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Using geometry to fight gerrymandering

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IMO we should resolutely oppose efforts to limit "gerrymandering", with the same vigor that we oppose "fairness" and "equality", "climate change" and thousands of other meaningless political buzz-words. We must especially oppose those forces of technocracy which claim they have a technological means of nailing jelly to a tree. Although science is real, the contemporary slogan "Science is real" does not refer to that fact, it refers to an authoritarian premise, which needs to be identified and combated.

We do not need a technological solution to the problem of language.

(Hint: there is no "problem of language")

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9 minutes ago, Nicky said:

The reason why we don't want to stop gerrymandering and you do is because we're familiar with the methods being proposed to attempt to stop it...and you're not. 

Then please make a contribution. SK literally asked and your response is to troll. Your response is trivial, "if you knew what we knew, you'd know". Well, that's the point of a forum, and you know that. To see what others know. Don't discourage questions.

Edited by Eiuol
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12 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

Then please make a contribution. SK literally asked and your response is to troll. Your response is trivial, "if you knew what we knew, you'd know".

I disagree with your evaluation. In fact, I believe an intelligent person should find my post more informative than everything you've ever posted.

Edited by Nicky
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5 hours ago, SpookyKitty said:

Why do you feel the need to be so cloak and dagger about it?

Why don't you clarify why you think it is bad? Maybe that will be a start. I'm really curious why we should stop this.
Or, better yet, define what it is: objectively. That would be a huge step forward in this "conversation".

Edited by softwareNerd
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13 hours ago, softwareNerd said:

Why don't you clarify why you think it is bad? Maybe that will be a start. I'm really curious why we should stop this.
Or, better yet, define what it is: objectively. That would be a huge step forward in this "conversation".

Definition of gerrymandering- The practice of redrawing district boundaries so as to maximize the number of seats that the incumbent party gets in a state legislature and to minimize the amount of seats of the opposing party.

I didn't say it was bad. I just don't see any reason at all why it would be good, let alone why we should oppose any attempts to stop it.

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20 hours ago, Nicky said:

I disagree with your evaluation. In fact, I believe an intelligent person should find my post more informative than everything you've ever posted.

Aw, quit being so modest, Nicky.

What you really meant to say, "I know that even an ant should find my post more informative than everything mankind has ever posted, including the Library of Alexandria, Wikipedia, and even Sports Illustrated."

BTW how are those little social experiments of yours turning out? I'm glad that you're spending such an opportunity as motherhood to make kids who are just as nice as you are. Who needs politeness, amirite? I really want to meet your offspring someday (I don't).

Edited by CartsBeforeHorses
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On 1/15/2018 at 7:50 PM, SpookyKitty said:

Definition of gerrymandering- The practice of redrawing district boundaries so as to maximize the number of seats that the incumbent party gets in a state legislature and to minimize the amount of seats of the opposing party.

I didn't say it was bad. I just don't see any reason at all why it would be good, let alone why we should oppose any attempts to stop it.

The counter to that definition is the argument that there is no objective way to draw the boundaries. So, the definition above speaks to outcomes, but a good definition would be something like: drawing the boundaries in violation of this principle ... . But, then, what is that principle against which we can measure, to know if we have gerry mandering? 

One principle could be that the distribution of legislators in a state (or whatever other larger geographical unit) should reflect the distribution of their support in the overall population. If that's the principle, some European countries have that already, in the form of proportional representation. There are countries where voters specify their first, second and third choices -- again based on some principle about the outcomes of a good voting system. One has to start with some principle about the good system before " gerrymandering" becomes a useful concept.

If you start with the principle of geographic representation: i.e. where voters are grouped together by geography and where that combined geographical group makes some decisions as a group, then you would need to add on some second principle to distinguish between better and worse geographic slicing. Just looking at flat space, none of these three divisions of an area into flat space is better than the other, unless we can add some other principle to determine that.

gerrymander.jpg

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  • 9 months later...

 

On 1/15/2018 at 4:50 PM, SpookyKitty said:

Definition of gerrymandering- The practice of redrawing district boundaries so as to maximize the number of seats that the incumbent party gets in a state legislature and to minimize the amount of seats of the opposing party.

Under the Objectivist epistmology, it is a problem to propose a ‘definition’ for an anti-concept. But furthermore, this definition needs some correcting. First, the words is actually used without regard to which political level the redistricting applies to – it could be county, state or federal levels of government. Second, this isn’t a definition of gerrymandering, it is an empirical claim about a result of gerrymandering plus some other political facts. If the Republicans (qua majority party) were to redraw voting districts so that Democrats would most likely become the majority party, that too would in fact be gerrymandering, though it doesn’t satisfy the profferred definition of the word.

I propose that gerrymandering should be simply defined as any redistricting action that serves a political goal other than equal apportionment. If a state has 100 districts and a population of 7,405,743 citizens, then each district shall contain 74,057 citizens (there shall be rounding to accommodate the fact that districts are based on physical residences which can contain various numbers of people, and you can’t have 43% of a person assigned to each district). Any non-random assignment of geographical areas to districts is thus gerrymandering. This covers choices that favor one party over another; it also covers choices intended to increase or decrease the percentage of voters in a district of a certain race, religion, age, occupation, etc.

A computationally-heavy geometry-based approach could be used to choose between SN’s three graphs (but there might also just be three solutions, one of which is selected at random. Because of the population-remainder problem, it is virtually guaranteed that some districts will have 1 more citizen that others. Because (by assumption, open for discussion) the content of a district is a collection of physical addresses and an address can (usually does) contain more than 1 person, addresses need to be included in / excluded from a district in such a way to minimize differences in populations.

However, this does presuppose the principle of geographical representation, largely because it is constitutionally mandated.

 

 

Edited by DavidOdden
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