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BillBrasky Memorial Political Chat Thread

ChrisL68 said:
There are plenty of solutions and states have enacted them and those states have representation that corresponds with the total vote in the state. You're not interested in them because you want to have a political advantage from drawing gerrymandered districts. Why don't you just admit it?
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Oh, I'm interested. I keep asking and nobody seems to point to one. But there are "plenty", so I'm sure this will take you no time at all. We can take Dem-controlled Illinois off the list. 48 to go.
 
birdman said:
Just write a a spatial optimization algorithm.

1) maximize population evenness in districts
2) minimize dividing municipalities and counties
3) constrained by the number of districts needed

...and you're done. The parameters are there for everyone to see and argue about, but there is no need for nonpartisan committees, no need for partisan back and forth and no need for expensive lawsuits.
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Yep. And NC can take it a step further because there are only two metro areas with more than then ~750K who should be in any district. So NC districts could be drawn without splitting up any counties that aren't in the Charlotte and Raleigh metro areas. The Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia MSA without SC splits almost perfectly 3 ways. The Raleigh-Cary MSA splits perfectly in half.

An algorithm that takes all that into consideration should net a few hundred combinations. Then just randomly pick one. If you want to get political, let each party veto 25% of the options and randomly choose between the remaining 50%.
 
PhDeac said:
Yep. And NC can take it a step further because there are only two metro areas with more than then ~750K who should be in any district. So NC districts could be drawn without splitting up any counties that aren't in the Charlotte and Raleigh metro areas. The Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia MSA without SC splits almost perfectly 3 ways. The Raleigh-Cary MSA splits perfectly in half.

An algorithm that takes all that into consideration should net a few hundred combinations. Then just randomly pick one. If you want to get political, let each party veto 25% of the options and randomly choose between the remaining 50%.
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Okay, but there would less Representatives from urban areas that way than there currently are.
 
PhDeac said:
Yep. And NC can take it a step further because there are only two metro areas with more than then ~750K who should be in any district. So NC districts could be drawn without splitting up any counties that aren't in the Charlotte and Raleigh metro areas. The Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia MSA without SC splits almost perfectly 3 ways. The Raleigh-Cary MSA splits perfectly in half.

An algorithm that takes all that into consideration should net a few hundred combinations. Then just randomly pick one. If you want to get political, let each party veto 25% of the options and randomly choose between the remaining 50%.
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You could also write some code to randomly pick from the tied decisions / maps and take the human element out of the results entirely. They write the inputs but have no say in "picking" the outputs.

It is fucking insane that in 2021 we are still using 1780's based approaches.
 
WokeandBroke said:
Oh, I'm interested. I keep asking and nobody seems to point to one. But there are "plenty", so I'm sure this will take you no time at all. We can take Dem-controlled Illinois off the list. 48 to go.
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No you're not. You keep pointing out illinois to provide cover so you can throw up your hands and say well we just got to accept it.

If you can have independent commissions you can have computer programs you can require that the redistricting be approved by both parties as examples. Any redistricting that is approved has to fall within a standard deviation of the total vote in the state in the last presidential election.
 
ChrisL68 said:
No you're not. You keep pointing out illinois to provide cover so you can throw up your hands and say well we just got to accept it.

If you can have independent commissions you can have computer programs you can require that the redistricting be approved by both parties as examples. Any redistricting that is approved has to fall within a standard deviation of the total vote in the state in the last presidential election.
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That and 400 continuous years of history to corroborate my belief. I'm saying "I'm interested" because I don't believe you. This is the part where you show me.
 
WokeandBroke said:
That and 400 continuous years of history to corroborate my belief. I'm saying "I'm interested" because I don't believe you. This is the part where you show me.
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You just ignore plenty of examples of states that have done it. You don't want equitable solutions so you just pretend they aren't possible.
 
Politicians should not pick their voters. A party that gets 52% of the statewide vote should not get 78% of the seats.
 
if jh thought gerrymandering was wrong we’d have heard that by now.
 
WokeandBroke said:
I posted a single tweet without comment. I haven't even endorsed either map. WHAT ELSE HAS HE FAILED TO CONDEMN?
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Your whole fucking schtick here today has been "The libs won't condemn the 1993 map" as evidence that we are ok with gerrymandering when it benefits Dems.
 
birdman said:
Your whole fucking schtick here today has been "The libs won't condemn the 1993 map" as evidence that we are ok with gerrymandering when it benefits Dems.
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TBF, my point is that this is harder than you all think it is (it's the very first thing I said. #1). If you plug your criteria in the computer, there's no guarantee you get a political balance, which is the only complaint you have with this map. That's my point.

But as the rest of your post, if the Shoo fits...
 
WokeandBroke said:
TBF, my point is that this is harder than you all think it is (it's the very first thing I said. #1). If you plug your criteria in the computer, there's no guarantee you get a political balance, which is the only complaint you have with this map. That's my point.

But as the rest of your post, if the Shoo fits...
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It isn't harder. You have states in this union that have equal partisan representation and they end up with much more fairly drawn districts
 
WokeandBroke said:
TBF, my point is that this is harder than you all think it is (it's the very first thing I said. #1). If you plug your criteria in the computer, there's no guarantee you get a political balance, which is the only complaint you have with this map. That's my point.

But as the rest of your post, if the Shoo fits...
Click to expand...

The guarantee is you get a map that is determined by transparent objectives and not human biases. I don't think anyone is saying that the objective is political balance, they are citing the imbalanced results (or really, results that do not reflect the electorate) as evidence that the inputs are biased.
 
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