It would be nice if we could get a constitutional amendment that would redraw all districts, regions, and precincts in simple squares and rectangles. It should ignore everything else. No favoritism. No gerrymandering. Nothing. If you can gerrymander in favor of one group then you can gerrymander in favor of another group. Take the control out of human hands. Just a simple algorithm. Once you hit either a certain number of people or a certain amount of land mass then that’s it. Make another zone. I’m tired of cheating.
redraw all districts, regions, and precincts in simple squares and rectangles…Once you hit either a certain number of people or a certain amount of land mass then that’s it. Make another zone.
If only it were a problem so simple a 5th grader could solve it. But people aren’t evenly distributed, and land doesn’t vote.
In reality, it is a very hard problem, but there has been a ton of scientific research on fairness algorithms in this space. We don’t need a solution from a 5th grader, we need a solution from all the experts on the subject that humans have to offer. The only reason we don’t is the same reason we still use FPTP voting: so that politicians can game them.
Didn’t they figure this out the first time two kids had to cut a cake?
Make sure the “out” group has to approve the gerrymander the “in” group drew.
If the committee that draws the maps is 75% red, the committee that approves it has to be 75% blue.
redraw all districts, regions, and precincts in simple squares and rectangles.
I think this is a terrible idea. You’re giving 10 people that live in one square as much power as 1000 in another.
I think the boundaries need to be based on population size.
That is also fairly trivial to set up- the rectangles just become fractals subdivided by population density such that every rectangle has close to the same absolute population across the entire US. Center each fractal origin area on city centers and census designated places with higher density and you’ll quickly build a fairly natural representation map that doesn’t wreck geographic area relations too much. Cool side effect is that this auto balances the number of reps to population size so you don’t run into issues where a district with 250k people has the same representation weight as Assfuck, Wyoming with 1.5k.
I bet a comp sci class could have this coded out and applied to the entire US in a couple weeks.
It’s perfect for an algorithm based districting. But so is ranked choice voting, and look how far that’s gotten. The devil is in the details I’m sure, but it is better than we have at fairly representing the us population. And until the us political system is razed to the ground and rebuilt, I’m not holding my breath.
Although, districting is a state prerogative. So maybe it’s possible is states with the least pressure from national political parties to maximize congressional seats. Like Vermont if they want to make a point, or maybe even New Hampshire if the libertarians would start acting like libertarians again.
Yeah the part where they stated certain number of people would make the shapes of various sizes, but is better than geographical size. My voting district changed drastically this election. I discussed it with a lawyer at the courthouse a couple weeks ago. He was given an address to the wrong courthouse. Drove to one south west of us. Yet when he drove to ours, he landed in my area, which votes in a district, far west of where he just came from.
Fuck it I’ll give reference. I live in Maury county now, he drove to Lewis county, but my area got dragged in trying to make the memphis area diluted.
Red area bottom (I live in Columbia Tennessee). Also where a country singer recently filmed a music video saying “Try that in a small town” (Jason Aldean) whom of course does not live on this town, county, or state. He’s from Georgia.
They are trying to dilute Nashville and Memphis while dragging our voting area across the state
Note that’s like a 200 mile change
I think you missed a key point that I was making.
You keep Increasing the area Until you either get to a certain number of people, or to a certain landmass. And I think you missed the word or in there
Let me explain this a different way for you.
Imagine you’re drawing a precinct in the middle of Utah. Obviously not many people live out there. So you’d have a certain amount of land mass that that precinct would cover. And once it gets to a certain amount of size you stop drawing. In other words, you stop increasing the size because it’s covered a certain amount of land mass.
Now imagine you are doing this in downtown New York City. Obviously, you would not be able to cover that much area because you would try to increase the size of the precinct and immediately cover too many people.
So in other words in downtown New York City, your size of your precinct would be smaller because you would hit the population limit for the precinct very quickly. But in Utah out in the middle of nowhere look at a current map of the precincts in Utah it covers a certain amount of land mass, but the very few people are actually in that area. Well, under my proposal when you’re trying to draw the precincts in Utah, they would cover more or less about the same amount of landmass that they currently cover, and then you would stop increasing the size of the precinct. Basically exactly what you have right now in Utah. But instead of oddly drawn precinct, you would have squares and rectangles.
This would not give an arbitrarily larger amount of power to fewer people. What it would actually do is make The way that precinct are drawn, be more fair.
Right now, what happens is Republicans can look in an area and say OK there’s a lot of Democrats in that area so we will do is gerrymander and split up the democratic vote. And they will also shove a ton of people in one area, one precinct, so that way you have eight hour long lines of voting.
What I’m proposing is a control on how many people can be in one precinct. So that way there is no such thing as an eight hour line. The maximum line on average would be about 35 minutes.
Now in places like Utah and Oklahoma the size of the precinct really won’t change very much. Going from what currently is to what I propose. I mean. The only thing that would change is the shape of the precinct out there they would become rectangles and squares.
The only thing this would do is eliminate cheating
If you divide the land into districts of equally-sized populations, each district would be more representative of the country as a whole, which means a white majority. Which means ALL of that district’s electoral college votes go to the party that panders to the majority.
In order for minorities to have electoral college power, you have to gerrymander districts in the first place so that local minority groups become a localized majority. No simple squares or rectangles.
Abolishing the electoral college is not a solution to this particular problem, either. If there are no districts and you go with a “fair” direct democracy, majority groups form terror cells to suppress the interests of minorities and prevent them from reaching the polls in a multitude of ways. See: the KKK for an example.
Every country ever organized faces this exact same problem. You simply haven’t heard about it.
There is strength in numbers and districts exist to give minority groups the ability to organize and be strong.
Direct democracies like Switzerland seemingly avoid this problem by being ethnically homogeneous. The global, border-free world of the future will not get this simplicity. America has always led the world in providing equality while allowing diversity. You’ve been duped into believing otherwise because those who hate us incessantly point out the flaws our free press shows while hiding their own problems.
The left’s problem is one of idealism. Today we can sit behind screens and see all the data and say “this is how it should be” without a proper understanding of how we got here in the first place.
In order for minorities to have electoral college power, you have to gerrymander districts in the first place so that local minority groups become a localized majority. No simple squares or rectangles.
But that also ensures the districts that minorities are excluded from will be entirely safe conservative districts that can elect outrageous extremists with no threat of them ever losing office.
It doesn’t ensure that reality, this is where we are at in delivering progress from that reality.
What if, instead of an unbiased algorithmic approach, SCOTUS encourages drawing districts which promote discontent in minority groups? How could that go wrong?
Sadly there is no such thing as an unbiased algorithm, every algorithm will be biased towards some form of outcome. Algorithms are just overtly biased as their intentions are more clearly defined.
And what say you of peer reviewed district drawing algorithms that are literally designed to minimize all provided sources of bias?
Something tells me when you hear the word “algorithm” you don’t think “math proof”, you think “recommendation”.
