[EM] Convex districts: a simple mathematical solution to gerrymandering?

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 03:04 PM 9/1/2006, Steve Barney wrote:
>It seems to me that a requirement that districts have to be convex
>may make gerrymandering significantly more difficult.

Actually, the central problem is the very concept of the district. 
District elections for representatives are, quite simply, *elections* 
for representatives, and such elections inherently disenfranchise 
voters, who end up with, quite often, an uncongenial 
"representative." How can this person be said to represent them. He 
does not represent them, he represents a district.

If districts paid taxes, no problem. But they don't, taxpayers do. 
"No taxation without representation?" Bosh. From my point of view, we 
don't have representation, most of us. Only those who voted for a winner do.

Asset Voting used for proportional representation totally solves this 
problem, generating a peer assembly where nearly everyone voted for a 
winner, if not directly, then indirectly. (If any votes are wasted, 
it is because the one who received the vote wasted it by refusing to 
find an appropriate compromise; to be sure, some small level of waste 
would probably remain, though schemes can be imagined that would prevent this.)

Delegable Proxy even more directly works in this way, it creates 
representation without elections. But Asset Voting fits much more 
easily into how people imagine legislatures, it creates a peer 
legislature where every representative has properly the same voting power.

Asset Voting, a brilliant idea, actually, wish I'd invented it. But 
Warren did, to my knowledge.

You know, when I heard of STV, I first assumed that the votes were 
transferable by those who received them. Silly me....

Gerrymandering uses the systemic disenfranchisement of voters through 
district elections to skew representation. That's all. Eliminate 
district representation and gerrymandering becomes impossible.

Asset Voting can (and would) be used by voters to create *mostly* 
local representatives. If creating a state legislature, however, some 
small factions might have a state-wide representative.

So with Asset, there *would* be local representatives you could go 
and meet and discuss issues with. They won't know, generally, whether 
you voted for them or not, under secret ballot conditions....

We got major help with our adoption from Senator Ted Kennedy's 
office. When CIS told us that it would be three months to get our 
Orphan Petition approved so we could bring our daughter -- whom we 
had already adopted by proxy in Ethiopia, she was waiting -- into the 
U.S., my wife called up his office. We had never had any contact with 
him, and we were not asked if we were Democrats. They simply listened 
to the story and said they would try to help.

And the very next day we got a call from Kennedy's office that CIS 
was approving our petition that day, and the approval came in the 
mail the next day...

Good politicians -- and Kennedy has to be one of the best, entirely 
aside from partisan considerations -- serve their constituents. You 
don't have to have district elections to have representatives well 
placed to serve a district.... and such service is the only 
reasonable argument for district elections, aside from the 
opportunity to gerrymander that they present.