ALL HAIL PRESIDENT TRUMP

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Donnerdrummel wrote:

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pneuma wrote:

I disagree with this sentiment, generally. Gerrymandering has very similar effects to financial leverage. By gerrymandering, you take on a lot more risk for amplification. This doesn't destroy competition, it makes the stakes higher.

By turning a mix of safe blue/red districts into, say, one red dump district and tons of slight-blue districts, you put yourself on the razor's edge. If even a few people change their mind, then you get a massive swing as all of the slight-blue districts go slight-red (in addition to the red dump district).

There probably are some districts whose population leans so much towards one party that trying to gerrymander it in a way that the OTHER party wins might be tricky.

This is what I'm talking about. The argument against gerrymandering is always that there is some "normal" distribution which someone with an agenda gerrymanders into an "abnormal" distribution.

I'm remarking that all attempts to break normality naturally lead to volatility, and that doing so brings risk. The abnormality may survive the risk, but a sea change can reverse the abnormality quickly into the other direction.

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Donnerdrummel wrote:

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pneuma wrote:

People also physically move over time, and it's not unheard of to move due to political reasoning (i.e. taxes too high, or job market too dry (due to policy), or religious communities fearing oppression, etc.).

Do you think this is a point for or against gerrymandering? Why?

It's that districting is naturally self-solving. When you gerrymander a district away from "normality", people reorganize themselves. I'm not in favor of gerrymandering, but I also don't think it's the end of the world or the reason for all of our problems.

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Donnerdrummel wrote:

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pneuma wrote:

Before I want to hear solutions to gerrymandering, I would first like to see the problem of gerrymandering written down in precise terms, since these too can change from proponent to proponent. If it's just some bogeyman hiding around the corner (much like "corruption"), then it's impossible to say if any policy truly solves it.

Democracy is a system of government where the citizens exercise power by voting. My vision of democracy is that every vote should count the same. gerrymandering, as is is currently fashioned in some areas, leads to not every vote having the same value.

If you don't believe that, educate yourself. If you don't think thats's a problem, feel free to elaborate on why.

We don't have a pure democracy in the USA, and I also don't want one like you're describing. I believe that states differ between themselves in the same country, and that things that work for one state do not work for another. I believe that cities differ between themselves in the same state, and that things that work for one city do not work for another.

When it comes to the presidency, I am okay with one big popular vote. There's one position for the whole country. That being said, we'd have to change the law first.

When it comes to legislature, I do not want one big popular vote. There's one legislator per... some division of actual land. I don't think that California has Texas's best interest in mind, or vice versa. I think that it is natural to make them argue and come to some compromise on federal issues that affect them both, beholden to their constituents, than to have them beholden to 50%+1 of the country regardless of where they live.

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Donnerdrummel wrote:

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pneuma wrote:

If the committee creates districts based purely on physical geography and it amplifies republican votes because democrats typically live in dense urban districts, did that solve the problem?

How could it? IMHO, gerrymandering can worsen or help alleviate the problems that are based in the "the winner takes it all"-principle. Geographical aspects may or may not be purely coincidental.

My point was rhetorical. What is the problem? You and I differ on the problem itself, before we even talk about a solution, and that's a much more interesting discussion.

I'm utterly uninterested in turning the whole country into one giant bag of federal-level voters and every vote into a nationwide popularity contest.

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MrCoo1 wrote:

This is pretty fascinating.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/02/us/black-president-nazi-group/index.html

Amazing coup!

This part is morbidly fascinating:

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Stern said Schoep, who ran the NSM since 1994, initially wanted to dissolve the organization, but Stern convinced him otherwise.

"I told him if he dissolves it, someone else is just going to get it and re-incorporate it, rebrand it. I said if you gave it to me, that won't happen, and at least you will know who has it."

So the head of the neo-nazi group wanted to get rid of it... but this guy argued to keep it around (in order to reform it/harass it from within).

In this case the ends may justify the means, but I can't imagine having to convince a neo-nazi to continue pushing their racist, anti-semitic drivel, even for a day.

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pneuma wrote:

I'm remarking that all attempts to break normality naturally lead to volatility, and that doing so brings risk. The abnormality may survive the risk, but a sea change can reverse the abnormality quickly into the other direction.

Not true, it just doesn't work that way. There is no way that gerrymandering can cost the party in power that did the gerrymandering more seats than what an even distribution would do. It just doesn't work that way. Remember, the first goal of gerrymandering is to pack all opposing party voters into the same districts as exclusively and as much as possible.

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pneuma wrote:

... The argument against gerrymandering is always that there is some "normal" distribution which someone with an agenda gerrymanders into an "abnormal" distribution.

My argument against gerrymandering is that whenever one is reassigning voting district lines, suspicions are raised that one's vote is getting intentionally devalued. And often enough, thats the case. This is undermining faith in democracy. I won't bother writing this in capital letters, but that's friggin' important.

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pneuma wrote:

I'm remarking that all attempts to break normality naturally lead to volatility, and that doing so brings risk. The abnormality may survive the risk, but a sea change can reverse the abnormality quickly into the other direction.

I am not argueing that voting districts, once set, should never be changed. You made the point that people are moving. This fact alone causes a need to have voting districts changed.

I am argueing that the "winner takes all" principle can lead to is bad.

I don't know the american legislation in and out. In germany, however, the party winning one election is able to pass laws if the Bundestag (roughly equivalent to the house) votes for them with 50% votes (Don't nag, there's more than one option, I know.). However, if said law conflicts with the constitution, the law is void - the constitution has to get changed fist. For that, 66% of the votes have to agree. 66% of the 2nd house (equivalent to the senate) have to agree, too.

These hurdles to legislature were integrated into the constitution for a reason. By allowing easy redistricting on the whim of any committee, or even house, the constitutional provisions can be voided if every voting district gets one voice, and if said voice basically gets determined by gerrymandering beforehand. That would be less bad if seats in each house got destributed by percentage of votes, and not by the "winner takes it all"-principle.

This principle is undemocratic.

Now, I don't think that many people would bother to move in order to change majorities. And by people moving and by people getting children, voting districts have to change from time to time. I get that votings districts have to change.

But how?

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pneuma wrote:

It's that districting is naturally self-solving. When you gerrymander a district away from "normality", people reorganize themselves.

Really? How many people do you know that are willing to forego their day-to-day problems and instead pay thousands of dollars to change election outcomes? Consider that, depending on the election in question, half of the populace can't even be bothered to show up and vote.

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pneuma wrote:

I'm not in favor of gerrymandering, but I also don't think it's the end of the world or the reason for all of our problems.

I am against gerrymandering if it is udes to help any certain party. I also believe that it has positive aspects. For instance, it can guarantees certain groups a voice in legislation. Germany, for instance has a barrier that at least 5% of the populace have to vote for a party for it to guarantee a spot in arliament. This 5%-barrier does not exist for the danish minority in northern germany. So gerrymandering has a purpose, but it can be abused, and I fear it is being abused too often.

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pneuma wrote:

When it comes to legislature, I do not want one big popular vote. There's one legislator per... some division of actual land. I don't think that California has Texas's best interest in mind, or vice versa. I think that it is natural to make them argue and come to some compromise on federal issues that affect them both, beholden to their constituents, than to have them beholden to 50%+1 of the country regardless of where they live.

I agree that there are aspects that each states should legislate on their own. I assume that you agree that there are aspects that need to be legislated by the whole contry.

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pneuma wrote:

What is the problem? You and I differ on the problem itself, before we even talk about a solution, and that's a much more interesting discussion.

So. Winner takes it all or not?

edit: an interesting podcast: Want Competitive Elections? So Did Arizona. Then The Screaming Started. https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/gerrymandering-podcast/

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Turtledove wrote:

As mentioned, this highly sophisticated gerrymandering means that a large percentage of our elected representatives are far more concerned about primary challengers than they are about the general election. This means they will be less likely to work to get laws passed or help the people because these kind of activities require bipartisan agreements and working across the aisle. This would only provide fodder for potential primary challengers, so is avoided.

Good point. Both the hilariously obstructionist House Republicans of the late Obama era and Maxine Waters' calls to harass Trump staffers while they eat, and other examples of Representatives behaving badly in the name of resisting Trump, are products of gerrymandering.

Rightwing news sites frequently make fun of Waters' Trump Derangement Syndrome, but it's worth noting Clinton supporters outnumber Trump supporters in her district at almost a 5:1 ratio. She faces absolutely zero threat of reelection from Republicans, so the only thing that keeps her up at night is whether another Democrat will challenge her seat. I'd go so far as to say that if she didn't regularly make news screeching some outrageous claim against Trump or her supporters, someone more than willing to out-crazy her would run for her seat and replace her. The system doesn't merely let her get away with it, it actively incentives her and compels her to act as she does.

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pneuma wrote:

I disagree with this sentiment, generally. Gerrymandering has very similar effects to financial leverage. By gerrymandering, you take on a lot more risk for amplification. This doesn't destroy competition, it makes the stakes higher.

By turning a mix of safe blue/red districts into, say, one red dump district and tons of slight-blue districts, you put yourself on the razor's edge. If even a few people change their mind, then you get a massive swing as all of the slight-blue districts go slight-red (in addition to the red dump district).

The relevant statistic here is that 84% of US Congressional districts are not competitive in terms of D vs R. Which means 16% are competitive.

I don't think I'm being to cynical when I say that it's safe to assume the system had been edited so as to maximize the gerrymandering effect — that is, minimize D vs R competition. And with their best efforts in ~100% of districts, they've been able to engineer non-competitive elections 84% of the time. That 16% where they have failed is, in my view, due to the type of unpredictability you mention.

If the system were redesigned for the polar opposite goal, I'm fairly confident we could make 75-85% of Congressional districts competitive. 15-25% of the time, I'd wager, people would behave unpredictably enough to overwhelm the margins of error and make districts intended to be competitive non-competitive. I have no delusions of infallibility, and if in some distant future districts were already 80% competitive and some crowd was rallying under the banner of "80% isn't good enough," I'd be right behind you on the impossibility of perfection.

However, let us not make this out to be something that can't be consistently achieved. The people intent on rigging elections have this kind of thing figured out fairly well; we can figure it out too.

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pneuma wrote:

there's a generally collectivist reasoning behind it all that I find distasteful. That you can presume to know how people are going to vote N years into the future based on how they voted in the past or the color of their skin or their gender.

The reality is that people do change their mind over time; certainly over a single 10-year census-driven redistricting period, but more generally over their lifetime. You can see it in real time right now comparing the political issues from even 2 years ago to the issues today, despite the districts staying the same during that time.

People also physically move over time, and it's not unheard of to move due to political reasoning (i.e. taxes too high, or job market too dry (due to policy), or religious communities fearing oppression, etc.).

Pneuma please. Do you really think gerrymandering is or has been a one-and-done process? They redraw boundaries for US House districts periodically to account for such changes. This occurs via acts passed by state legislatures (or in cases of particularly egregious gerrymandering, when ordered by the courts), so it's difficult to keep up with. I don't have data on the average time between redistrictings Nationwide, but the House district I'm in was redrawn in 2007 and 2013… probably due for another soon.

In the same way, redistrictings to keep races competitive would need to be a continuing effort.

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pneuma wrote:

Before I want to hear solutions to gerrymandering, I would first like to see the problem of gerrymandering written down in precise terms, since these too can change from proponent to proponent.

There are many problems with it, so emphasis naturally varies from proponent to proponent. However, the problem I'm focused on is noncempetition between parties and an overreliance on primary challenges as competition. Thus solving the problem requires oversight from those for whom their explicit and genuine goal is close races.

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pneuma wrote:

If it's just some bogeyman hiding around the corner (much like "corruption"), then it's impossible to say if any policy truly solves it.

RepresentUs's ACA anti-gerrymandering says that the problem is solved by independent redistricting committees, but which problem are they solving?

If it just so happens that the independent committee is entirely made of wealthy Republican business owners and they create districts that prioritize their issues and incidentally amplify republican votes, did that solve the problem?

If the committee creates districts based purely on physical geography and it amplifies republican votes because democrats typically live in dense urban districts, did that solve the problem?

Eh. In the latter case, I think it might be slightly better, but it's not really a solution. It's kind of like going from a situation where a fox is guarding the henhouse to one where a particularly idiotic but benign dog is guarding it. Purely geographical districts, for instance, would probably be less gerrymandered than what is commonplace now, but it's roughly equivalent to rolling a bunch of dice and going pure random. One isn't likely to achieve a truly competitive system without a bit of deliberate balancing effort.

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pneuma wrote:

To make my stance perfectly clear, I don't think that giving the job to an independent committee necessarily solves it, because I think the problem with gerrymandering is that it splits physical communities.

If I had my druthers, I would require any districts to not create lines that split houses on one side of the street from houses on the other. Within a city, industrial/retail districts, unoccupied spaces (i.e. parks), and large streets (i.e. highways) should be the primary source of the lines.

Suburbs getting cut in half is an absurdity, especially when it's very likely that suburb is already politically tied together due to HOA or covenants. Chopping a house or two from one side of the suburb just foments neighbor-against-neighbor division.

This would be roughly equivalent to saying that balance changes in Path of Exile shouldn't be complicated — or more accurately, should be grokable. And I certainly see utility in grokability, but when it comes to an actual confrontation with balance, wherein the most balanced solution is clearly not the most grokable, which one is higher in my value hierarchy? Shit, man, I don't know. Could we file that under "to be resolved later?"

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Turtledove wrote:

I would even go a step further to say that the whole point of gerrymandering is to make the votes of the party in power to count more.

Kind of. It's critical to understand that redistrictings are generally decided by state legislatures, so you need to look at which party is in power on THAT front. It's pretty safe to say that the Texas legislature has tried to gerrymander Texas districts to send Republicans to the House, while California has consistently done so for Democrats.

However, when a state legislature is contested — for example, each party controls one of two chambers — gerrymandering still occurs. The result in that case is usually safety for incumbents of both parties — that is, both parties agree to harden the system against change.

Amazingly, some don't even consider this to be gerrymandering — and perhaps it isn't, but if so I need some new term to cover it. Go take a look at the main image on Wikipedia's page on Gerrymandering, and check out the bottom left image, under "proportional out comes." 5 districts, each of which are so safe that there's zero chance of a challenge from the other party; 5 districts where those who win will appeal to the craziest fringes of their base and never come across the aisle for anything. THAT is the typical result of bipartisan redistrictings.

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pneuma wrote:

The argument against gerrymandering is always that there is some "normal" distribution which someone with an agenda gerrymanders into an "abnormal" distribution.

To be clear, I explicitly reject this pathetic normie reasoning. I don't believe the primary goal is maximum competition,not drawing borders in a "natural" way (wtf even is this?). I'd have only one problem with drawing some convoluted squiggly line of a border that achieves maximum competition in a district — and that problem would be if voters couldn't understand the boundaries (as mentioned above). And even then such qualms might not stop me.

The gerrymanderer's goal is imbalance, not unnaturalism for its own sake (it isn't modern art). My goal here is balance, not naturalism.

I want to thank Donnerdrummel and Scrotie for such fantastic long-form argumentation. I've been missing an outlet like this and y'all are wonderful people for engaging. :)

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Donnerdrummel wrote:

I am against gerrymandering if it is udes to help any certain party.

This is a secondary concern for me.

Districts come from land -- we're not divvied into buckets based on the first letter of our last names or ID numbers. At the very least, districts are constrained to the confines of a given state.

Take a look at this insanity from my wonderful hometown. There are extreme differences between urbanites in the middle of that cluster-fuck where the districts meet and the vast swaths of rural inhabitants in entire counties outside the city.

If we're to be grouped by land, then those groups should succeed in grouping by common land interests. None of the districts in the picture above do so. A single representative for one of those districts must forsake half of his constituents, regardless of which way he votes.

Creating a bunch of districts like those state-wide that "even out" such that the total comes out representative across party lines would fulfill your desire that the divisions not favor a specific party, and I would still have a problem with it because, on policy that affects land, some arbitrarily large percentage of the state would be denied a voice.

Regarding movement, I meant that the districts are self-solving because people lose their jobs and/or taxes get too high that they move out, or they're tired of high crime, and so on. They're not doing it for purely political reasons, but public policy absolutely had a part in creating the reason why they moved in the first place.

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To Scrotie, much of my argument applies. You care only that the representatives represent high-level party affiliation, by any means necessary. You want high competition because you want every seat to be a swing seat, where the signal from popular support to representative support is the strongest.

If you think that every issue in front of the House can and should be solved by popular referendum, then yeah, whatever districts you need to draw to have your representation match the popular vote is what you want. Really, you should argue in favor of replacing districts wholesale with "SSN modulo rep_count", then presumably arguing that states are an unnecessary division, then arguing that nations are an unnecessary division.

I feel something is utterly missing in this conversation. Where people physically live strongly determines how they favor different policies. Districts were created geographically for a reason.

It's certainly not about "artistry", whatever the fuck that means. It's about the reality that people that live near each other almost always have common interests.

House districts are redrawn every 10 years after the census. It is part of the USA constitution. So, the gerrymandering is refreshed every 10 years.

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pneuma wrote:

If you think that every issue in front of the House can and should be solved by popular referendum, then yeah, whatever districts you need to draw to have your representation match the popular vote is what you want. Really, you should argue in favor of replacing districts wholesale with "SSN modulo rep_count", then presumably arguing that states are an unnecessary division, then arguing that nations are an unnecessary division.

Wow. What a revealing response.

Gerrymandering is an issue that effects how responsive representatives in our national legislature are to the people. Unless I am to go so far towards states rights (or further, to individual sovereignty) as to advocate the abolishment of the federal legislature, this responsiveness is relevant. Caring about that responsiveness doesn't make me some useful idiot for a globalist agenda. I'm not contradicting myself when I say I want a federal legislature that better listens to the people AND a decrease in federal power redistributed to the state, municipal and individual levels. Hell, even if I was advocating Texan secession, I still could have an opinion on how those who don't secede might improve the federal system, although admittedly it'd be a mite strange if I was passionate on the subject.

I hate to tell you this, but I think you've descended to a Bill Maher "I pray to my nongod for a Trump recession" level of haterade consumption. As I've said before on this thread, I'm more for nationalism than globalism, more for state's rights than nationalism, more for city's rights than the state's, and more of an individualist than all of those. But I don't look at the federal system we have now and hope it won't fix itself, purely out of a desire to see it fail. If someone can make the US federal system, or the EU, or the UN, work, then I'm not going to let my predictions of failure cause me to wish ill on others, even as I predict ill will befall them. Just because I know globalism won't work doesn't mean I want globalism not to work. (Well, to be honest there's a part of me that does, but I'd still rather be proven wrong such that people prosper than proven right such that people suffer.)

Furthermore, you're looking at a more responsive US House as inherently meaning more, bigger government. Why? The constituent-to-representative feedback relationship is just that, a feedback relationship, not a solutions engineering process. The issue is that Congress rarely takes action on the problems we identify, even if that action is repealing old laws rather than creating new ones. No one's arguing for the abolishment of our republic in favor of direct democracy (excluding perhaps fringe loons). So why do you pessimistically assume that a more responsive government wouldn't better respond to you and likeminded citizens?

In summation, you're trying to have a strawman of my position ride down a slippery slope, and that is, to put it mildly, fallacious reasoning. In reality, even some alternate reality wherein slippery slope fallacies were by some strange magic valid, my position isn't even on that slope to slide down it.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

It is THE major problem in politics for the same reason monopoly is THE problem in economics — it destroys competition. Y'know, that motivational force that makes free markets work, competition. Noncompetitive elections are corrupt elections — literally rigged elections. Gerrymandering is election rigging.

I'm in a complete agreement, but you are looking too narrowly here.

People don't care about gerrymandering. People couldn't care less if the elections were rigged. They can complain, but at the end of the day if they don't vote, their opinion doesn't matter.

Isn't that the real problem?

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Second, I'm not trying to make things "fair." I'm trying to make them Darwinian, artificially so if necessary. There's no natural selection in a contest with a foregone winner. I'm explicitly about increasing competition, whereas your attitude seems to be "they already competed, leave them alone for a bit." As if the holder of a monopoly has earned it and therefore his monopoly shouldn't be broken up.

Well, gerrymandering is natural darwinian process of elections where people don't care about voting. Again, the fact that you artificial change something, just means it takes a while for gerrymandering to happen later in a different set of words.

People don't care enough to vote, so all that will happen is that billionaires and politicians will make a new set of laws, that will bypass whatever changes you are making. And they will PASS the new gerrymandering laws because people don't care to vote against them.

You see? All the changes you want to happen, get replaced instantly because people don't give a fuck to go out to the polls. They vote at best one or two times on it and then sit on their couch thinking the world's problems are solved.

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The reward is election, obviously.

This is like the same logic they had when the passed the death tax some years ago.

I forgot which state it was, maybe California, but they gave a tax so that if you had any money left over when you were dead, a percent of it would go to the state when you died if you had no close relatives or something.

The state expected an increase in revenue, but instead people just fucking spent all their money or gave it all away once they knew they were terminally ill.

People think passing laws will fix something, but instead all it does it make people do asinine stupid shit to get around it. Artificial solutions rarely work in reality when you don't actually put some incentives for people to actually follow them.

A real solution would be to

1) Lock in politicians for re-election as long as they vote with a majority of their voters. This means they generally vote along a graph that follows their population base. This way you can't get random scandals or random thing they said 10 years ago, causing them to freak out and people hating them all of a sudden.

This would solve gerrymandering, because politicians don't need to gerrymander if they are already secured re-election by following the annual census of opinion.

2) Give politicians a fuck ton of a money and assurances for their family so billionaires and special interest can't lure them with promises.

3) Have an official large support group of people who will back up politicians when they are taking political pressure or heat, so that politicians are mentally stable and rock solid in their beliefs.

Note that all my solutions are things politicians would want to have, and not only just the voter. You see, its a win-win for politicians to actually want the new changes and elect them in, themselves.

Instead of giving a big fuck you chaos, free for all, whoever gets elected, best only for the people, but not anyone else, lets pass new laws to fix everything approach.

It's a stable relationship, just like the ones politician's have with billionaires now. And works even if most people don't give a fuck about actually voting.

If you want to replace something. You have to offer something as good or better as an alternative.