Poor Logic in Redistricting

[Brambila]

I have made several proposals in the redistricting thread, but each attempt I make somebody dismisses it as unconstitutional. After studying Article four of the Bill of Rights and Constitution, I have realized that a lot of my proposals do not seem to be unconstitutional. Further, I'm finding a lot of flaws within the constitution, and among the forummer's interpretation of it. Therefore, I want to ask the forummers what they think of this- is my interpretation incorrect?

Here's what the constitution says:

Districts shall be determined by how many registered voters there are at the Forum. Each district should have nearly equal the amount of registered voters as the other districts have. Amendment IV, section 3.

But also says:

Districts have no authority and are meant only to represent the people of the Forum by the population from within that district. Amendment IV, section 2.

Now, if anyone can explain to me how a district is supposed to represent the population of the forum within that individual district if they are equal, please do. What's the point in representing the population if all of the districts are equal? Further, the constitution says they have to be near equal, but that means that means every time a member joins the fantasy forum the entire districting is screwed up, and if four other members join that same district and no others, everything needs to be redistricted since it's not equal. Clearly, the founding fathers either did not intend that or really did not do a good job writing this constitution. Further, I see no point in it being as equal as possible. The more one population grows, the more EVs one district gains. The more people move out of a district, the less EVs it gains. Not only is it more practical, it makes the election process much more interesting.

The second point I would like to make is regarding the District of Columbia. Everyone has told me that the District of Columbia needs to be part of a larger district. I noted the poor logic, since the District of Columbia is in itself a district, and reviewed the constitution.

There are five Regions with ten states per Region. One region must include the District of Columbia. All Regions must be contiguous.  Each region must have a name that will either be decided by the members from the region or the Senate itself.  

The District of Columbia needs to be part of a REGION, not a district. Hence, my proposal remains fine. The District of Columbia, because it is the capital, should be its own district.

Therefore, my proposal is the following:



OR

 

(with the change of District of Columbia)

Or also:
 

[Josh/Devilman88]

I say we have 6 districts..

[Brambila]

But really, I don't see the point of the EV system altogether, since that was made for larger populations, and since we have such a small population it can't really represent us well. Let's say they all have 13 EVs. If Gustaf wins District 1 by 7/6, and District 2 by 7/6, and District 3 by 7/6, but the other two vote overwealmingly against him, that's 51 against and only 21 for. That means the opponent gets 70% of the vote and Gustaf gets 30%... quite ridiculous.

[ilikeverin]

We don't have EVs...

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

But really, I don't see the point of the EV system altogether, since that was made for larger populations, and since we have such a small population it can't really represent us well. Let's say they all have 13 EVs. If Gustaf wins District 1 by 7/6, and District 2 by 7/6, and District 3 by 7/6, but the other two vote overwealmingly against him, that's 51 against and only 21 for. That means the opponent gets 70% of the vote and Gustaf gets 30%... quite ridiculous.

The districts are meaningless in the presidential election...there is no "Electoral Vote".  This is only for the Senate elections.

The districts are meant to be balanced at the time of the end of the census.  They may become unbalanced between censuses...that's fine.  Right now, the census and redistricting occurs every ten months, but we may change that.

[Brambila]

Continuously redistricting is ridiculous. Constantly changing the government gives people the impression that the government is unstable. Further, it gives people more of an impression that they could change the government if they'd like to. We should only have to do the districting once, and no more.

If you want an even consensus, don't do the 1-senator per district thing. Do it one senator for every six people. So California would get one, District 1 would get like 3, et cetera. That's a good way to represent.

Or we can do it the European parliamentary way- that is, if a party gets at least three votes, they can have representation regardless of which party won the election. Since the Atlasian nation has such a small population, this may be the best. The United States is a large nation. Look at how smaller nations are run, like Andorra.

[Josh/Devilman88]

Here is one with 6 districts..

[Gustaf]

Brambilla, on regions, we're scrappin them, there's an amendment for that. Secondly, the districts are only reviewed at certain times, they only have to be equal at the time of redistricting. Like IRL, the CDs of 2000 weren't equal the way they were in 1990 and so on.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Continuously redistricting is ridiculous. Constantly changing the government gives people the impression that the government is unstable. Further, it gives people more of an impression that they could change the government if they'd like to. We should only have to do the districting once, and no more.

If you want an even consensus, don't do the 1-senator per district thing. Do it one senator for every six people. So California would get one, District 1 would get like 3, et cetera. That's a good way to represent.

Or we can do it the European parliamentary way. Since the Atlasian nation has such a small population, this may be the best. The United States is a large nation. Look at how smaller nations are run, like Andorra.

This is the sort of discussion that would be appropriate when we first writing the Constitution.  Now we have a Constitution and have to follow it.  

If you want to amend the Constitution, find a Senator who will sponsor the amendment and maybe it will happen...or run for Senate yourself.

[Gustaf]

This is an amendment to the constitution. In the thread entitled Atlas Forum Constitution these amendments can be found.

This constitutional amendment, proposed by senator StevenNick has passed, 7 votes to 1 in the senate and has been approved by a public poll, in accordance with the constitution.

All senators shall hereby be elected from districts.  Although regions will no longer be relevant for the purposes of electing senators, governors will continue to be elected from regions.  Districts will be redrawn by the governors in the event of a disparity in voter allocation between the districts.  This amendment will replace any contradictary section or article of the current, unamended constitution.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Here is one with 6 districts..

Same thing what I said about amending the Constitution, Josh.  The Governors can't just create six districts.  If you want the Constitution changed, you know how to do it.

[Josh/Devilman88]

Here is one with 6 districts..

Same thing what I said about amending the Constitution, Josh.  The Governors can't just create six districts.  If you want the Constitution changed, you know how to do it.

oh.. ok I did not know it said we have to have 5 districts...

[StevenNick]

Continuously redistricting is ridiculous. Constantly changing the government gives people the impression that the government is unstable. Further, it gives people more of an impression that they could change the government if they'd like to. We should only have to do the districting once, and no more.

If you want an even consensus, don't do the 1-senator per district thing. Do it one senator for every six people. So California would get one, District 1 would get like 3, et cetera. That's a good way to represent.

Or we can do it the European parliamentary way- that is, if a party gets at least three votes, they can have representation regardless of which party won the election. Since the Atlasian nation has such a small population, this may be the best. The United States is a large nation. Look at how smaller nations are run, like Andorra.

I'm beginning to agree with you.  Some of the redistricting plans are downright insane and I don't think it's a good or useful thing to have the districts be completely redrawn every four months.  It's confusing, irritating, etc.

Perhaps it is time institute proportional representation among the districts and leave the boundaries alone.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Having a fight over redistricting gives our fantasy government something to do that isn't driven by an external event.  Whether that is a good point or a bad point is another question.  However, eevry 10 months is an awkward time frame for this board.  Six months or twelve months would be better, even if it doesn't use the one month fantasy is equivalent to one year of reality rubrick that was used in deciding upon the time periods.  We're using tranferable voting which isn't used in the US so the argument that the census should be ten months to conform with the ten years between censi in the US doesn't make sense.  That said, if we have yearly censi, they should be in April since that is the month for censi in the US.  If we go to semi-annual they should be in April and October.

[Brambila]

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That's what amendments are for, honey. The same way, the discussion about regions would have been appropriate when creating the constituion. My position is that the constitution is contradictory. I understand regions are being lost in an amendment, but when we can change that, why not so many other items as well?

The entire position is entirely ridiculous. Changing every 6, 10, 12 months is such an impracticality. We're trying to make it as easy as possible to run this nation, not as difficult as possible. I find the entire thing very ridiculous- almost humorous.  

It's a logical fallacy- that is, begging the question, to justify this because the constitution says so.

Oh, and one more point. Even if you do it every ten months or already, if a few people join, the entire system will be screwed up for the next months ahead. It's so ridiculous.

[Beet]

In order to have proportional representation in the Senate without redistricting, we will have to give some Senators more power than others.

[Justin]

What do you mean more powers? That sounds neither fair nor Democratic.

[Brambila]

I see no reason why that is an issue. Please, explain.

[Justin]

It was my understanding that all Senators that were elected had the same power as the others. Giving certain Senators more power is in my eyes a bit undemocratic.

[platypeanArchcow]

I think changing senatorial elections to proportional representation would make them rather dull.  We already know who votes for which party, so if we just put in senators off party lists, we wouldn't even have to vote!

[Beet]

I see no reason why that is an issue. Please, explain.

Well no matter what boundaries you draw, their populations will eventually become uneven. You then have two options, either to redistrict, or to allow an unequal situation to develop. One District may have twice the population as another. In this case people may not even want to register in their own home states. I feel this would be a bad thing. The only way to remedy without redistricting would be to diversify Senators' power.

[Brambila]

I see no reason why that is an issue. Please, explain.

Well no matter what boundaries you draw, their populations will eventually become uneven. You then have two options, either to redistrict, or to allow an unequal situation to develop. One District may have twice the population as another. In this case people may not even want to register in their own home states. I feel this would be a bad thing. The only way to remedy without redistricting would be to diversify Senators' power.

EXACTLY. However, I disagree with your solution. So what if it's uneven? That happens in the US anyway. If certain regions are small and others are large, so be it. That's what happens. We shouldn't worry about equal representation.

It would probably be best, seeing the small population, to remove districts all together rather than making all these districts. We could still have senators, but it would be more like a parliament. In others, for ever ten or so people, we'll have a senator or parliamentary member.

As for governors, we could keep the regions OR districts (whatever), and have a governor per region.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I see no reason why that is an issue. Please, explain.

Well no matter what boundaries you draw, their populations will eventually become uneven. You then have two options, either to redistrict, or to allow an unequal situation to develop. One District may have twice the population as another. In this case people may not even want to register in their own home states. I feel this would be a bad thing. The only way to remedy without redistricting would be to diversify Senators' power.

EXACTLY. However, I disagree with your solution. So what if it's uneven? That happens in the US anyway. If certain regions are small and others are large, so be it. That's what happens. We shouldn't worry about equal representation.

It would probably be best, seeing the small population, to remove districts all together rather than making all these districts. We could still have senators, but it would be more like a parliament. In others, for ever ten or so people, we'll have a senator or parliamentary member.

As for governors, we could keep the regions OR districts (whatever), and have a governor per region.

Our system isn't parliamentary because we have a popularly elected president instead of a primary chosen from among the majority party in the legislature.  It difference has nothing to do with the Senate districts.  

Canada and England select their parliaments in a similar way to our Congressional elections (minus the primaries)...single member, geographic districts with first-past-the-post vote counting rules....they also redistrict every so often.  The way they differ is in the way they select their single top executive.

[Brambila]

I said it was parliament in that sense. I never said the system was a parliament. We could still have a democratic senator group, but they would be more like representatives, in that we'd get one every ten people.

We already havea small government. Instead of making it so complicated, we should take advantage of what we have.

[Beet]

I see no reason why that is an issue. Please, explain.

Well no matter what boundaries you draw, their populations will eventually become uneven. You then have two options, either to redistrict, or to allow an unequal situation to develop. One District may have twice the population as another. In this case people may not even want to register in their own home states. I feel this would be a bad thing. The only way to remedy without redistricting would be to diversify Senators' power.

EXACTLY. However, I disagree with your solution. So what if it's uneven? That happens in the US anyway. If certain regions are small and others are large, so be it. That's what happens. We shouldn't worry about equal representation.

It would probably be best, seeing the small population, to remove districts all together rather than making all these districts. We could still have senators, but it would be more like a parliament. In others, for ever ten or so people, we'll have a senator or parliamentary member.

As for governors, we could keep the regions OR districts (whatever), and have a governor per region.

So, people will have to divide themselves into groups of 10 and each elect a senator, so we won't have a set number of senators? This is interesting but it could get chaotic. One compromise might just be to move redistricting back to 10 months.