Error in the editorial: Republicans didn't exist when Gerry came up with the gerrymander. So.. No. He didn't do it to help republicans.

Thanks to the overt gerrymandering in MD, IL, CT, NJ, CA, and NY, all controlled by democrats, I'd argue that this article is meretricious.

I am all for an independent commission, although I always wonder how you choose members who are truly independent? I feel like everyone has some bias.

Personally, I would prefer to use a machine to draw districts to be as compactly shaped as possible. I think that's the only way to remove human bias. The compactness of a district can be objectively measured based on its shape.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic-Republican_Party

The article probably should have clarified a bit. The Democratic-Republican Party was known at the time as the Republican Party and was founded in 1792, dissolved in 1834.

It was also known as the Jeffersonian Republican Party, the ticket under which Elbridge Gerry was elected VP. So he very much was trying to help "Republicans."

Eli5 why this is a thing? Why isn't it just by town?

Some towns aren't large enough to get a representative of their own, because the voting has to be even by humans-per-representative. So a town of 15 people doesn't get the same representation as a town of 15,000 people. Therefore they need to draw districts allocating people to different areas that one person will represent in the legislature. They have to give a rep to any town big enough to merit one of their own.

Thanks.

I would imagine the process for selecting independent members for redistricting would have to work similarly to jury selection where they look for people who might have ties to the case and keep picking until both prosecution and defense (or in this case, interested political parties) are reasonably satisfied with the choices

Obviously this isn't perfect either, but is probably as close as we're likely to get

The NH Constitution requires that any town large enough to qualify for a representative of its own has to get one - if the town has at least 1/400th of the state population, it has to get a rep. That makes the algorithmic solutions harder.

I would favor 'open period for anyone to submit maps, and the constitutionally-compliant map with the shortest total length of district boundaries is automatically adopted.' Make it open to absolutely everyone and have a simple nonpartisan mathematical formula that specifies which map wins.

Alternatively, do away with districts and just use proportional representation so whichever party gets the most votes gets the most seats.

> Personally, I would prefer to use a machine to draw districts to be as compactly shaped as possible.

There was a good YouTube video demonstrating the use of a computer program to generate compact gerrymandered districts.

In general, there's no such thing as delegating to an unbiased computer. Instead you're giving the control to biased computer programmers and pretending they aren't in control of what the computer does.

> I always wonder how you choose members who are truly independent?

You can't. Again, you'll have whatever bias the people who appoint the commission have.

I'd love that link if you can find it.

When it comes to proportional representation, do you still have a representative that is local to you? I am not sure how that whole process works.

Honestly it's something everyone likes to talk crap about but actually fixing it is not really something that can be done. I remember when they tried a "non partisan commission" in NC and it was just as partisan as any map from the state legislature

Pretty sure it's this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq-Y7crQo44

Other states seem to have figured it out? I don't think you'll ever get a 50/50, but I think we can agree that states like Ohio and Florida have just gone batshit crazy. Even NY when they tried gerrymandering the other way, the "Democratic" Court said "no, this is wrong, you can't do this." So I don't think it's hopeless.

I worked for a computer mapping company in the 90's that developed a redistricting application for the purpose of modelling based on specific criteria like compactness, population density, etc. Of course, the intent was to provide a tool specifically to gerrymander within the legal constraints of district formation rather than to create unbiased maps because no one wanted to buy a solution that provided a fair and equitable solution. Clearly the technology has evolved considerably since then, but the underlying assumptions have not. Bias is a function of data, not software. In the absence of any data related to party affiliation, past voting records, etc. it certainly is possible to generate districts using a program which would be absent of political bias. It will never happen, not because of programmers, but because politicians are usually opposed to anything which would potentially loosen their grip on power and control.

So a state that is roughly fifty red and blue should have roughly fifty fifty congressional representation in the US House? That’s good to know.

Selecting districts without knowing the underlying political data is the same as creating random political districts. It kind of sounds good, but it's not what anyone actually wants - imagine if NH selected random districts that just happened to be even more biased than the current districts.

Probably the fact that there's no way to select good districts should result in abolishing district-based representation entirely. They're a remnant of democratic government design from before people really understood that political parties were an unavoidable thing - better to accept reality and do something like proportional representation.

Interesting video. I understand the point, but I still think if you had the software draw districts only taking population layout into account and ignoring the voting patterns you could call it unbiased.

"not sure why some (like the Guv) are so opposed to it"

Ooh, this one's easy, because when you gerrymander districts it makes it easier to get rid of competition and retain party control, even when you're not supported by the majority of the electorate. (Take a guess which party poured more resources into gerrymandering... it's not the one that supports independent commissions, which is what we should have.)

Three problems:

1. Nobody actually wants unbiased districts, because they're exactly the same as a random bias. Maybe people will support the idea until they see the resulting maps, and then it will immediately become a partisan issue based on whatever bias the maps have. The compromise is generally "representative" districts, which is just an intentional gerrymander for some characteristic that benefits the team pushing for it.
2. When asking a computer to generate an unbiased answer, it's always easy for the programmers to cheat and generate an answer that appears unbiased by any arbitrary criteria and yet still has the bias they want. This turns out to be exactly the thing that programmers are trained to do. They can use population data? Population density is a proxy for party. They can use racial data to comply with VRA requirements? Race is a proxy for party. None of that? Well, they ran the numbers offline and determined that (coincidentally) whether zip code is divisible by 5 is a proxy for party and happened to use that as part of a random number generation formula.
3. In the end the basic premise of having representatives for geographic districts is innately flawed in a two party system. It doesn't do the thing it's supposed to do, and instead provides a mechanism whereby the politicians get to pick their voters instead of the other way around.

One can dream, right? What a concept.

> imagine if NH selected random districts that just happened to be even more biased than the current districts.

Seems like they could redraw them regularly by computer to balance that out.

To me, it seem like the easiest way would be; if the Repubs get 49% of the votes, they get 49% of the representatives. Same with every other party. Of course, it would be necessary to adjust so that a single representative wasn't supposed to represent 49% Republicans, 49% Democrats, and 1 % Independents.

Someone gave me the term, "proportional representation." But you just know that neither Democrat or Republican party leaders want to share power with, say, the Green Party. Winner-take-all excludes that, so they won't be putting anything like it in a referendum any time soon.

All districts should be as close to a recognizable shape as possible, preferably square shaped

Depends on the implementation. You would generally not have a geographically-designated representative, but you would have representatives from your party of choice who would represent your interests, and if your party is large enough to be statewide, they likely would assign representatives geographically, or something like that. But you could also do proportional representation by county, in which case you'd have multiple representatives from your county but none specifically attached to your town.

Shortest splitline seemed like it was a decent enough solution.

> Seems like they could redraw them regularly by computer to balance that out.

One of the key points in this thread is that redrawing districts by computer makes things worse rather than better.

> To me, it seem like the easiest way would be; if the Repubs get 49% of the votes, they get 49% of the representatives.

A couple more steps in that direction gets you to proportional representation, which would be a significant improvement.

One of the key points that I read in this thread is that computers work fine. I'm thinking that it might take a few iterations to work the kinks out, until all parties agree that it's as fair as possible. But it has to be better than putting up with, or worrying about, human partisanship.

And, I didn't have that term, proportional representation, but that's what I was basically trying to describe.

So does the party choose the candidates who would represent a county or are voters able to have input?

> One of the key points that I read in this thread is that computers work fine.

Then you've horribly misunderstood both the problem to be solved and the mechanisms proposed to solve it. Unless by "computers work fine" you mean "computers are the perfect tool to generate gerrymandered districts".

Computers aren't magic devices that take humans out of the equation. They do exactly what specific humans program them to do in a way that makes it very difficult for even experts to confirm exactly what the computer is doing or why.

Gerrymandering actual leads to more candidates on the fringe. Although the Republicans have struggled to attract good candidates. The last R-elected Senator was Ayotte who was a Centrist. She was relentlessly attacked for being a RINO and had a far right third party candidate get 2k votes in the election that she lost by 500 votes. So yes NH is evenly split but prefers Centrists like Sununu and Hassan to extremists like Bolduc and Mesner.

The state court in NY then appointed a special master that created 4 districts more favorable to R’s this is why they just one 4 seats in NY.

Yup.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/28/nyregion/jonathan-cervas-redistricting-maps-ny.html

Shortest splitline is a clever gimmick but probably not super useful for real life. Sometimes there really are natural (e.g. rivers, mountainsides, etc. etc.) or cultural boundaries that should be respected.

Better would be to get rid of single-seat districts entirely and elect representatives using proportional representation. This is the only way to conclusively eliminate gerrymandering

Yes, definitely. This is the basis of proportional representation. Check out activist groups like Fix Our House who are lobbying for this reform.

It depends on the exact implementation.

A common one internationally is called "open-list." You vote for a candidate and your vote counts for both that candidate and for their party.

Seats are awarded to parties based on how many votes they get, then parties send candidates to fill those seats based on how many votes each candidate in the party got.

Alternatively could be implemented as STV, which is used in Cambridge, MA and Minneapolis, is also used in a number of cities in AU, NZ, Scotland, and Wales, and just passed ballot initiatives for future use in Portland, ME and Portland, OR. That version has voters rank candidates (without necessarily any regard for parties) and then selects winners proportionally based on the rankings.

I support proportional representation.

I would say that geographies features would be necessary border conditions

I still think we need to, as a nation, have a more honest conversation about what exactly districts are intended to be. Is a district supposed to be geographically compact, or is it supposed to represent specific populations? Is it supposed to align with the geography, or should it be more geometric? Is it bad to have a district that's intended to align with, say, a specific immigrant or minority population? Is it bad to have a district designed to represent an agricultural region vs. a manufacturing one?

I don't know the answers to those questions. Gerrymandering sucks, but I don't think we can solve it until we can talk more clearly about what we think districts are supposed to look like.

It can be done, but the state constitution needs to empower it. My last state has a true bi-partisan districting commission made up of 6 people, 2 appointed from each of the state majority and minority parties in the house and senate, and 1 appointed by each party state chair. It always yields 3 GOP and 3 Dems and prevents any serious gerrymandering. Only reason it's like this is because it's in the state constitution and the GOP supermajority hasn't tried amending it....yet.

What state?

ID