This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to simply eliminate the political appointment process entirely. I'm not saying that staffers at DOJ might not have political motivations too, but they are far less likely to than their openly political bosses, no matter which party is in power.
One of the things I really dislike about the current administration is how they appear to be at war with the bureaucrats who actually know things and have worked in these areas for years. The political ideology of the moment is more important than years of accumulated expertise.
Shake things up periodically, sure, but to put a gag order on staffers and simply squelch their reports because they don't go along with the ruling party's latest power play is just nasty.
The part that irked me most, though, was that their point about the last-minute, closed-door tweaks to the redistricting didn't send up the flares that it should have.
It has been said that TX redistricting is going to stand even if DeLay and his local operatives go to jail over the issue (and that is only part of what they are being investigated for, and not a very big part, really). It has even been said that TX redistricting could stand even if the courts decide that it was done improperly.
Certainly, the people already elected under the new districts aren't just going to be sent home until this is all sorted out.
So, the tactic worked.
But at what cost?
If TX has to go through redistricting all over again, how many $millions will that cost?
If they have to hire independant contractors to do it all, because no-one trusts the politicians to do the job fairly and honestly, what's the cost of that?
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I don't like it whenever or wherever it happens. The TX case is particularly egregious, though, because of the way in which the final boundaries were decided (closed door sessions) and because they violated long-standing traditions in the state regarding the cycle for making these decisions.
DeLay lost a lot of credibility among Texans because of the way he rammed this down people's throats, even in his own party. LOTS of outraged people all around.
I read your comment as "well, everybody does it, so no big deal." The problem with that is that we never will put a stop to it, or improve things if that's the attitude of average citizens.
Meanwhile, the rights of actual living human beings, citizens who are supposed to be protected by their legislators, not screwed over, are harmed now.
"Oh well" just doesn't cut it. Especially in a context where people want to turn around and say things like "minorities complain too much -- they don't have it so bad."
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I still don't consider it anywhere near as bad as what has happened in California, and that was a bipartisan gerrymandering effort.
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You're missing Bob's point. Both examples are shameful.
Me, I'm in favor of districts chosen by geography alone, by an independent panel or even by slicing the states up into even portions. So you'd have to please more than just your oh-so-carefully-chosen constituency to win office? Good!
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quote:Gerrymandering is a time-honored political tradition in this country. See California.
Tradition does not equal ethical.
Gerrymandering is fundamentally undemocratic. A representative democracy is only democratic if everyones voices are represented. The clearly stated goal in the Texas redistricting was to ensure that republican voters were represented more than democratic voters. That should offend anyone who support democratic ideals no matter what their political party.
This is just one of the reasons I think that the House of representatives should go to a state by state parlementary system. No state would be divided into districts. Within each state, each party would put forth a slate of candidates and voters would cast a vote for the party whose slate they prefer. If The republicans got 56% of the vote and the democrats got 40% of the vote, and the Libertarians got 4% of the vote in all of Texas, the state would send the top 18 repulicans and the top 13 Democrats, and the top 1 Livertarian to congress. This system also has some flaws but it would completely eliminate the Gerrymandering problem.
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quote:But Justice Department spokesman Eric W. Holland said the decision to approve the Texas plan was vindicated by a three-judge panel that rejected the Democratic challenge. The case is on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Even if SCOTUS ultimately strikes down the plan, it's clearly not an unquestionable violation of the Voting Rights Act. 6 staff lawyers have no greater say than appointed lawyers, nor any particular expertise. They're opinion as such isn't even admissible - it's a legal opinion, just as a judicial decision is a legal opinion.
quote:You're missing Bob's point. Both examples are shameful.
Me, I'm in favor of districts chosen by geography alone, by an independent panel or even by slicing the states up into even portions. So you'd have to please more than just your oh-so-carefully-chosen constituency to win office? Good!
I agree both are shameful. But as long as the rules exist, I'm not inclined to chastize either party for using them. We need to implement neutral district line drawing, preferably with some transparent algorithms. Use a genetic algorithm to produce 5 plans, let the legislature pick, or something like that.
But until that happens, these are the rules. CA just rejected one solution that was purported to help this out (I have no idea if it would have or not).
I think it all sucks. But neither party can afford to stop doing it, because then the other party will take over and use the technique to cement their control. As long as citizens reject the efforts to change it, I'm inclined to save my outrage for the citizens. If we as the American people would demand this to be changed, it would. But it always benefits one party at any given time - more realistically, it benefits both.
So point to the absurdities of the layout plans by all means. (Although I happen to agree that the CA plan is more egregious, but that's due mostly to geography and the fact that the TX legislature could achieve its desired effects without such radical cartography.) Use those absurd maps to rally for change. Ideally, use those absurd maps to rally for a Constitutional amendment that requires all states to change to a more neutral method. But it's a waste of effort to vent the outrage on the politicians. It's the system that sucks, and it's the system that has to be changed.
Edit: Rabbit's idea of percentage-based House voting by state is one of the ideas that needs serious consideration.
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quote:staff lawyers have no greater say than appointed lawyers, nor any particular expertise.
If I understand the thing correctly, this staff worked in a specific section of DOJ dealing with voting issues. If that's the case, I believe that they probably would have particular expertise. At least I'm willing to submit that they have more expertise than the political appointees who decided the fate of their memorandum.
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The absurdity of the final maps is pretty common, I'll agree, and I'm not surprised that states like TX and CA (with ultra-huge urban areas and large sections with almost zero population per square mile) would have bizarre district shapes in a final map.
My concern is that the process shouldn't be secret and when the process is concluded, it shouldn't be in one party's power to shut the doors and redo parts of the agreed-upon mapping.
I don't really know enough about CA's process to comment on it. I moved to TX while all this was happening (just after the Dems fled the state in their famous bid to block the GOP) so I'm much more aware of what went on there.
Dag, Do you know what happens if the districts are declared illegal. Do elected officials serve out their terms or are they automatically recalled if their district changes shape?
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Not addressing the legal issue, but Dag, how on Earth is this problem suited to a genetic algorithm? What could you possibly use for a fitness function?
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You wouldn't need a GA. But if you did, a fitness function could be a weighted sum of such things as ratio of circumference of district to its geographic area. Or whatever. I just think a GA would be inefficient; I'd use hill climbing.
Too bad the SC has ruled that all laws against gerrymandering are illegal. It means that Bush appointees and Clinton appointees do indeed get to duke it out over how to prevent their parties from losing power. This is *exactly* what anyone could have predicted, when the SC forbade restrictions on gerrymandering: the fight moves from the ballot box to power struggles among appointees.
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: CA just rejected one solution that was purported to help this out (I have no idea if it would have or not).
The California solution that was just rejected (and I did vote against it, because until redistricting is done in a truly fair way, I'd rather have the devil I know rather than the one I don't) would have had a three-judge panel draw up the district boundaries. The proponents of the initiative said that it would be fair because the politicians wouldn't be doing the redistricting, but instead it would be done by three retired judges who were appointed to do the job. The problem I had with this was that it would have most likely been the politicians doing the appointing. Which works out the pretty much the same thing.
I honestly don't know what the solution to the problem is, but I sure wish someone would find it. Soon.
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We appoint people to do the job. If they screw it up, we put them on a plane to Singapore with a stick of chewing gum in their mouths and a pound of heroin strapped to their backsides.
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Nothing really surprising here. Alberto Gonzalez defends the DOJ decision to support TX redistricting despite internal dissention by staffers. He said, basically, that internal dissent is nothing new, that the top people are sworn to uphold the law and sometimes have to overrule staff to do it, and that it's not even clear that John Ashcroft was involved in squelching the 73-page memo. Oh, and by the way, this never reached the President's desk. And the 3-judge panel ruled in favor of the plan, so that means that who ever did overrule staff at DOJ was correct.
More details on the 8 staffers (6 lawyers and two "others") -- they were charged with exactly this duty -- vetting redistricting plans for states that were found in significant violation of the 1965 voting rights act (see the article for details). At any rate, they appear to have had significant expertise in this area.
It also appears that the 3-judge panel ruled on a different aspect of the law than what this memo deals with, so it may not provide the vindication that is being claimed.
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quote:You wouldn't need a GA. But if you did, a fitness function could be a weighted sum of such things as ratio of circumference of district to its geographic area.
I would also add relative uniformity of the population in the area.
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quote:If I understand the thing correctly, this staff worked in a specific section of DOJ dealing with voting issues. If that's the case, I believe that they probably would have particular expertise. At least I'm willing to submit that they have more expertise than the political appointees who decided the fate of their memorandum.
I've seen too many situations where issue-specific lawyers in government agencies interpret the law very badly to give them any weight over either appointed lawyers, outside counsel for someone challenging their decision, or the judge.
I don't give judges any particular credit for expertise either, but their decisions actually have authority, so we have to defer to them. We don't have to defer to staff findings.
quote:Do you know what happens if the districts are declared illegal. Do elected officials serve out their terms or are they automatically recalled if their district changes shape?
There's not been an automatic recall that I'm aware of, but the last time I studied this was as an undergrad in '91. I think I'd have heard of any decision that did recall officials, but I can't be sure.
quote:The California solution that was just rejected (and I did vote against it, because until redistricting is done in a truly fair way, I'd rather have the devil I know rather than the one I don't) would have had a three-judge panel draw up the district boundaries. The proponents of the initiative said that it would be fair because the politicians wouldn't be doing the redistricting, but instead it would be done by three retired judges who were appointed to do the job. The problem I had with this was that it would have most likely been the politicians doing the appointing. Which works out the pretty much the same thing.
I agree with your conclusion, then. A panel proposing several alternatives, one of which must be chosen by the legislature might be good. Especially if 2/3 vote was required to approve one of them. If no plan gets the approval, back to the panel for another set of alternatives. But I haven't fully thought it through.
quote:Not addressing the legal issue, but Dag, how on Earth is this problem suited to a genetic algorithm? What could you possibly use for a fitness function?
Both Miro and MPH's suggestion on population would be good. A certain amount of population disparity would automatically disqualify a plan - that's a constitutional requirement. But they could be allowed to reproduce at a low rate.
Perimter size would be one element of contiguousness. There are several mathematical ways to evaluate contiguousness or compactness.
If you made political entities - cities, counties, towns, etc. - into a kind of center of gravity, you could attempt to respect them but deviate when necessary for population equality.
There are other factors you could use. Have each one computed on a scale of 0 to 1, assign weights to each factor, and use that to calculate a probability of each map reproducing.
You could start with census precincts as the granularity. Each precinct is assigned en toto to a district. The algorithm could be seeded with the political boundaries, the current districting scheme, or even some proposals from legislators or the executive branch.
Each iteration, select which maps reproduce according to their probabilities. Then make a new generation by keeping some intact, mutating some, and combining some (not sure how this works, but I've read of ways to merge maps).
Hell, there's a finite (but very large) number of combinations of N census precincts that produce M districts on a map. There are fewer combinations where each district is contiguous. We could produce each map and evaluate each according to the factors. Then kick out the top 5, or 10, or 50, and let the legislature vote.
I'm not saying it's easy. Evaluating each factor is probably a dissertation's worth of work all by itself. Weighing and combining the factors even more work. But it's certainly possible.
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Surely a parliamentary system is simpler than trying to create a fair process for districting.
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Maybe, but I think there is serious benefit to local representation - i.e., a representative being accountable to a specific, identifiable set of constituents in each election.
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Bob -- when you say parlimentary system, do you mean proportional representation, which is usually used in conjunction with the parlimentary system?
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Actually, I was just echoing what "the Rabbit" said at 8:58 last night. I agree that there's a benefit to local representation, but, ultimately, if we can't figure out a way to make the state and federal offices actually BE representative, and fairly distribute districts geographically and socio-economically, or whatever, then I think we should just quit wasting money on trying to tweak the broken system and replace it with something that just avoids the problem altogether.
We'd still have local representation for things like town councils, mayoralties, school boards, etc. I think we just waste too much money on districting.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:ultimately, if we can't figure out a way to make the state and federal offices actually BE representative, and fairly distribute districts geographically and socio-economically, or whatever, then I think we should just quit wasting money on trying to tweak the broken system and replace it with something that just avoids the problem altogether.
I just don't think we're to the point yet where we can say that we can't figure out a way to make it representative. Either Iowa or Idaho has a system that is well spoken of, and there are lots of other proposals.
Although a parlimentary system is undoubtedly simpler and, as I said, needs to be considered, it is not clear that there is no fair way to draw district lines, especially given the computing power available to us today.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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One of the disadvantages of proportional representation is that you can't vote for a specific person, you have to vote for a party. In a state with 10 representatives, there's liable to be members of the party that are up for a seat that you dont' want to vote for, even if you like the parties politics as a whole.
Personally, I think that disadvantage makes it worth our while to find a better way of districting, even if it does take millions of dollars.
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How about we force states that consistently screw up districting to have to go to a parliamentary system, and we take away 1 seat in the House of Representatives as punishment.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: You're missing Bob's point. Both examples are shameful.
Me, I'm in favor of districts chosen by geography alone, by an independent panel or even by slicing the states up into even portions. So you'd have to please more than just your oh-so-carefully-chosen constituency to win office? Good!
Bob's point wasn't just that both examples are shameful, but that the Texas example is more egregious. My point is that both examples are shameful, and the California one is more egregious.
And no, Rabbit, I don't consider either ethical.
Personally, I think that maybe if we took the social security numbers of everyone in a state, divided them up equally by the number of representatives, that it would be a fair way of rearranging. Then again, it would defeat local representation in the House.
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wrong. I used the term "particularly egregious" specifically because I don't know anything about the California case, and was very familiar with the closed door, off-schedule nature of the TX one.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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My bad then. I'm familiar with both, and IMO, the Cali one is far worse, because both parties conspired together to gerrymander the districts, and it's still being kept quiet.
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