Extension 4/3/13

I found this unique entry someone wrote about how there could be another way than to just redistricting. They go on and talk about how it can be more of a divide and conquer method for urban areas to have more  control. In 11 states there is something called redistricting commission, basically stating that elected or appointed officials focused on strictly on purposes of drafting new congressional and or state districts based on information from the Census. The effectiveness as of now is difficult though because of the growing movement of states. It does state that they have a higher propensity for standing up in court challenge compared  with legislatures, especially when considering congressional redistricting. There is a really good quote in the article that gives information of California's redistricting commission. It goes on talking about how the legislative redistricting bug kicks in and to benefit the party over the altruistic goal of benefiting the state over rides the discussions. This article also mentions on how Texas has thought about the redistricting commission before. They want this Bill called Wentworth's bill to be passed by the next redistricting, so that the "will of the voter" is fair within this Bill.

This is the website I read the information about.

http://www.concernedinsa.com/2011/09/19/redistrictingthere-is-another-way/

Summary 04-03-2013

In today’s class we discussed districting/redistricting, which is the process of dividing a state up into districts for the purpose of representation.  We saw that while all districts had to have the same population, not all districts had to be the same shape.  In order to determine how many people should be in each district you have to find the ideal district size.  You do this by taking the total population and dividing it by the number of districts that you want.  If there are 100,000 people in a district, for example, that is the number of people a representative represents.  There are four desirable features a district should have.  First, it should be contiguous.  This means that districts should be in one piece instead of scattered into a bunch of little pieces across the state.  Second, a district should be convex.  In order for a district to be convex it must have no dents in its shape.  Third, districts should respect geological boundaries.  Examples of these include rivers and mountains.  Fourth, districts should respect geopolitical boundaries such as city limits and county lines.  We also learned about gerrymandering, which is when districts are drawn up in ways that benefit a certain politician or political party.  The term was named after a New York politician named Gerry, who drew up a district in the shape of a salamander.  This act caused scandal, and a case against it was brought to the Supreme Court who did not say it was illegal, but did not approve of it either.  The Baker v. Carr case was also discussed in which residents of urban districts in Tennessee felt that their vote was being debased because rural districts with smaller populations had the same number of representatives as them.

Extension for 3/23

Weighted voting systems are voting systems based on the idea that not all voters are equal. Instead, it can be desirable to recognize differences by giving voters different amounts of say (weights) concerning the outcome of an election. This is in contrast to normal parliamentary procedure, which assumes that each member's vote carries equal weight. This type of voting system is used in everything from shareholder meetings, where votes are weighted by the number of shares that each shareholder owns, to the United States Electoral College. This typer of voting has been used elsewhere in the world throughout history.

The Roman assemblies provided for weighted voting after the person's tribal affiliation and social class (i.e. wealth). Rather than counting one vote per citizen, the assemblies convened in blocs, with the plurality of voters in each bloc deciding the vote of the bloc as an entity. Men of certain tribes and a higher social standing convened in smaller blocs, thus giving their individual vote the effect of many poor citizens' votes. In the Plebeian Council, where only the plebs could participate, these effects were somewhat relaxed, thus making the decision to grant its decisions the full force of law controversial.

In several Western democracies, such as Sweden weighted voting preceded equal and universal suffrage, as well as women's suffrage, to different extents. In Sweden, universal and equal male suffrage to the lower house was introduced by Arvid Lindman's first cabinet, while voting for city and county councils, which indirectly decided the composition of the upper house, was graded along a 40-degree scale. Certain corporations also had votes of their own, thus multiplying the political strength of its owners. Weighted voting was abolished in Nils Eden's reforms of 1918-19, when female suffrage was also introduced.

Extension 3/20

             Just a little history lesson on our voting techniques  that we currently use today.  The Australian ballot also called secret ballot, is the system of voting in which voters mark their choices in privacy on uniform ballots printed and distributed by government or designate their choices by other secret means.  Victoria and South Australia were the first states that introduced secrecy of the ballot in 1856, and for that reason the secret ballot is referred to as the Australian ballot.

            The system had then spread to Europe and the United States to meet the growing public and parliamentary demand for protection of voters.  In the United States the Australian ballot system was widely adopted after the presidential election of 1884.  This was the election that came very close in votes and the deciding state was New York.  The winner was democrat Grover Cleveland.  He was the first democrat to win an election since 1856, before the American Civil War.

                Voting by the Australian ballot usually takes place in a prescribed manner.  The voting boxes are required to be a certain dimension and closed.  The containers are examined before the poll begins and obviously cannot be opened until the count begins.  The voter then marks a ballot, in a special booth, and (after the voter’s right to vote has been verified) the vote is placed inside the container.  If you have voted before than this is not something new to you.  I found it very interesting how the secrecy of voting became, and we the U.S. did not come up with this idea.  Like most things in the United States we adopt it from another country.

An Extension of Different Voting Methods

Posted for Whitney:

Today in class we learned about three different types of ways to evaluate votes. Weighted voting is a system where different voter’s votes are worth different amounts. A dictator is a voter who has the only vote that counts. A dummy is a voter who’s vote does not count. A weighted voting system has a quota. That is the number of votes needed to win or pass a motion and the weights of all the votes in the system. Dictators have all the power and dummies have none. There is also a power index.  A power index assigns a number to each voter that measures the amount of power that voter has in that system.

In 1961, In Southern Rhodesia they used the weighted voting system called cross voting. This system used two types of voters;  A rolls and B rolls. The A rolls were made up of individuals with European decent that lived in the African country.  The B rolls were made up of Native Africans. There were sixty-five total parliamentary seats.  At the conclusion of the election despite there being more Native Africans in Rhodesia the A rolls elected fifty out of sixty-six parliamentary seats. There were also a special group of voters. They were one thousand tribal leaders. They elected eight seats. In despite of the huge population of Native Rhodesians, they were left with the remainder of the few parliamentary seats.

This is an example of weighted voting because the A rolls votes disproportionately weighed more than the B rolls. The tribal leader’s votes also outweighed the B rolls. Do you think this is a fair system of voting?  

3/13 Summary

Posted on behalf of Hannah:

In class we learned about weighted voting. Weighted voting is a voting system in which not all voters’ votes count the same. A weighted voting system is expressed in numbers as a list. There is a quota. A quota is how many votes are needed for a motion to pass. The weights of the voters in the system are how many votes each has. For example [3: 3, 1, 1] 3 is the quota and 3, 1, 1 are the votes. 3 is the dictator because that’s the only vote that counts. The other numbers are dummy voters because they don’t count. In this example [8: 5, 3, 1] there is no dictator because no voter has enough votes to decide the election. Voter C (1) is a dummy because no matter how A and B vote, Cs vote will never matter. In this example [9: 5, 3, 1] there is no dictator or dummy voter. Everyone has the same power which is called an unanimous consent system. It will only pass if all voters have the same vote. The second topic that we learned about is Shapely-Shubik Power Index. A Power Index assigns a number to each voter in a system. The number indicates how much power that voter has in that system. This Power Index uses the idea of         roll-call vote (a vote in which each voter is called on to vote in some order). With this power index we consider every possible order in which the voters in the system could vote, and then we see which other voter casts the pivotal vote (the vote that decides the election). 

Extension_3-13-13

The Banzhaf Power Index

Tallying votes when the stakes are high is always going to be a complicated process.  Weighted voting is one of the better methods for obtaining the fairest outcome.  We’ve explored the current method, Shapley-Shubik index, which measures power by the number of different permutations in which each voter has the pivotal vote. 
 
A previous voting index used was the Banzhaf power index.  Instead of looking at the number of permutations, the Banzhaf method looks at the number of coalitions which a voter is critical.  A coalition is defined as a group of voters who all agree to vote a certain way to have a motion blocked or passed.  The Banzhaf method counted the critical voters – a voter who, if he/she changed their vote from yes to no, would cause the coalition to lose. The voter power is measured as the fraction of all swing votes that voter could cast. To calculate the power of a voter using the Banzhaf index, you would list all the winning coalitions and then count the critical voters in each.

An example of the Banzhaf method was the 2000 election when Bush-Cheney ran against Gore-Lieberman.   The Bush-Cheney team won with 271 electoral votes – only one vote over quota.  This means that almost every voter in the Bush-Cheney coalition was a critical voter. This is important because even the state with the smallest weight would still have a high amount of power in the 2000 election because they were a critical voter in that coalition.