[EM] Even simplier anti-gerrymandering rule

Stephane Rouillon stephane.rouillon at sympatico.ca
Sat Feb 24 08:09:01 PST 2007


Do we really need boundaries to obtain any representation?
Would any other way to capture comparable population samples be preferable?
Actually the geographical link ties up electors that belong
to the same region, thus obtaining different electorate in each region...
Having all districts with the same proportion of age distribution, language
variety,
religious proportion could enhance the feeling of belonging to a nation
instead
of a federation of region. I would prefer astrological districts throughout a
country ...

Brian Olson a écrit :

> True, unless we dissolve such irrelevant boundaries! ;-)
> If we had fair congressional districting in every state I might be
> happy enough to spend a few minutes ignoring the even more gross
> misrepresentation apportioned in the US Senate.
>
> Ideally a good algorithm for solving districting problems will scale
> well. Congressional districts (within a state). State legislature
> districts. County board districts. City council districts, and so on
> wherever districted representation happens.
>
> On Nov 8, 2006, at 7:16 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
>
> > At 6:50 PM -0800 11/8/06, Brian Olson wrote:
> >> 0.5% is readily achievable by my solver. A US House district is
> >> 300000000/435 = 689655 people. 1% of that is of course a 6897 person
> >> variability from district to district. I think people might whine
> >> about this; it affects the degree to which they are represented. It
> >> won't necessarily be a logical argument.
> >>
> >> Also the wider the margin the greater possibility for distortion to
> >> malicious ends (depending on the exact method of picking within the
> >> constraint). Of course current districts are equal population to
> >> within 100 people according to Census data and are still distorted in
> >> some extreme ways.
> >
> > Wyoming and Montana each have one district, and 509,294 & 935,670
> > people respectively. Rhode Island has two districts and 1,076,189
> > people.
> >
> > The 1% rule (or whatever) must be intra-state only.
> > --
> > /Jonathan Lundell.
>
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