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[–] 16 points 3 days ago (12 children)

I'd love to see a law that distributes voters among electoral districts on a strict mathematical base, eg. Based on minimum distance algorithms. No input except home address location straight from census data.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 days ago* (2 children)

    This, combined with some form of ranked choice with a minimum of 3 winning representatives seems to pretty much guarantee equitable representation

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  • [–] 9 points 3 days ago (3 children)

    Distance is not enough: depending where you center those districts, they can still be biased. There have been a bunch of initiatives for algorithmic districting, with all kind of constraints - compact, competitive, .... Somewhere along the way, electoral reform and campaign finance just fell off the public radar. Along with Medicare for all. I mean, I get that fascism is kind of a priority at the moment, but elections are fundamentally how you fix that.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago

    It would need to deal with compactness, too, to avoid biased centers, of course. It would need some parametric tuning, but the tunable parameters should be rather restricted to avoid gerrymandering again. Although any working algorithm in that direction would be way better than those rather "artfully designed" ones the Republicans have drawn.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago

    Yes it's still possible to introduce bias, but it would make a big difference on the ability to gerrymander, because you don't have he degrees of freedom to stack voters in the same way.

    If you're into maths and want to know the theory behind it, it is based on the Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension of the shapes used for distracting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vapnik%E2%80%93Chervonenkis_dimension . Not a fun read! But accurate

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago (3 children)

    You'd potentially end up with some slightly nonsense results, like having districts that are divided by a river. Doesn't make sense to allocate public services that way - are you going to maintain the roads that aren't connected to the rest of your district by road?

    I think that this is seeking a technical solution to a human problem. Life doesn't really work that way. Still leaves the potential for shenanigans that could no longer be argued with, because it's "fair". Having the election districts be drawn up by a truly independent body would be better, no?

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