[EM] Redistricting, now with racial demographics

[James Gilmour]

Yes, Bob, I fully appreciate the opposition to PR.  I have been active in this field for more than 45 years myself and the Electoral
Reform Society has been campaigning for 125 years, and still we have not achieved our main objective (though we have had some
smaller successes along the way).

I fully understand the reasoning and the practicalities of those who go for gerrymandered single-member districts to secure
representation for THEIR minority, but I am opposed to gerrymandering of all kinds for any purpose.  MM-plurality is, of course, the
worst voting system ever devised (still used in local government elections in England) and I was aware of its past use to
discriminate against certain minorities in the USA.

There are many minorities among the electorate.  If you discriminate in favour of one minority (or some minorities), where do you
stop?  Once you start down that road, there is, in fact, NO logical end.  In the UK we could follow our "discrimination" legislation
that applies to the workplace, etc, etc.  Thus we would start with sex, followed race, disability, religion, sexual orientation  -
there may well be others.  And these various discrimination groupings are all overlaid to give a multiplicity of minorities.  There
is no logical case for discriminating electorally in favour of some of these minorities and not doing it for them all.
Discrimination in favour of some minorities will almost certainly mean discrimination against some other minorities.  The whole
discriminatory approach to elected representation just makes no sense.

The only logical approach is to adopt a voting system that will secure representation of all significant minorities among the voters
and then leave it to the voters to determine the representation they want.  This is the only way out of the constitutional blind
alley into which the USA has been driven.

James Gilmour


Bob Richard  > Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 5:50 PM
> Much more sense, yes. I suspect that James himself knows at 
> least as much as anyone on this list about political 
> opposition to PR in general -- that is, without regard to 
> racial inequality. In addition, in the U.S. some leaders of 
> black and Latino organizations working on fair representation 
> of minority groups prefer single member districts to PR.
> 
> One reason is that plurality at-large (which is even more 
> majoritarian than any single-winner method) has long been 
> used to prevent minority candidates from winning in local 
> elections. Since PR requires multi-seat districts, minority 
> group leaders have been suspicious of it even though it uses 
> very different voting rules and produces the opposite results.
> 
> A more pressing reason is historically low voter turnout 
> among minority voters. Racially gerrymandered single-member 
> districts can compensate for this, since a minority candidate 
> can get elected even when turnout is low.  PR addresses this 
> problem as well, but only in the long run as turnout 
> gradually increases because people learn that their votes 
> really count for something. Even then, PR by itself would not 
> close the remaining gap in turnout, just reduce it.
> 
> Wanting racially gerrymandered single-member districts 
> instead of PR may sound like an opportunist, even cynical, 
> approach. It is not. It is a realistic, practical response to 
> generations of exclusionary white control of election rules 
> -- which is still not entirely in the past.
> 
> Racial disparities in voter turnout are reduced from what 
> they used to be, and in some places have all but disappeared. 
> That should create opportunities to bring together those who 
> work for fair representation of all political views and those 
> who work for fair representation of ethnic minorities. At the 
> same time, the Supreme Court's increasingly chaotic rulings 
> on which racial gerrymanders are required and which are 
> prohibited have led it into a constitutional blind alley. PR 
> may be the only escape.


> James Gilmour  > Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 3:28 PM
> If one of the requirements is to secure representation within 
> a state for the significant (racial) minorities within that 
> state, would it not make much more sense to start with a 
> voting system that had such an objective rather than engage 
> in deliberate distortion of district boundaries in an attempt 
> to overcome the deficiencies of a voting system designed for 
> a completely different purpose?
> 
> 
> Brian Olson  > Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 2:39 PM
> > As this isn't something I really want it's going to be hard to get
> > motivated to work it out.
> > That said I think the way to go about it is to make 
> unbiased districts  
> > by my current district, then pick one district with the highest  
> > proportion of the desired minority to elevate and adjust all the  
> > districts until that one has a majority of the desired minority.  
> > Repeat one district at a time until there are enough (some states  
> > require two or three I think).
> > 
> > 
> > > On Jul 16, 2009, at 6:46 PM, Raph Frank wrote:
> > > Are you considering updating the algorithm to include majority 
> > > minority districts?
> > >
> > > This would potentially decrease the legal issues with using it for
> > > districting.


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