Cont: Trump's Coup - Part 3

[Paul2]

shut (may I call you shut?), maybe we've hijacked this thread enough? I could continue on, but maybe it's time?

 

[phiwum]

I have explained this to you several times already. Your plan will reduce the politics in the regular process of redistricting by piling it all up into a big heap of politics in changing the rules that govern redistricting.

I have another method to propose, we do it based on area from now on. We'll fix the size of the districts so they all must have equal area. Would that be a non-political change to the redistricting process?

What a blatantly obvious plan to tilt the balance in favor of the GOP.

As we all know, urban areas are more densely populated and tend to be Democratic. This plan would make state governments and the House subject to the same issues that the senate is. People in rural (and hence less dense) areas would be overrepresented, an advantage for the GOP.

Why the heck would you think area is more important than population?

 

[Thermal]

Just return the voting right to landowning white men only. We didn't have all these problems back then.

 

[shuttlt]

The results of a democratic vote reflect the will of the electorate (within a margin of error). Gerrymandering is the attempt to subvert that process through redistricting.

What electorate? The electorate within the district? I think that is kind of contentious depending on what you mean by electorate, but it certainly is a pretty good representation of who actually votes. Probably though you mean that the number of districts won should closely align to the popular vote. Is there agreement that the two things should align. There clearly isn't when talking about the electoral college. I am not at all convinced that there is agreement on these things.

The electoral college is not this type of issue, in my opinion, because some claim that it produces a separation and balance of power, the Senate reining in the presumably more populist, direct-democracy tendencies of the House. Other say it was merely put there for the slave states, but this is a whole 'nother issue.

Balance power between big states and small states? In much the same way that maybe redistricting may skew things to favour rural areas? I don't think that there is the agreement you think there is about these issues.

Without rebutting my point about "fairness" being too vague, why would you re-iterate your point about fairness? All that will do create the need for me to re-iterate my point about the problem with "fairness" being vague. this doesn't contribute productively to our conversation.

It's the fundamental issue. You keep asserting different forms of "the results of a democratic vote reflect the will of the electorate" and take that to mean the electoral districts won should align closely with the popular vote. You assert that as if it was uncontentious and generally agreed. Is it? I don't think it is. It's certainly not sufficiently agreed that you are going to get everyone to agree on a percentage.

It seems to me that there is a radical split between Democrats and Republicans on these issues. You mentioned "the electorate" before. What is the electorate, it is all the people who are eligible to vote. Should the result of the election reflect their views, or just the views of the people who are motivated enough to vote? I think you'd get different answers from Republicans and Democrats on that, particularly if you started pushing into edge cases.

That was never my issue, others here brought that up.

I know. I was mostly reminding myself where this digression came from.

But that merely says you and I disagree, it doesn't prove that my plan isn't the fair one.

There is no universal standard of fairness. There is just what you think is fair and what I think is fair. I'm not trying to prove that your plan is unfair.

What if my plan *is* the rational one?

Sure it's a rational one, given the axioms you are reasoning from about fairness and so on. I am reasoning from a different set of axioms.

The only way we find that out is by getting into the details of whether it is rational or not

I'm willing to grant you that your plan is 100% rational, given the assumptions you have about fairness, and the purpose of redistricting, and so on. It doesn't matter. I have a different set of assumptions, so the soundness or otherwise of your reasoning gets us nowhere.

and just saying that "you say you're the one being rational" doesn't do that.

That's not what I am saying. I am saying there is no "rational" solution to this problem. It's like arguing that there is a tastiest flavour of ice cream and everybody who prefers a different flavour is being irrational.

It dismisses the possibility of my plan being rational without rationally evaluating it.

What I have been telling you post after post is that what would be a fair formula for redistricting isn't something you can decide rationally unless you have agreement on all sorts of things like what you mean by fair, what the purpose of redistricting is, and a host of other questions. I don't think there is agreement on those questions. Those questions are where the disagreement is. You can't skip over all that and answer the questions yourself to end the debate.

 

[shuttlt]

What a blatantly obvious plan to tilt the balance in favor of the GOP.

As we all know, urban areas are more densely populated and tend to be Democratic. This plan would make state governments and the House subject to the same issues that the senate is. People in rural (and hence less dense) areas would be overrepresented, an advantage for the GOP.

Why the heck would you think area is more important than population?

Yes, indeed. It was meant to illustrate that just because one took all the politics out of redistricting didn't mean the politics hadn't moved some place else.

As I have said, repeatedly, you can't take the politics out of this by fiat.

 

[shuttlt]

Agreement with who?

I don't know. The people, the public, the parties, the two sides contending for power?

Even if there is nothing in legislation, the constitution, or inter-party agreements that "the legislature should match the popular vote", I think most people would assume that there should be at least some correlation (given the fact that the U.S. is a democracy. And, you know, the whole "All men are created equal" thing.)

Correlation, sure and there is. All men created equal doesn't mean that all votes count the same. The system wasn't designed to make that happen. A vote in Rhode Island gets you 30% more of a Representative than in California and 338% more of a Senator.

There is a difference between "Here is an algorithm based only on math and that has no human input that provides an electoral map, which favors one side because they have the more popular policies" (i.e. what the democrats want), and "Here is an electoral map that we have drawn by hand to marginalize our opponents so that we can maintain control, not because our policies are more popular, but because we don't care what the general population wants and just want power (i.e. what the republicans want).

To what extent the popular vote should carry the day in the election of any particular body is a political question. Arguing for an answer to this question by referring to your political beliefs, like the supreme importance of the popular vote, is like proving that Jesus is the son of God by quoting the Bible.

The democrats are not asking "let is redraw the map so we can do the same sort of dirty packing and cracking the republicans have been doing", they are saying "lets use algorithms to draw maps and then parties will have to rely more on their policies".

OK. Could we maybe base the apolitical algorithm on Republican political assumptions instead of Democrat ones, like the need to give smaller, more rural communities a greater say?

Not sure about the 2/3rds couldn't solve gerrymandering case (although it is technically possible).

Many things are technically possible. In most of the cases I've looked at the Democrats won the legislatures in these states handily under Obama with a few points over 50% of the popular vote in the state.

But we do have this:

From: Business Insider
Michigan provides a good example of how the formula works....voters statewide split their ballots essentially 50-50 between Republican and Democratic state House candidates. Yet Republicans won 57 percent of the House seats, claiming 63 seats to the Democrats’ 47.

When you look at redistricting and compare it against Democrat views on how redistricting should work we find that Democrat districts conform better to the Democrat standards than Republican districts? This isn't surprising.

So that's a swing of 16 seats (or 15% of the total) based not on "who is more popular in the state", but "How is the electoral map drawn for the state".

Yes, well, that's politics. Wait 50 years. I bet you whichever party is winning the popular vote is saying that the popular vote is the way to go, while the party that is losing it is arguing that some disenfranchised group or other that supports them needs to a greater share of the vote. It's a tale as old as the US. Older even.

 

[shuttlt]

Just return the voting right to landowning white men only. We didn't have all these problems back then.

True, but landowning white men were a better class of person back when 5% of the population could vote. You can't go back :-(

 

[shuttlt]

shut (may I call you shut?), maybe we've hijacked this thread enough? I could continue on, but maybe it's time?

To me, it seems like there is an interesting and fundamental point here. It does relate to the main thread topic in that, I think, the same error I am claiming is going on here is endemic. Jan 6th is a swamp of a discussion, so I'm only up for dabbling around the edges like this.

I would definitely expect exactly the same disagreement to be at the root of the arguments on whether the election changes and so forth that the Republicans have been putting through are unfair manipulations of the election.

 

[Paul2]

What electorate? The electorate within the district? I think that is kind of contentious depending on what you mean by electorate, but it certainly is a pretty good representation of who actually votes. Probably though you mean that the number of districts won should closely align to the popular vote. Is there agreement that the two things should align. There clearly isn't when talking about the electoral college. I am not at all convinced that there is agreement on these things.

IIRC, it's an estimation of those likely to vote that is sued. See Michigan for a counter-example, for the type of thing my plan is designed to minimize.

Balance power between big states and small states? In much the same way that maybe redistricting may skew things to favour rural areas? I don't think that there is the agreement you think there is about these issues.

Yikes, I mixed up the EC with the separation of powers between House and Senate. Sorry. Ignore my previous comment.

It's the fundamental issue. You keep asserting different forms of "the results of a democratic vote reflect the will of the electorate" and take that to mean the electoral districts won should align closely with the popular vote.

What other outcome would be democratic and reflect the will of the electorate, and how, exactly? How could electoral districts *not* align with the overall popular vote (for all districts redistricted together) and somehow reflect the will of the electorate? This is definitional. What else does the will of the electorate mean in an election in which the popular vote wins the most seats in an election? How can you say that the results in Michigan referenced up-thread reflect the will of the people equally or better than if the Dems had won seats proportional to their overall percentages, same for the Repubs? those are not rhetorical questions, by the way?

It seems to me that there is a radical split between Democrats and Republicans on these issues. You mentioned "the electorate" before. What is the electorate, it is all the people who are eligible to vote. Should the result of the election reflect their views, or just the views of the people who are motivated enough to vote? I think you'd get different answers from Republicans and Democrats on that, particularly if you started pushing into edge cases.

I'm not sure which option my plan is based on. It doesn't matter, because determining before the election which way a district is leaning is an estimate anyway. I suppose one could, over time, see which way of determining which way a district leans produces the closest alignment with the results. That's the way in which gerrymandering is minimized.

There is no universal standard of fairness. There is just what you think is fair and what I think is fair. I'm not trying to prove that your plan is unfair.

I got sucked into your framing of this issue as one of fairness, so I'm going to unsuck myself out (?!). Framing it that way obscures the issue I consider important, as I've already said before.

Sure it's a rational one, given the axioms you are reasoning from about fairness and so on. I am reasoning from a different set of axioms.

Which axioms do you think I'm reasoning from? I can tell you some of the ones *I* think I am using:

• The US is a democratic republic.
• The will of those who vote should be reflected in election results decided by popular vote.

Therefore, (and the following is not an axiom, it's a conclusion from the other axioms.)

Re-districting should be conducted such that the will of those who vote is reflected in the overall results of elections decided by popular vote (see Michigan for a counter-example).

 

[shuttlt]

IIRC, it's an estimation of those likely to vote that is sued. See Michigan for a counter-example, for the type of thing my plan is designed to minimize.

Perhaps. I went by a dictionary definition. If we are talking about what kind of "will of the people" elections are measuring, you've got a range of opinions that go from people who are motivated enough to go through some amount of inconvenience in registering, dealing with security, going to the polling station to people who feel if it doesn't include the opinion of illegals with no ID voting from home something is unfair. There isn't even agreement on what will the election is supposed to be approximation of.

Yikes, I mixed up the EC with the separation of powers between House and Senate.

You need some different mechanism for electing the House and Senate so they represent different interests. Personally, I think the 17th amendment was a mistake, but that's another digression.

What other outcome would be democratic and reflect the will of the electorate, and how, exactly?

I think you are including your conclusion in your premises here. The US election system has never been structured to be a reflection of the majority will of the electorate. It's always been in the interests of whichever of the two parties represents the populous states and cities to favour a majoritarian democratic system, so there is a long tradition of arguing that this would be fairer. They would argue that though, wouldn't they?

How could electoral districts *not* align with the overall popular vote (for all districts redistricted together) and somehow reflect the will of the electorate?

Again, you are using the "overall popular vote" and "will of the electorate" to mean functionally the same thing, so this is circular. You might as well just say "how can you not want politics to be decided by the majority?". That isn't how the US political system was set up. The arguments against rule by the majority predate the revolution. See the arguments for the advantage small states have in the electoral college that come up every election cycle.

This is definitional. What else does the will of the electorate mean in an election in which the popular vote wins the most seats in an election?

The popular vote doesn't necessarily win the most seats in the election. Again, arguments against "the will of the people" ruling in the way you describe predate the revolution.

How can you say that the results in Michigan referenced up-thread reflect the will of the people equally or better than if the Dems had won seats proportional to their overall percentages, same for the Repubs?

In as much as the popular vote represents the "will of the people", I'm sure it doesn't.

I'm not sure which option my plan is based on. It doesn't matter, because determining before the election which way a district is leaning is an estimate anyway. I suppose one could, over time, see which way of determining which way a district leans produces the closest alignment with the results.

All this is the politics of populous states and big cities feeling that it is unfair that a system that wasn't designed to favour them doesn't favour them. Populous states and big cities are where the money lives, they have disproportionate per capita influence regardless.

That's the way in which gerrymandering is minimized.

By changing the districting so that it aligns with one political philosophy that favours the people who hold it over another political philosophy that favours the people who hold that.

I got sucked into your framing of this issue as one of fairness, so I'm going to unsuck myself out (?!). Framing it that way obscures the issue I consider important, as I've already said before.

If you mean you think the correct framing is that the popular vote is a better reflection of the "will of the people", then it is just a different way of saying the same problem. We don't agree about the definition of fairness. We don't agree that the legislature should reflect the "will of the people".

Which axioms do you think I'm reasoning from? I can tell you some of the ones *I* think I am using:
*The US is a democratic republic.

I guess. It might depend what you mean by that.

*The will of those who vote should be reflected in election results decided by popular vote.

Not necessarily. The US system like the UK system is set up so that a minority party can win. This isn't a new discovery. There are plenty of other considerations than representing the "will of the people". One might feel it's worth sacrificing a few points from the will of the people to mean that at least one of the parties represents rural voters, rather than both of them competing for the coastal urban/suburban vote year after year. All this has been articulated for 250 years.

Therefore, (and the following is not an axiom, it's a conclusion from the other axioms.)

Re-districting should be conducted such that the will of those who vote is reflected in the overall results of elections decided by popular vote (see Michigan for a counter-example).

I'm not 100% certain I agree with your first axiom and I definitely disagree with your second.

 

[Paul2]

Pardon me for intruding on this.

. . . . All men created equal doesn't mean that all votes count the same. The system wasn't designed to make that happen. A vote in Rhode Island gets you 30% more of a Representative than in California and 338% more of a Senator.

Can you provide the numbers and the sources for the numbers used to calculate that 30% figure for Rhode Island over California? I'm having trouble verifying exactly which numbers need to be used.

 

[Paul2]

I think you are including your conclusion in your premises here. The US election system has never been structured to be a reflection of the majority will of the electorate. It's always been in the interests of whichever of the two parties represents the populous states and cities to favour a majoritarian democratic system, so there is a long tradition of arguing that this would be fairer. They would argue that though, wouldn't they?

Exactly what is the difference between (1) "[reflecting] the majority will of the electorate" (for House seats through state-by-state reapportionment) and (2) a "majoritarian democratic system?" What is a majoritarian democratic system if not a system that reflects the majority will of the electorate?

 

[shuttlt]

Pardon me for intruding on this.

Can you provide the numbers and the sources for the numbers used to calculate that 30% figure for Rhode Island over California? I'm having trouble verifying exactly which numbers need to be used.

I couldn't find the value quoted anywhere, so I stuck my neck out and I calculated it. Hopefully I got it right. You can check my workings

https://www.census.gov/mycd/?st=44&cd=02
Rhode island has a bit over 530k people in it's congressional districts, your average Californian/Texan district has about 200k more than that. I can't remember which districts I used, but basically, if you divide 730k into 530k. 730/530 = 1.38. Hence, 38%.

I think that was the maths I used. It's kind of rough. I've not taken an average of all the districts in California or anything. Call it 30-40% depending on what districts you choose to compare.

If instead of looking at the population per representative, you look at the votes cast per representative, or per electoral college vote, you find even bigger swings in the value of a vote in each state.

 

[shuttlt]

Exactly what is the difference between (1) "[reflecting] the majority will of the electorate" (for House seats through state-by-state reapportionment) and (2) a "majoritarian democratic system?" What is a majoritarian democratic system if not a system that reflects the majority will of the electorate?

There is no difference. Different way of saying the same thing. Apologies if I confused the issue.

 

[Paul2]

There is no difference. Different way of saying the same thing. Apologies if I confused the issue.

Then what did you mean when you contrasted the two - implying they are different - here:

The US election system has never been structured to be a reflection of the majority will of the electorate. It's always been in the interests of whichever of the two parties represents the populous states and cities to favour a majoritarian democratic system, so there is a long tradition of arguing that this would be fairer. They would argue that though, wouldn't they?

Can you explain?

 

[shuttlt]

Then what did you mean when you contrasted the two - implying they are different - here

The US election system has never been structured to be a reflection of the majority will of the electorate. It's always been in the interests of whichever of the two parties represents the populous states and cities to favour a majoritarian democratic system, so there is a long tradition of arguing that this would be fairer. They would argue that though, wouldn't they?

That isn't a contrast. It doesn't imply they are different. I will rephrase it.

The US election system has never been structured to be a reflection of the majority will of the electorate. It's always been in the interests of whichever of the two parties represents the populous states and cities to favour a a system that reflected the majority will in elections, so there is a long tradition of arguing that this would be fairer. They would argue that though, wouldn't they?

Is that rephrasing sufficient?

Can you explain?

Election system A (the current one) does not favour voting group B (big states, cities etc). Election system A was designed to to have the effect of disfavouring group B. Election system C (will of the majority/popular vote) would be much more in voting group B's favour. Surprisingly voting group B favour election system C and regard it as neutral, fair and what any rational person would choose if they weren't blinded by politics.

Again, it's no shock that the populous states and cities would favour the popular vote. Short of playing Joseph Smith and finding some golden tablets with the word of God written on them saying what the right system for running an elections is, there is no neutral, no point of view answer to the question of how to divide up votes.

 

[Paul2]

I couldn't find the value quoted anywhere, so I stuck my neck out and I calculated it. Hopefully I got it right. You can check my workings

https://www.census.gov/mycd/?st=44&cd=02
Rhode island has a bit over 530k people in it's congressional districts, your average Californian/Texan district has about 200k more than that. I can't remember which districts I used, but basically, if you divide 730k into 530k. 730/530 = 1.38. Hence, 38%.

I think that was the maths I used. It's kind of rough. I've not taken an average of all the districts in California or anything. Call it 30-40% depending on what districts you choose to compare.

If instead of looking at the population per representative, you look at the votes cast per representative, or per electoral college vote, you find even bigger swings in the value of a vote in each state.

That's a good site for looking up those numbers. So, I don't know what that discrepancy is about, but I can imagine one thing: if you were to increase the number of people in a R.I. district to get closer to Cal/Texas, RI would only have one representative representing 1,060,000 people. So the discrepancy between that can Cal/Texas districts is larger than with 2 reps at 530K, so maybe that's why 2 reps is preferred?

Huh. Hawaii has 695K and 720K in their districts. Maybe RI is the worst case, the smallest population?

Presumably, the goal is to minimize the difference between districts, insofar as is possible given other contraints.

 

[shuttlt]

That's a good site for looking up those numbers. So, I don't know what that discrepancy is about, but I can imagine one thing: if you were to increase the number of people in a R.I. district to get closer to Cal/Texas, RI would only have one representative representing 1,060,000 people. So the discrepancy between that can Cal/Texas districts is larger than with 2 reps at 530K, so maybe that's why 2 reps is preferred?

Huh. Hawaii has 695K and 720K in their districts. Maybe RI is the worst case, the smallest population?

Presumably, the goal is to minimize the difference between districts, insofar as is possible given other contraints.

Sure, but you really can't do away with big disparities if you are going to organize an election in this way. Maybe if you had a couple of thousand representatives it would be better, but the House would grind to a halt.

Things get much worse when you look at electoral college votes. That site has Wyoming at 578,759 people for their three electoral college votes, so that's 192,920 people per vote. At the last census California had a population of 39,538,223 for 55 electoral college votes or 718,877 people per vote. That makes a ballot cast in Wyoming worth 3.7x what a ballot cast in California is worth. Obviously not everybody in each state is eligible to vote, or will vote, but we are talking rough indications of scale here.

 

[Paul2]

That isn't a contrast. It doesn't imply they are different. I will rephrase it.


Is that rephrasing sufficient?



Election system A (the current one) does not favour voting group B (big states, cities etc).

Election system A was designed to to have the effect of disfavouring group B. Election system C (will of the majority/popular vote) would be much more in voting group B's favour. Surprisingly voting group B favour election system C and regard it as neutral, fair and what any rational person would choose if they weren't blinded by politics.

Again, it's no shock that the populous states and cities would favour the popular vote. Short of playing Joseph Smith and finding some golden tablets with the word of God written on them saying what the right system for running an elections is, there is no neutral, no point of view answer to the question of how to divide up votes.

A neutral system would be one in which the overall percentage of party A voters in a state - let's say 60% of the voters are registered with party A - roughly (within a margin of error) equals the percentage of seats in an individual chamber of the state legislature. That is true because a non-neutral system would be one, for example, in which 60% of the voters are registered with party A but party A winds up with 5% of the seats in an individual chamber of the state legislature.

If party B complains that they are being disadvantaged because they used to have 95% representation in the legislature but now they have 40%, that is how voters get to be in charge of who represents them. When party B had 95%, the voters were not in charge of who represents them, the representatives were in charge - through their gerrymandering.

 

[shuttlt]

A neutral system would be one in which the overall percentage of party A voters in a state - let's say 60% of the voters are registered with party A - roughly (within a margin of error) equals the percentage of seats in an individual chamber of the state legislature. That is true because a non-neutral system would be one, for example, in which 60% of the voters are registered with party A but party A winds up with 5% of the seats in an individual chamber of the state legislature.

If party B complains that they are being disadvantaged because they used to have 95% representation in the legislature but now they have 40%, that is how voters get to be in charge of who represents them. When party B had 95%, the voters were not in charge of who represents them, the representatives were in charge - through their gerrymandering.

Republicans and Democrats should just agree to frame issues according to Democrat moral assumptions, because they are neutral and nonpartisan, and then Republicans and Democrats can fight it out to their hearts content about how to implement Democrat ideas.

This is ridiculous. You can't, by fiat, just declare your moral assumptions about the world to be neutral. You think elections should attempt to reflect the popular will. Have you seen how the Presidential election is calculated? The views of people in Wyoming are weighted to count nearly 4x more than the views of the people in California. If sometimes the popular vote and the electoral college score come close it's a coincidence. The system was deliberately not set up to work in the way you think it should.