(08-07-2013 11:10 AM)S.A. Owl Wrote:  How can at-large seats be part of a solution if you still value minority representation? Are there safeguards you would build in to prevent, for example, a 51% white county from having an all-white delegation?

One approach is just to not really care. As an example: New England has 12 Senatorial districts (called "states"), each of which has two at-large Senators. All or nearly all of these Senators are white (for 60+ years, 8 percent of them were Kennedys). But since the district boundaries were NOT drawn for the purpose of favoring one group over another (even Kennedys), we just live with it, and we don't worry about whether the boundaries are demographically optimized.

(08-07-2013 04:13 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(08-07-2013 11:10 AM)S.A. Owl Wrote:  How can at-large seats be part of a solution if you still value minority representation? Are there safeguards you would build in to prevent, for example, a 51% white county from having an all-white delegation?

One approach is just to not really care. As an example: New England has 12 Senatorial districts (called "states"), each of which has two at-large Senators. All or nearly all of these Senators are white (for 60+ years, 8 percent of them were Kennedys). But since the district boundaries were NOT drawn for the purpose of favoring one group over another (even Kennedys), we just live with it, and we don't worry about whether the boundaries are demographically optimized.

Yes, George, we're familiar with how the Senate works.

But it's wrong to characterize the Senate as an "approach" -- it's just one piece of the "Great Compromise", as I'm sure you're aware. The big-population states never would've gone along with it without the proportional representation in the House.

(08-07-2013 05:05 PM)JOwl Wrote:  

(08-07-2013 04:13 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(08-07-2013 11:10 AM)S.A. Owl Wrote:  How can at-large seats be part of a solution if you still value minority representation? Are there safeguards you would build in to prevent, for example, a 51% white county from having an all-white delegation?

One approach is just to not really care. As an example: New England has 12 Senatorial districts (called "states"), each of which has two at-large Senators. All or nearly all of these Senators are white (for 60+ years, 8 percent of them were Kennedys). But since the district boundaries were NOT drawn for the purpose of favoring one group over another (even Kennedys), we just live with it, and we don't worry about whether the boundaries are demographically optimized.

Yes, George, we're familiar with how the Senate works.

Not everybody is. I would wager most voters could not tell you how Senators are apportioned, how many there are, or even how many states there are. Even less could tell you why. Think of Leno's Jaywalking. I will never forget the young lady who thought Alaska was an island because that's the way it is shown on weather maps.

Proportional representation in any of several forms solves a lot of these problems and pretty much eliminates the "need" for, or "usefulness" of, gerrymandering.

(08-08-2013 01:03 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Proportional representation in any of several forms solves a lot of these problems and pretty much eliminates the "need" for, or "usefulness" of, gerrymandering.

Agreed.

(08-12-2013 12:39 PM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  

(08-08-2013 01:03 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Proportional representation in any of several forms solves a lot of these problems and pretty much eliminates the "need" for, or "usefulness" of, gerrymandering.

Agreed.

Some examples, please.

The Supreme Court threw out strictly geographic boundaries generations ago in the Baker v. Carr, one man one vote decision. In fact,the U.S. Senate is the only body set on geographic grounds alone. "Gerrymandering" goes back to 1800's Massachusetts when Gov. Gerry drew up a district resembling a salamander. Whether it is pernicious depends on your viewpoint. In Souther states, the DOJ has been in the gerrymandering business for years to ensure minority representation of African Americans and Latinos. The GOP has taken advantage of that effort to ensure GOP majorities in adjoining districts. But in Dem states, such as California, the GOP has been hurt as well. Such maneuvering insures that incumbents are "safe" and that winners are ideologues with no incentive to compromise wit the other side.

Proportional representation would call for equal districts to have multiple representatives. That way, the argument goes, there would be no incentive to gerrymander as each political group would be insured of some representation. In theory, if one district was drawn to favor one party, such a drawing would cause the other party to win more in other districts. Ultimately, the percentage of reps from each group should mirror their respective shares of the entire state electorate. Critics argue, citing Italy as an example, that such elections would cause the splintering of political parties and unstable governments.

As bad as our current system is, I think proportional representation would be worse. The last thing we need is more fragmentation. Moreover, don't underestimate the ability of partisan political scientists to game whatever system is in place.

(08-13-2013 11:12 PM)NolaOwl Wrote:  As bad as our current system is, I think proportional representation would be worse. The last thing we need is more fragmentation. Moreover, don't underestimate the ability of partisan political scientists to game whatever system is in place.

This is where we differ. I think more fragmentation would be a good thing. In fact I think it's exactly what we need.

What I see now is republicans who are falling off the right edge of the political spectrum in order to placate their base of 20-25% of the population on whom they rely for funding, and democrats who are falling off the left edge of the political spectrum in order to placate their base of 20-25% of the population on whom they rely for funding, and nobody who represents the 50-60% of us in the middle who don't want to live in a theocracy or a socialist/communist state, or anything approaching either. And the current two-party, first-past-the-post political system serves as a huge barrier to entry for anyone representing us. Proportional representation would greatly reduce that barrier, and give a middle-of-the-road party a fighting chance to gain some power and influence.

Of course, there are other barriers to entry, including the ferociously expensive process which makes both parties financially dependent upon those whose views are so radical that they are willing to spend great sums of money to impose those views upon the rest of us. One other thing I would like to consider, for the house at least, would be to go to more of a parliamentary approach with snap elections that would naturally reduce the cost of obtaining a house seat. If you don't know when it's coming, you can't spend as much in advance. I would also 1) limit political contributions to individuals--no corporations, no unions, no PACs, no bundlers--with full disclosure on the internet within 10 minutes (if it was good enough for gas trades, it will be good enough for political contributions) and 2) put a spending limit on campaigns--no more that $X for each person who voted in the last election for that position. You'd have a definitional issue between political advertising and issue advertising. I'd say anything that names an individual candidate or party, or occurs within Y days (where Y is probably 90-120) before an election, is deemed political.

Even with these changes, my moderate party would still have a huge burden getting off the ground. But let's say it got 5-10% of the seats in the house. Let's say the house ends up 200 R's, 200 D's, and 35 third party. Who has the power then? Get to that point, and it would grow in a hurry.

You may disagree with my assessment of where we are. Those who lean hard left say, "Oh, I can see where the R's are off the chart to the right, but the D's aren't off the chart to the left," and those who lean hard right say, "Oh, I can see where the D's are off the chart to the left, but the R's aren't off the chart to the right." It's a perspective thing. Believe me, both partiers are way out of the mainstream at this point, leaving the vast majority of Americans no choice but the lesser of two evils. And it's getting harder and harder to find anything "less" about either evil.

Yes, if you were the ultimate authority, all things would be better! <g>. Unfortunately, both parties have vested interests in the system as it is. We all see the world differently and we move very slowly to change. But we do move. I still think working within the system is the best way to affect change.

(08-12-2013 01:20 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Some examples, please.

The most common type is the party list. Say Texas has 10 reps. Each party has an ordered list of 10 candidates. If the party gets 40% of the vote the first four candidates are elected, and so on. Or you could split Texas into two districts of 5 seats and the party would need to get 20% per seat. This gets to NolaOwl’s point about fragmentation. Israel, for example, uses the entire country as a district and you can get a seat with a really low percentage of the vote, like 1% if I recall correctly. But you don’t have to set it up that way. Number of seats per district naturally raises the threshold, and even without doing that you can set a minimum, like 5%, 10%, 20%. A number of countries do that.

One objection Americans might be likely to have is “but that gives parties too much power!” I don’t really agree but that’s part of our political culture. So the most common form I see proposed here is the Single Transferable Vote (STV) in which basically you rank candidates. People like this because you can vote for specific candidates, even switching between parties in your rankings, and I can see the argument for that, especially in a non-parliamentary system like ours. The political scientist in me just thinks it’s too complicated, asking voters to come up with ranked lists, and then all the various ways that needs to be counted. We have a enough problems counting first past the post! Anyway, you could actually do this system with a single member district – it wouldn’t really be PR, but you could vote for Green first, Dem second, or Libertarian first Rep second or some other combination. Or you could have more seats per district. Maybe you could have larger geographically coherent districts (Greater Austin, Greater Houston, Panhandle, etc.) and reapportion the number of seats based on the Census every ten years. Actually, I’m liking this idea better than I did when I started this paragraph.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote)

My original thought was something like Germany’s Mixed Member Proportional system, which essentially has single member districts but then additional seats distributed proportionally, so that in the end you get proportional representation, but people have their own rep too.

(08-13-2013 11:12 PM)NolaOwl Wrote:  The Supreme Court threw out strictly geographic boundaries generations ago in the Baker v. Carr, one man one vote decision.

They did indeed -- unnecessarily and constitutionally incorrectly.

(08-14-2013 05:41 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  This is where we differ. I think more fragmentation would be a good thing. In fact I think it's exactly what we need....

Plus term limits!

(08-14-2013 10:09 AM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  

(08-12-2013 01:20 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Some examples, please.

The most common type is the party list. Say Texas has 10 reps. Each party has an ordered list of 10 candidates. If the party gets 40% of the vote the first four candidates are elected, and so on. Or you could split Texas into two districts of 5 seats and the party would need to get 20% per seat. This gets to NolaOwl’s point about fragmentation. Israel, for example, uses the entire country as a district and you can get a seat with a really low percentage of the vote, like 1% if I recall correctly. But you don’t have to set it up that way. Number of seats per district naturally raises the threshold, and even without doing that you can set a minimum, like 5%, 10%, 20%. A number of countries do that.

One objection Americans might be likely to have is “but that gives parties too much power!” I don’t really agree but that’s part of our political culture. So the most common form I see proposed here is the Single Transferable Vote (STV) in which basically you rank candidates. People like this because you can vote for specific candidates, even switching between parties in your rankings, and I can see the argument for that, especially in a non-parliamentary system like ours. The political scientist in me just thinks it’s too complicated, asking voters to come up with ranked lists, and then all the various ways that needs to be counted. We have a enough problems counting first past the post! Anyway, you could actually do this system with a single member district – it wouldn’t really be PR, but you could vote for Green first, Dem second, or Libertarian first Rep second or some other combination. Or you could have more seats per district. Maybe you could have larger geographically coherent districts (Greater Austin, Greater Houston, Panhandle, etc.) and reapportion the number of seats based on the Census every ten years. Actually, I’m liking this idea better than I did when I started this paragraph.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote)

My original thought was something like Germany’s Mixed Member Proportional system, which essentially has single member districts but then additional seats distributed proportionally, so that in the end you get proportional representation, but people have their own rep too.

Another approach that I've played around with a bit is having 5-member districts. So if you have 25 representatives, you would have five districts of five members each. Each party puts up a slate of 5, you count the votes for all 5 and if there are two parties and one party gets 60% and the other 40% of the vote, then the top three individual vote getters from the 60% party and the top two individual vote getters from the 40% party are elected. Up to 3 parties could get representatives in each district, with the 3rd party having to get more than 10% to get a representative. You would need some pretty detailed rules to allocate votes, but other countries do it so it is doable. And you have an issue where the number of representatives is not evenly divisible by 5, but again, other countries deal with it so it is doable.

One thing I like about this approach is that the top vote getters in each party are generally going to be the ones with the ability to pull the most crossover and independent votes, so there will be a natural tendency to pull toward the center rather than the current tendency to pull toward the edges.

I don't see how these would stop the gerrymandering of districts. Party A would draw the lines to get the most advantage. Ten years later, party B would the same.

As an aside, looking at the shapes of Maryland, West Va., and Michigan brings gerrymandering to mind. Wyoming and Colorado, not so much.

(08-14-2013 05:26 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  I don't see how these would stop the gerrymandering of districts. Party A would draw the lines to get the most advantage. Ten years later, party B would the same.

As an aside, looking at the shapes of Maryland, West Va., and Michigan brings gerrymandering to mind. Wyoming and Colorado, not so much.

How it stops gerrymandering is that, using the 5-member example, most districts are going to be 3-2 no matter how you draw them. So it's really, REALLY hard to draw districts to accomplish what gerrymandering does. Once the ability to achieve that result goes, the incentive to do it goes.