The Supreme Court discussed my research on gerrymandering: some misconceptions
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
It's exceedingly common for Supreme Court justices to ask controversial questions they think/know others will have, regardless of their own opinions - many times you will see them ask questions or dig in to areas that are in direct contrast to their leanings.
The reasons for this are two-fold. First, these are Supreme Court Justices; their opinions become law, and they have a responsibility to understand both sides on an argument. Second, they understand that it's best for the court and the country if controversial/questionable things are brought up and addressed in session rather than debated endlessly after their decisions are issued.
In short, don't read too much in to what questions the justices ask, or what aspects of a case they question...
In that respect, "there were some misconceptions" seems to be the link-bait, white washed with integrity and civility.
While the average/composite justice might ask devil's advocate questions, most the coverage of this issue is also taking into account the individual personalities and histories of the folks asking the questions.
So, it means something different if Justice Ginsburg asks a question vs Justice Roberts.
In the age of Trump, I think it's far more dangerous to assume politicians and judges don't really mean what they say, than for this author to vigorously defend his work and opinion.
Having read the article, it's clear that Alito represented a fundamental misunderstanding of the author's research. It would be irresponsible for him not to respond and clarify.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-justice-kennedys-s...
> That data shows that Kennedy is no different from the rest of the court: You don’t want to be on the receiving end of his questions. When Kennedy votes for the respondent (which would be the Wisconsin Democrats, in this case) he directs 93.3 words to them (57.5 percent of his speech). When he votes against the respondent, he directs 102.0 words to them (61.1 percent of his speech).
So about a 60%-40% split when he has zero words. It does look like he is leaning in favor of the Wisconsin Democrats, but still far from a sure thing.
If you are genuinely seeking new information, great! But you should do your homework first, which includes finding the right person to ask the question to.
I am confused on how this would work in practice. What kinds of questions do you propose these bigoted people are asking?
"Why should I pay for taxes to support single mothers just so black men don't have to pay child support?"
Now, I think we should still encourage them to ask those kinds of questions, because I believe in an open and liberal society and that the best reaction to poor thinking is to address it directly, that the answer to speech I don't like is more speech. But it's pretty easy for some really racist opinions about others to hide behind questions like that.
Of course, there are also some uncomfortable truths in those questions which cause us to silence them, such as -- "Are the disparaties we see in racial groups purely the effect of lingering racial bias, or is there a modern cultural component that happens to align with racial groups and perpetuates the inequality?" (And in this case -- the more general, is there a disparity in the fatherhood rates that correlates with racial grouping?)
Ed: I think the people downvoting proved someone upthread's point -- I literally provided an example I've heard of such a question and got downvoted for providing facts to a discussion.
I'm not saying we give them a megaphone, but if bigotry is prevalent (and it seems to be), then the best antidote is to expose it and address that directly.
Why?
Simple. Bigots are bigots for reasons -- even if they're not (in our esteem) good ones. You can't address the symptom (bigotry) without addressing the cause (those reasons).
Your method only leads to wounds festering under bandages, and not the exposure and cleansing we need for healing.
From my understanding of social media, it hasn't been workable trying to stop outright racist comments being hurled at those marginalized people -- so I just can't agree that not actually addressing the cause so we don't hypothetically do less damage than is actually being done right now by the problem is a workable idea. That's the kind of squeamish bargaining done by people without the stomach to tackle complex or hard topics: "Can't we all just get along without it being messy!"
Your complaint is like saying that surgery hurts, can't we just let the infection fester? The surgery doesn't even hurt as much as the infection! Why would we do that?
This is, for the moment, setting aside that we could work with technology to do better at time/place of those questions and filtering so the stream isn't overwhelming for (or even involuntarily sent to) any particular marginalized person. And so at a technical level, you're solving the problem in an inefficient way (trying to legislate human nature versus changing how we route text online).
More so that it just hasn't been tried.
"so I just can't agree that not actually addressing the cause so we don't hypothetically do less damage than is actually being done right now by the problem is a workable idea."
What do you mean by "addressing the cause"? Taking the leading question seriously? That clearly hasn't worked. The answers to those things are out there. The people repeating these questions are not interested in answers. They just want to get their bigotry out there to try and make it seem mainstream.
"Your complaint is like saying that surgery hurts, can't we just let the infection fester? The surgery doesn't even hurt as much as the infection! Why would we do that?"
But your answer is like, "Let's amputate the leg!" When the infection is nowhere near the leg.
I takes time, effort, and empathy to try and unpack the real meaning behind questions like that -- effort that we don't invest when we allow ourselves the shortcut of just calling them "racist" to end the conversation.
I don't think we can move forward as a society -- and are even regressing -- because we've stopped unpacking what the other person is trying to say and started short-circuiting that process of human interaction with thought terminating cliches. It sincerely scares me how many people derive great joy in that kind of unthinking censorship.
Implies people who have to take on welfare as sustenance haven't worked hard enough, and so are undeserving of any help, are therefore inferior and an unjust drain on resources ... and you can take that down the road a little while depending on context ...
edit: Tucker Carlson on Fox News does this very often.
Every time?
But my two hypothetical quotes were simply examples of the attitude that is so common, not explicitly trying to accurately characterize the parent or GP.
In particular, paragraph 2
"What about this guy" doesn't really help here.
Are you arguing that it's a bad example, or asking in good faith why it is a good example?
Also, that was an either-or question...
That would be a totally legitimate question, if we lived in a colour-blind world. Or in a world where institutional racism has not been well-documented for decades. Or a world where driving while black was not a reason to get pulled over. We don't, though.
Or, the Canadian equivalent:
"Why are natives complaining about the government, when they don't pay any taxes?"
That would be a totally legitimate question, if we lived in a world where native people did not pay taxes. We don't, though.
That actually sounds like quite an important question to ask. And difficult to phrase without sounding racist, which makes it even more important to ask.
If you assume someone is more racist than average just because they ask such a question, you are the bigot.
If your follow up to "Why do blacks even have a problem with the police?" is "all they have to do is stop commiting crimes!" then it is the second statement that is explicitly racist. With the second statement you make the claim that the fault of police abuse lies in the abused, not the abusers, and that black people have no reason to mistrust the police except for the obvious fact that they are criminals.
The racist part is that the question assumes there is no precursor, or unstated factors.
>>KekDemaga: I am confused on how this would work in practice. What kinds of questions do you propose these bigoted people are asking?
Crazy to watch a near-literal explosion in this arguably off-topic sub-discussion "just" asking for concrete examples of loaded questions. Am I the only one hearing the imaginary yet ear-splittingly-loud whooshing sound (going "over their head") as people are gearing up and jumping in here? What an amazing demonstration of the power of words as HN users can't resist reacting to examples of inflamatory questions even when they are specifically requested and provided (some even with disclaimers) _as examples_!
As an aside, it is almost impossible for me to even begin to differentiate between the naive/geniune vs. trolls vs. devils advocates vs. others (hope that covers most of the bases) at all levels of this sub-thread.
> what's so frustrating about discussing a topic these days
> you get labeled a bigot
You've just said in your own post that if a topic or the way it's discussed upsets someone, that's their problem. So the fact that you find this stuff frustrating is your problem, no?
It’s something you do when preparing an argument for a debate. It’s an attempt to understand and defend an argument or point of view from the opposing side.
It’s a thing that has a couple of benefits.
1. You can prepare against counter-arguments better if you try to understand something different from what you think is true or correct.
2. You can use a devil’s advocate to refine your own point of view if you’re willing to have some level of sympathy with the with a person who disagrees with you.
It’s a common device, and very useful. Your thoughts about your logic are probably not perfectly logical and probably not totally correct. So if someone engages you from the point of view of the devil, it’s like someone who agrees with you testing your logic and reasoning
But in general social contexts, there are vastly different rules. When it comes to dealing with possibly distasteful words or actions, then the safest assumption is that the speaker means what he says (walks like a duck...)
Now, whether that has always been as apparent, I can't say. I didn't live in the golden years before the internet. But I don't like the automatic assumption that "these days" are somehow incapable of fostering well-intentioned rhetoric.
That's what confused me about the following, if I'm interpreting it correctly:
> But in general social contexts, there are vastly different rules. When it comes to dealing with possibly distasteful words or actions, then the safest assumption is that the speaker means what he says (walks like a duck...)
I would say the safest assumption is to assume as little as possible initially, and try to dig out the details. Assuming they mean what they say is always problematic because you are assuming they mean what you interpreted them as saying, when in reality they may mean what they intended to express. And lest someone say that's uncommon, I find that it's at least in part true of the vast majority of positions I don't agree with here when solicit more details from the other party.
Edit: Cleaned up for clarity
If I were a black man and saw a guy spewing what seems like inflammatory racist drivel, asking probing questions to better understand his position and clear up misunderstandings is all well and good, but I'd feel much safer hightailing out of there.
On the other hand calling for the potentially racist drivel or potentially devil's advocate debater to be shut down because you were feeling unsafe and didn't want to try better understand his position and thus it would be better for everyone if he didn't talk at all and thus everyone could feel safer... well... that seems to be some kind of goal displacement error. It's elevating the heuristic of feeling safe over the actual outcome of avoiding real harmful events.
>I would say the safest assumption is to assume as little as possible initially, and try to dig out the details
Just to clarify, when I said safest assumption I actually meant in the context of personal safety (not trying to spread FUD, just acknowledging we live in uncertain times).
I would characterize your assumption as the fairest because it avoids misunderstanding and makes sure all participants get to fully articulate what they believe. While fair discourse ought to be the bedrock of a just society, it might not always be irrational to take people at their word.
1: Of course this is with respect to how possible it is to misinterpret. "Kill the Jews!" is unlikely to result in a different interpretation on examination that results in a different action on your part.
If you CREATE a definition for a subset of view points and pound it into the general public enough, if a person hears a piece of it from somebody they'll tend to assume the entire label. This is how people end up arguing with things that other people have never said. They're arguing with the label, not the person.
I wish people could imagine others doing this in a similar situation. For instance in most Mideastern nations apostasy and heresy/blasphemy are still crimes. In a number of nations they're among the most grievous of crimes imaginable, carrying the death penalty. And the majority of people support this. Can you imagine how ridiculous it is that many of these people would thusly refuse to even consider discussing the possibility that these acts ought not be criminalized, if they felt the person discussing it genuinely believed that? After all the person suggesting such thing must be some sort of subhuman deviant incapable of basic moral and ethical comprehension.
We're doing the exact same thing. And the only reason it seems less ridiculous is because of our cultural values. To believe that all of our beliefs that are taboo to go against are somehow objectively true and just is, in my opinion, the height of arrogance. Even if, somehow, it is true - it certainly will not always be. And we risk ending up in this same sort of silly cycle these countries are left in where religion holds them back, yet it is simultaneously impossible for them to ever actually discuss such a thing as words would be met with sticks and stones. And that behavior is something that I think, more than any other, is the epitome of cultural regression.
Sadly that's not how the world works. People end up on lists for discussing "anything" or having "any" heinous views, and sometimes have their lives via this. And so far as I can see, the vast majority are okay with this.
"I think you should be murdered. Don't worry, that's just my opinion. But I'll be voting for the 'murder people like you' candidate at the midterms. Do you like my 'Death To The Inferior' lawn sign?"
(OK, so that's the extreme version, but "I think you should be denied a particular kind of medical treatment even if it results in your death" is practically mainstream policy, as is "some kinds of humans are intrinsically inferior" and "people should be deported to countries which will murder them")
Edit: I literally tabbed out to twitter and found another example immediately, https://stv.tv/news/international/1399390-model-targeted-by-...
So, it sounds like what you're saying here is that if Alice says to Bob, "I think you're fundamentally subhuman; you have no value as a person, and I think that you don't deserve the same human rights that I do" and Bob replies, "That's a disgusting viewpoint and you're a disgusting person for having it", you feel like Bob is in the wrong because Bob is getting emotional while Alice is being logical, cool-headed, and coherent. This is a weird viewpoint because being able to express something logically doesn't necessarily make you more right or better than the other side; see the comic[1] where an angry person is shouting "Raarg people deserve to be treated like humans nobody has the right to murder millions hurr" and the calm, collected Hitler is saying "I just want to murder all the Jews and take over the world, but that's your opinion and I'm fine with that. Looks like you've got some growing up to do"
If you haven't picked up on it yet, the idea that I'm trying to express here is that even if something can be expressed logically, that doesn't mean it deserves a platform for logical debate. Murdering all the Jews is a _bad position_, no matter how you express it. If your position is that it might be a good thing to murder all the Jews, trying to debate with you logically about why it is bad can only serve to legitimize what is unlegitimate. If you don't accept the premise that murdering people for being Jews is bad, I'm not going to convince you that it's good. And if I'm a Jew, I might get a little worked up about the idea that you think murdering me is a viable path towards improving the world. This is not an indication that I'm bad or that I'm arguing in bad faith; it means that I take poorly to the idea of being murdered arbitrarily. Similarly, when somebody expresses the idea that black people are subhuman trash and deserve to be shot in the streets by police because they are no different from monkeys, it's not really going to be that easy to convince them that actually, people are people and deserve to be treated as such. If I'm black and being called a monkey, that's not really an invitation to a fair and open debate, right? Your position is couched in the idea that I'm not even worth debating with, because I'm subhuman.
Additionally, it's very rare that people _hold_ heinous viewpoints but never _act_ on them. Even if all you do is express your heinous viewpoints, that has the effect of normalizing those heinous viewpoints for other people; consider the recent event where a popular Youtuber (Pewdiepie) called somebody a "nigger" in an online game; part of his defense for his actions was that it's a common thing and everybody does it. Calling out the holding (and expressing) of heinous viewpoints is an important part of helping the rest of society move past those viewpoints. If I make it clear that it's not okay to call people niggers as a joke, then maybe people will stop saying it as a joke. And if people stop saying it as a joke, then the people who are saying it for real won't have the legitimizing cloak of 'irony' (think "come on, dude, I was only joking, don't get so mad!") and will be shows as the actual racists they are.
[1]: http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/578/682/575...
I’ve never met someone (that I know of) who actually thinks that.
But even in that extreme case, there’s a fair amount that could be discussed. Though if I were Jewish and ran into a large crowd of people shouting this, I probably wouldn’t not choose that moment to have a conversation.
I think that’s at least part of the trust mentioned a few comments above about having a conversation needing trust as a prerequisite.
But in a situation where you are talking honestly with someone who believes all Jews should be killed, I think there is room for investigation and possibly persuasion.
For example, there’s the idea that a large group of people yelling for all of category x to be killed could one day be turned against them. There could be people saying that they, in fact, are subhuman scum and should be exterminated. So maybe not such a great social policy on those grounds.
Many people with these extreme views hold them because they were convinced at some point that all members of category x are guilty of a particularly heinous crime and should be punished for that.
This is a good time to talk about the rule of law, the presumption of innocence and just how bad it could be for all of us if these things are suspended in this one case.
It’s also an opportunity to talk about problems with the death penalty in general.
So, in reality, no. I don’t really think that the appropriate response to all Jews should be exterminated is, “You’re a terrible person, and I won’t talk to you.”
I think that falling into the trap that something’s simply can’t be debated because they are so obviously repugnant is part of the problem we have right now in a deeply and badly polarized U.S., not to mention the same divisions we are seeing elsewhere around the world.
The idea that some ideas are so awful that we simply cannot engage with them and, in fact, have a moral obligation not to is just as broken as blindly asserting that all x are bad and should be killed.
These things shift over time, and if we create a culture where we refuse to engage in certain debates because of some moral high ground, we will eventually find ourselves on the other side of that. Unless we just decide to exterminate everyone who disagrees with us because they are such awful peoples. Probably criminals, actually.
It’s not hard to find people on either side of the political fence right now who view the opposing side as scum who should at least be locked up. Perhaps even given the death penalty.
It’s less easy to find left-wing people who think this way, but it’s not that hard. There are plenty of people there who think that all Trump supporters are vile, ignorant, criminal scum who at the very least shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
Hell I have both sides in my own immediate family. People who think Trump is basically Satan and that he and people who voted for him should be charged with treason. And just as many who think Hillary is a crazy child rapist and a socialist and shout be prosecuted for treason.
We are mostly well-educated and thoughtful people. And that’s just in one family where we all really love each other at the end of the day, even when we disagree, there’s a lot of trust, and some of us flip flop often to play devil’s advocate.
That’s a lot of words to say this: shutting down logical debate because some idea is repugnant to you is not a good thing to do in general.
I’m reminded of the Leisure Suit Larry Thread here about how much society has changed since the 80s. Including a lot of comments from people my age who remember how sexist and anti-gay a lot of comedy and people were then.
We’ve made a significant amount of progress since then, and we did it because a lot of people were willing to have some difficult conversations about ideas they found repugnant.
We’ve achieved a lot of things in the last 40 years. Hell even the last 60. We didn’t do it by telling people to shut the fuck up about their ideas that we thought were gross. We did it by taking them apart and having those difficult conversations.
I fully agree with shutting down violent behavior. It’s unacceptable. But drawing a connection between a though we disagree with and an actual crime is a terrible idea. And besides that, the stupid, angry, idiots that shout hate at rallies are the ones least likely to be able to enact policy.
It’s the ones who are willing to sit down and have a rational conversation who are the ones yo need to worry about in the long run.
A mob can hate, hurt, and even kill a few people at a time. You can find those people and put them in jail. A person who can make a convincing argument for exterminating a large group of people for no reason is extremely dangerous.
Those people need to be debated by everyone, so that the flaws are exposed to the whole world for how bad they are.
Fighting a bad ide with the same bad idea is a really precarious position for all of us. And I don’t mean just the U.S., I mean for all humans.
What do you mean, black people deserve the same job opportunities as white people? We haven't even established that we shouldn't be killing them yet!
What do you mean, black people shouldn't be subject to extrajudicial killings in the streets by police officers? My friend here says that we should be rounding them up and shooting them by the dozens.
There are always going to be people who think that some disadvantaged group should be mistreated. If society constantly has to sit down and explain to them why being racist or sexist or anti-semitic or whatever is wrong, then there's no opportunity to try and make actual progress in terms of helping those disadvantaged groups. Every new person who comes in with a terrible opinion sets the discourse back to square one of "killing people is wrong", and when progress is an incremental thing, getting set back to square one repeatedly means that progress doesn't get made. At some point, you need to be able to say "No. That viewpoint is vile, and it doesn't get a place at the table. When you're willing to treat people like people, we'll entertain what you have to say, but you need to behave with a certain amount of decorum before you get to participate in actual discussion."
It's like if you had to explain to your child why smearing feces on the table and plateware isn't acceptable, and you had to do it before every meal. You don't have any time to actually sit down and eat, because every single time you do, you need to explain that no, smearing shit on the plates is wrong. Don't do that.
To take a slightly less controversial example, I've managed to successfully discuss climate change with a good number of people that felt it was 'fake.' People that do things like effectively scream '97%, idiots!' and move on do a great disservice. This sort of dismissal or appeal to authority is a big part of why there are so many of these people. It absolutely strengthens their resolve since they feel their views cannot be countered logically. And indeed there is more to their views than the satire we created in our heads of them thinking little more than 'dur, it's a Chinese conspiracy.'
Instead when you talk about the interplay between long wavelength energy, short wavelength energy and how they both react to CO2 explaining how precisely it traps energy (and how you can even create experiments at home to show the effect), you can start to explain things in a way that very few people seem willing to do. And willing is probably the wrong word. I think it's more accurate to say that many people who do acknowledge climate change don't actually understand it on any more sophisticated level than those that deny it - and so arguments resort to vitriol instead of logic. And I think that lack of knowledge is far more transparent than most people realize. So you end up with two sides, equally uninformed, slinging mud at one another and both taking their own self assigned moral high-ground.
The point here is that refusing to discuss things or scolding adults for holding such views, does not make them go away - and I think there is a very strong argument to be made that it does quite the opposite. For the most extreme example, one needs only look to who is currently the head of our country. And in this desire to refuse to even discuss things with people, 'we' even did things such as managing to pressure Elon Musk into drawing a line and ultimately leaving the president's advisory council. And was that a good idea? He's still just as legitimate a president with just as much control. The only difference is now there's one fewer voice of logic and reason trying to encourage him to do the right thing. And while those voices may ultimately have failed to achieve anything, their absence makes such a possibility a foregone conclusion.
There's no experiment I can construct that helps people understand that black people are people too. There's no science I can point to which establishes that women should be treated the same as men. There's no journal I can cite that explains why Jews don't deserve to be rounded up and exterminated. Stuff like that is axiomatic; I can't construct a logical argument to show you that people deserve to be treated like people, it's just the case. If you think that some subgroup of humanity is less than human, I'm probably not going to be very effective at changing your mind; any counterexample I show you can be written off with "well, they're some of the ~good ones~, but it's all the others who are the problem". Change really has to come from within on this one.
And I think your extreme example of our president kind of works in my favour, as opposed to yours. Trump said and did (and continues to say and do) a lot of extremely heinous shit. We have him on video discussing how much he loves to assault women, and how they just let him do it. And instead of saying "No, that's not acceptable, full stop. This is wrong and people who do this are wrong", there was a lot of "oh well it's just boy talk, they were just chatting like boys do in the locker room, it wasn't really sexual assault because he said the women let him do it", and it turned into a debate about whether or not sexually assaulting women is wrong and whether or not bragging about sexually assaulting women is wrong. And now Trump is president, despite the fact that he habitually sexually assaulted women and is proud of the fact that he habitually sexually assaulted women. By providing a platform for logical debate of something that is heinous, the heinous action gained legitimacy and ended up being okay.
One can apply the principle of charity, without developing trust with another.
One can strive for objectivity, without trust.
One can allow that they might be wrong, without trust.
One can be aware of their biological responses to their own thoughts and feelings, and the consequences these have, without trusting another.
Edit: Trust may (?) be a sufficient condition, but is not a necessary condition.
That's a non-sequitur.
The author is a researcher responding to statements he read/heard from a justice who isn't an expert in that particular field. His main point is the premises underlying the justice's questions reveal a misconception, quite apart from the justice's intent. He's also addressing a general audience in a newspaper, not the Supreme Court, so his intent to clarify misconceptions without regard to the Supreme Court justice's method of inquiry is perfectly reasonable.
Furthermore, each argument the author puts forward is not a "visceral response", but instead is supported by links to research. The only thing that could conceivably be different if the quoted justice were, say, Ginsburg, is the author writing a clause opining that she was probably playing devil's advocate.
But to shoehorn "trigger warnings", "identity politics", and false labels of bigotry into that discussion is as silly as talking about how the Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer’s table.
The problem with the internet is that you only get one comment to say who you are and what you believe. No one knows what else you think about the world, no one knows if you're trolling or for real, and no one can see you as a flesh-and-blood person with a perspective distinct from others unless they go out of their way to. They just see a string of text in among a bunch of other strings of text and react to it.
More recently, it seems that our culture has changed, and that students are being not just indulged, but even encouraged to respond in the unfortunate manner that you describe.
It can be frustrating but i guess that's how hierarchical organizations work.
Supreme court justices are supposed to be impartial - this is why the statue of justice has a blindfold on. It's frankly abhorrent that we have such partisan hacks in this role.
And this is even more true now a days where geographic vicinity to a representative doesn't really mean much of anything. In the times these laws were drawn up good chunks of the population would have known their representatives personally, or at worst have a very minimal number of degrees of separation. So there would be some good argument for having geographically close representatives. In today's society we're very disconnected from our representatives, physically and metaphorically. There's no intimacy between constituent, so much as we can even be considered constituents anymore, and representative. They're simply the person we send our letters to and whom gets to respond with focus tested form letters.
Edit: After rereading the parent again I think he might be talking about the state house not us house.
http://www.fairvote.org/ - Promotes IRV, and I think they were in favor of proportional representation, but I can't seem to find the pages now (go figure).
http://www.equal.vote/ - Promotes a customized score voting system, which seems more solid than IRV from my reading, but no mention of proportional representation.
It's too bad, really, I'd be hugely in favor if something like this came up in a CA statewide ballot/proposition.
http://www.fairvote.org/the_fair_representation_act_has_been...
Furthermore, you have to decide which reps stay on when an election reduces the number of reps. Who makes that choice? In parliamentary systems, the party does. But in the US, elections are (mostly for the worse, imho) ultimately about the individual representative: voters have a chance to say 'THIS guy is an asshole' and vote him out, instead of giving the party discretion as to whether to drop the entrenched asshole or kick out the newcomer...
I think the easiest "trial run" for proportional voting in the US is using two-winner elections (preferably Schulze but maybe traditional STV) to elect Senators, because this doesn't require any changes in representation. Unfortunately this is subject to game-theoretic problems because it tends to make the Senatorial output of a state less polarized (California might have one Republican and one Democrat instead of two Democrats), which could result in a political swing towards those states without proportional Senators (Wyoming might still elect two Republicans with FPTP).
The easiest trial run would be at the state level. Making each states Senators part of the same class instead of being from two of the three separate classes would require a Constitutional Amendment, since it would change the terms of some sitting Senators to something longer or shorter than the Constitutional 6-year terms.
It also (presuming Senate terms aren't changed besides what is necessary for transition) would mean each state would have six years between elections for the Senate rather than alternating 2- and 4-year intervals.
> Unfortunately this is subject to game-theoretic problems because it tends to make the Senatorial output of a state less polarized (California might have one Republican and one Democrat instead of two Democrats), which could result in a political swing towards those states without proportional Senators (Wyoming might still elect two Republicans with FPTP).
This can be mitigated by increasing the number of Senators per state; even 3/state would probably make it a non-issue, it would make 2/1 splits common initially, so you wouldn't have most states even with the others 2/0.
Three Southern states had populations that were majority black: Louisiana (until about 1890), South Carolina (until the 1920s) and Mississippi (from the 1830s to the 1930s).
See: The refusal of representatives to hold town halls. They literally don't represent their constituents anymore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_system_of_Germany#Vo...
1. You vote both for an individual in your district and for a party.
2. Individuals win via a plurality of their district, like in the US
3. The rest of the Bundestag is filled up from party lists so that as much as possible the final proportion of parties matches proportion of party votes.
Applying it to your example and doubling the representative count, there would be 10 directly elected Democratic representatives. The rest would be distributed proportionately among Republican, Libertarian, and Green.
In practice you don't actually get the directly elected seats all coming from one party, so in reality you end up with a roughly 35%/30%/20%/15% breakdown in the end.
That way you can have some direct representation of your region, which I'd assert has some utility, without sacrificing proportional "accuracy".
(I'm skipping a couple subtleties here, but that's the gist as I understand it.)
Party-list proportional systems reduce the accountability of individual representatives to the general electorate, transferring that accountability to those setting the party list.
You can get much better proportionality than single member districts provide without abandoning direct accountability (e.g., by using STV or a similar system in districts of, say, 5 representatives.)
The first quote comes from page 61-62:
> JUSTICE ALITO: You paint a very dire picture about gerrymandering and its effects, but I was struck by something in the seminal article by your expert, Mr. McGhee, and he says there, "I show that the effects of party control on bias are small and decay rapidly, suggesting that redistricting is at best a blunt tool for promoting partisan interests."
The author edits out the italicized portion, but that's probably what Justice Alito was focused on.
The second point is addressed at pages 42-44. Justice Alito states:
> And then a year later you bring this suit and you say: There it is, that is the constitutional standard. It's been finally - after 200 years, it's been finally discovered in this paper by a young researcher, who concludes in the end -- this is the end of his paper -- after saying symmetry and responsiveness have shown to be -- looked to be inappropriate, "The measure I have offered here, relative wasted votes, is arguably" - arguably -- "a more valid and flexible measure of -- of partisan -- of partisan gerrymandering."
> Now, is this -- is this the time for us to jump into this? Has there been a great body of scholarship that has tested this efficiency gap? It's full of questions.
The author's response misses the point. Law is not science. It iterates, but it's not free to change the rule every year to get incrementally better results. What's at stake in this case is nothing less than peoples' right to self determination. Both on the side of each person's vote counting fairly and equally, but also on the side of elected, sovereign state governments being permitted to run their elections without undue federal meddling.
It's one thing to say that this standard is better than what's come before. But that's not what the Justices care about. They want a rule they can carve into stone and leave in place for decades if not centuries hence.
I happen to think that the Supreme Court should affirm the district court's invalidation of Wisconsin's redistricting plan. But Justice Alito was asking questions that needed to be asked.
> The paper referenced by Alito drew on data from the 1970s through the 1990s. At that point, the impact of gerrymandering was, in fact, relatively small. I have since extended the analysis with more recent data, and the results indicate that the effect of gerrymandering is now much larger. In fact, the size and scale of partisan gerrymandering has accelerated rapidly in just the last two redistricting cycles, as voters have become more committed to their parties and the tools for drawing gerrymanders have become more sophisticated.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-the-supreme-cou...
What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case? | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14751953 (Jul 2017)
Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group – Tufts University | http://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/
a need for expert witnesses who understand the mathematical concepts applicable to gerrymandering. To meet that need, she’s spearheaded the creation of a five-day summer program at Tufts [the first in a series of regional trainings] that aims to train mathematicians to do just that [...] over 900 people have indicated their interest by signing up for a mailing list
http://tufts.us15.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=3529c170e5d9b7...
(re-post of mailing list link)
edit: To be clear, I don't have a pony in this race; I just believe the info and opportunity is important and may reach members of its intended audience here. The July article dug into the reasoning behind the efficiency gap and pursuit of mathematical models:
> The efficiency gap is an elegant way to quantify the extent of partisan gerrymandering. But more than that is needed to win a case. The challenged plan must also be more biased than other maps, inconsistent with the state’s spatial patterns, and durable in its effects. And these elements can only be established by additional studies.
Another HN user shared a higher-level summary I will try to TL;DR here:
> paulmd: SCOTUS turns based on which side of the bed Kennedy wakes up on (on most issues). [...] mathematicians heard [Kennedy might be open to striking gerrymandering down] And now the court cases are working their way back up to SCOTUS, only with the academic models that Kennedy has indicated he wants. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14753909
My own suspicion is this: that districting is an act of partitioning the social graph. The weights of this graph are not necessarily "who socializes with who" but rather "to what extent do these people share common interests". It is not necessarily the case that regions characterized by people of common interests will be shaped in ways that we can express easy geometric criteria for.
You could argue that this gap isn't very important, but to come to this conclusion you would have to use some metric other than the efficiency gap.
This is false. Efficiency has been applied by the Supreme Court to mean precise mathematical equality, rather than an approximate or relative metric [0]. For instance, if the populations of two districts is not exactly equal according to the most recent census data, then the district must be explicitly justified.
Quote [1]:
> But in Kirkpatrick v. Preisler,288 a sharply divided Court announced the rule that a State must make a “good-faith effort to achieve precise mathematical equality.”289 Therefore, “[u]nless population variances among congressional districts are shown to have resulted despite such [good-faith] effort [to achieve precise mathematical equality], the State must justify each variance, no matter how small.”
We would expect that the Supreme Court would apply the same mathematical exactness to the efficiency gap, should they find the efficiency gap a valid measure of gerrymandering.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesberry_v._Sanders
[1] http://law.onecle.com/constitution/article-1/05-congressiona...
Then, the defendents made a subjective argument that they were "close enough". However, the Supreme Court doesn't like to replace an objective measurement (population) with a subjective one ("close enough"ness).
So, in this case we have an objective measurement -- voter efficiency -- and a subjective one -- "what do other maps look like". If we can sometimes reject the objective measurement in favor of the subjective one, then it's not really ready to be applied as the standard by our highest court.
Can you please share the key terms allowing further research of the known solutions?
Some of the geometric approaches gloss around this stuff but none do what the efficiency gap does: actually identify unfair "wasted" votes.
The exciting thing about efficiency gap is exactly how unambiguous it is which makes it GREAT for basing a law on.
The solution is to moved to STV and expanding the size of districts to elect 3 to 5 representatives instead.
How would you answer Sotomayor's question?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudenc...
My counter-question might be something like:
"Could you tell me what difference fixing these individual cases of Gerrymandering would make to outcomes across our congress as a whole over the past 20 years? What helps our democracy more, fixing the technical problem of gerrymandering but not improving representation, or removing the technical feasibility of gerrymandering to exist and so doing provide a fix to the problem of representation?"
There are residual disputes about recent Conservative changes to the criteria given to the Commission in setting boundaries, but even so this is way less egregious than the problems in the US.
Redistricting is the process of setting the boundaries of districts. This has to be done for two principle reasons:
1. To adjust for population changes over time. This is undisputed.
2. It can be argued that this also makes sense to group together areas that have similar concerns -- in an extreme example, separating primarily agricultural districts from primarily urban districts. This is relatively uncontroversial.
Gerrymandering is a term that describes a third reason:
3. Redistricting with the intent of producing a bias towards a particular party. This is pretty uncontroversially considered bad.
It's difficult to prove that this is happening; that's what this whole case is about, or at least a subset of it. Namely, to establish the "efficiency gap" as a metric on a state-wide basis for saying whether the redistricting is trying to do #3 in the guise of doing #2.
Many proposed solutions to the redistricting problem attempt to take some basic heuristic and apply it in an objective way, but although it's possible to solve #1 pretty easily, solving #2 is inherently subjective and that's where the wiggle room for #3 is created.
If geography is the most important concern to voters, then surely voters would be able to handle grouping themselves according to geography in at-large elections with proportional representation. There could even be an explicit urban party and rural party if that is what matters most to voters.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/...
In 2008, Republicans had 44% of the votes and 47% of the seats. In 2012, they had 47% of the votes and 61% of the seats.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_w...
The party in power (Democrats) agreed to this several years ago despite being the majority. The result ended up being that they got a subsequent supermajority, because I guess CA is really progressive/liberal in aggregate.
No, they were both adopted by citizen initiative, and the California Democratic Party opposed both (the Republican Party supported the redistricting one, all six of California’s ballot-qualified parties opposed the jungle primary, which got put on the ballot as part of a deal to pass a budget back when the supermajority budget requirement made holding the budget hostage a regular occurrence.)
Several US states have bodies like that (nonpartisan, of course, doesn't mean the members and the people setting criteria don't have political preferences that influence what they do, and there is no non-distorting way to assign single-member districts.)
The US as a whole does not because the US is a federal and not unitary state, and there is little appetite for transferring the detailed regulation of elections to the federal government.
This metric was very convincing to me until I noticed one thing: if a district election is split 75%-25%, then it seems that the net wasted votes is 0. But a state where every district is split 75-25 is clearly heavily gerrymandered! Am I missing something?
Here's an example from another article:
>Suppose, for example, that a state has five districts with 100 voters each, and two parties, Party A and Party B. Suppose also that Party A wins four of the seats 53 to 47, and Party B wins one of them 85 to 15. Then in each of the four seats that Party A wins, it has 2 surplus votes (53 minus the 51 needed to win), and Party B has 47 lost votes. And in the lone district that Party A loses, it has 15 lost votes, and Party B has 34 surplus votes (85 minus the 51 needed to win). In sum, Party A wastes 23 votes and Party B wastes 222 votes. Subtracting one figure from the other and dividing by the 500 votes cast produces an efficiency gap of 40 percent in Party A’s favor.
https://newrepublic.com/article/118534/gerrymandering-effici...
I think all districts being 75-25 is not really possible based on how communities grow and group together socially and economically.
Partisan advantage is far from the only reason for gerrymandering; protecting incumbents and dividing particular communities of interest (whether ethnic or otherwise) that don't necessarily align more with either party to effectively silence them are among two of the more common uses.
A recent wave of extreme partisan gerrymandering by Republicans is what has made it a national discussion right now, but it's not the only (or even historically the main) problem with gerrymandering.
Which is simple to solve: stop having single-member, first-past-the-post districts for legislative bodies.
In that sort of situation it doesn't seem to be reasonable to call what's going on "gerrymandering"; I think the finger of blame should be pointed (if anywhere) at the system of single-member-constituency plurality voting.
The gerrymandering that usually happens is that the group in charge wants to win 3/4 of the X seats at a small percentage like 60-40 and lose 1/4 of the X seats by a huge margin like 90-10. This would give them a huge seat advantage since they own most of the seats. In this case, the gap would be huge proving deliberate gerrymandering.
Even worse, that means that if we actually use the efficiency gap to measure gerrymandering, then there is a strong incentive for parties to draw district lines to be as close to 75-25 as possible!
So it isn't the case that a state where every district is split 75-25 is necessarily heavily gerrymandered.
On the other hand, if all twelve districts are 75-25 A-B then it seems like B has three fewer seats than it deserves, which does suggest that that definition of an efficiency gap is missing something.
The worked example in the definition section of the paper lays it out pretty clearly:
http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
If you take 3 districts, with 2 going to A and 1 going to B, 300 votes at 75-25 would be split into 175 and 125. That's a reasonable outcome, the majority took 2 seats, the minority gets approximately proportional representation.
Compare to 300 votes going 51-49 (the most extreme efficiency gap). The ~1/2 minority gets 0 representation (153 vs 147 for that election).
What the author fails to do is explain why the efficiency gap is better than district compactness. If they are used together, then in what way are the two measures weighted? If not, why should we pick efficiency over compactness?
It should seem obvious that these two methods would result in different districts, but which mwthod to use is more a matter of personal values than objectivity.
Compactness tells us nothing about the effects of gerrymandering. Less compact districts correlate with more gerrymandering but that doesn't tell us whether that gerrymandering was effective. Compactness could be a useful tool to limit the effects of gerrymandering when drawing districts.