6/ So, anyway, if we want to comply w the Voting Rights Act and related court cases, sometimes we have to gerrymander. But let's imagine a world without that Act. >>>
-
Show this thread
-
7/ What's so great about geographic proximity (or whatever metric that's equivalent, like minimizing the perimeter) ? Serious questions. Why are squat small districts good, and long skinny ones bad?
3 replies 1 retweet 15 likesShow this thread -
8/ One thing I've been yammering on about for a decade or so is that we are (perhaps) in the birth pangs of a new geographically distributed post-Westphalian world. The ideal of representative democracy is that people in similar situations can share a representative who >
3 replies 0 retweets 16 likesShow this thread -
9/ argues for and votes on behalf of the populace that they represent. I guarantee you that the senators from CA and the representatives from the Hollywood area do a great job of representing the actors, directors, and studio employees who vote in their districts.
2 replies 0 retweets 10 likesShow this thread -
10/ And as these people all have very very similar interests, when the Hollywood rep (CA 28? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_28th_congressional_district … ) votes on on a topic that touches on the film industry, he or she is actually doing a great job of representing those common interests.
1 reply 0 retweets 7 likesShow this thread -
11/ The movie industry is geographically centralized, as is the financial industry. This means that a squat, compact district actually does a job job of grouping a demographic, and aligning represented with representatives.
2 replies 0 retweets 8 likesShow this thread -
12/ 200 years ago geography likely had a lot more bearing on demographics and indeed psychographics, as marketers like to say. New Englanders tended to agree on taxing the shipping industry. Southerners tended to agree on cotton tariffs. etc.
2 replies 0 retweets 13 likesShow this thread -
13/ And, besides, when information traveled only as fast as the envelope in a courier bag under the armpit of a dispatch rider, there was really no other way to set up districts. Likewise when voting meant walking 2-5 miles to the nearest church or 5-10 miles to a courthouse.
2 replies 0 retweets 11 likesShow this thread -
14/ But in 2020, will mail-in ballots (or even without, if you consider our ability to marshal and ship data around), there's no logistic reason that districts need to have minimized perimeters ... or even be contiguous! Here's an illustrative map of my demographicpic.twitter.com/8jLTLQhkTN
5 replies 2 retweets 20 likesShow this thread -
This Tweet is unavailable.
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.