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

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 03:14 AM 9/15/2006, Scott Ritchie wrote:
>On Sat, 2006-09-02 at 02:50 -0400, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
> > Gerrymandering uses the systemic disenfranchisement of voters through
> > district elections to skew representation. That's all. Eliminate
> > district representation and gerrymandering becomes impossible.
> >
>More specifically, gerrymandering exploits the wasted vote effect by
>systematically concentrating wasted votes among a specific group of
>people.

Precisely.

>   As a result, you can get rid of gerrymandering by any means
>which lessens the wasted vote effect.

Well, you can "lessen" gerrymandering, perhaps to a degree that it 
becomes more trouble than it is worth. Given, however, that wasted 
votes -- which discourage voting in general -- can be almost entirely 
eliminated, by a method which would probably bring other salutary 
effects, why not kill two turkeys with one stone?

>There's no need for asset voting
>in particular - any form of proportional representation with larger
>district magnitude will handle the wasted vote effect.

That is, with more representatives per district. This will *reduce* 
wasted votes, often. It still leaves substantial wasted votes. Wasted 
votes are intrinsic in systems that produce "winners" by eliminating 
"losers." Whoever voted only for losers has wasted their vote, in 
such a system. Ranked systems will reduce this effect, but only by 
forcing voters to cause the election of someone who might be 
repugnant to them....

Asset Voting cuts through this mess, wasting *no* votes except those 
that are wasted, deliberately or through negligence, by candidates 
receiving the votes, who refuse or are unable to combine excess votes 
with those from other candidates to create winners. In other words, 
there is someone specific who can be held accountable for the vote 
wasting. I would think that generally, wasted votes under Asset would 
be less than the quota for one winner.  If it is a rule that one rep 
may be elected with less than the quota, being the rep with the 
highest vote after all the other winners are assigned, but not less 
than a majority of them, the only likely wasted votes would be no 
more than half the quota. Essentially, that last rep position becomes 
a single-winner election. Given that we assume that Asset Voting is 
public (the initial assignment of votes is standard secret ballot), 
the last position would likely be a negotiated one among all those 
candidates still holding unassigned votes.

Asset Voting would, I expect, bring with it another major benefit. It 
is really a secret ballot form of delegable proxy. Under Asset 
Voting, and assuming that one may write in a candidate, voting 
becomes a totally free choice, by the voter, of a representative, to 
either fill the position, or to openly and publicly negotiate the 
winners. Consider the effect of this on campaign financing....

Imagine an assembly which is electing a council with N members at a 
public meeting, and I'll assume that the full assembly size is Q * N. 
The rule is that each member of the assembly gets one vote. Any group 
of Q members of the assembly may combine their votes and create a 
winner. This is a device for creating a proportional representation 
council from a larger assembly. Asset Voting is not necessary for 
this, with the assembly, because, I am assuming, the process is open, 
not secret ballot. Asset Voting is necessary in order to accomplish a 
similar purpose with secret ballot.

It has been argued that Asset Voting is a bad idea because "I might 
not like the person chosen by the candidate I vote for." That's true. 
However, in a real legislature, much of the actual work is done by 
staff, which is chosen by the candidate who won. Being able to 
delegate, to choose trustworthy people, is actually a critical skill 
for any high-level office. In general offices like that of 
legislator, the skill set needed to perform the job includes or is 
similar to the skills needed to delegate the job. A legislator who 
cannot delegate well, essentially, should not be trusted with the job 
in the first place.

So, sure, I might not like a choice made by the legislator. However, 
this is true of any choice made by the legislator during his or her 
term of office. Representative government requires surrendering 
personal control over governmental decisions (i.e., surrendering the 
right to directly vote on them), in favor of the efficiency of having 
this work done by a rep, an efficiency which becomes absolutely 
necessary when the scale gets large. But there is a possible exception.

The efficiency is necessary with respect to the deliberative process. 
It is the inability to deliberate in very large assemblies that makes 
towns move from Town Meeting government, i.e., direct democracy, to 
(usually) Mayor/Council government. But this necessity does not apply 
to voting. Proxy democracy would allow the deliberation function to 
be concentrated in representatives, while still allowing direct 
voting by those citizens who decide not to trust how their proxy 
would vote. This can't be done with Asset Voting, or any secret proxy 
assignment process, because there is no specific connection between 
the voter and the representative. But with open proxy, where the 
proxy assigned is a matter of public record, it then becomes possible 
for an individual to vote and for that individual's vote, then, to be 
removed from the total votes being cast by the proxy.

There are software systems currently being designed, it seems, that 
would accomplish this secretly. That is, the system compiles the 
total vote, allowing the individual to either vote directly, or to 
leave the vote to an assignd proxy. Presumably the proxy assignments 
are also secret, in that the proxy does not know who, exactly, has 
assigned the proxies to him or her. I consider this an interesting 
proposal, but greatly inferior to what I expect would happen where 
proxies are directly and personally assigned *and accepted*. I.e., as 
is standard in business proxies.

(The argument that proxy assignments will be coerced has been raised, 
as an argument for secret systems. If it were such a problem, one 
would think that this problem would be manifest in the corporate 
environment, where billions of dollars can be involved and at risk.)