[EM] Using gerrymandering to achive PR

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Raph Frank wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 10:27 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
> <km-elmet at broadpark.no> wrote:
>> Raph Frank wrote:
>>> 1) Every odd year, an 'election' is held but voters vote for parties
>>>
>>> 2) based 1), seats are distributed using d'Hondt between the parties
>> If you're going to have D'Hondt, or PR in general, why bother with the
>> districting? Just use open list or a party-neutral proportional
>> representation method like STV.
> 
> It is currently illegal for a State to use PR to elect its House
> seats.  The Senate seats would be even harder.
> 
> I was wondering if it would be a way to get PR without needing
> Congress to change the law.

By what law? Since I'm not American, I'm not familiar with the law, and 
thus I can't comment on whether this kind of indirect PR would be covered.

>> I suppose that if you want to steer democracy, you could redistrict so that
>> a certain fraction (changing for each election) have narrow margins. The
>> question would be one of stability on one hand and responsive changes on the
>> other (analogous to feedback damping), but again, who's to say where the
>> optimum is? That is, if one should steer democracy in the first place.
> 
> Actually, thinking about it, 2 people from the same party would be
> pretty reasonable.
> 
> All districts would be competitive.  However, if you are trying to
> balance districts, then you can't do it for all of them.  A few have
> to be safe for the largest party.
> 
> 2 members from the same party would allow the voters remove an
> incumbent without having to vote against their own party.

What I mean is that, using gerrymandering, you could change a state that 
had 67% support for party A into one with 12 districts, 8 of which has 
an A-majority, but you could also make the margins very narrow (3-4% or 
so). An engineer of politics could set the margins narrow to increase 
change, or set the margins wide to increase stability. The risk would be 
that if they're set too narrow, the variation in support might cause the 
district to go to B instead.

I don't think it's a good idea, though. The result could easily become a 
bipartisan gerrymander, where the two parties reach agreement on border 
divisions that keep their incumbents in office. Better would be to use 
Iowa's solution, or to support PR on a local scale with an aim of 
overturning the law once people get familiar with PR.