[EM] Gerrymandering solutions.

Wed Jun 6 20:30:28 PDT 2012

As far as the US goes, the Supreme Court (law of the land) has officially
declared that gerrymandering is just fine.

The only "solution" to gerrymandering is for voters to elect representatives
who won't draw the districts to benefit themselves. 

Aint happening in Texas or anyplace else it matters.  We all know there are
good and fair ways to draw districts, but the US Supreme Court has said
those are not criteria they care about.

-----Original Message-----
From: election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com
[mailto:election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of Michael
Ossipoff
Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2012 8:22 PM
To: 'Ted Stern'; election-methods at lists.electorama.com
Subject: Re: [EM] Gerrymandering solutions.

Ted:

You said:

> Michael, you are stepping naively into an area that has been very well
studied.  I
> include a couple of points below you may want to consider.

Of course, it's necessary to check out your points before answering about
the purported naivete of my suggestions.

But I would recommend that, as a general rule, it's better to just tell us
your arguments, and report any errors that you find, before drawing
conclusions or expressing characterizations. Best to save those for after
their alleged justifications.

> 
> On 04 Jun 2012 22:18:06 -0700, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
> >
> 2. Whatever can be accomplished by PR can be accomplished by an
> > at-large single winner election, because every single winner method
> > can output a ranking of candidates instead of just one winner: Elect
> > the winner. Then delete the winner from the ballots and count them
> > again. That will elect the rank 2 winner. Then eliminate the rank 2
> > winner too, and count the ballots again. Each time, delete every
> > previous winner before counting to determine the next winner. So you
> > can elect N winners at large in a state, or nationally, for a body
> > such as Congress (or its separate houses, if you want to keep them) or
> > a state legislature. Of course, with Approval, it only requires one
> > count, and you elect the N candidates with the most approvals.
> 
> Can you prove that the ranking from a single-winner election is
proportional?

No. Nor did I say that it was. Notice that I didn't call it "PR" or
"Proportional Representation". When I said "Whatever can be accomplished by
PR can be accomplished by an at-large single-winner election", I was
comparing the suggested multi-winner use of a single-winner method to
PR--speaking of it as something _other than_ PR. That shouldn't be taken as
saying that it is PR.

Yes, it wasn't the best choice of wording. No, it didn't imply that
multi-winner use of a single-winner method is PR. I spoke of it as something
other than PR.

All I meant was that a single winner method, used as I described, can elect
a national Congress, at large, without districts.

> 
> 
> At the very least, you should remove ballots, in some fractional way, when
a
> ballot has achieved some portion of its preference.  Single Transferable
Vote
> (STV) is one way, of course

Of course. You're talking about PR. I wasn't talking about PR. I was talking
about the use of a single-winner method, without the goal of
proportionality.

I have nothing against PR--except that I don't like the idea of unpopular
parties being seated in Congress :-)  But PR would be fine anyway. It works
fine in Europe. There would be nothing wrong with borrowing from Europe. As
I said before, if there were a referendum tomorrow about whether to adopt
European or Australian PR, I'd vote "Yes" on it without hesitation.

One advantage of party list PR is that it allows the use of the most
proportional PR formula: Sainte-Lague.

Sainte-Lague isn't the only PR formula that is unbiased with respect to
party-size, but it's the only unbiased formula that doesn't share the
avoidable errors of STV and Largest Remainder.

 Also, I like emphasis on party platforms instead of personalities and
hairdo, etc.

But I recognize that many would like to vote for individuals, even in a PR
election. Of course that can be done in open list systems, such as those in
Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland. The best of both worlds: Optimal
proportionality and opportunity to support individual candidates. I'd
thought that Finland had open list, but Juho says that they don't.

, but there is also Reweighted Range Voting, and a
> Bucklin variant proposed by Jameson Quinn as AT-TV a year ago.  My
simplified
> version of JQ's method is Graded Approval Transferable Vote (GATV) and can
be
> found here:

Forget those. The familiar already-used methods are fine. The last thing
you'd want to do would be to invent and propose something entirely new. If
all you want is PR, then stick with existing familiar PR systems.

But I'll say again that, for the U.S., PR would be a whole entirely new and
different system, a new concept of government. Forget it. A better
single-winner method is nothing more than a better way of doing what we
already do. And Approval is nothing other than Plurality with its ridiculous
forced-falsification rule repealed. Ask for less change. Get something.

And no, I don't recommend including at-large Congressional elections as part
of an Approval proposal :-)

I propose nothing other than replacing Plurality with Approval. No other
change in the electoral system.

Further refinements and enhancements could be proposed later.

> Brian Olson has one automated method, with examples from the 2010 census,
> located here:
> 
>       http://bdistricting.com/2010/
> 
> There is also the shortest splitline algorithm, discussed here:
> 
>       http://rangevoting.org/GerryExamples.html
>       http://rangevoting.org/GerryExec.html
>       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUS9uvYyn3A
> 
> Ted

Ok, Ted, I guess I must have missed the part in which you pointed out my
naivete, or my naïve errors  :-)

I'm glad to hear that others have proposed automated, no-human-input,
districting methods.  How much success are their proposals having. What
objections are being encountered? Why haven't they been implemented? 

Would it really have been a lot of trouble to briefly summarize Brian
Olsen's proposal, and the shortest splitline algorithm?

Whatever "shortest splitline" is, the word "shortest" suggests something a
lot more (unnecessarily) complicated than the obvious simple system that I
suggested.

Mike Ossipoff

> --
> araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com
> 
> 
> > To change the subject a little, I'd like to bring up another
> > geographical government suggestion, while I'm at it: Partition.
> >
> > It doesn't make any sense for people to have to live under a
> > government that they don't like, with people whom they don't agree
> > with or don't like. So why not just divide the country up into
> > separate countries, according to what kind of government people
> > like? It's ridiculous to make everyone share the same county, when
> > they want different kinds of country.
> >
> > It would be like a PR election, except that it would be for square
> > miles instead of for seats.
> >
> > Though, like districting, the partitioning of the country could be
> > (1) by an automatic rule, with those same rectangles (I like that),
> > or (2) it could also be done by national negotiation in a PR
> > negotiating body, or maybe by a proxy DD negotiation.
> >
> > I like the quick simplicity of (1). But (2) could _maybe_ be done in
> > such a way as to ensure that each new partition-country has, to the
> > best extent possible by negotiation, equally good land, by whatever
> > standards its people want to bargain for.
> >
> > Of course an overall census could be taken periodically, and the
> > process repeated, to take into account people who have "voted with
> > their feet". But those adjustments wouldn't be necessary, because
> > the initial partition would let everyone live in the govt they like
> > best. But, though I don't watch tv, I used to watch it along with
> > the family I was part of, so what about a family like the one in
> > "All in the Family"? Should Archie Bunker's daughter have to remain
> > in his country? Likewise the family in "A family Affair" (if I've
> > got the show-name right). It is not your fault what country you're
> > born in. So there would be a strong case for letting people continue
> > to choose what country they want to live in, even after partition.
> >
> > Of course then it would be necessary to repeat the initial partition
> > process to adjust the national borders to the new populations. Maybe
> > migration should only affect borders when it's by people who were
> > born in the country that they're in, as opposed to people who chose
> > that country at partition time.
> >
> > But migration must be distinguished from fecundity, for this purpose. A
> > country shouldn't be able to expand over its neighbors just because it
> > doesn't like birth-control.
> >
> > Mike Ossipoff
> >
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