Post by Rob Lanphier...
Much of the more recent discussion has shifted toward whether the
gerrymandering is really such a bad thing, and whether the electoral
college is really such a bad thing. Also, we've discussed a variant
of CMU's cake cutting algorithm. It's been an interesting discussion.
Gerrymandering and the electoral college apply to general elections,
when the choice is between two money-backed candidates, one from the
Republican party and the other from the Democratic party.
In contrast, U.S. primary elections are where, sometimes, a
reform-minded candidate runs against the money-backed candidate. That's
when voters have a real choice.
Alas, many people don't vote in primary elections, and -- even worse --
many voters fall for the trap of money being used to attract votes to a
"spoiler" candidate (away from the reform-minded candidate).
(The money to the spoiler candidate is likely coming from superficially
different sources, but if family connections and organizational
connections are taken into account, the spoiler candidate is funded by
basically the same sources.)
And then there's the "carrot" in the form of third parties trying to
reach a vote-count goal (such as 5% of the vote) that will give funding
to the third party. The people who created that law are probably
snickering at how successful it is in splitting votes away from
Democratic candidates (because no significant funding flows to
conservative third parties).
In short, the distraction of gerrymandering and the electoral college is
very successful in attracting attention from primary-election
unfairnesses, which go unnoticed -- in spite of voters recognizing that
somehow elected politicians are not doing what we, the voters, want.
Richard Fobes
Post by Rob LanphierPost by Ted Sternhttps://fivethirtyeight.com/features/hating-gerrymandering-is-easy-fixing-it-is-harder/
There's a link to a nice interactive map, which includes Brian Olson's algorithm as the "mathematical" solution.
Thanks for pointing that out, Ted! There are also a bunch of us over
on Facebook in "The Gerrymandering Project" discussion group over on
http://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/the-gerrymandering-project/
...and click on "Join the discussion". There was a complaint there in
the past week or so about how the proportional representation
advocates seemed to have taken over the place. There was a suggestion
that maybe there was a better forum to talk about proportional
representation (and I was tempted to suggest this mailing list).
Much of the more recent discussion has shifted toward whether the
gerrymandering is really such a bad thing, and whether the electoral
college is really such a bad thing. Also, we've discussed a variant
of CMU's cake cutting algorithm. It's been an interesting discussion.
Rob
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