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[McTraveller]

Sorry in the circle example I forgot to say "with constant population density across the entire area."

Also - "convex districts" is one of the attempts I've seen to avoid small corridors and the like. Convex means "no pinches" after all.

Your example though is correct - any time you draw lines based on population density, you will get complaints about unfairness because of potential "ideological" density differences.  Any time you draw lines based on "ideological density" you will get complaints about population density.

Consider this situation: how could you possibly construct a geographic district if you had a population that was 90% for one party, but 10% for a different party, but the geographic distribution of each party was homogeneous (that is, no matter what area you looked at, 9 people would be party A and 1 would be party B).  If the districts were defined by geography, party B would "never" have any representation.

So the root cause is districts based on geography, period.

If we were serious about gerrymandering, we would remove all geographic boundaries from representation.  In the US at least, you would also have to get rid of the concept of a partisan Executive branch.  After all - we have problems as it is with our partisan executive, when our votes are generally split close to 50/50 for party A vs party B ( I consider 48% vs 52% to be essentially equally split), but representation is 100% or 0%.

Unless we change the executive to something that has no 'head' - where it is always proportionally representative, this problem will always exist.

And if you use proportional representation, you will always have some sort of quantization problem; if you had say 100 representatives, you would have no representation if you fell low enough below 1% of the total population.  For a population as large as the US, that would mean over 3 million people that had no representation.   Say you had 1000 representatives trying to decide all laws - you'd still have groups as large as 300k with "no representation" - you have to draw the line somewhere.

So for states - yeah gerrymandering can be a problem if you don't have enough total districts. If you have enough districts, gerrymandering doesn't work anyway.  Or put another way: gerrymandering only works if you have too few districts and your population doesn't have enough geographic concentration of its ideologies.

[smjjames]

Is it me or are they intentionally avoiding giving Williamson questions or chances to talk? I know the candidates only have so much time to talk, but they could be doing it more evenly. At least they seemed to be during the first half hour.

[sluissa]

Williamson is a bit incoherent in her speech though. Not that she's alone in that, but she's especially bad.

[smjjames]

Inexperience maybe? She seemed to be talking about being proactive in healthcare rather than reactive with one answer, but didn't quite have the right words to convey it and veered off onto a tangent.

Also, half-hearted hand raise from Biden to one handraise question, think it was about decriminalizing immigration.

[sluissa]

Biden is just a flat out bad candidate. It's frustrating that he's the frontrunner. Hopefully him having to be on stage and answer tough questions will make people realize that.

As for Williamson... she sounded like she was getting very close to anti-vax anti-GMO territory with how she was talking. (And she has in fact been of those sorts of opinions and only recently backed off from them while campaigning.)

[smjjames]

Yeah, 538 staff on the liveblog have said that Biden isn't dominating the stage like a frontrunner should be, and there was that half-hearted hand raise earlier. Granted, it's in part due to sharing the stage with several others in the front of the pack, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't be able to dominate the stage.

He probably excells in one on one or in smaller debates, just not this.

[PTTG??]

Narratively, what the democrats need is to start with a front runner with clear establishment favor who is overrun by a groundswell of outside support.

Regardless of if this happens naturally, or if it needs to be "performed" by having the party nudge Biden forward and let him falter, it will get the radicals engaged and to provide the push the party needs.

[sluissa]

First half was worse than last night as far as the "Family dinner table" crap was going with people talking over each other. Second half kinda settled down. Harris is starting to remind me a lot of Clinton at this point. Always guarded, always firmly on script unless she sees an opening to attack which she admittedly does a lot better and a lot more fiercely than Clinton. I don't hate her, I just wish she didn't seem like everything she says has had a team of writers refine it down before it comes out of her mouth.

I still love Gabbard, but don't expect much of a jump even after light night's decent performance. (Although apparently she was the most googled candidate last night by a decent margin.) Warren might walk out of this better than she walked in. Sanders I think embarrassed himself. Buttigieg held steady, nothing outstanding either way about him up until the final comment... which was a bit stilted and on script, but had enough emotion in there to get me on his side.

Yang... just unfortunately doesn't fit into politics very well... and I think that's going to make sure he never rises above single digits in polling.

As for everyone else... completely forgettable. Even Biden would be forgettable if not for the name recognition and the scathing attacks he suffered tonight.

[smjjames]

As for everyone else... completely forgettable. Even Biden would be forgettable if not for the name recognition and the scathing attacks he suffered tonight.

That's likely a consequence of attempting to do a two hour debate with 10 people over multiple subjects, it's far harder to get a memorable moment because each interaction was more or less fleeting. The O'Rourke-Booker-Castro interaction over immigration is more the kind of thing you'd want in a debate.

Williamson and Yang were the definite losers in the debate though, and apparently Yang stuck to the debate rules which ended up him being dead last in speaking time.

[sluissa]

Speaking of Williamson:

https://twitter.com/ellievhall/status/1144447746570641410

Tweets from her past.

I only vaguely remember O'Rourke-Castro... and mostly just because they started speaking spanish out of nowhere. Booker I didn't even remember being in the debate until you mentioned him.

[lemon10]

Sorry in the circle example I forgot to say "with constant population density across the entire area."

Also - "convex districts" is one of the attempts I've seen to avoid small corridors and the like. Convex means "no pinches" after all.

Your example though is correct - any time you draw lines based on population density, you will get complaints about unfairness because of potential "ideological" density differences.  Any time you draw lines based on "ideological density" you will get complaints about population density.

Consider this situation: how could you possibly construct a geographic district if you had a population that was 90% for one party, but 10% for a different party, but the geographic distribution of each party was homogeneous (that is, no matter what area you looked at, 9 people would be party A and 1 would be party B).  If the districts were defined by geography, party B would "never" have any representation.

So the root cause is districts based on geography, period.

If we were serious about gerrymandering, we would remove all geographic boundaries from representation.  In the US at least, you would also have to get rid of the concept of a partisan Executive branch.  After all - we have problems as it is with our partisan executive, when our votes are generally split close to 50/50 for party A vs party B ( I consider 48% vs 52% to be essentially equally split), but representation is 100% or 0%.

Unless we change the executive to something that has no 'head' - where it is always proportionally representative, this problem will always exist.

And if you use proportional representation, you will always have some sort of quantization problem; if you had say 100 representatives, you would have no representation if you fell low enough below 1% of the total population.  For a population as large as the US, that would mean over 3 million people that had no representation.   Say you had 1000 representatives trying to decide all laws - you'd still have groups as large as 300k with "no representation" - you have to draw the line somewhere.

So for states - yeah gerrymandering can be a problem if you don't have enough total districts. If you have enough districts, gerrymandering doesn't work anyway.  Or put another way: gerrymandering only works if you have too few districts and your population doesn't have enough geographic concentration of its ideologies.

There are plenty of different ways to significantly reduce the impacts of gerrymandering as well that don't require taking people out of the equation entirely (eg. have a non-partisan multi-party district drawing committee, use a slightly different voting system (eg. if your party wins 40% of the vote but only 20% of the districts you get 20% party based non-district based seats)) but these all run into the same fundamental problem that causes gerrymandering in the first place: Gerrymandering massively benefits politicians in power, so as the ones that make the laws of course they are going to try to keep it in place and not give up their power simply because its more ethical.

If you want to get rid of it altogether you can do so by having computer programs/algorithms draw the district lines based on pre-written rules. Note that of course this could be manipulated as well (eg. you write a specific line drawing formula to give your party benefits in that specific redistricting) but presuming said program/algorithm were written as a general case this could largely be avoided.
Now, even that wouldn't necessarily be "fair" as doing it so impartially would presumably result in some messed up districts, but it would get rid of any party manipulating it to their own benefit.

[Rolan7]

Speaking of Williamson:

https://twitter.com/ellievhall/status/1144447746570641410

Tweets from her past.

I'm sure this is supposed to be negative, but it sounds surprisingly okay to me.  I guess it reminds me of the Christian-paganism fusion I partly grew up around.  That sort of spiritualist hokum is inherently irrational, but some people use it for good.  I have no idea who the author is yet so I've yet to decide (watching the debate tomorrow in the morning), but these excerpts on their own don't turn me off.

Spirituality is here to stay in America, maybe in humanity, so it's nice to see examples who aren't hateful bigots directly attacking intrinsic parts of me.  Though again I don't know the candidate yet.

[Bumber]

I'm sure this is supposed to be negative, but it sounds surprisingly okay to me.

"When enough minds are vibrating on a high enough level, then all lower thought forms will fall of their own dead weight."

Descan approved?

[Kagus]

Well I'm personally of the opinion that someone who claims that you can immunize yourself against swine flu by "seeing every cell of your body filled with divine light and pouring God's love on your immune system" should probably not be put in charge of anything more important than an astrology quiz to find out what starsign your sandwich has.

Even then...

[wierd]

sounds like sacred geometry hoodoo to me.

(Get your youtube blockers ready, and get some popcorn. That one's a doozie.)