Gerrymandering

The last matrix currently puts Fair Redistricting in first place. If we were to take this one up as our first consensus "win" I wanted to explore some strategy. We could...

A. Simply state it as a grievance.
B. Grievance and a set of solutions.
C. Grievance and a framework for arriving at solutions.
D. Grievance and our solution.
E. Other
F. None of the above.

I found an excellent article on ProPublica, here's a excerpt.

"In a 2004 partisan gerrymandering case, the Court deadlocked on the question of whether partisan gerrymandering, given the difficulty of establishing a standard, should be subject to judicial review. Four justices argued yes — but proposed very different standards for how to tell whether a district has been gerrymandered. Four justices argued no, and one, Anthony Kennedy, argued that while no standard for judging what makes a district "fair" had emerged yet, it might be possible to find one.

In the Supreme Court's most recent consideration of partisan gerrymandering, in 2006, the confusion persisted."

Here is the whole article link...

http://www.propublica.org/article/is-partisan-gerrymandering-unconstitutional

Personally, my readings and thoughts have brought me to "fair" as competing algorithms submitted by universities in each state to an independent nonpartisan commission or jury that is statistically representative of the state's political demographics. I also believe median income SHOULD be considered, but I know that is controversial. IMO, the politics of most issues are monetary so having economically balanced districts around a median point should center discussions. Also, if there is to be a bias, it could be done towards proportional representation. That really should be a local/state decision, as there are excellent arguments for and against.

If we were to proceed with this as our first "issue" we might want to seek out some experts on solutions and hear their testimony. This would be in keeping with citizen jury work, and that is one way we could view ourselves.

Cheers,
Jon Denn

Jon:

Thanks for the link. It's a helpful resource.

I recently met a PhD in statistics at the University of Cincinnati who is doing work in the area of creating balanced Congressional districts. If we should pursue the issue, I'll try to engage him in the conversation.

Cheers!

TJ