[AndrewHampton]

FiveThirtyEight did a great podcast series on gerrymandering in 2017 [1]. It turns out to be a much more complicated topic than I expected. Some gerrymandering is even legally required to ensure proper representation of minority groups even if they live in somewhat distributed communities.

1: https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/gerrymandering-podcast/

[jandrese]

Which is so hilariously misguided it might be taken as a form of racism. By lumping minorities into a single candidate they create a token representative who has a very safe seat but no power in the state senate and allow all other candidates to effectively ignore that minority entirely. They don't have to worry about angering 5% of their electorate and losing the next election by a 2% margin.

[thefifthsetpin]

If political issues actually split along the 95%/5% lines that correspond to that minority, then the 5% are effectively voiceless however you cut it. Another possibility is that most issues aren't about that minority group and you see something like republican:democrat:minority::42:43:5 split. Now the rep for that 5% has a ton of leverage to exchange, eg, votes for republican issues in exchange for republican support for minority issues.

[Spivak]

Now let's take the other extreme. You split the minority population among 10 different seats where their population in each district is so small that their interests are ignored entirely in each one.

[kelnos]

That's what coalition-building (an important feature of other governmental structures used outside the US) comes in. You generally have a bunch of small minority groups all over the place, but if they work together ("hey, we'll support your group's big issue if you support ours"), they can form a large enough voting bloc that their issues get traction.

[jandrese]

If your population is relatively balanced then you need to worry about everybody because every vote might count. Sure a minority might only be 5% of the population, but if you anger them and they vote for your opponent that could absolutely change the outcome of an otherwise close race.

[TheHypnotist]

These are both extreme's which make total sense but the degree at which the entire drawing of borders is taken is extreme by itself.

Are there any feasible solutions? Does simply squaring out a district make sense? Would that have unintended side effects?

[bzbarsky]

Yep. It's hard to effectively wield political power as a minority in a democracy based on voting power alone...

[legitster]

This was exactly the point discussed in one of the episodes. Artificially create a black delegation? Or have no black delegation at all.

[TremendousJudge]

...just do away with districts entirely? why are they needed?

[kelnos]

The original point of having districts was because states are "too large" and you want people representing an even smaller geographical area so that truly local issues are represented.

And in many places that's still the case, and is actually useful and important to get local issues surfaced properly.

For states with heavily gerrymandered districts, though, I agree: might as well just do away with districts and have the entire state vote for their entire roster of representatives.

[triceratops]

So instead of making a choice between 2-5 candidates (major 2 plus a few independents/smaller parties), every voter has to rank up to 50 candidates (assuming ranked choice voting)? How do you expect voters to know the policy positions of that many candidates? They may as well be picking at random.

If not ranked choice voting, how would this even work?

[caf]

If you're going to have a large multi-member district with proportional representation, it's not essential to use ranked-choice voting - you can get a reasonable result just by having people vote once for the ticket of candidates they prefer, then allocating the seats proportionally.

That said, ranked-choice voting in large multi-member districts is certainly possible: It is usual to require voters to rank only as many candidates as there are vacancies, though they can number more if they wish to (consequently they don't need to understand the detailed policy positions of the minor candidates that have no realistic chance of election). Voters in such systems tend to firstly order the parties based on the policy positions of those parties, then order the candidates within those parties if they have a strong opinion of the relative merits of those candidates.

Here's an example of a media summary of the candidates running in such an election: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-17/federal-election-2019...

[zhoujianfu]

Yep, via ranked choice voting and open primaries!

[tombert]

I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Individual districts are going to have problems the the rest of the state or country don't know/care about. Having a representative for these districts makes sense.

For example, in my district (Brownsville in Brooklyn), we have an almost tragically poorly-ranked school system, due largely to bad funding and high crime rates in the area. I don't expect someone from Midtown Manhattan to care a whole lot about these specific problems (I know I certainly didn't when I lived in Washington Heights).

In an ideal world I guess I'd agree, everyone would care about everything at the exact appropriate weight, but that's not the world we live in. Certain problems will go ignored if we don't have fairly-granular representation for an area.

[jandrese]

That's not a great example because really the school budget should be set at the state level and distributed evenly to every district based on student headcount.

You do make a valid point that many issues are local and that could be lost in a system where the party is focused at the state level instead of the local level. Proportional representation systems are prone to having this issue for example.

[tombert]

Some areas are going to require more funding than others. For example, certain areas are wealthier and as a result are less reliant on the after-school programs, while poorer areas have a higher likelihood to be single-parent, or both parents having to work, meaning that the after-school programs are vital.

That's just one example, but it's not as simple as "give a certain amount of money per kid to the schools", and saying this is reductionist.

[singron]

I think America really likes them because the alternative seems like "virtual representation" (i.e. representatives represent everyone, not a local district), which was part of why they rebelled against England. The theory is you want someone to represent your local area specifically rather than all representatives trying (badly) to balance the needs of everyone.

I don't know what the difference would really be in practice, although I think the other comments in this thread about lack of proportional representation would probably apply. I think it sort of comes down to how much worse you think Tyranny of the Majority is than what we have currently (or if you want an actual proportional representation system instead).

[triceratops]

Because otherwise every voter would need to cast a vote on every single candidate for every single seat in the legislature. It's impossible to make informed choices with so many options.

[runarberg]

State representation usually clusters around class issues not ethnicity. And even if it didn’t, why arbitrarily focus on ethnicity? Handicapped people need representation, yet we don’t draw districts that ensures they get one. And if we did, and started splitting votes by who we think need the most representation, we might as well do away with democracy and start arbitrarily arranging representatives.

[DiogenesKynikos]

This is one reason why proportional representation is a better system. Parties can form to represent different types of interests, and their power is proportional to the number of votes they get. Instead, in the American winner-takes-all electoral system, the Supreme Court decides which groups need representation and mandates that they get gerrymandered districts.