MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers on Tuesday vetoed a redistricting proposal that the Republican-controlled Legislature passed last week in a last-ditch effort to avert the …
If you have a particular goal in mind when designing your election map, you’ll achieve it. Be careful, though, because Goodhart’s Law applies. Elections can be made to order. And focusing on one measure of “success” for a fair map inherently reduces the effects of others. If we go too far down this rabbit hole, we’re designing our maps to get us the election results we want, which is democratically backwards.
Which is, of course, how we got INTO this mess. The GOP are designing maps with a priority on winning and maintaining power above all else. Above having communities held together as communities. Above making sure the various demographics all each get their own says. Above having a healthy, competitive contest of elections.
There’s no such thing as an apolitical, objective, quantitatively “right” or fair map. We can only judge maps off of subjective, political standards.
So what this internet stranger will tell you is that you shouldn’t try to come up with any simple test for the correctness of an election map. You should be holistic and compromising – both are necessary to get fair maps. The process must be bi- or nonpartisan and it must be highly transparent.
Which is not the case in Wisconsin. It is a 100% political process carried out by agents acting in the most cynical, heinous bad faith. The Wisconsin GOP wants to win at any cost. Democracy is an obstacle to their power. Equity and fairness are vices to them. This veto is a good thing. The lawsuits are a good thing. The GOP needs to be called out and shamed loudly and often. Because in spite of everything I said about it being impossible to objectively tell a map is fair, when a map is THIS unfair even a child can call it out rightly.
There’s no reason we need to have first past the post, single seat districts.
You can make much more representative maps with RCV of multi member districts. And that district could be statewide if you wanted, then no special map to make anyway.
But also, these system choices are a political ones that affect political results, and so whether that effect is positive or negative is subjective to politics. There’s winners and losers being picked in every system adjustment.
If you have a particular goal in mind when designing your election map, you’ll achieve it. Be careful, though, because Goodhart’s Law applies. Elections can be made to order. And focusing on one measure of “success” for a fair map inherently reduces the effects of others. If we go too far down this rabbit hole, we’re designing our maps to get us the election results we want, which is democratically backwards.
Which is, of course, how we got INTO this mess. The GOP are designing maps with a priority on winning and maintaining power above all else. Above having communities held together as communities. Above making sure the various demographics all each get their own says. Above having a healthy, competitive contest of elections.
There’s no such thing as an apolitical, objective, quantitatively “right” or fair map. We can only judge maps off of subjective, political standards.
So what this internet stranger will tell you is that you shouldn’t try to come up with any simple test for the correctness of an election map. You should be holistic and compromising – both are necessary to get fair maps. The process must be bi- or nonpartisan and it must be highly transparent.
Which is not the case in Wisconsin. It is a 100% political process carried out by agents acting in the most cynical, heinous bad faith. The Wisconsin GOP wants to win at any cost. Democracy is an obstacle to their power. Equity and fairness are vices to them. This veto is a good thing. The lawsuits are a good thing. The GOP needs to be called out and shamed loudly and often. Because in spite of everything I said about it being impossible to objectively tell a map is fair, when a map is THIS unfair even a child can call it out rightly.
There’s no reason we need to have first past the post, single seat districts.
You can make much more representative maps with RCV of multi member districts. And that district could be statewide if you wanted, then no special map to make anyway.
These ideas all sound good to me.
But also, these system choices are a political ones that affect political results, and so whether that effect is positive or negative is subjective to politics. There’s winners and losers being picked in every system adjustment.