269
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
269 points (98.9% liked)
politics
19159 readers
4543 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I don't particularly disagree with what you're saying. My criticism is that building these elaborately-complex algorithms that are deciding how to build the districts... it's having the political apparatus chose the voters instead of the voters choosing the political apparatus.
In simple terms: a data-science approach to redistricting is TOO powerful. It is too effective at getting to a result. It fundamentally undermines the democratic process.
In a well-functioning democracy -- which I am not going to pretend the US is -- elections need to be competitive. They need to allow for surprises. Political arbitrage. Some amount of unfairness is the price we have to pay for that. And a theoretical algorithm that sufficiently takes into consideration EVERYTHING we need to ensure flawlessly "fair" elections where outcomes have a perfect proportional match to voter opinions/identities (and how do we even know they truly do in the first place?) may as well be trusted to pick the winners while it's at it. We're just in Foundation at that point.
It seems the more we discuss it, the eventual conclusion that emerges is that any act of subdividing representation (whether by geographical boundaries, demographics, or probably any criterion) inherently makes that representation less democratic under scrutiny. This is probably because any simplified/heuristic criterion will almost never be a perfect match to the specific type of representation an individual wants to prioritize, leading to mismatches between individuals and the defined criteria for "proportionate" representation.
So maybe the answer is broader elections with the voters themselves self-identifying the representation they want, and matching that to proportionally apportioned representatives? But I think we've just described political parties, so...I probably am not helping.