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Comment on YSK that Gerrymandering allows politicians to choose their own voters. In many countries, it's illegal. Gerrymandering is common in the United States

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iglou@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

Three problems:

It makes voting more complex. Having citizens able to make their opinion heard is important, but it should be separate from voting, unless you want an even larger abstention.
The matching problem doesn’t necessarily have a solution. As in, it might be (and is actually likely) impossible to have a set of representatives that matches the percentages of each opinion.
Not all opinions can be expressed in a multiple choice question. Most topics are way too complex to be summarised in a few options. So, who picks the options?

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Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
1, it is actually less complex for the voter. Right now they don’t kniw much about who/what they are voting for because all the info they get is marketing. But a question about homelessness or crime they probably feel more confident in thier answer. Plus many people don’t vote because thier options are all liars. The reps in this case don’t have to be popular, so they don’t have to lie. 2 in very small states it might be tough, but an algorithm can find the closest match by simply trying all the combinations. For a computer that will be a very simple task. And it could even print them all out for anyone to validate. 3 this for sure is the hardest part. Probably some kind of public proposal and polling combo would be needed. Btw, at work we were told to use numbers instead of bullets because it makes referring to a point much easier.

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- iglou@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  You are conflating complexity with difficulty. But I’ll argue it’s both more complex and more difficult. It’s more complex because rather than choosing your candidate, you have to express your opinions. You have a bunch of choices to make instead of one. That’s complexity. But jt js also more difficult, because it rewuires you to have a grasp of all the issues that are brought up. Not everyone is able to give their opinion on how to best fight a job crisis, for instance. And picking what “feels” best makes the choice pointless and dangerous. It also doesn’t prevent lies, marketing and false promises at all, as a candidate could still be lying about their intentions just to get more votes.
  
  It is very hard to find the closest match. I tell you that as a software engineer. Because what rules do you use to determine the “closest”? Do you consider every opinion as important? Do you minimise the average distance? Do you minimise the amount of extreme differences? Do you prioritise some “more important” issues? Who even decides what is important? There are so many ways to bias and twitch a system like this.
  
  Then you’re probably better off advocating for a direct democracy, which is another topic and can be done in a mich easier way than trying to adapt a representative democracy for it!
  
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  - Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    I disagree that answering the questions have to be harder. They don’t have to be so specific that they require a solid grasp. They should be more like do you agree with doing X. Not “choose the best way to solve the homeless crisis”.
    
    You’re overthinking it. You take each question and determine what % of the population answered each way. Then you choose multiple cadadites such that together roughly the same % of the cadadites answered the same way as the people. So yes you should end up with representatives on opposite sides of the issue if people voted that way. The idea is that the representatives as a whole accurately represent the people. And like I said, in a small population state that may be a challenge. But there are ways to work around that.
    
    I don’t think a direct democracy is better. In a dd, money determines what gets voted on. And there are less things voted on in general, so money can sway the people a lot. When the number of questions is higher and all at once, money has a hard time focusing a message on them all. And even after that, the answering of the questions chooses a rep who is able to learn enough aboutvit to be less likely to be swayed by money. A large part of that is that they need no campaign, so they don’t have to serve the money to get reelected.
    
    I’m not saying it perfect, but the general idea is to get people who represent the opinions of the people, not popularity contest winners. And to reduce the money connection to poloticians votes. Also, you don’t need a “party” at all.
    
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    iglou@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    Then we’ll have to agree to disagree on this.
    
    I’m not overthinking it. Doing stuff like this is my job. I receive a problem, I ask the questions to get precise requirements. What I am telling you is that depending on who answers these questions, the outcome of the elections can be completely different. In a very oversimplificated way, it’s a new, even sneakier way to gerrymander.
    
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