Algorithmically generated districts just give a sharper target, and allowing the existing systems to include multi-member districts just makes gerrymanding easier.
The only way to prevent gerrymandering is with either districts that don’t change (statewide), or changing the rules of the legislature so gerrymandering doesnt matter
My favorite potential fix is direct proxy voting. Tie vote weight in the legislature to how many citizens voted for you, and send either the top N vote-getters or everyone who gets at least X% of the votes cast to the legislature.
You can pick a specific algorithm based on nothing but population, without any demographics. Thus impossible to gerrymander. The Shortest Splitline is one. Another I don’t remember the name of draws circles around the densest population centers as big as they need to be to include the required number of people.
Passing government functions off to a computer only encourages corruption and distortion in either the implementation, the input, or how the output is handled.
It’s like trying to engineer anti-cheat on a system where not only does the user own their own hardware but also the marketplace vendors, the courts, the OS vendors, and your servers.
I don’t know whether it’s cute or terrifying that you think you can solve a political problem with software.
Humans can and will game how many people are reported as living where. And they’ll intentionally misinterpret the algorithm you write. And they’ll lie about what your magic box says. And if they’re ever caught doing it they can and will be either ignored by the humans who enforce laws or just be given pardons by the governing humans who wanted the system mucked with in the first place
The only thing in our species’ history that has ever served as a check against the selfish creativity and audacity of humans is the selfish creativity and audacity of other humans.
How do you change peoples addresses; Not just a few, but several percentage points? And people don’t interpret anything. That’s the point. The data is collected in the census by thousands of people. You can’t get thousands of people to lie about tens of thousands of addresses when they don’t even know which way to fudge the numbers. Then the computer tells you where the lines are. Nothing for people do to change them. Any attempt to change it will be obvious.
Did you even look at the site I linked? Because all you have is vague promises that people lie. You offer no alternative. If people can just lie about everything (which even Rump has failed to do) what can laws do? Laws are even easier to lie about.
There was intentional miscounting in the 2020 census, even though that was only used to determine relative distribution of representatives among the various states. Every politician in the country already has huge lists of where their supporters live, and it is already obvious when they’re pulling shenanigans. And yet they do it anyway, because mere shame is not enough to keep humans from being jerks to obtain power and wealth.
My preferred alternative is not to rely on software or laws, but other humans and a dramatic expansion of whose votes matter in the country from “just those who won” to “essentially everyone.”.
How much miscounting? Enough to matter? How. If you want to convince the shortest splitline can be manipulated more than a bunch of people, you need to explain exactly how.
I’m not going to get into a pointless argument about whether or not the worst part of your proposal is “people” or “math”, since this is a system question and the distinction is irrelevent.
Humans will attempt to distort whatever system you decide. The only thing that has ever constrained this impulse is other humans with opposing interests. If you do have that what math is actually used becomes irrelevant, and if you don’t then the math is just a game that the humans who want to break your system may play or ignore as they choose.
Algorithmically generated districts just give a sharper target, and allowing the existing systems to include multi-member districts just makes gerrymanding easier.
The only way to prevent gerrymandering is with either districts that don’t change (statewide), or changing the rules of the legislature so gerrymandering doesnt matter
My favorite potential fix is direct proxy voting. Tie vote weight in the legislature to how many citizens voted for you, and send either the top N vote-getters or everyone who gets at least X% of the votes cast to the legislature.
Don’t know what you mean by sharper target.
You can pick a specific algorithm based on nothing but population, without any demographics. Thus impossible to gerrymander. The Shortest Splitline is one. Another I don’t remember the name of draws circles around the densest population centers as big as they need to be to include the required number of people.
Passing government functions off to a computer only encourages corruption and distortion in either the implementation, the input, or how the output is handled.
It’s like trying to engineer anti-cheat on a system where not only does the user own their own hardware but also the marketplace vendors, the courts, the OS vendors, and your servers.
I think you’re thinking of laws.
Code is better.
You can’t game how many people live where.
I don’t know whether it’s cute or terrifying that you think you can solve a political problem with software.
Humans can and will game how many people are reported as living where. And they’ll intentionally misinterpret the algorithm you write. And they’ll lie about what your magic box says. And if they’re ever caught doing it they can and will be either ignored by the humans who enforce laws or just be given pardons by the governing humans who wanted the system mucked with in the first place
The only thing in our species’ history that has ever served as a check against the selfish creativity and audacity of humans is the selfish creativity and audacity of other humans.
How do you change peoples addresses; Not just a few, but several percentage points? And people don’t interpret anything. That’s the point. The data is collected in the census by thousands of people. You can’t get thousands of people to lie about tens of thousands of addresses when they don’t even know which way to fudge the numbers. Then the computer tells you where the lines are. Nothing for people do to change them. Any attempt to change it will be obvious.
Did you even look at the site I linked? Because all you have is vague promises that people lie. You offer no alternative. If people can just lie about everything (which even Rump has failed to do) what can laws do? Laws are even easier to lie about.
There was intentional miscounting in the 2020 census, even though that was only used to determine relative distribution of representatives among the various states. Every politician in the country already has huge lists of where their supporters live, and it is already obvious when they’re pulling shenanigans. And yet they do it anyway, because mere shame is not enough to keep humans from being jerks to obtain power and wealth.
My preferred alternative is not to rely on software or laws, but other humans and a dramatic expansion of whose votes matter in the country from “just those who won” to “essentially everyone.”.
How much miscounting? Enough to matter? How. If you want to convince the shortest splitline can be manipulated more than a bunch of people, you need to explain exactly how.
I’m not going to get into a pointless argument about whether or not the worst part of your proposal is “people” or “math”, since this is a system question and the distinction is irrelevent.
Humans will attempt to distort whatever system you decide. The only thing that has ever constrained this impulse is other humans with opposing interests. If you do have that what math is actually used becomes irrelevant, and if you don’t then the math is just a game that the humans who want to break your system may play or ignore as they choose.