« It's like having an inner ear problem... | Main | Stephen Green says something that I'd rather not hear. »

June 17, 2004

Comments

The problem with open primaries is that if one party has a leading candidate, their voters are free to tactically shift in the primary to pick the weakest candidate in the other party - if that party has several candidates without an apparent leader.

This tacitical switching problem won't go away, and it is antithetical to party governance and people choosing their candidates.

GOP conservatives have played this game repeatedly in CA, picking the most conservative choice - who then loses the general election. You might ask why they keep doing the 'losing' thing: they finally got the message with 'Arnold', but only with much grinding of teeth.

Parties have been weakened enough with campaign finance reform. Open primaries will administer the coup de gras.

Funny, Washington just lost its open primary, leaving only Louisiana, I believe.

"I'd be much happier with gerrymander-proof Congressional districts, but that's just me."

Yes, please. Unfortunately, while this is a bipartisan sentiment, the people who actually make the decisions really, really like being gerrymandered. Calls for a national referendum. This and uncapping the size of the HoR would, I think, do enormous good to Congress. Or maybe they'd just pander a lot more. But regardless, it's what the sweet founders intended.

There was an interesting article in Dr Dobbs of all places, where a guy came up with an algorithm to determine congressional districts that both evened out population per district and kept districts roughly compact (they were basically circular). This would have some weird results, like neighbors being in different districts, and people on the edge of town being in districts with small towns on the edge, but I think it'd be worth it.

Sign me up for anti-gerrymandering regulations, uncapping the size of the House of Representatives, and much smaller Congressional districts. Ain't gonna happen, though, short of armed insurrection.

I heard an interesting proposal not long ago for a relatively simple anti-gerrymandering provision: if you can draw a straight line between any two points in the district, the area through which the line passes must be in the district.

Writing from beautiful Chicago, home of the bar-bell-shaped Congressional district.

I heard an interesting proposal not long ago for a relatively simple anti-gerrymandering provision: if you can draw a straight line between any two points in the district, the area through which the line passes must be in the district.

Nice idea, but the execution might be very, very difficult, and it still leaves the door open for extremely long, skinny districts. I'd propose something a little different: the ratio of length of the district boundary to its narrowest cross-section can be no greater than some arbitrary number. I'll toss out 6 for the sake of argument.

Oh, and there are state boundaries that automatically violate the anti-concavity rule.

With GIS mapping software it should be fairly trivial to create fair, even, random districts automatically. No human intervention required and no automatically safe seats.

Oh, and there are state boundaries that automatically violate the anti-concavity rule.

That's a convexity restriction, I'm fairly sure. Which may or may not be an anti-concavity restriction depending on the company you keep ;)

As I mentioned previously (though perhaps on another site?) Yglesias and De Long had a couple of nice links on the mathematics of "fair" voting districts, where fairness was measured under a number of different metrics. If people are interested, I can probably rustle up some links...

It's the Concavity Creeps!

"We make holes in congressional districts! We make holes in congressional districts!"

Ah, the Holy District. It was only a matter of time.

Or is that Holey?

The comments to this entry are closed.