Proposed Redistricting Procedure

Thank you for your graciousness. =========== Rebuttals: 1. I now understand that by "happiness" you mean "happiness toward the system and their representative." And though both of the sources (1 and 2) you provide were rather innacessible, such that I could not research your claim that: "voters' whose candidate wins election are happier with their representative and look more favorably on the system as a whole than voters' whose candidate lost the election" I will take it on trust that you did actually read this journal and have drawn accurate information from it. I do however take issue with the idea that peoples "happiness", as you've defined, in regard to their representative and political system is necessarily a good thing. In equating happiness with how much people favor their representative and political system your claim is almost tautologically true, for in uncompetitive districts the "majority" party get full authority to pick their representative in their primary, and so that majority ought to be content with their pick. Further, it would make sense that that local "majority" would be happy with the system, as it is skewed toward their views. This "happiness" of your's, or a majority's contentment with being in control, is not however a good thing which ought to be encouraged, or built into a political system. For it also ensures the great "dishappiness" of those of minority views generally as they don't make up majorities anywhere. What you are proposing is that people ought not get equal votes for their representative, but votes only matter if you're in the local "majority pary". And if your views are not in the majority anywhere, they're not represented in the least. 2. When you get down to it you admit that this contention is essentially the same as contention 1. "For the same reason that uncompetitive districts result in a happier constituency, uncompetitive districts also result in more representativeness." And I have essentially the same answer. Uncompetitive districts may best "represent" that local "majority" party, but they grossly underrepresent those minorities, and building the gerrymandering system which you propose into the system would systematically deny those people of minority opinions, around the country, of their right to influence elections, as their views are not necessarily a "majority" anywhere, or at least not in as many places as to fully represent their positions. 3. In your argument for "legislative attentiveness", which is again another way of discussing the above two contentions, you admit that the "competition" in the gerrymandered districts you propose shifts from the regular election, in which all have the right to participate, to the primary, in which only the members of the dominant party have the right to participate. "Competition shifts from the general to the primary election; from inter-party to intra-party. As we have seen with the sources in contention 2, uncompetitive districts outperform competitive ones in representativeness." -Includes an admission that the variouscontentions are the same. Again such a process might "represent", or allow "contentment" for, or best ensure "attentiveness" to that given majority party of the uncompetitive district, but it is unfair. It gives no representation whatsoever to those of minority views. Yes, as I stated in my first argument it perhaps allows an equitable representation between the two "major parties" who are large and organized bodies, but it denies such representation to smaller, geographically spread out parties, and denies representation to all of those independants who don't claim party affiliation, and have no right to vote in primaries. ------ Not only does such a voting system deny smaller "parties" representation, but it denies representation to the people generally. It ensures that your general election vote shall not really count. Only the votes of the party count, and only within their party's nomination process. My opponent admits to this, as I quoted him in the above contention 3. In our county parties do not and should not have votes, it is people who vote. Our system should not be designed to give the power of representation only to parties, or skew it in their favor, but should be designed to respect each persons vote individually. In the proposed gerrymandering system, as with all gerrymandering systems, the votes of individuals are discounted to the benefit of some, in this case two, part(y/ies). On my opponents sources: The first three are apparently inaccessible to myself, and probably to likely voters, though this is really rather irrelevant being that the claims for which my opponent tries to derive credibility for from them are all rather obviously true in definition, though not relevant, being that my argument is not that the majority are not "content/happy" but rather that such a system unfairly chooses who shall be so "content," and grossly underrepresents many people. The last source, source 4, was accessible, and seemed to be an interesting analysis of polarization trends, but it doesn't refute the fact that gerrymandering, of any stripe, unfairly denies people representaion, and it would seem does not use hard evidence to prove it's analysis, as it uses only computer simulations of non gerrymandered districts, instead of actual ones, which may be different in many kinds of factors, including what kind of politicians decide to run. My sources: In fact on the issue of who decides to run in a campaign, Thomas Mann in chapter two of his book Party Lines (published by the Brookings Institute in 2005) addresses this idea in detail and comes to the conclusions that potential candidates, who differ from party ideology, are far less likely to run in uncompetitive districts. I saw no mention of this factor being accounted for in the computer simulations of your source. Also I'd like to give a source for my figure of last round, that is that as of October 2009 30% of Americans did not declare any party affiliation. http://www.thewoodlandsteaparty.com... (The percentages of party affiliation are near the bottom of the article)