the person making the cut will be the "loser", and thus has every incentive to make sure the split is a fair one.
The point of using a representative sample randomly selected citizens, rather than politicians, is that none of them will be winning or losing - they don't pay the game. They're just tasked with drawing the lines on the field with insufficient information to stack the deck appreciably if they wanted to.
And no, we didn't get here by trying to be fair, gerrymandering has always been about leveraging current power to give your team an unfair advantage in the future.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday July 05 2018, @09:40PM (1 child)
And I believe you haven't got a single clue how this works!!!
If it was as simple as that, you'd just program it into the computer and let it draw lines.
Its never been that way. The last thing any party wants is a mathematical boundary line adjustment to suddenly flip "their" district from their party to the other. All machinations revolve around this.
Any outcome that leaves them with less seats is a bad outcome. Any outcome that gives them more seats is good. Nobody makes much of an effort to mask that basic sentiment.
If A district elects a 9 term Representative that happens chair an important committee, that is target number one on the hit list of the opposition. Even if it hurts that state as a whole to lose that chairmanship. (Whereas voters often cross lines to keep Reps with seniority).
One could approximate term limits by having the State redistricted by COMPUTER with only a few key program objectives:
Equal population +-x%, (legal requirement)
No district matches a previous district - kill them all, and let the voter sort it out, (Term Limit by proxy.)
Districts as contiguous as practical, (logistical consideration).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday July 06 2018, @01:11AM
Oh, that's absolutely how the politics work, not making the argument that it's easy to change how a corrupt system works, just that it's actually pretty easy to draw reasonable boundaries IF that is actually the goal.
Seems like the only place it could actually be put into practice is in places where a sufficiently united populace can change the law without the consent of the politicians.