Comments on: Congressional Races and the Manipulation of Districts

By: decius

decius — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 19:23:00 +0000

Perfect districting would grant all of the seats to the party with a simple majority (assuming that the party candidates all follow the party line).

That would be 51% of the vote yields 100% of the seats.

Anything less than that is evidence that gerrymandering is not taking place.

By: Umlud

Umlud — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 15:23:00 +0000

One more example showing how different the proportions of the popular vote against the proportions of seats won:

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/11/chart-of-the-day-7.html

By: guest

guest — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 02:30:00 +0000

oh yeah well what are you gonna do about it

By: Yrro Simyarin

Yrro Simyarin — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 20:29:00 +0000

I always wonder what actually leads to better representation… living somewhere where 40% of the electorate did not approve of their representative, but there is a small chance that they might next time, or living somewhere where only 10% disapprove of their representative, but have no chance of replacing them.

In the second case they are a truer representative of the people, but in the first they have at least some incentive to consider pandering to bother sides.

By: Yrro Simyarin

Yrro Simyarin — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 20:25:00 +0000

Because there is an underlying assumption that local issues affect you more than global ones.

Whatever my opinions on the big issues, if someone wants to put a freeway through my front yard it’s probably going to affect me more.

The idea is that your representative is supposed to represent your community’s concerns, not just your ideological ones.

Whether that is still entirely true today or not, that’s the theory. I think I like it for more local state or city governance, but once you get to the national (and largely abstract) level, ideology might matter more.

By: Sartora

Sartora — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 17:19:00 +0000

I was referring to the “un-American” systems – though I was under the impression the UK uses a broadly similar first-past-the-post system as the US (and Canada), give or take some technical variations. All countries are known for election results that reflect the popular vote remarkably imprecisely.

By: OtakuOlga

OtakuOlga — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 03:49:00 +0000

California has 53 people in the house of representatives. Do you really think Californians should have to vote on 106 people (assuming each seat only has 2 people vying for it) every congressional election (plus more if the senators are up for reelection), or do you think people would be more informed if they only had to decide between 2 candidates every other year (again, ignoring third parities to simplify the math)?

Or are you envisioning an un-american system where you vote for parties as opposed to individual people? It is my understanding that this is the system used in England, but it is decidedly un-american.

By: nydwracu

nydwracu — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 00:14:00 +0000

In the wake of the 2012 election, gerrymandering has been covered with mostly Republican anecdotes, sometimes explicitly saying that gerrymandering is a Republican problem. It should be noted that it isn’t; gerrymandering is a natural result of the American system of districts.

The Maryland district map is an excellent example of gerrymandering on the other side of the aisle; and, unlike with the districts here, it’s completely implausible that the intent of the recent redistricting was to provide racial minorities with Congressional representation, since it extended the district that previously covered the rural, white, Republican counties in Western Maryland into parts of suburban, white, Democratic Montgomery County in order to get Roscoe Bartlett replaced with a Democrat.

By: nydwracu

nydwracu — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 00:14:00 +0000

Why not?

By: Yuuki

Yuuki — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 23:19:00 +0000

For ignorant like me this video does a nice job explaining gerrymandering and other problems with elective systems:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=s7tWHJfhiyo

By: Sartora

Sartora — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 20:27:00 +0000

“Intuitively” there shouldn’t be district-based elections in the first place.

By: oliviacw

oliviacw — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 20:03:00 +0000

Intuitively, congressional districts should be compact and contiguous, following existing political boundaries and natural geographical features. It’s amazing how far away from that philosophy you can get if you are driven by pure partisan politics.

By: LynneSkysong

LynneSkysong — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 19:56:00 +0000

I live near the Dayton area in Ohio. Since the big cities (Columbus, Akron, and Cleveland) are usually go to the Democrats, I was wondering why Dayton didn’t too… but as I look at the map, it looks like Dayton is split up into 4 sections, with a lot of rural (and most Republican) voters. Divide and conquer? It makes me wonder.

By: Mae Spires

Mae Spires — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 19:31:00 +0000

This is a pretty fun little way to learn more about gerrymandering: http://www.redistrictinggame.org/

By: Orion Adrian

Orion Adrian — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 19:08:00 +0000

Yes, several the democratic districts are majority-minority districts. Overall I’ve been pretty outraged by the Gerrymandering in our state.

Orion Adrian
Raleigh, NC