How Should US House Seats be Redistricted?

[vcczar]

New poll

[ShortKing]

I personally prefer a nonpartisan independent commission but want to allow states the flexibility to design it how they want or if they want it at all. Colorado's commission did great from what I recall, but some states have commissions that deliver gerrymanders all the same or get into gridlock on a partisan basis that makes it impossible to pass a map at all. For sure we need to expand the House though, the 435 seat limit is not helpful, US Representatives were not meant to represent almost 800,000 people, they should have smaller constituencies to best represent them.

[MrPotatoTed]

My answer is a combination of the above.  First, I don't believe that non-partisan independent commissions exist.  Even if you pull names out a hat of every person living in the state, they're still going to have political views.

My answer is to use a computer program, which has no information except population numbers.  No political affiliations, no genders, no races or ages or areas of interest or whatever.  No urban versus rural.  Just populations.  Let it map out equally-populated congressional districts, primarily using county lines where possible.  

[ShortKing]

20 minutes ago, MrPotatoTed said:

My answer is a combination of the above.  First, I don't believe that non-partisan independent commissions exist.  Even if you pull names out a hat of every person living in the state, they're still going to have political views.

My answer is to use a computer program, which has no information except population numbers.  No political affiliations, no genders, no races or ages or areas of interest or whatever.  No urban versus rural.  Just populations.  Let it map out equally-populated congressional districts, primarily using county lines where possible.  

My issue with a computer program is that there are communities of interest that should be taken into account. When a lot of Southern states got around to redistricting after black voters became a powerful bloc, they had real debates over whether it was better to spread out their voters for a voice in as many congressional elections as possible or to consolidate in one or two districts to have representatives that have to answer to their community. The VRA makes majority minority districts necessary where possible, but there are limitations to what a computer program could do. There are just too many metrics that can’t all be satisfied to leave up to a data program.

[MrPotatoTed]

17 minutes ago, ShortKing said:

My issue with a computer program is that there are communities of interest that should be taken into account. When a lot of Southern states got around to redistricting after black voters became a powerful bloc, they had real debates over whether it was better to spread out their voters for a voice in as many congressional elections as possible or to consolidate in one or two districts to have representatives that have to answer to their community. The VRA makes majority minority districts necessary where possible, but there are limitations to what a computer program could do. There are just too many metrics that can’t all be satisfied to leave up to a data program.

Yep, I know.  It was needed specifically to outmaneuver the racist humans who were intentionally designing congressional districts racistly. 

The computer program would be literally blind to race and anything else that potentially seperates us.

[MrPotatoTed]

The only metric that actually matters is number of people in a congressional district, which must be approximately equal to all other districts.  The rest is gerrymandering, in one form or another.  Literally no other metrics are needed.

[MrPotatoTed]

12 minutes ago, Patine said:

 

Here in Canada, Federal election constituency redistricting schemes is specifically supposed to avoid, if possible, partisan strongholds and demographic community lines and create simple, compact population-based units. There are some obvious failings in this matter, but it's meant to be an ideal.

This got me interested, so I looked it up.  Definitely seems weird and broken too, albeit weird and broken in different ways than ours is.

 

[MrPotatoTed]

Also, that video says that Canada does have “areas of special interest” as well, which seems like it might refute what you were saying @Patine.

[pilight]

Non partisan districting, but competitiveness should not be a consideration.  Make the districts close to equal in population and geographically compact & contiguous.  Preferably using visible geographic features, city and town borders, and undivided census tracts to define district lines where possible.

[Timur]

Get rid of districts and make things proportional. That is my "other." If not, the US Census one or the Non Partisan committeee is appealing.
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