Well, yes, in a way all of them. I should clarify what I had in mind with my earlier post though.
I was more speaking to the practice — I think it’s called “poison pill” in the press, and yes #bothsides do it — of taking the one thing that everyone would otherwise agree on, and loading the bill up with one or more other partisan priorities so that when the bill is inevitably declined, the poisoning party gets an artificial talking point of “oh see, they didn’t vote for A” when B/C/etc. that had nothing to do with A should not have been there in the first place.
To me, that’s not good-faith or clever negotiating. It’s intellectual dishonesty.
With regards to the actual disputed provisions of this FtP Act? I honestly didn’t even know it was a thing, so I don’t have too much to say one way or the other without looking into it more. Theoretically it should be easy for an eligible voter to register to vote. In practice, it also makes it easier for uninformed people to vote blindly. So I guess be careful wha you wish for. Maybe it’s not the provisions’ fault if people choose to be uninformed or keep others uninformed, though.
So you don’t even know what was in the bill, but you dismiss it as a non-starter? I’m asking you to actually read the provisions and tell me what you disagree with. I agree with your comment regarding ‘poison pills’, but you haven’t bothered to identify which part of this bill that is in this case. Your complaints about not negotiating in good faith are looking like projection at this point.
I think you missed my point a bit. It’s non-starters for the Rs, so I posted it as an example of that poison pilling process that shouldn’t be a thing because it’s dishonest. I didn’t mean for it to sound like I necessarily thought of it that way personally. I actually try more not to comment on things from a personal perspective if I haven’t at least minimally read about it for myself first. I’m sorry that I didn’t make that clearer in my original post.
Perhaps a more significant point is that the Republicans have majorities in both houses right now, and if they wanted to advance a gerrymandering ban, they have the ability to propose one. But they haven’t.
…and I’m saying this isn’t an example of that. Read the bill and tell me what provision you think is the ‘poison pill’. Or maybe come up with a clearer example and post that instead.
The neutral third party would be a computer applying a couple simple calculations.
Crowd source to get potential maps.
Sample rules for US House districts:
Any registered voter can submit a map between __ and ___ .
Districts must be created by assembling US Census tracts.
All districts must have populations within 1% of the ideal average population.
For maps satisfying those criteria, calculate the total lengths of all district boundaries.
The map with the shortest total length becomes the official map.
One advantage of this method is that every hobbyist writing an optimizing program will write code that can be used to audit the official map, and I’m sure most will do that.
It’d be better still to reduce the importance of geography in elections.
If you move to multi-representative superdistricts, with voters casting a single vote, you significantly reduce, if not eliminate, the potential value of gerrymandering.
How does that work? And doesn’t it potentially hurt? E.g. a state with 2 representatives, where 80% of voters prefer party A over party B. If too many voters go for one particular party A candidate, can a party B candidate slip in?
In your scenario, the two party A candidates (assuming they wouldn’t put more than two in, as that would probably lead to cannibalization of their votes) would have to be differentiated. They could differentiate by being a champion for different planks of the party platform. For example, candidate 1 for party A focuses on abortion rights, while candidate 2 for party A focuses on immigration. For voters who prefer that party mainly for their stance on abortion rights, they would likely go with candidate 1 and immigration-focused voters would go with candidate 2.
The plank or set of planks would have to be popular enough that it would get more than 20% of the vote (not always that easy to predict), to prevent party B (likely to enter just one candidate) from winning a seat. If the two candidates say exactly the same things, then the party runs the risk of an overwhelming majority of voters for that party going for the more eloquent/better-looking/charismatic candidate, so that the party B candidate can sneak in with just 20% of votes.
I think for my idea to work, you need to think of superdistricts ideally being represented by 3-5 legislators.
If you have a 5-representative district where the population tends to be divided 40% party A, 40% party B, 10% party C, and 10% party D, parties A and B will both be inclined to run 3 candidates, while parties C and D each run one candidate.
You’re likely to end up with a 3-2 or a 2-2-1 representation, but there is the potential for weirdness if parties A and B have one charismatic candidate and two duds.
You could gain some protection from unintended outcomes by also having an RCV/IRV mechanism in play. I know that I’ve seen the description of an RCV or IRV algorithm that handles the allocation of “excess” votes, but I’m not sufficiently caffeinated to try to remember it or sketch the concept out.
Something similar is playing out in California right now with their “jungle primary”. Even with Swallwell out of the mix, it seems there are at least 3 viable dem candidates that will probably split about 60% and 2 repubs that will get the other 40%. There are many others also on the ballot, so it could get weird.
I’m sure that the slowness stems from the current administration’s presence as “the powers-that-be”.
Would be interesting to see what interest is garnered if a different administration (one that is more center-focused than leaning “far-right” or “far-left”) comes to power.
