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There is a valid both sides argument to a lot of these issues IMO, but where the discussion ought to be is at how extreme “one” side has taken it.

Whether it’s executive orders, corruption, pardons, appointments, obstruction, gerrymandering. pedophilia, lying, etc. I don’t think there’s a valid defence of just how far one particular side has gone (and proactively I might add).

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testdelacc1 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why is there always a both sides-er in these discussions?

FWIW, one party generally deferred to nonpartisan commissions to draw boundaries to avoid gerrymandering. So one “side” did far more than propose a solution, they did the right thing even when the other side wasn’t.

Gerrymandering is the worst example to pick when you’re pushing both-sides-bad.

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paulsutter 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Great! So please explain what algorithms are used by these "nonpartisan" commissions?

	▲	testdelacc1 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I’ll reply in good faith even though I detect sarcasm in your comment. Generally nonpartisan commissions prioritise contiguity and compactness. There is an element of “I know it when I see it” because you’re trying to avoid both packing (packing minority voters from disparate areas into one) and cracking (distributing a minority district like Salt Like City into its 4 neighbouring districts, ensuring the city can’t vote for … whoever cities generally vote for). So there is a human element involved, but these commissions generally do a reasonable job. You know how we know? States that move from nonpartisan to partisan commissions cause a dramatic change in the results of the next election. If the nonpartisan was biased like you imply with your air quotes, we wouldn’t observe that effect. Also there are algorithms to draw fair districts without needing human judgement. See this paper[1] that expounds on one such algorithm. 1 - Swamy, R., King, D. M., & Jacobson, S. H. (2022). Multiobjective optimization for politically fair districting: A scalable multilevel approach. Operations Research, 71(2), 536–562. https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2022.2311
	▲	unselect5917 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		They're not.

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TimorousBestie 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> yet neither "side" makes any proposal for an apolitical fair approach for redistricting...

Last week there was mention here of a proposal to fix the apportionment of House seats so that they are not capped at 435.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47332108

This proposal would make gerrymandering much harder.

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catlover76 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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