Supreme Court outlaws gerrymandering

Derek Jackson · May 29, 2006

Up to now the Court has tended to leave legislators to rig bounderies almost no matter how outragous unless it is for purposes of representation of minority ethnic groups,

Is there, or has there ever been, a possiblity of the Court saying the gerrymandering effectively denies voters meaningful choices and that the very effect of this is to leave voters without a political way of changing things.

I think that there is a plausable case that the way boundaries are drawn now breaches the 14th and maybe 15th amendments

Max Sinister · May 29, 2006

I don't know whether you could prove that, but it would help the US a lot.

I wonder how you can make it a law... maybe like that: The border of a state / county grows with the square root of the size. So if the border exceeds the limit of X multiplied with the square root of the size of that state / county, it's a case of gerrymandering and thus illegal.

Steffen · May 29, 2006

Hm, the chance I see is a proportional voting system with rather large voting districts,
or the reason which keeps the problem at bay in the german state I live in: -the size of the constituency is essential to the chances of getting elected, so the state government feels obliged to redraw the boundaries every 4 years because otherwise the Staatsgerichtshof would declare the election null and void and that´s a political death of first grade.

Anthony Appleyard · May 30, 2006

A similar system works OTL in Britain.

oberdada · May 30, 2006

Gerrymandering Berlins city districts in the late nineties had a huge impact on the 2002 election.
The voting districts for the Federal elections were formed basicly acourding to the city districts.
This weakened the PDS (former East German ruling party)
so much, that they did not make it into the Federal parliament, saving the Socialdemokratic-green coalition.

Gerrymandering is evil and should be outlawed, although we don't talk about things like that in Germany.

Steffen · May 30, 2006

well, it isn´t gerrymandering unless the court says it is, and placing the constituency boundaries according to the administrative boundaries has several advantages.

Chrispi · May 30, 2006

oberdada said:
Gerrymandering Berlins city districts in the late nineties had a huge impact on the 2002 election.
The voting districts for the Federal elections were formed basicly acourding to the city districts.
This weakened the PDS (former East German ruling party)
so much, that they did not make it into the Federal parliament, saving the Socialdemokratic-green coalition.

Gerrymandering is evil and should be outlawed, although we don't talk about things like that in Germany.

Agreed, systems like MMP can be used to gerrymander very small parties out of existence, to the benefit of the larger parties. That's why, if gerrymandering is outlawed, Germany's electoral system would not be used here.

Personally, I prefer an electoral method that I've invented: cross-proportional representation. Every member under CPR is elected from single-member districts, as well as being elected from a party list that is determined by the electorate as a whole, not party bosses. How can this be? The party list is determined from the district results!

The sum of the rows are how many people voted in each district, and seats are distributed proportionally among the districts. The sum of the columns are how many people voted for each party, and seats are distrubuted proportionally among the parties. The top m seats in each district win, just like in good ol' first-past-the-post. The top n seats in each party win, just like in list proportional representation. OOPS! The two sets don't match!

Here's my innovation: for a candidate to be elected, one must win both in the district and the party. These candidates are called double winners. Then, if all the seats allocated to a district or party are filled, that district or party is crossed out. This process is repeated on ever-reducing sets of candidates until every district and every party seat is filled simultaneously!

The upside of CPR? Unlike MMP, it has an 80%+ agreement with first-past-the-post and yet is fully proportional! The downside? Swing districts get saddled with representatives from smaller parties!

Tom_B · May 30, 2006

The greatest impact of an end to gerrymandering is the current huge advantage for House incumbents would be greatly reduced though not completely eliminated.. You would see bigger election swings in the House. You would also see greater influence of $$$ on the elections as safe seats are no longer safe there is a need to raise big bucks to defend them.

Raymann · May 30, 2006

You can't just say "no gerrymandering" (god I hate that word!).

1. Districts have to be close in size within a state for representation to be fair. So when the population grows or moves the district has to move also.

2. Someone has to make that choice. The last thing we want is someone from out of state drawing the lines that affect our lives where we live.

Now the ability for the states to decide their own districts is clearly completely under their purview under the constitution. After Lawerence v. Texas and Kelo v. New London I have zero faith in the Supreme Court to decide on the constitutionally of an issue and in fact, the Southern states are already kneetowing to the fed by having to submit all proposed changes to them, have been since the 60's.

In the end, I support the current system. It allows for a pluerality to be reached. It creates districts where the guy that's supposed to be representing you is actually representing you. Cut it any other way and you could end up with really devisive districts.

I've worked for my parish government back in Louisiana, I recommend for everyone to actually go to a city or parish (county) government meeting on a controversal issue. You will realize really fast that sometimes fences make the best neighbors and when you have two groups that are not going to see eye to eye, being able to put them in different districts is sometimes the best way to deal with them.

Electric Monk · May 31, 2006

Or...

Give a outside observer who knows nothing about the state the following (paraphrased from here):

(a) money
(b) two weeks
(c) a map of the state showing county and city boundaries, plus dots representing the approximate location of groups of 100 people
(d) the number of seats in the states congressional legislation plus the total population of the state
(e) a red magic marker.
Said outside observer could then divvy up the state in equal portions. It wouldn't reflect the character of the state, but since our outside observer would know nothing the result would be blind and, thus, fair.

The current US system results in silly things like the Austin showdown referenced in the post I paraphrased from above. I'm not focusing on a particular party by the way, they both do it with gleeful abandon.

The US really needs an independent non-partisan body to draw these lines (like Elections Canada) because seriously, letting the parties do it themselves can best be seen as utterly insane. I mean c'mon, the governing party choosing who elects it?

Chrispi · May 31, 2006

Raymann said:
You can't just say "no gerrymandering" (god I hate that word!).

No gerrymandering!

Max Sinister · May 31, 2006

@Raymann: Moving borders of constituencies being necessary is one thing. Gerrymandering another. As I said, if the border of a constituency is way longer than necessary in relation to its size, anyone can see that someone has done gerrymandering.

Thande · May 31, 2006

Anthony Appleyard said:
A similar system works OTL in Britain.

Yet there are concerns that it is currently unbalanced in favour of Labour, mostly because of urban constituencies being even smaller (and thus, more of them) than one might expect on grounds of population density.

Chrispi · May 31, 2006

It's not just gerrymandering

It's also the evils inherent in first-past-the-post. Take this electoral result for a city council fought between two parties for five seats:

Dist. A B
1: 68 32
2: 61 39
3: 51 49
4: 21 79
5: 19 81
---------------
Tot: 220 280

FPTP would give three seats to Party A and only 2 seats to Party B, in spite of the fact that B got more votes overall than A. PR, on the other hand, would give only 2 seats to Party A and 3 seats to Party B, as one would expect in an equitable system.

Derek Jackson · May 31, 2006

Any first past the post election can result in deep injustice. I was elected one of 27 Liberal Democrat Councillors in Brent on May 4th. We polled 29%; The tories (Conservative Party) got 29.5% and 15 seats an Labour got 37% and 21 seats on Brent Council.

However deliberate gerrymandering is a different issue. Boundaries in the UK and I think most democracies with first past the post are drawn by relatively independent Commissions.

In most US state boundaries are drawn openly and ruthlessly by politicians.

You could make a case for a Proportional System being needed to give full effect to the 14th and 15th amendments. I think that the Court would have to be VERY brave to do that

Max Sinister · May 31, 2006

@chrispi: And where gerrymandering isn't forbidden / made impossible / made by independents, not politicians, exactly that situation will happen. Party A comes once to power, gerrymanders a bit, and puts sure that it will stay in power.

Friendly Otter · May 31, 2006

Hey, and idea for an AH: what if the U.S. had had a proportional electoral system?

I'll have most of the board against me on this one I suppose, but....

I live in Sweden, and we have proportional representation. A party gets 15 percent of the votes, it gets 15 percent of the 349 seats in the Riksdag (parliament), as it should be. You have to get more than 4 percent of the votes though, this to ensure you won't have a plethora of tiny parties. (Don't really like that...the minimum should be 1 percent, I think.)

When you have a system with representation for a region, however, the electoral process is grossly distorted. E.g., suppose party A gets 25 percent of the votes in all districts, whereas party B gets 21 percent, party C 20 percent, party D 20 percent, party E 14 percent. You get a second round between A and B in every district, and A wins them all with a small margin. Voilà! Party A has 100 percent of the seats in parliament, even though it is only supported by 25 percent of the population!

My point is: regional representation means the votes of the losers in a district are thrown away: they won't be represented this electoral period. Only the winners will be.

Imagine to live in a country where you're not represented by anyone in parliament, even though you voted ... imagine if it would happen again and again ... smaller parties are quickly strangled, and you are left with just two or maybe three big ones, who as luck would have it are all too pleased with this system....

No wonder less and less people vote in such nations! No wonder people lose interest and feel frustrated. I would be frustrated as h e l l.

In my opinion, proportional representation is the only democratic way to go. Throwing away the votes of the losers, leaving them without representation, is not democratic.

Funnily, both of the two largest parties in Sweden have considered changing the constitution to regional representation. The prime minister has said that it would "strengthen democracy," lying that people in a region would feel closer to their MP. As if the MP wouldn't simply represent the people who actually voted for him, not his ideological enemies.

Wendell · Jun 1, 2006

Derek Jackson said:
Any first past the post election can result in deep injustice. I was elected one of 27 Liberal Democrat Councillors in Brent on May 4th. We polled 29%; The tories (Conservative Party) got 29.5% and 15 seats an Labour got 37% and 21 seats on Brent Council.

However deliberate gerrymandering is a different issue. Boundaries in the UK and I think most democracies with first past the post are drawn by relatively independent Commissions.

In most US state boundaries are drawn openly and ruthlessly by politicians.

You could make a case for a Proportional System being needed to give full effect to the 14th and 15th amendments. I think that the Court would have to be VERY brave to do that

That would be quite a stretch on which to base a ruling. Why not have the Congress introduce an amendment to initiate the reform?

oberdada · Jun 1, 2006

Friendly Otter said:
Hey, and idea for an AH: what if the U.S. had had a proportional electoral system?

Countries with proportional electoral systems tend to have lots of paties in parliament, with a result of not very stable Governments, unless it is somehow limited.
For example with a hump.
5% in Germany, 10% in Turkey and (I think) 4% in Poland.
Paties getting less votes, won't get any seats.

Most countries with PES also selct regional members.
A citizen should have his or her congressman or congresswomen to write to.

Raymann · Jun 1, 2006

Otter, er...no.

I don’t know anything about the Swedish system but for one, I’m talking about the state level in the US. The concept of not having someone to represent YOU in the state is a concept wholly foreign to Americans. In the end, we will loath it. In our current system, at best only a little under half of the people can really hate their representative. The parties here will fracture and I don’t think the system can survive having a leader with a large majority not voting for him