(12-14-2018 06:01 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Gerrymandering by the party in power has been done by all parties for over 200 years. It is part of the spoils of electoral victory. Elections have consequences.

This is the argument you’ve made before, but it seems like a classic case of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. There is no perfect electoral system or solution, but good is better than bad and even mediocre is better than terrible.

Yes, elections have consequences, but to take an extreme example, if you win the election and then cancel all further elections, that’s a problem. And that does happen in some places. Or you have situations like Orban in Hungary and Erdogan in Turkey, where they change the basic rules to undermine democracy and strengthen their grip on power. Point is, institutions and norms are part of a stable democracy. I’d argue that we’re reaching a bad place in the US in that regard.

A concrete example: In Wisconsin, the Dems won the vote for the state assembly 55-45 or there about. That’s a pretty solid victory. But Republicans still won nearly 2/3 of the seats. So in this case, the election did NOT have consequences. A massive change in votes had a negligible effect on results. Not only that, but this legislature then proceeded to undermine another election result (the Governor’s race) by drastically reducing the powers of the governor. This is not how a democracy should work. We would probably not consider a country where this was happening a true democracy.

Is there an absolutely perfect solution? No.

Can we do much, much better? Absolutely.

One solution I’ve mentioned before is a hybrid system like Germany – they have districts where you vote for the individual and then also a vote for state lists, i.e. proportional representation. So 1) you get your own rep, 2) effects of gerrymandering are greatly reduced and or eliminated, 3) allows voters to voter for their party but also a specific rep who they may like (so I could vote for a Kasich or Hurd type Republican in my district if the Dems nominate someone I really don’t like, but still vote for the Dem list) and 4) gives third parties an opportunity.

But the commission and/or supermajority are still much, much better than what we have. I think Owl69 is also falling into the perfect being the enemy of the good here. A non/bi-partisan commission may not come up with as good a solution as good as a benevolent philosopher king, but could definitely come up with something more reasonable than when I was living in downtown Austin but still had the same representative as my wife’s relatives in Tomball in a district that was for long stretches literally just I-10. Not the gas stations on either side. Just the interstate.

Tanq, Lad, and Owl69, you all get yellow cards for trying to divert a rare constructive and not terribly partisan discussion. :-)

(12-19-2018 10:28 AM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  

(12-14-2018 06:01 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Gerrymandering by the party in power has been done by all parties for over 200 years. It is part of the spoils of electoral victory. Elections have consequences.

This is the argument you’ve made before, but it seems like a classic case of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. There is no perfect electoral system or solution, but good is better than bad and even mediocre is better than terrible.

Yes, elections have consequences, but to take an extreme example, if you win the election and then cancel all further elections, that’s a problem. And that does happen in some places. Or you have situations like Orban in Hungary and Erdogan in Turkey, where they change the basic rules to undermine democracy and strengthen their grip on power. Point is, institutions and norms are part of a stable democracy. I’d argue that we’re reaching a bad place in the US in that regard.

A concrete example: In Wisconsin, the Dems won the vote for the state assembly 55-45 or there about. That’s a pretty solid victory. But Republicans still won nearly 2/3 of the seats. So in this case, the election did NOT have consequences. A massive change in votes had a negligible effect on results. Not only that, but this legislature then proceeded to undermine another election result (the Governor’s race) by drastically reducing the powers of the governor. This is not how a democracy should work. We would probably not consider a country where this was happening a true democracy.

Is there an absolutely perfect solution? No.

Can we do much, much better? Absolutely.

Never said we needed a perfect solution. But you have yet to convince me that elected representatives are worse than appointed ones. IOW, I have yet to be convinced any of the proposed "solutions" are "good", much less "better".

The type of actions you mention in Wisconsin are not much different from actions we have seen in Texas previously, or in New Jersey, or North Carolina, or just about any state that has more than 3 electoral votes. Once again, by both parties. It certainly is not perfect, but until a proposal is made that is "better" rather than just "different", it is the best we have.

Odd that democrats had no problem with gerrymandering until the Republicans got strong enough to use it.

Do I resent that some districts are gerrymandered to protect some of our worst legislators? Sure do, although my list of "worst" is probably different from yours. But what to do is the basis of the thread.

District 18

You say we can do much better. How?

(12-19-2018 10:30 AM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  A non/bi-partisan commission may not come up with as good a solution as good as a benevolent philosopher king, but could definitely come up with something more reasonable ...

I disagree with that premise. First, I don't see any way to have a truly non/bi-partisan commission. Where do we find the necessary non/bi-partisan angels to staff them? Second, I simply don't see any reason to believe that unaccountable bureaucrats will do a better job. I like the supermajority idea better, but I still don't see any better alternative than proportional representation.

I am not as familiar with the German approach as you are, but that sounds at least conceptually reasonable. I will take a further look and see how well I think it would work.

(12-19-2018 10:30 AM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  I think Owl69 is also falling into the perfect being the enemy of the good here. A non/bi-partisan commission may not come up with as good a solution as good as a benevolent philosopher king, but could definitely come up with something more reasonable than when I was living in downtown Austin but still had the same representative as my wife’s relatives in Tomball in a district that was for long stretches literally just I-10. Not the gas stations on either side. Just the interstate.

That's not what he's saying. What he's saying is that the idea of a "nonpartisan" commission is illusory, because ultimately the party in power will always figure out a way to stack it with "nonpartisan" commissioners who favor that party. So his concern is not that the result wouldn't be perfect, but that it would be essentially the same result we already have, just cloaked with a transparently false veneer of non-partisanship.

It's hard to see how the appointment of redistricting commissioners would become any less partisan than, say, the appointment of Federal judges.

OO, who is talking about appointing representatives? If you are complaining about appointed positions, I've got bad news for you - our government is full of them.

But if you can't see the situation in WI as bad, I don't know what to tell you. I see it as terrible for democracy (and yes, I would if the parties were reversed) and can think of dozens of limits or guidelines that come up with better solutions.

Owl69, I personally have no issue with full PR, it's my first choice actually. But the idea of each of us having a single representative is pretty ingrained in the American mindset, so the German system seems like a more plausible compromise.

Also, you don't need 'angels' to come up with better districts. Split it evenly, give some basic guidelines and require a super majority in the legislature to pass it. Or any of dozens of set ups that have been proposed. You seem to love Bowles-Simpson - why is that case of a bipartisan commission OK, and everything else are just "bureaucrats"?

(12-19-2018 11:00 AM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  OO, who is talking about appointing representatives? If you are complaining about appointed positions, I've got bad news for you - our government is full of them.

But if you can't see the situation in WI as bad, I don't know what to tell you. I see it as terrible for democracy (and yes, I would if the parties were reversed) and can think of dozens of limits or guidelines that come up with better solutions.

Owl69, I personally have no issue with full PR, it's my first choice actually. But the idea of each of us having a single representative is pretty ingrained in the American mindset, so the German system seems like a more plausible compromise.

Also, you don't need 'angels' to come up with better districts. Split it evenly, give some basic guidelines and require a super majority in the legislature to pass it. Or any of dozens of set ups that have been proposed. You seem to love Bowles-Simpson - why is that case of a bipartisan commission OK, and everything else are just "bureaucrats"?

I meant the nonpartisan representatives to the nonpartisan apportionment boards.
who nominates them? Who appoints them?

(12-19-2018 10:28 AM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  

(12-14-2018 06:01 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Gerrymandering by the party in power has been done by all parties for over 200 years. It is part of the spoils of electoral victory. Elections have consequences.

This is the argument you’ve made before, but it seems like a classic case of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. There is no perfect electoral system or solution, but good is better than bad and even mediocre is better than terrible.
Yes, elections have consequences, but to take an extreme example, if you win the election and then cancel all further elections, that’s a problem. And that does happen in some places. Or you have situations like Orban in Hungary and Erdogan in Turkey, where they change the basic rules to undermine democracy and strengthen their grip on power. Point is, institutions and norms are part of a stable democracy. I’d argue that we’re reaching a bad place in the US in that regard.
A concrete example: In Wisconsin, the Dems won the vote for the state assembly 55-45 or there about. That’s a pretty solid victory. But Republicans still won nearly 2/3 of the seats. So in this case, the election did NOT have consequences. A massive change in votes had a negligible effect on results. Not only that, but this legislature then proceeded to undermine another election result (the Governor’s race) by drastically reducing the powers of the governor. This is not how a democracy should work. We would probably not consider a country where this was happening a true democracy.
Is there an absolutely perfect solution? No.
Can we do much, much better? Absolutely.

Would an appointed commission do better? Maybe, maybe not. I would think not, because I see no reason to believe that unaccountable bureaucrats will do better than elected representatives who are at least accountable at election time.

I think the supermajority concept has some potential viability. I would certainly have more confidence in a supermajority than a commission.

As far as protecting the worst representatives, I am like Tanq in that your worst list and mine are probably not the same, but any system is going to retain some on both lists. I still think the worst driver is the attempt to create districts that guarantee minorities can be elected, since they have to string together geographically disparate pockets on high minority population, and that forces not only gerrymandered districts but also gerrymandered knock-on effects for adjoining districts.

(12-19-2018 11:00 AM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  OO, who is talking about appointing representatives?

I think OO is talking about appointing members of your proposed redistricting commission. How else would you select them?

Quote:If you are complaining about appointed positions, I've got bad news for you - our government is full of them.

That is bad news--very bad news--indeed. The amount of power that our system has transferred from elected representatives to unelected bureaucrats is shameful.

Quote:But if you can't see the situation in WI as bad, I don't know what to tell you. I see it as terrible for democracy (and yes, I would if the parties were reversed) and can think of dozens of limits or guidelines that come up with better solutions.

Do I think the Wisconsin situation is bad? Yes, regardless of party. Do I believe a commission of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats would do better? Nope.

Quote:Owl69, I personally have no issue with full PR, it's my first choice actually. But the idea of each of us having a single representative is pretty ingrained in the American mindset, so the German system seems like a more plausible compromise.

The idea of each of us having a single representative is "so ingrained in the American mindset" that it has never occurred to me until this thread. I can assure you that when I lived in Sheila Jackson Lee's district for several years, I certainly never felt that I had any representative. If I had lived in a 5-member PR district with, say, 3 D's and 2 R's, both you and I would have had someone that we felt represented us.

Quote:Also, you don't need 'angels' to come up with better districts. Split it evenly, give some basic guidelines and require a super majority in the legislature to pass it. Or any of dozens of set ups that have been proposed. You seem to love Bowles-Simpson - why is that case of a bipartisan commission OK, and everything else are just "bureaucrats"?

"Split it evenly, give some basic guidelines" sounds reasonable in the abstract. But what is "evenly" and what are the "basic guidelines" and who sets them? That's where you need those angels.

And Bowles-Simpson weren't bureaucrats. Almost 2/3 were elected politicians, and Bowles, Rivlin, and Bruce Reed (all D's) were the only others who could be described as bureaucrats. And they had a supermajority requirement, which they failed to meet because IMO the threshold was set too high because nobody wanted it actually to work.

(12-19-2018 11:00 AM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  But the idea of each of us having a single representative is pretty ingrained in the American mindset...

Two current types of counter-examples are the Senate, and at-large seats on city councils, school boards, etc. And historically the House has not always had single-member districts.

(12-19-2018 02:51 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(12-19-2018 11:00 AM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  But the idea of each of us having a single representative is pretty ingrained in the American mindset...

Two current types of counter-examples are the Senate, and at-large seats on city councils, school boards, etc. And historically the House has not always had single-member districts.

General state district voting was only abolished in 1967.

Single member districts were only mandated in 1842 as opposed to a very widespread use of slate voting at the time. In fact, the Apportionment Act of 1842 was seen as a key issue in the 'then-ongoing' Federalist/Anti-Federalist debate that had festered since the Constitution..... and has been noted by some historians as one of the early rifts that presaged the Bellum era of the 1860's.

Sorry, too fing lazy to throw cites out that seem to be harped on and about lately.

I really don’t know where this is going to end up. I was reluctant to vote for Trump in 2016 because I feared 4 years of turbulence and chaos that would hand control of everything to democrats in 2020. I thought if we had Hillary and republicans could somehow hang onto the senate, we could ride out 4 years. I keep wondering if Trump has this card up his sleeve that he is at some point going to play to expose this partisan witch hunt. If he does, then one thing about the American people is that they don’t like unfairness, and I could see a significant backlash. I just don’t know and I’m not optimistic. Frankly, the prospect of four more years of Trump does not excite me, but that doesn’t scare me as much as four years of Bernie or Fauxcobontas or Spartacus or Kamala Harris or Robert O’Rourke.

Interesting take from a mathematician.

A quote that looks at it in a way I hadn't really thought about before:

"The opposite of gerrymandering isn’t proportional representation; the opposite of gerrymandering is not gerrymandering."

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019...kagan.html

(04-01-2019 12:02 PM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  Interesting take from a mathematician.
A quote that looks at it in a way I hadn't really thought about before:
"The opposite of gerrymandering isn’t proportional representation; the opposite of gerrymandering is not gerrymandering."
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019...kagan.html

Query--How does one "not gerrymander" while creating districts that satisfy the minority representation criteria in the Voting Rights Act?

Serious question. I don't have a clue how not to do so, and am hoping that someone else can actually shed light on the answer.

How is a political party a suspect class?

(04-01-2019 03:02 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(04-01-2019 12:02 PM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  Interesting take from a mathematician.
A quote that looks at it in a way I hadn't really thought about before:
"The opposite of gerrymandering isn’t proportional representation; the opposite of gerrymandering is not gerrymandering."
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019...kagan.html

Query--How does one "not gerrymander" while creating districts that satisfy the minority representation criteria in the Voting Rights Act?

Serious question. I don't have a clue how not to do so, and am hoping that someone else can actually shed light on the answer.

More fundamentally, what exactly is "not gerrymandering"? The article is cute but not very helpful. Unfortunately, the so-called "mathematicians brief" (https://mggg.org/SCOTUS-MathBrief.pdf) submitted to the Supreme Court is not much more helpful. (I've got a fair bit of experience in the not-easy problem of explaining technical issues convincingly to Federal judges. To be honest, this brief does a mediocre job. The two key technical ideas that the brief needs to convey persuasively are how a baseline for comparison is generated, and how a given districting plan can be compared to that baseline. But the explanations of these two key points seem mostly like hand-waving, which is disappointing. I believe that a writer for IEEE Spectrum or any number of lay-audience technical magazines could have done better.)

The bigger problem in my eyes is that unless you want to foster segregation, it's going to be very difficult for minorities (almost by definition) to ever get representation without some form of gerrymandering

Sure, there are big cities where minorities might have sufficient representation by choice within a zip code or other random delineation to get representation, but still, that is a form of segregation even if it is voluntary. You're essentially encouraging people to segregate

Maybe I'm completely misreading this article or the point the author is trying to make:

"My biggest worry is that, six months from now, we’ll get a decision that lets the gerrymandered maps stand, on the utterly irrelevant grounds that voters don’t have a constitutional right to proportional representation."

The article appears in a Left leaning (according to Allsides.com) publication, Slate.

Why would a left leaning publication be (indirectly) advocating for proportional representation?

(Which party is the largest proportionally across the US?)

(04-04-2019 07:29 AM)MerseyOwl Wrote:  Maybe I'm completely misreading this article or the point the author is trying to make:

"My biggest worry is that, six months from now, we’ll get a decision that lets the gerrymandered maps stand, on the utterly irrelevant grounds that voters don’t have a constitutional right to proportional representation."

The article appears in a Left leaning (according to Allsides.com) publication, Slate.

Why would a left leaning publication be (indirectly) advocating for proportional representation?

(Which party is the largest proportionally across the US?)

Well, the author claims not to be advocating for proportional representation (PR) per se; witness his defense of Massachusetts's 100% Democratic congressional delegation despite a voting populace of 65% D, 35% R.

As for which side is more likely to think it would stand to gain from a PR-type system, I'm guessing that would be Democrats, if for no other reason than that Republicans currently control more state legislatures (and thus have more control over the mapping process) than they do.