Posted on 04/04/2010 3:24:54 PM PDT by neverdem
In 2002, at the end of my fourth term as a New York state senator, I heard that the Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, wanted to talk to me. It was the beginning of the decennial state redistricting, and Mr. Bruno showed me a map of his plan for Brooklyn — which had my district cut into pieces and allocated to other senators.
“We’ll give you the safest seat in Brooklyn,” he said, along with about $2 million in member items — discretionary money that senators get to dole out to constituents — considerably more than the $130,000 a year I had been receiving. All I had to do was become a Republican, or at least support him as the majority leader.
I declined his offer, and still managed to win. But the experience brought home to me the way that the state’s redistricting system creates almost lifetime tenure for elected officials and an almost imperial level of control for the majority leadership. Separating it from political influence must therefore be high on any reform agenda.
The Legislature should create a panel of distinguished citizens, perhaps including a few legislators, which would submit three plans for redistricting; the Legislature could choose one of them, but could not alter it...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
How do you keep the “distinquished citizens” from playing politics with it.
The only way to truly remove the politics is to have a mathematical formula that divide the land and population into districts. And this formula gets followed no matter what.
Gerrymandering even gets judicial approval in “minority districting.”
OK, so the system according to this rat is utterly corrupt, and he refused to play, but he still managed to WIN?
How do you suppose that happened?
Tsk, tsk, he won't say.
The problem with that plan is that it could result in Congressional and legislative delegation completely out of whack for the state trend.
In Texas by the 1990’s, Republicans were winning statewide. By the early 2000’s they had every statewide seat, sometimes by extremely healthy margins. Yet until 2002 (if I rememebr correctly) the Congressional delegation was still majority Democrat, and the State House was still Democrat. Republicans then drew the seats, and after customary lawsuits, Republicans ran the state. Call it gerrymandering if you will, but the party that was winning elections took power. That is as it should be.
In some respects, Republicans over-did it when they redistricted before the 2010 census, but Democrats had set the precedent, and they had no right to complain.
I agree. The formula should be something like: minimize the length of the edges of every district, so that the total length (of all district edges) is as small as possible.
Exceptions should be made for political boundaries: counties, cities, etc -- so that a city or county is not split between two districts unless there is simply no way to draw the districts equally without doing so.
However, I don't know how you require every state to do it, without trampling on state's rights.
I’m thinking it’s simple geometry - every district has to be as close to a square as possible, and make the squares large enough or small enough to encompass the same number of people in each Congressional District.
A set of circles would generate the smallest "edge length". But, it would leave a a lot of space between them. :-)
For adjacent figures (or districts), squares would yield the smallest overall edge length. But, you'd still have the problem with political boundaries -- which is why I proposed the exceptions.
There is a way to specify this algorithmically: a good mathematician would be able to do it, and apply it to the 2010 census data (voting age population only -- no other factors should be allowed).
THEN, someone could test it against recent vote tabulations to predict the probable outcomes and identify the contested districts. It would be really interesting to compare it to the results of the inevitable gerrymandering.
This would be an great research project. I wonder if anyone would be willing to undertake it and publish the results?
I say make every district rectangular and let a computer draw the maps.
Texas Democrats gerry mandered to the nth degree when in power and then once the shoe was on the other foot, they got mad and ran off to another state.
hypocrites.
Republicans over-did it”
Actually , NO they didnt ... the number of GOP seats is still less than the GOP vote share, BOTH for the state House and the congressional districts.
The districts are quite reasonable and over-fair to the Dems in many ways.
Worse idea: Letting lawmakers appoint unelected, “disinterested” committees to do it.
Worse idea still: having unelected, radical, left-wing judges do it.
Squares and circles are hard because districts have uneven population densities. And you still have to decide where to seed the squares or circiles. But fortunately, computer programs can be sophisticated enough to implement an agreed-apon set of values. I’d suggest tasking the computer to find districts which divide the fewest number of local-government jurisdictions. The jursidictions could be weighted for population, so splitting wards in Manhattan would be as bad as splitting counties in the Adirondack; that way gerrymandering couldn’t take place within massive jurisdictions.
As in zip codes? I could see that. District 1 consists of zip codes x, y and z. But wouldn’t that lead to interference with the zip code (or whatever) establishment process?
So something like.....
Start at the state capital building, and draw a ring of concentric circles at 1 mile intervals. If the number of residents / voters inside that circle is less than some target, proceed to the next +1 mile radius. Keep doing so till you reach a max number of voters.
You could then divide the rings along N, S, E, W and likewise, continue with the rings.
You could use squares or rectangles as well but they would require greater description.
As I see it, make every District comprised of four points joined with lines - only one of which to allow for geographical features (rivers, coastlines, mountain ranges, etc.) - the other three being straight following N-S, E-W alignments. Any parcel or property bisected to become part of the District that contains over 50% of it.
While zip codes might make some of the administration a little easier, I think you are right that would just push the gerrymandering over to the post office.
No, I'm thinking more of a formula like the following:
It would be a strict mathematical process. And it's possible that last district could end up being a collection of really disjointed remnants in the eastern part. If that's a problem, you could modify it by changing the start point every 10 years, again by a fixed formula.
You would probably need a rule that says voting locations should not be more than 10, 15, 25 miles from a voter depending on population density. Not sure how voting locatiosn are decided now, but I haven't heard complaints about voting locations not being accessible.
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