54
votes
Accepted
How far can gerrymandering go?
This is a rather simple mathematical exercise. If you allow me total freedom to draw districts within the current requirements, I can place anyone in any district I want provided they have equal ...
- 1,794
43
votes
Accepted
Does gerrymandering not affect elections for US Senators?
Yes. Currently gerrymandering has no effect on US Senators.
However, before the ratification of the 17th amendment to Constitution, Senators were elected/chosen by the state legislature. The state ...
- 985
21
votes
Does gerrymandering not affect elections for US Senators?
While the state-wide nature of gerrymandering would make one think that it has no effect, it certainly could.
Elections are run at the state level, so a state-gerrymandered election could alter that ...
- 20.7k
21
votes
Accepted
Would HR1 pass the US Senate if it only prohibited gerrymandering?
Impossible to say, but unlikely. Congressional Republicans have phrased the entire concept of federal regulation of voting as government overreach and a breach of the states's rights to do so. There'...
- 15.7k
18
votes
Does gerrymandering not affect elections for US Senators?
The above examples are correct that current gerrymandering does not have an effect on US Senators.
However, the division of territory into states itself has been alleged to be a consequence of ...
- 181
17
votes
How far can gerrymandering go?
The problem here is that "one person one vote" can be based on residents rather than citizens or voters. So if you could assign people purely arbitrarily, you could fill up your districts with non-...
- 88.7k
16
votes
Are there any solid representative district planning strategies that can avoid gerrymandering?
One alternative is to let a totally impartial computer decide, based purely on census data and geography, with no details about the political (or other) makeup of the population. Brian Olsen's open ...
- 12.6k
15
votes
Accepted
How does gerrymandering work in the US?
How did gerrymandering evolve from a practice applied by one senator in Massachusetts to something commonly applied across the US?
Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts is normally considered the ...
- 88.7k
14
votes
Have Republicans ever complained about gerrymandering in the United States?
Yes, everyone complains about gerrymandering when the gerrymandering doesn't help them.
To answer your questions specifically, there is an ongoing case in Maryland where the Democrats are accused of ...
14
votes
Is the North Carolina 2016 Congressional map gerrymandered?
Are North Carolina's districts extremely common sense?
You can look for yourself - the colors designate each district.
Other than 2 and 4, they look pretty common sense and even those aren't ...
- 10.9k
12
votes
Is the North Carolina 2016 Congressional map gerrymandered?
The recent Supreme Court ruling on this specific case is available. In this instance the court was split 5-4 along Conservative/Liberal lines.
The majority opinion states that Partisan Gerrymandering ...
- 22.7k
11
votes
Accepted
What is gerrymandering?
Gerrymandering is the act of redefining borders between voting districts in order to gain a political advantage. The practice is named after the US politician Elbridge Gerry, who was the governor of ...
- 71.4k
10
votes
Does gerrymandering risk tidal wave reversal?
Yes, it definitely could happen.
The mathematical version of gerrymandering is easily expressed in integer programming, as shown here (for people who like MIPs).
In its simplest version (without ...
- 3,286
10
votes
How would one prevent political gerrymandering?
Pegden, Procaccia, and Yu have proposed a really cool new method for districting from game theory. In a 2 party system, a pretty fair solution can be reached using a method deriving from the simple ...
- 10.9k
10
votes
Accepted
Origin of gerrymandering phrase regarding politicians picking voters
A candidate:
Lectures delivered before the American Institution of Instruction, Boston, August, 1841, pg 186
The young should be prepared , by their education , to choose their rulers , and not be ...
- 387
9
votes
Accepted
How does the argument go that gerrymandering restricts freedom of association?
It falls to the entire "voters choosing legislators vs legislators choosing their voters" meme.
If there is an objective criteria for drawing boundaries in a logical, geometrically simple method, ...
- 20.7k
9
votes
Is Baltimore unfair to Republican voters?
You'll have to ask K Dog. The question was about city elections, so all these answers about states' gerrymandering of congressional districts are irrelevant. Here is what he was responding to:
"With ...
- 91
8
votes
Does gerrymandering risk tidal wave reversal?
It did happen. In the US in 2006, the Democrats took the House of Representatives after twelve years of Republican control. Four years later the Republicans took back the House. Both were wave ...
- 88.7k
8
votes
Have Republicans ever complained about gerrymandering in the United States?
Has the Republican party ever seen the same sort of disparity that is quoted in the above Reuters article on Wisconsin?
Despite receiving 51 percent of the votes statewide in 2012, Democrats ...
- 88.7k
8
votes
Is Baltimore unfair to Republican voters?
Gerrymandering is the big one. Maryland is two-thirds Democrat and one-third Republican, and in the 2010 redistricting, Democrats offset several large Republican-dominated rural areas by scooping up ...
- 16.9k
8
votes
Accepted
How would one prevent political gerrymandering?
Any other way?
No.
The normal suggestions are
An "independent" commission.
A "fair" algorithm.
But who chooses the fair algorithm? The politicians in power. How long does it take before ...
- 88.7k
7
votes
Accepted
How does the Australian Electoral Commission avoid partisan bias?
The AEC is headed by a Commission consisting of three people appointed by the Special Minister of State:
a chairperson, who must be a current or retired judge of the Federal Court selected from a ...
- 870
7
votes
Is it possible to gerrymander Maryland's congressional districts such that all eight lean Democratic?
FiveThirtyEight's Atlas of Redistricting is a good resource for this, which has compiled a set of seven alternate congressional district configurations for each US state, in the following categories:
...
CDJB♦
- 96.2k
7
votes
Would HR1 pass the US Senate if it only prohibited gerrymandering?
Would "For the People Act" (aka HR1) get required bipartisan support in the US Senate if it concentrated only on the prohibition of gerrymandering?
No, because what one group of people call ...
- 15.4k
6
votes
When courts draw maps, do they gerrymander?
When courts draw maps, do they gerrymander?
Courts do not draw maps, though they have authority to invalidate maps drawn.
2 U.S. Code § 2c. Number of Congressional Districts; number of ...
- 30.7k
6
votes
How does gerrymandering work in the US?
Generally voting districts in a state are defined and controlled by the state legislature. Let's use my home state, North Carolina, as an example.
N.C. currently has 13 congressional districts. In ...
- 15.3k
6
votes
Would HR1 pass the US Senate if it only prohibited gerrymandering?
There is a significant problem with not gerrymandering in the US system. It is a combination of two factors: (1) a de-facto two party system (2) single seat representation, with per-district winner-...
- 2,642
5
votes
Does gerrymandering risk tidal wave reversal?
This does not only apply to gerrymandering but any way to skew a voting system.
To see this, let’s first make a few simplifying assumptions:
We have a pure two-party system.
Votes somehow assign ...
- 1,137
5
votes
Are there any solid representative district planning strategies that can avoid gerrymandering?
It is possible to eliminate redistricting altogether. Redistricting is caused by geographic districts, which are inherently unfair:
A third to half of the voters in a district are disenfranchised ...
- 88.7k
5
votes
Do any countries use a mathematical formula to divide districts, so that gerrymandering is avoided?
This is a difficult question to answer because any answer will be heavily dependent on one's definition of bias. To attempt to answer, I'll be working off of the Merriam-Webster definition of ...
- 966
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible