[EM] Brian Olson's district algorithm mentioned in 538 article re gerrymandering

[VoteFair]

On 1/25/2018 9:09 PM, Rob Lanphier wrote:
 > On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 12:40 PM, Ted Stern <dodecatheon at gmail.com> 
wrote:
 > ...
 > Much of the more recent discussion has shifted toward whether the
 > gerrymandering is really such a bad thing, and whether the electoral
 > college is really such a bad thing.  Also, we've discussed a variant
 > of CMU's cake cutting algorithm.  It's been an interesting discussion.

Gerrymandering and the electoral college apply to general elections, 
when the choice is between two money-backed candidates, one from the 
Republican party and the other from the Democratic party.

In contrast, U.S. primary elections are where, sometimes, a 
reform-minded candidate runs against the money-backed candidate.  That's 
when voters have a real choice.

Alas, many people don't vote in primary elections, and -- even worse -- 
many voters fall for the trap of money being used to attract votes to a 
"spoiler" candidate (away from the reform-minded candidate).

(The money to the spoiler candidate is likely coming from superficially 
different sources, but if family connections and organizational 
connections are taken into account, the spoiler candidate is funded by 
basically the same sources.)

And then there's the "carrot" in the form of third parties trying to 
reach a vote-count goal (such as 5% of the vote) that will give funding 
to the third party.  The people who created that law are probably 
snickering at how successful it is in splitting votes away from 
Democratic candidates (because no significant funding flows to 
conservative third parties).

In short, the distraction of gerrymandering and the electoral college is 
very successful in attracting attention from primary-election 
unfairnesses, which go unnoticed -- in spite of voters recognizing that 
somehow elected politicians are not doing what we, the voters, want.

Richard Fobes


On 1/25/2018 9:09 PM, Rob Lanphier wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 12:40 PM, Ted Stern <dodecatheon at gmail.com> wrote:
>> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/hating-gerrymandering-is-easy-fixing-it-is-harder/
>>
>> There's a link to a nice interactive map, which includes Brian Olson's algorithm as the "mathematical" solution.
>
>
> Thanks for pointing that out, Ted!  There are also a bunch of us over
> on Facebook in "The Gerrymandering Project" discussion group over on
> Facebook.  One way to get there, go to this page:
> http://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/the-gerrymandering-project/
>
> ...and click on "Join the discussion".  There was a complaint there in
> the past week or so about how the proportional representation
> advocates seemed to have taken over the place.  There was a suggestion
> that maybe there was a better forum to talk about proportional
> representation (and I was tempted to suggest this mailing list).
>
> Much of the more recent discussion has shifted toward whether the
> gerrymandering is really such a bad thing, and whether the electoral
> college is really such a bad thing.  Also, we've discussed a variant
> of CMU's cake cutting algorithm.  It's been an interesting discussion.
>
> Rob
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>