ALL HAIL PRESIDENT TRUMP
" You're not. I'm saying the argument that districts should be created in whatever shape leads to "responsiveness" and ignores borders is the same bad argument that leads to globalism. Did you not like my suggestion that districts become "SSN modulo rep_count"? Why does that not work for you? It maximizes the responsiveness you crave, so where's the problem? Reiterating it in expanded terms, physical districts go away. There are, say, 10 federal house reps for your state, so you look at the last digit of your social security number to determine which seat you vote on. Each representative represents 1/10th of the state's population, effectively randomly sampled. Every 2 years, these reps change to basically mirror the popular vote (with minor rounding/random error). Say what you will about Ilhan Omar, but she is an accurate representative for her district. She knows about the issues that face Somalian immigrants, and Muslims, because she's from there and speaks for them. In a system like you describe, the "Somalian vote" is spread across 10 even districts and they're completely disenfranchised as a result. " Neither am I. There are problems worth fixing, and to bring this full circle, I certainly don't think that simply funding an "independent redistricting committee" gets us any closer to a solution. I also don't think that your goal is a goal that leads toward the problem of unrepresentative government being solved. " I never said or implied that. I said that it leads to an unrepresentative government, and you took that to mean more, bigger government. You are only focused on one metric: republican/democrat representation, and you think that that's the only thing worth representing about people in the House. --- Aside from your heinous misreading of my opinion, we obviously agree that most of the problem is that federal reps have to vote on federal bills that really should never have made it up to the federal level in the first place. As I said in the first take, I appreciate that RepresentUs is arguing in favor of pushing law up from the states instead of going for top-down solutions (and that I am curious why they don't think this will also solve things like, say, overincarceration). Last edited by pneuma on Mar 4, 2019, 3:08:23 PM
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"Funny, I thought I mentioned the Wikipedia image already; it's kind of important to understand the other districting problem of proportional representation. Since linking it apparently fails, I'll repost it here:  Remember, this is Wikipedia's image, not mine. Your "modulo rep_count" plan is represented by the top left image, and therefore would generally be considered gerrymandering because it leads to disproportionate representation — hiding the Somali vote, per your example. Would I consider it gerrymandering? Yes, but I consider the bottom left image to ALSO be gerrymandering. Under the bottom left districting, every representative has their own hyper-partisan base, and no one is interested in bipartisan compromise. Instead of top left (what you think I'm advocating) or bottom left (what Wikipedia thinks is just fine but I find egregious), I'm advocating for bottom right. What's interesting about the bottom left districting is that it's bad for federal representation but it's ideal for local governance. Ideally the municipal boundaries would put unanimous groups of people together. However, using those ideal municipal boundaries for federal representation districts would be problematic at that level. Thus we'd expect that ideally municipalities and federal districts would use separate border systems (bottom left for cities, bottom right for federal districts). "No, there could be more variables than simply liberal/conservative. For example, consider a total of 81 people to be drawn into 9 districts, wherein 36 are red squares, 18 are red circles, 18 are blue squares, and 9 are blue circles. I think a good (but perhaps not perfect) districting would be… District 1: 3 blue circles, 2 red circles, 2 blue squares, 2 red squares. → Expected winner: blue (5:4) circle (5:4) Districts 2 and 3: 4 red circles, 1 blue circle, 3 red squares, 1 blue square → Expected winners: red (7:2) circles (5:4) Districts 4 and 5: 4 blue squares, 1 blue circle, 3 red squares, 1 red circle → Expected winners: blue (5:4) squares (7:2) Districts 6 and 7: 6 red squares, 1 blue square, 1 red circle, 1 blue circle → Expected winners: red (7:2) squares (7:2) Districts 8 and 9: 5 red squares, 2 blue squares, 2 red circles → Expected winner: red (7:2) squares (7:2) Now of course there's the question of what types of distinctions are relevant. Should race be a factor? Etc. But the point is that this approach can accommodate multifactor demographics. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Mar 4, 2019, 6:19:42 PM
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Good image for simplifying the argument. I don't consider the bottom-left image gerrymandering, and in fact I think that it's closest to the natural outcome of districts that follow geography and don't split up communities.
--- " There are a limitless number of factors. There's race (among several), religion (among several), sex (among two), occupation (among many), and wealth to consider, at the very least. As it so happens, most (all?) gerrymandering lawsuits come from republicans gerrymandering districts away from democrats and breaking Title 9 race protections due to disenfranchising black people (who incidentally vote ~90% democrat)... but I digress. To try and account for all factors in some presumably programmatic system is a fool's errand that dies in intractability. Your approach necessarily requires that you pick and choose relevant factors, as if we know a priori which human factors matter the most when it comes to writing effective policy. Moreover, I have a very strong feeling that no contiguous geographic boundaries (and districts are these) will result in the bottom-right image. People make an active choice about where they live and work, and these opinions feed into geographical realities. You're throwing this knowledge aside and imposing your own. Two obvious examples are Jewish communities that congregate in residence around a local synagogue, and manufacturing workers that live near the factory they work at. You want these voices (and the knowledge behind those voices) consolidated into at least one representative, and be beholden to them for re-election if they don't listen to the community. It wasn't too long ago that I remember Texas having pro-gun Democrats. They broke with "party command" because they were beholden to their communities. Did you include "gun ownership" in your list of factors...? If not, then you've lost an important voice in forming policy. --- " I'm not sure that having highly competitive districts leads to bipartisan compromise writ large. Highly competitive districts turn into mud-slinging shitshows, now more than ever. More people turn a blind eye to the fault of their own parties knowing that it could come down to a single vote. Accusations of rigged elections come out of the woodwork knowing how easy it could be to change a single vote. The reality is that some ideas are mutually exclusive, and no bipartisan federal legislature can be written for problems solved by each idea. Ideally you want this duked out at a lower level before it reaches the federal level (and god help you if it ends up in the executive branch for which there is exactly one person making a binary choice). Overall, I would say this issue isn't a primary source nor the place to "solve" the partisanship problem. You've got people (and the media, making huge ad bucks) that still claim without evidence that Trump is an illegitimate president. In turn, I heard Trump say in his recent CPAC speech re:executive orders, "I don't care about precedent, the democrats were going to use EOs anyway, keep voting republican". This kind of back-and-forth, escalating, brainless tribal warfare does far more to foster partisanship than a 90% democrat district led by an old incumbent that has written bipartisan legislation in the past and is good friends with some republican legislators. Last edited by pneuma on Mar 5, 2019, 12:17:36 AM
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" The really fake news, which now is all part of TFN (Trump Fake News). For example TFN did the 2 hour speech to the CPC which contained 104 false or misleading statements, almost one per minute! Over 430 threads discussing labyrinth problems with over 1040 posters in support (thread # 1702621) Thank you all! GGG will implement a different method for ascension in PoE2. Retired!
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"While I agree that the bottom left best represents people grouping by free association according to shared interests, that has nothing to do with districting. For simplification, let's focus on two levels of government: municipal and federal. We are considering both borders of municipal jurisdiction and the borders of federal districts for the purposes of electing representatives to a common house. These two types of borders serve very different purposes. One determines where municipalities can enact laws that can be different from those of the municipalities around then, and thus should be drawn to DIVIDE people from one another. The other is part of a system that determines laws that apply to everyone uniformly, and thus should be drawn to UNITE disparate people's together. Although proportional represntation is one of the two goals, it us not the only goal. The function of representatives (as contrasted with, say, a mayor) is to hammer out compromises with other representatives, which is why over-appealing to any one isolated community is not productive. This is why municipal and representative-district borders should NOT match each other. "Scientists are getting close to being able to tell if you'll be liberal or conservative on the basis of your DNA. You're overmystifying things. "Your feeling is wrong. "Again, I am NOT saying representative-district boundaries should match municipal boundaries, and I AM saying more decisions should be decided at more local levels than are currently decided at the federal level. I'm not throwing this knowledge aside; I'm saying it is less relevant when trying to write universal laws as opposed to laws tailored to particular communities (but not irrelevant — proportional represntation is still one of two goals). In other words, I acknowledge that those things matter and are important, but I'm saying they're not as contextually relevant to federal representation. "One of the two goals addresses this. But the other goal incorporates some voices outside that community for compromise. Factory example: consider a federal proposal to punish major corporate polluters. If the representative's base is overwhelmingly factory workers, factory management, and surrounding businesses reliant upon those two groups for business, then the attitude is significantly different than if the representative's base is a narrow majority of those two groups, but also includes nearby communities less reliant upon the factory. The latter will still be compelled to represent the factory, but will be more open to compromise. "Show me a single example of a House Democrat from a 90% district that has good relationships with Republicans. You won't, because they haven't incentive; they'll get primaried out by the likes of AOC. 86% of seats (obviously not counting the one in the Oval) are not competitive in a D vs R sense. Most Representatives aren't scared of challengers from the opposing party. What House Democrats ARE scared of is AOC mean-tweeting them, because THAT is what threatens their re-election. Just as, I'm sure, House Republicans are scared of a potential Trump tweet. We've got Democrats scared of further-left Democrats and Republicans scared of further-right Republicans, and you're saying you don't see the correlation between that and districtings? Really? Edit: "These are problems for which the only federal answer is to acknowledge there is no federal answer. If there is no chance of a bipartisan compromise, only of one dominating the other, in the context of a particular issue, the ONLY valid answer is: there are some states and/or cities where one dominates, and some where the other does. In other words, these are best recognized as NOT being federal issues. As federal non-issues, the makeup of representatives is not relevant to their decision — although representatives will better realize this if they themselves represent different communities with different laws that peacefully coexist through separation. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Mar 5, 2019, 5:38:19 PM
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" His mind is failing quickly as he sundowns. Even full blown psychopaths have their limits. |
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" Actually, it is hard for me to say. He's always been kind of scatter-brained when speaking off script like that. It's a really difficult skill to master to just speak for 2 hours like that without a set script or apparently even an outline of what he was going to talk about. If his mind is going then, I can't really say that I can see any degradation over the past 3 years? Over 430 threads discussing labyrinth problems with over 1040 posters in support (thread # 1702621) Thank you all! GGG will implement a different method for ascension in PoE2. Retired!
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Xav is still gone huh :( Guess we're looking at a month.
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" Well, tbh, this thread is more of a therapy session for trump-haters who need someone to vent to with the occasional spark of intelligence. It's a good break for ppl to take a long time-out if they get too emotional. (⌐■_■)
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