Math Professor Fighting Gerrymandering with Geometry
Can I just point out that <i>every</i> time a gerrymandering article is posted to hacker news, the thread is quickly overwhelmed by people professing various forms of proportional representation?<p>This is striking me as becoming close to Wolfram Derangement Syndrome, and I think it&#x27;s bad for the quality of discourse on this subject.<p>Just to sketch out the brief reasons why, let&#x27;s first accept that the gerrymandering conversation is about the United States. As such, we have to accept the reality of the United States Constitution. Finally, most arguments about gerrymandering are focused more on <i>federal</i> districts, as in the districts that make up the House of Representatives.<p>Given all that, talking about proportional representation is a complete waste of time, and it gets in the way of having constructive conversation about this subject. It is constitutionally <i>impossible</i> to disband the House of Representatives and switch to proportional representation. It will not happen. Arguments about how it should happen are completely irrelevant to the gerrymandering subject, and counterproductive. For people that know this, arguments about proportional representation are not all that different than hijacking threads and trolling - the only difference being the high likelihood that people are not educated enough civically to understand that proportional representation is impossible on the Federal level.<p>Every time I see a thread here I really do look forward to reading thoughts that are actually about gerrymandering and solving gerrymandering - I would like to see more focus on those subjects rather than the completely unrelated subject of proportional representation.<p>One caveat - many people don&#x27;t realize this, but some state constitutions DO theoretically allow proportional representation for STATE governments. That&#x27;s worth exploring.