On Mon, Apr 29, 2002 at 10:16:49AM +1000, Russell Chapman wrote: > Haven't they been trying to find an answer to this since > 1812? Elbridge Gerry may have been the first, but he was hardly the > best (worst?) at this sort of thing. We had our state government here > kept incumbent for several terms using this method during the 1970s > and 1980s. There have been all sorts of statistical models devised, > but they all seem open to interpretation during implementation.
Like many issues, I don't think anyone has come up with a perfect solution. But my interpretation of the situation, based largely on the article, is that things in many states are bad and getting worse. But there are a number of BETTER ways of districting, which while not being perfect, are worth implementing in the quest to make the elections more fair than they are now. -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.com/ Me: There absolutely are. I've been writing about this issue for four years now - you have no idea how thrilled I am to hear it becoming a serious topic of mainstream discussion. Check out an article by Mickey Kaus in Slate that talks about it a little bit. http://slate.msn.com/?id=2060365. The American Scientist has an article on how difficult it is to program a computer to draw district lines. See http://www.americanscientist.org/Issues/Comsci96/compsci96-11.pdf Arizona has a non-partisan redistricting commission. http://www.azredistricting.org/ David Broder also recently had a column on it, but I can't find the link. A bunch of bloggers have also begun writing on this topic. I got most of these links from Mickey Kaus's website. This is a wonderful example of how political science findings can affect political debate, though. This idea first percolated up in poli. sci. circles about 10 years ago, I think - it was a major issue in an into. to American poli. sci. class I took. It took about that long for it to make it to the mainstream. It is starting to happen, though. I had lunch with David Pryor last week and suggested to him that this might be the most important issue in American politics today - he promised to think about it as he works with his son in Arkansas. This isn't really a question of _fairness_, though. The elections are fair, as far as I can see. The problem is the results. Congressmen react to incentives - the behavior of a Congressman is governed, to first order, by what is most likely to get him re-elected. Partisan redistricting creates districts in which everyone is a Republican or everyone is a Democrat. Thus you get Republican Congressmen who are past the midpoint to the right of the Republican party in their region (because they are people who win the Republican primary), and Democratic Congressmen who are past the midpoint to the left of the Democratic Party. They have no incentive whatsoever to work together, because the people in their districts _have_ no common political ground. Out of 435 Congressional districts, there are probably only 30 that will be competitive in the 2002 election. This is the single most important reason for the gridlock and partisan bickering in Washington. If every state switched over to a non-partisan redistricting commission, the quality of American government would probably improve immediately by a huge amount. Gautam
