Open Source Tool Lets Anyone Redistrict New York 102
First time accepted submitter Micah_Altman writes "As the next redistricting battle shapes up in New York, members of the public have an opportunity to create viable alternatives. Unlike the previously reported crowdsourced redistricting of Los Angeles, the public mapping of New York is based on open source software — anyone can use this to set up their own public web-based redistricting effort."
Eliminate districts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Eliminate districts (Score:5, Informative)
Districting only serves to virtually guarantee safe seats for the incumbent parties. We need at large elections to increase the representation of minority views and weaken the established players.
At-large elections eliminate representation of minority views, duh (consult a history book or two about the civil rights struggles of the 60s).
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Re:Eliminate districts (Score:5, Insightful)
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In a gerrymandered system, the incumbent parties can ensure that the minority view is spread out over every district, diluting it to insignificance.
In a gerrymandered system, incumbent parties can ensure that the majority view is spread out over every district, diluting it into a minority.
Minority opinions are not supposed to be what get representatives elected.
An optimal election looks like this: If a state has 5 seats, you get a pool of candidates, say 60 people who want to be a representative.
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An optimal election looks like this: [...]
lol, what a load of crap. maybe you should read about electoral systems before spouting off. here's a start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote
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The majority would get to pick every candidate. Say, 55% of your voters decide to get a particular set of candidates elected, and they focus all votes on a particular candidate, and get him elected. Then for the second vote, they change and select their second favorite candidate. Executed on a nationwide level, a party with a slight minority would have a significant edge in representation in Congress.
A much better way: Every voter picks their party. Each party gets representation based on the number of vote
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A much better way: Every voter picks their party. Each party gets representation based on the number of voters registered. Party holds an internal election to choose their own representatives, guaranteeing each voter is represented by somebody of their own party assuming their party has enough voters to qualify for a representative.
This isn't better... this substitutes voters picking a leader based on the merits of the person for the office and the candidates' political views and how they will represent
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We could use a little less governance of the sort we have had for the past 30 or so years on this side of the pond. The middle class is losing ground due to leaders who don't put the citizens first, but their own pocketbooks and the pocketbooks of those who buy them.
Re:Eliminate districts (Score:5, Informative)
We have an at-large election system here in Denmark, as in much of continental Europe. This proportional representation [wikipedia.org] gives each voter a vastly better opportunity to vote for the candidate which best represents him, instead of just having to vote for the lesser of two evils or throwing your vote away.
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Oh, please, the political situation in Europe isn't any better than it is in the US, you just have more illusion of variety due to the larger number of parties. When push comes to shove, you don't have any more variety than we do, it's just we have less party unity than you do.
People keep repeating that logic and it's no more true now than it was decades back. The party affiliation means little to nothing when politicians aren't required to vote with their party. Some of the Democrats in our legislature are
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From time to time, new political views get wider attention in Europe. In the past it was the greens, now it's the pirates. And they get into parliaments.
I really don't think it's just an illusion of variety. And I've yet to see any such political party have any kind of success in the US.
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From time to time, new political views get wider attention in Europe. In the past it was the greens, now it's the pirates. And they get into parliaments.
From time to time new political views get wider attention in the US. In the past it was the neocons, now it's the Tea Party. And they get into office.
I've yet to see any such political party have any kind of success in the US.
That's because our political parties contain a much wider spectrum of opinion than yours. Blue Dog Democrats have vastly different views than Progressive Democrats or the Christian Left, for example. Log Cabin Republicans have a different agenda than the Tea Party, Neocons or the Religious Right. These are just a few examples. In Europe these would all b
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Okay, let's say I support one of those sub-parties? How do I vote for them? I can't. I have to vote for the superparty they are part of and hope that the elected representative will be from the subparty I like.
I don't think that's much of a solution. Why not have one superparty and decide everything by intra-party politics? Oh, wait, we (the eastern Europe) tried that and it didn't work. I have a feeling the US system is dangerously close to that.
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I agree... there is a dilution of ones voting power. One gets the choice of voting for some of the things one wants and accepts that a lot of other things they don't want will dominate as well.
It is a choice between greater evils rather than a choice for those who will do most of what one wants.
Not saying it is bad, but it is demoralizing and doesn't lead one to feel like their vote actually matters.
Re:Eliminate districts (Score:4, Interesting)
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I love it .... most excellent!
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Third party votes in America are usually anywhere from 1% to 10% of the vote depending on who's being elected. I think we have a grand total of 1 senator who isn't a Republican or Democrat (he's an Independent.)
Under a proportional system, we would have 1-10% of the House and Senate (that's 1-10 Senators and ~6 - ~54 Representatives in the House) in third party control. Laws have absolutely been decided on a 10% margin, and there's been more than a few controversial congressional decisions that were decided
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Third party votes in America are usually anywhere from 1% to 10% of the vote depending on who's being elected. I think we have a grand total of 1 senator who isn't a Republican or Democrat (he's an Independent.)
Don't forget that this is skewed by the voting system as many people will vote for the lesser of two evils instead of voting for their true preference, so I'd expect under a proportional system for there to be a large increase in votes to 3rd parties.
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The party affiliation means little to nothing when politicians aren't required to vote with their party.
But politicians often are required to vote with their party. What do you think whips [wikipedia.org] are for? Politicians who defy the whip can be subject to a number of penalties, including removal from any official office they hold, and being kicked out of the party itself (which is effectively removal from public politics, since they are unlikely to re-win their seat running as an independent).
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Not true. The Nazis were a populist party and would have gained power anyway. Goering [slashdot.org] testified at his war crimes trial was that, under the British "first past the post" system (which apparently he was a fan of), the Nazis would have won *every seat* at the Reichstag in the 1932 national elections (based on 37.8% of the vote). In the 1938 Anschluss vote, Hitler apparently got the vote of 99.73% of the Austrian people.
I don't know why it's such a surprise that people would vote for this; it is human instin
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We have an at-large election system here in Denmark, as in much of continental Europe. This proportional representation gives each voter a vastly better opportunity to vote for the candidate which best represents him
Demark has a population of about 5.5 million. 90% Danish. That is half the population of metro New York City and not remotely as ethnically and culturally diverse. Denmark [wikipedia.org]
Adovocates of proportional representation in the states tend to ignore domestic cultural and political realities..
The American voter wants a clear decision.
The amiable non-entites that are everyone's second and third choices do not interest him at all.
Absent some national calamity, he will not stray far from the centrist or center-r
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> The American voter wants a clear decision.
I hope not. If you're sufficiently enamored of strong leadership at the expense of representation, only the führer principle will do.
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Now if someone could explain why people have gut reactions like this against any suggestion that gerrymandering is anything less than the one true god-given way to run elections, even though the evidence against its usefulness mounts higher every election, we might learn how to do away with this sort of unthinking gospel-following fervor.
What IS it with you people and insisting on a system geared toward rampant abuse and then letting people with interest in misrepresenting the representation do exactly that
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The problem is that the majority party has to deliberately cede power to the minority party and the voters tend to want their candidates to run the show. It's just like taxes and spending cuts, most people are surprisingly fine with both as long as they hit other people. As soon as it's their taxes and their programs they're suddenly significantly less willing to allow it.
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What IS it with you people and insisting on a system geared toward rampant abuse and then letting people with interest in misrepresenting the representation do exactly that until the cows come home?
Because we like cows?
Re:Eliminate districts (Score:4, Interesting)
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That's one of the rare situations where Initiatives are a reasonable response. Politicians aren't going to do it because the voters don't really want them to, and the ones that do aren't large enough in numbers to make it happen.
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What might be interesting is an at-large election to vote for re-districting proposals. The top vote getting proposals that, in aggregate, received 50% of the vote could run-off again and again until we spend our entire lives voting on how we vote... that would be fair and equitable, right?
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Inconsistency would have prompted greater questions.
For example, the obvious question is how could someone misspell a word and then properly spell a word? The 'a' and 'o' keys aren't nearby so one could not blame it on a typo.
You missed his point (Score:5, Informative)
But it comes down to the people. Like it or not - Bitch all you want but the fact of the matter is that our elected officials reflect the people. Our politicians act the way they do because that's how they get elected. period.
No they don't. This is demonstrated fact.
Say the House in your state allows 100 representatives. The current system of choosing these 100 representative is to slice up the state into 100 districts, each of which chooses a single representative in a winner take all election. Suppose the Green party has a 10% support of voters across the state. Unless enough of them live in a single district such that they represent more than 50% of the vote in that district, they will not get a single representative.
Even among the major parties, if you have a Democratic leaning state with 60% of the population voting democrat, you will find that more than 60% of the representatives are Democrats because of the same effect. Our current system of voting only represents geographic diversity, not diversity within a region.
Apart from starting a huge hippy commune, the supporters of the Green party will never get the representation they deserve. Even then, chances are that the incumbents will simply change the boundaries of the district that the commune is in to include enough people from neighboring communities to ensure that the Greens don't get enough votes. Likewise for the Libertarians, who have had very limited success thus far with their Free State initiative.
On the other hand, if you had a proportional election across the entire state this wouldn't be a problem. That has the downside that individual politicians get lost in the sea of the party. Alternately, if you did away with voting districts, and just had each county elect a handful of representatives*, then you will still be voting for individuals, but would give much greater chance for third parties and result in a House that is more representative of the views of the people.
* In the case where the counties are huge (which is a problem in itself), still have districting, but make the districts 3-4 times larger than they currently are and elect 3-4 times the number of representatives per district.
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That has the downside that individual politicians get lost in the sea of the party.
This isn't really a downside, it's just an acknowledgement of what already happens. Next time there's an election, ask your friends and colleagues how they voted. If your experience is anything like mine, they will invariably say "Party X". Then ask them who they actually voted for (assuming you live in a country where you vote for a person rather than a party). It is illuminating - in my experience, the majority of people have no idea who they voted for. Most go into the polling station completely ignorant
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Bullshit, that's a false dichotomy here in WA and in IA there's districting that's not done on a partisan basis. The net result is that any decisions that benefit one party tend to benefit the other.
If you think that at large elections help minority views, then you haven't been following politics around here. The GOP has for years been trying to split the state for the purposes of electing senators so that they don't have to convince urban voters from the western portion of the state to vote for them.
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I cannot wait until you get that incurable, slow, lingering cancer that causes your every moment on Earth to be an unbearable agony.
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Re:A novel concept ... (Score:4, Insightful)
That never works because by in large people are not willing to pay for the costs of all the programs they like.
Bill Clinton tried to do that with Medicare. Payouts were tied to funding... automatic cuts were supposed to be made. And of course the medical associations and lobbyists made a fuss.. the cuts are postponed...
It would be the same with social security. If the plans calls for automatic increases in contributions, people will make a fuss. If it calls for cuts in benefits.. people will make a fuss... and the government will cave.
You can see this in action. Sweden for example is known to have one of the best 'formula' based pension systems...taking into account the economy, age, expected life span... All was wonderful of course when nothing bad was demanded by the formula. When the economic downturn occurred and it demanded pension cuts for the elderly... the government caved. it compensated for the loss of pension income with tax cuts for the elderly to make up the difference. So basically, even the swedes were unable to follow the formula when it came to take the bad side of the formula.
If things are not politically possible, they're not possible. Not recognizing that... is even dumber.
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You gave examples of how formulas for very complex and dynamic specific budgets failed to model them to the satisfaction of the people.
The redistricting problem is one that a formula can model well, if it's parametrized to include the voting of the people. Just as the Constitution is a set of rules that's highly parameterized by voting (at multiple levels, in multiple cycles) to select the actual implementation, and even the judging after accusations a person has broken a law.
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I'm sorry... I really don't get your point. I'm honestly unsure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me.
If what you're saying is there are rational reasonable ways to solve a problem, then I'm afraid, I just have to repeat my line:
"If things are not politically possible, they're not possible. Not recognizing that... is even dumber."
Not taking into account human variables is simply ignorance. One, I'd argue the vast majority of academics are guilty of. It's like trying to solve a math equation while pur
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The solution is to make the process either non-partisan or bipartisan. Doing that has done wonders for our local politics.
Even better if you institute a top two primary system. We often times end up choosing between Democrats and in some other parts of the state they choose between Republicans, but it has the effect of pushing the legislature towards the middle as in all cases the less extreme candidate won. Normally in cases like this the more extreme candidate would win as that would be what it would take
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The budget supercommitte is bipartisan. That's /not/ a guaranteed recipe for success.
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Except that in the case of the supercomittee they can just do nothing and deal with the consequences of the default plan. In terms of districting there is no default, and as a result the people selected to make the decision reflect that.
In terms of the supercomittee on the budget, that's more or less what I'd expect, nobody told the GOP that they lost the 2008 elections and they've been behaving like self entitled brats ever since. The Democrats can't cave as doing so is just going to encourage that sort of
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The solution is to give a simple framework in which the people can vote for their own district's boundaries, and then vote for the officials representing the district. Parties in general are anti-democratic, and have worked against both democracy and the republic's integrity. Even if we let these private political clubs exist, with their frameworks for graft, bribery and other corruption, they should have no special advantage in getting on a ballot. Anyone with a minimum fraction (like 1-5%) of eligible vot
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Indeed, seems the only thing that the parties around here can agree upon is that the voters don't know how to pick candidates for the final election. They sued to get the previous system tossed and have been trying to get the new system tossed as well.
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Politicians agreeing that voters don't know how to pick politicians is the most powerful truism of all.
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> I favor letting each zipcode vote
That would open the door to gerrymandered zipcodes, I would think.
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The zipcodes are already set, and have an accepted basis for setting them. Gerrymandering zipcodes would be a lot more obvious than gerrymandering districts, which makes it harder. But of course ultimately any basis for districting can be gerrymandered, if the people don't pay attention. Zipcodes are easier to pay attention to.
The main advantage to zipcodes is that they're small in population, and lots of their population sees each other at the post office, parks, and other, private places in the area. Zipc
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The general principle is that if people can agree on the goals of some process or system, an algorithmic or machine learning approach may be the best way to instantiate the agreement. For the principles of drawing political districts, it seems to me that such an agreement might be achievable. Whether geographic political districts still make sense is another matter.
Of course there should be a way to appeal the decisions of a computer program to a human authority, based on either a failure of the program t
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There are already many algorithms [wikipedia.org] for similar problems.
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Funny how the current beneficiaries think Social Security is pretty great, as has always been the case since SS was implemented. And funny how the people who dislike it always dislike it only in principle, until they receive it.
That sounds like SS is pretty great. Even if the people suck.
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Except SS isn't running out of money. Because the current beneficiaries, both Baby Boomers and older, did what was necessary: increased their contributions starting in the 1980s to cover the current beneficiaries. Though they deserve little credit for it; it was Alan Greenspan who raised taxes to protect Americans' pensions. Just as most Baby Boomers and their parents never marched in any streets, but rather voted for what those who did march opposed.
Eventually, in the late 2030s, SS might not have the mone
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Nobody denies that some changes are necessary. What some people are lying to say is that it needs either radical change, or should be eliminated.
Even without changes the fund only grows until 2024. Even without changes the fund pays full benefits through 2038. I really don't know what the point of your post is now, but the point about SS is simply that it needs only small changes to remain the most successful and popular government program of all time, except perhaps the Revolutionary War and WWII.
Let them eat cake (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't it be 3d? That way they can draw lines so people living on top floors can vote and the people on the ground floor can eat cake.
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Easy: You can vote if you live in Manhattan and your residence is above 200 feet above MCPL (mean central park level).
Ooh, I want One! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Would the candidate not be required to reside in Brucistan in order to be on the ticket?
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Greyfox votes for Greyfox to be representative of Greyfox. Greyfox wins 100% of the vote.
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Will they use it? (Score:2)
TFA says they're gonna take the results to Albany. Is the state under any obligation to look at this?
Also, on a somewhat related note, is there any desire amongst Americans to have proportional representation? There's pros and cons of course.
Not really useful? (Score:5, Informative)
The tool just teaches you how to redistrict - but has absolutely no real-life outcome. "It's full of smoke-filled back room dealmaking by political insiders with little public input" - highly doubtful that this will ever change.
It's like watching Man vs Wild.
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The redistricting that state politicians actually enact comes from the people who have access to those politicians. The people with access have tools to create and analyze the districting that serves them best.
Until now, the public hasn't had a tool like that, so the people with access have all the advantages. Those people still have their access advantage, but that's partly because most people never have anything worthwhile to say to the politicians, certainly not in a form that politicians can understand.
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For instance in Texas they are in a new redistricting and had the courts disallow the recent attempt not because they cut out minorities, they increased the number of district with a majority of minorities but because they did not account for the historic voting rate of people in those new districts.
Try configuring all the laws like that into some software that any person can use.
Maybe they got the idea from GTA IV? (Score:2)
Get the Source Code (Score:3)
It's not obvious from the link to the blog how to get the source code. But you can get it [publicmapping.org], and read how to [publicmapping.org] set it up either on your own server or the Amazon hosting the project seems to prefer. The source is hosted at github, though there's a required R stats package hosted at sourceforge.
Districts Made of Zipcodes (Score:2)
I want to use this SW to redistrict NY composed of its zipcode areas. Anyone know where I can get the zipcode population and boundaries GIS data, and have ideas on how to integrate that data with the source code [publicmapping.org] of this project's app?
FWIW, I want to use other zipcode data, the demographics data, to aggregate zipcodes into the districts. I also want to simulate the self-selection aggregation method, where each zipcode's voters vote with which of the other zipcodes bordering theirs they want their zipcode to
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ArcGIS is fucking expensive though. I use it for work and we are paying huge amounts in license fees. A single license is cheaper ($1500 I believe) but is still a very hard expensive exercise.
You need shapefiles of the New York zip code boundaries. Quick Google search gives me this:
http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/z52000.html#shp [census.gov]
If you want to view and edit shapefiles and don't want to pay or pirate ArcGIS, there are several open source alternatives. I recommend QuantumGIS [qgis.org]. It has all the facilities for mo
Do Wall Street & Park Avenue need representati (Score:2)
Unsupervised Learning (Score:1)
My one wish (Score:2)
Disallow concave redistricting shapes