In the never ending battle between the two big parties, the battle over redistricting is pretty much at the front lines...

http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_57...-210186-1.html

I think the Arizona situation is a pretty egregious example of this. A while back the voters got tired of the politics in their districting and lobbied to form an independent commission to form the districts in their state. The commission was made up of two Democrats, two Republicans, and one Independent, who was also the chairperson. They came back with a proposed electoral map that redrew the boundaries to make them as fair as possible but the (perhaps) unintended effect was that it could loosen the Republican stranglehold on the state. As a result Governor Jan Brewer impeached the chairwoman of the commission claiming that the redrawing focused too much on "competitiveness" in the districts and not enough on other factors, such as maintaining a grid-like layout. Her letter to the chairwoman is pretty hilarious as she outlines how many other factors are more important than having an actual competitive district.

Gerrymandering is something that everyone should be against, regardless of their affiliation, but changing it requires politicians who are willing to support measures that might be directly against their self interest. As long as that's the case, what's the right way to draw districts?

why is "having an actual competitive district" important?

I assume it is the same in the U.S as it is in Australia. Competitive districts here get a lot more government funding and a lot more attention from politicians because both parties try to buy the swing vote to capture the district.

There has to a mathematical way to do this based on population and geography so that the aggregate of all districts have the least possible border length. And we're done. Fair for everyone. Obviously will never happen.

There is no perfect non-partisan way to draw a district. You can only draw it for one party or another.

Did you read my post? Use computers to draw the smallest bordered districts possible, while still following roads (something like the grid idea that the republican governor seemed to be clamoring for, but more scientific). That way it's always the same formula for everyone.

"Mom, will you call the Governor before the socialist hippies take over my district"

Well then you keep people together randomly but there are a few flaws at least for me.
A. Neighberhoods and actual areas might not get grouped together.
B. Democrats would get boned because they tend to live together in cities while Reps tend to live in trailers in the middle of nowhere spread out.

Conclusion: Some voices would be favored over other voices using a random computer method.

lol. They are just trying to put the inevitable Bluing of Arizona. Its sick to think that Arizona could go for the dems as soon as this year.

The grid would be based on population not area. I can live with the neighborhood problem. You're always going to have to split a neighborhood in any kind of continuous city.

The closer a district's makeup is to 50/50, the more sensitive the election results will be to changes in the political disposition, and therefore the more responsive to the people the government will be.

If they're using computers at a precise local level to help rig it in their favor they have to be able to do it in a fair way as well. Def. agree that they would never do that though.

I recently spoke with a state senator from my state who convinced me that our redistricting will take place in the courts rather than drawn up by the lolgop led legislature. "thank god for the courts," they said.

btw I've been in favor of the type of model discussed itt by suzzer99. the damned vipers make it difficult to understand by handwaving and making sarcastic comments about "the computers" and how "they" want us to hand over everything to the "porn peddlers."

The US electoral system is woefully unfair, outdated and undemocratic. The only real solution is to change it (which will never happen). Until that time gerrymandering will have a lot of influence on politics.

I could get on board with the computer-drawn lines based on population apportionment. While we're at it, could we get the Amendment (one of the first twelve proposed that was never ratified) that specifies we get a representative for every 50,000 people? Congress is way too small relative to the population for effective citizen participation.

Tangent: also, abolish the Senate and Electoral college plz.

Suzzer wins, thats the best strategy.

Such algorithms exist. Here's an example, with sample maps to boot.

Sure, but Democrats are still disadvantaged of having more of their support concentrated in their strongest areas. There are tons of urban precincts where Obama got over 90% of the vote, which probably have more total population than the precincts where McCain got over 70% of the vote.

The idea is not so much "neighbourhoods" but "communities of interest". Urbans areas might be a community of interest separate from rural areas, but a simple algorithm might draw two districts split evenly between the two when it may have been easy to draw a heavily-rural and a heavily-urban district.

Terrible idea.

Congress is there to pass good laws. When you make a legislature too big, the representatives become meaningless pawns, and the whole show would be run by the parties. It's sort of like the nominating conventions, where the only job of the delegates is to vote for the candidate who they were elected to vote for, not to do any thinking by themselves. The output of congress would be worse than it is now.

The House should be smaller in size, the closer they come to the size of the Senate, the more independent thinking representatives you will have, and the less party line voting they will do. They should reduce the House to about 200 members.

Yes, and different neighborhoods would be affected every ten years as population shifts would lead to the moving of the boundary lines every ten years.

I can support computerized mapping. It would randomly create some safe seats for each party and some competitive seats, and would make for interesting and fair elections.

Right now the Senate is the more representative body of the US legislature, precisely because it is not gerrymandered like the House is. Of course it is representative on a time delay. What people most recently want (2010 election) only accounts for 1/3 of the Senate, while their out of date desires (2006, 2008 elections) still has 2/3 of the Senate. But that is still better than gross gerrymandering.

The Senate is not representative at all. How can you think that? Just add up the populations of the 25 states with the least population and see how skewed it is.

Yet another structural issue. Stop using districts, send people to congress via proportional representation. Let the people choose who they vote with.

I checked it myself. 15.85% of the population (including people living in the territories who get no representation in the Senate at all) lives in the 25 least populated states. Considering the winner takes all nature of Senate elections only about 8% of the population is needed to take half the Senate.

The Senate is extremely unrepresentative of the US population. And because Senators are also relevant to the electoral college this means that the bottom 25 states also have a disproportional amount of electors in the presidential elections.

The US federal electoral system is archaic, undemocratic and pretty bad. How they ever came to the conclusion that this was a great idea is a mystery to me.

I think they were trying to find a good way to elect a national leader that didn't involve the parliamentary system as in England, but also paid attention to their belief in the importance of both the states and the people. Good intentions but now a pretty lousy system. Far better would be electing the President by popular vote, but good luck seeing that day come.

Sadly some people never get beyond simple population math.

Small states elect both liberal Democrats and Conservative Republicans as much as the large states do. Population does not on a practical level change the balance of the Senate.

The effects of gerrymandering (creating a disproportionate number of very one-sided districts) distorts the membership of the House so much more than the size of states has any effect on the Senate. There are a lot more "swing seats" percentage wise in the Senate than there are in the House.

Yes, Virginia, the Senate is more representative of the entire country's drmographics than the House.

Even if every state gerrymandered at optimal efficiency they couldn't get to elect half the House with only 8%-16% of the voters. Simple math really. And you call out my math? Lol,

The fact that small states swing both ways doesn't change the fact that the Senate is not representative of anything at all.