Engineer's Solution: Neutral Redistricting so Reelection is Less Assured
rangevoting.org
rangevoting.org
This looks like a terrible gerrymander. But there is actually something of a method to this madness. The GOP actually didn’t have much choice but to pack voters into Detroit- and Flint-based districts. Detroit has had two African-American-majority districts since the 1960s, and Republicans were probably required under the Voting Rights Act to retain both of them.
This was no easy task. The 13th and 14th districts had both seen their African-American populations drop below 60 percent, and both had suffered severe population losses in the 2000s, requiring them to take on quite a few additional citizens. Making matters worse, there were barely enough African-Americans in all of Wayne County to create two African-American-majority districts entirely within that county’s borders.
Since it was impossible (and possibly unconstitutional) to draw lines to make sure every African-American in the county was in the minority-majority district, redistricters needed to add those voters from Oakland County, which has a growing African-American population. This is actually the source of the odd appendage we see jutting northward from Detroit; it crosses Oakland County to take in heavily minority Pontiac. Even with all this, both districts are only 56 percent African-American and the 14th still elected a white Democrat over an African-American incumbent in the 2012 primaries.
The neighboring districts were then all pushed toward Republicans, as the most loyal Democratic constituents were removed to comply with the VRA. Even a Democratic legislature would have drawn something akin to these districts; there just aren’t many other options. No neighboring district is left with an African-American population in excess of 11 percent under this map, suggesting that the heavily African-American precincts in the state were pretty well gobbled up.
You are confusing "proportional representation" (which is a continuous-valued property of many election systems) with "party list proportional" which is a particular election system for achieving a high value of proportional representation.
Notably, Single Transferrable Vote is a system in which people vote for candidates as they do in FPTP elections (except using preference ballots), but which is designed to acheive proportional representation.
Proportional representation doesn't have involve voting for parties (party list proportional is one mechanism for achieving proportionality; another method for acheiving proportionality is using voting systems like Single Transferrable Vote in multimember districts -- the latter method is just as candidate-centered as the FPTP-in-single-member-districts system used in the United States, yet provides proportional results [the degree or proportionality varies with the size of the districts.])
While its less proportional, in partisan terms, than party-list proportional (assuming usual sizes of legislatures and manageable numbers of seats per district for STV), it counterbalances that by being more sensitive to general election voter concerns in selection between candidates of the same party.
> The FPTP system we have is a reflection of the framers' desire to avoid parties.
No, its not. The framers were familiar with FPTP, and familiar with the way that parties operated under it. It wasn't a new idea that they were trying out expecting that it would avoid the formation of parties.
It's inaccurate to even say that "the framers" had a coherent desire to avoid parties -- Washington certainly did, and this certainly got more urgent for him as the First Party System took hold during is term as President; Hamilton may have initially opposed parties in the traditional democratic sense since he was more inclined to a life-term aristocracy (remember that he wanted both Presidents and Senators to serve "in good behavior" -- that is, for life subject to impeachment -- the way that in the Constitution-as-it-ended-up federal judges do), but he seems to have readily accepted political parties as the second-best choice; Jefferson clearly saw parties as an inherent part of democracy, and the absence of parties as a feature of despotism, and actually seemed to see a two party system divided on a particular axis -- which he referred to as Whig v. Tory -- as fundamental and inherent in the nature of mankind, though he also was clearly opposed to tribal adherence to parties.
Not by the VRA alone, but by the VRA combined with the statutory requirement for single-member districts, combined with the expected outcomes of FPTP elections.
Keep the VRA and eliminate FPTP in single-member districts, and you don't need to gerrymander to preserve expected minority representation (plus, you represent everyone better, not just the particular racial minority being protected by the VRA.)
Doomed to fail.
This would tend to make areas that make more sense. They would have roughly the same shape, but people living at the boundaries would be more "correct".
http://commoncensus.org/maps.php#regional_maps
Drawn by answers to the question: "What city has the most influence over the area where you live"
Having more of them would also make it more difficult to buy votes.
And with modern tech, there's no reason not to, even if it means the House of Reps needs a new building. In fact, I'd suggest that they get one, but that we build it in Wyoming, Kansas, Colorado, or Nebraska.
Until you get very close to the limit case of 1 voter per district, more districts doesn't really reduce the opportunity for gerrymandering.
Simply using a candidate-centered election system which produces proportional results in multimember districts neatly eliminates the benefits of gerrymandering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York%27s_congressional_dist...
The Geo-Graph in Practice: Creating United States Congressional Districts from Census Blocks
http://cho.pol.illinois.edu/wendy/papers/geographs.pdf [pdf file, obviously]
It was a finalist for a best paper award on public service in OR.
[1] http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php
[2] http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/poll-republicans-are-%E2%80...
Also, the tea party republicans have all been reelected recently, so they can't possibly be caused by the high reelection rate. In fact, you would probably see more of them if the advantages of incumbency were diminished.
If you read my other comments on this thread, you'll see I agree that incumbents are too advantaged, but the incumbents that were defeated by the tea party also had high re-election rates.
Invectives aside, I was noting that tea party republicans are actually a point against the advantage of incumbency.
No, it wasn't. Whatever you think about the opinion claim ("as full of bad incumbents") the fact claim ("as unpopular") is wrong: Congress' current approval ratings are at the lowest since approval of Congress has been tracked.
> Also, the tea party republicans have all been reelected recently, so they can't possibly be caused by the high reelection rate.
Assuming that you mean "first elected" when you say "reelected", which is the only way this claim even makes sense, then, yes, that's true. What they are a in part a product of is not "the reelection rate", per se, but a particular factor which also contributes to the reelection rate, specifically, districts in which there is no substantial party competition.
These districts mean that a committed faction of the dominant party, even if it is not itself an overall majority faction, can keep a candidate in office quite easily.
A better (also less inflammatory) case would exclude condemning the tea party for their political views and tactics and include mentioning politicians like Tom Delay, Duke Cunningham, William Jefferson, Jesse Jackson Jr., and Charlie Rangel who were all convicted or censured for corrupt behavior. Many of them subsequently won primary or general election races!
I actually agree that incumbency is probably too big of an advantage, especially in primary races, but I think the recent primary success of tea party republicans undermines that argument if anything.
EDIT: Regarding popularity, since the 9/11 fervor wore off, congressional approval has been maybe 25% at best. The tea party didn't exactly break anything that wasn't broken already.
So there's a 10% approval rate, and assume that congress is roughly 50/50 by party. Even if we assume that the GOP's approval rate is 0%, then that leaves the Democrats with only a 20% approval.
Clearly the problem is across the board. While you're throwing stones at the other guy, I think you ought to get your own house in order.
We're trying here not to make this a partisan issue, but to look at systemic solutions.
The problem is that there now really are three parties: Dems, GOP, and the tea party. While historically there have been many nutcases that got elected, our current problem is that the tea party consists of people with extreme far right, even anarchist views. Moreover, they have enough people in the House to cause trouble. The thing is, they win in either case: if they manage to shut the government down, or hinder some of its functions, they are doing what they promised. If they do not, they can still cause enough trouble and blame the system they are a part of.
In the long run, I actually hope that the republicans divorce themselves from the tea party, and become slightly more centrist. This will be a short term loss, but in the long run they will then appear to be the most reasonable ones.
Its a good thing for there to be meaningful choices in general election. Gerrymandering to maximize competitive districts is one way to acheive very minor improvements in this area (party-blind redistricting isn't likely to do much at all), at the cost of creating a small number of hypermajority districts.
Better ways to do it don't focus on redistricting, but focus on changing the election and nomination system so that: 1) There are more parties that are competitive than in FPTP, and 2) Competitive parties are incentivized to offer more candidates than they currently are for any given election (which, currently, is the seats they are likely to win, rounded up to the nearest whole number.)
STV, or a similar candidate-centered proportional system, in multimember districts for legislative elections is one way to do this, and supports both more viable parties and more candidates per party, and thus more viable choices in general elections. And, like any multimember district proportional system, it reduces the impact of reapportionment methods, so you don't have to worry about trying to control gerrymandering.
To me, geographical districts have the effect of filtering out like-minded people. For example: hackers don't get a voice (except perhaps in the Bay area), since they are scattered all over.
Why must this be so?
VRA is used in court challenges to overturn STATE redistricting efforts, but isn't inherently more powerful than any other federal law when "head to head". This law would change/supersede parts of it.