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A comment on Gerrymandering and a cure for it – the shortest splitline algorithm. Parent comment

Re:Gerrymandering and a cure for it – the shortest splitline... by SapphireSun on Wednesday September 30, 2015 @12:57AM (#10301882)
That's true, but every time an individual result is unfair... it's still unfair. If I live on the red side and there are two blue reps, I have literally no representation despite comprising 50% of the population. The fact that I sometimes get to sock it to the blue side with two red reps is unfair to them. This isn't a case of turnabout is fair play, as the promise of representative government is that everyone gets a voice and decisions are generally made by consensus, compromise, and occasionally a smack down vote.

Let me put it another way, which system would you prefer to live in?

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Re:Gerrymandering and a cure for it – the shortest splitline... by Retra on Wednesday September 30, 2015 @11:02AM (#10304464)
It sounds like you are confusing "everyone gets a vote" with "everyone gets a result." If you're the only red person in a room of blues, there's no way it's going to be fair unless you can convince others to turn, or you run away. A voting system is not meant to make everything possible, but to make it so that the one red in the room has an out: get more votes. (Because without something, you've got a very volatile situation.) You have a voice, it's just not codified in your vote unless you're a near majority.

The point of voting isn't to get fair representation. You can't have fair representation in this sense due to the Pigeon-Hole principle. You can have it in a long term, systemic sense.

    every time an individual result is unfair... it's still unfair
Fairness is not a property of individual results. It's a property of a statistical system incorporating many data points.
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Re:Gerrymandering and a cure for it – the shortest splitline... by SapphireSun on Wednesday September 30, 2015 @11:38AM (#10304716)
On what timescale? If district I'm talking about went 100 years red then 100 years blue but retained the same characteristics, that would be aggregate fairness, but clearly unfair. In your case of one red person in a sea of blue, it's obvious that they would be at a disadvantage. The situation I'm specifically talking about is one where red and blue are roughly equal. Does it make sense to randomly remove one side's voice?
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