It's one of the things that (imo, of course) every educated person ought to be aware of, along with Gödel's incompleteness, special relativity, and some of the ideas of quantum mechanics.

The twentieth century was not kind to the certainties of the nineteenth. Europe lost its grip on world domination. The version of Adam Smith believed in by nineteenth-century laissez-faire liberals (as the word was used then) was forcefully refuted by the Great Depression. The nineteenth-century vision of martial virtue, with its connections to both manly virtue and civic virtue, died in the trenches of WWI, giving the lie to "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori". The center could not hold; mere anarchy was loosed on the world. Nietzsche seemed prophetic. God was dead.

But this crisis of faith wasn't just empirical. It was theoretical. The clockwork universe in which Benjamin Franklin had stolen the secret of lightning from the gods, in which Maxwell spoke his equations and there was light, in which Tesla and Marconi and Edison had worked their miracles, in which the Wright brothers made the first true heavier-than-air flight in 1903 -- the world of those miracles was shaken to its foundations in the Year of Miracles, 1905, when Einstein published seminal papers in both quantum theory and relativity.

In the early years of modern physics, it was proven that atoms were a sort of thing could not exist in the world of Newton and Maxwell: an electron would spiral into the nucleus, but nuclei had been demonstrated experimentally. The incandescent light bulb was also impossible: it would emit an infinite amount of ultraviolet light. By the same token, so would any object with a temperature above absolute zero. The paradoxes were all solved at the level of mathematical formulas, but Newton's universe was gone, replaced with nothing comprehensible. Technological wizards could still work their magic, but the closest they could come to explaining it sounded as though nothing was real.

In the foundations of mathematics, Gödel challenged previous notions of truth, proving that some statements of arithmetic are undecidable.

And, much, later in the century, Kenneth Arrow set off a revolution in the idea of "the will of the people". Bad enough that the French Revolution had produced the Terror, and Locke's conception of the common good had to compete with Rousseau's vision of the general will. But in 1951 Arrow proved that any means of taking individual preferences and combining them into one set of preferences must either have its results vary capriciously on irrelevant, or ignore the unanimous will of all the individuals, or be a dictatorship.

That doesn't just mean that there's no practical way of tallying votes to ascertain the will of the people. It doesn't just mean that, in principle, no possible way of tallying votes can be an entirely satisfactory measure of the will of the people. It means that in general there isn't any such thing as the will of the voters. It means that an economy cannot be judged on how well it satisfies the preferences of the people in it, unless those preferences include not just which things people prefer, but also some apparently-arbitrary measure of how much they prefer them.

"Now, I don't know what all that means, but it sounds pretty bad."
-Tom Cruise, A FEW GOOD MEN

:D

Michale.....

[48]: OK, I'll be the first to admit, I have no idea what you're talking about. Um, the arrow never gets to the target because it always has half the distance to travel? That's just a guess, mind you...

[49]: This is a known bug in my site. On the main page (technically, "inside the program loop," I think), it counts "comments" as "comments + trackbacks" but on the article page it counts it correctly as "only comments". Trackbacks are links that other sites have which point back to that article, in a nutshell. I toyed around with it when I wrote the code, but I could not get it to separate the two out in order to provide an accurate count on the main page, sorry.

-CW

I don't call that a primary and a general. I call it a general and a runoff.

What's your take on Arrow's theorem?

The new CA maps are one heck of a lot less Gerrymanderey, that's for sure.

Funnily enough, I am reading about Elbridge Gerry at the moment, and the Federalist/AntiFederalist era in Massachusetts. Interesting stuff.

We'll see how things work out in CA. The "top two" business may be a little bizarre, though...

-CW

It's trickier than I initially thought, but still, the power to get 11 out 16 when the ratio of Republicans to Democrats in Ohio is much closer to 50/50?

This says that the makeup of Congress is not like the makeup of America. So yeah, I suppose I would be arguing for something closer to proportional representation.

First it started with state House seats, but then was expanded to US House districts as well.

I had no idea. This does sound interesting. I'd much rather see the districts drawn by an independent panel so as not to rig the system.

I think it would benefit everyone as incumbents would face more challenges and you wouldn't see people staying on forever just because they're put in "safe" districts.

-David

Check it out.

Woo hoo!

-CW

California is trying two new experiments this election cycle which may interest you. First, they ("we" actually, as these things were forced through by referenda) wrested control of drawing the redistricting lines from the state legislature, and put it into the hands of a citizens' commission. First it started with state House seats, but then was expanded to US House districts as well.

The new maps have now been drawn and implemented. It would have been more interesting if CA changed the number of House seats (53, I believe, from memory), but the Census neither gave nor taketh away from CA this time around, so we had the same number of districts to work with. This simplified matters somewhat.

The new districts are MUCH more geographically sane. Much of the gerrymandering was removed. The last time the lines were drawn (back in 2000), the Dems and GOP got together and cherry-picked "safe" districts, until almost the entire state was a done deal. This time around, districts will be a LOT more competitive.

What will this mean, functionally? Probably more Democrats in the House from CA, and possibly even the magic 2/3rds in both houses of the state legislature. Republicans are a weak minority here, I should point out.

But the other experiment is also going to take place, and we won't be able to see how it will work until after our primaries. When we vote in the primaries, only the top two vote-getters will move on to the general election -- no matter what party they are from. Meaning we could have a Democrat running against another Democrat, for example. Or two GOP candidates. What we are NOT likely to have is any third parties on the general election ballot at all.

I wasn't a fan of this change (by yet another ballot measure). I don't like the idea of banishing all the third parties to the primary race only, personally, as it seems anti-democratic (small-"d"). But we'll see how it all plays out...

Anyway, just thought I'd toss that into the conversation...

-CW

To get 8/8 you would need some kind of proportional-representation scheme. If you have roughly 50/50 and the districts were all alike, you would get 16/0 whichever way the electorate twitched that cycle.

However, if you could draw the districts to maximize the number of seats, you would have 4 districts which were 100% Democratic and 12 which were Republican.

If you have 50/50 and you were maximizing the number of Republican seats, you would have one district that's 100% Democratic and fifteen districts that are 7/15 Democratic to 8/15 Republican. But that's a spread of only six and two-thirds percentage points in each district. That's not enough to be safe, even if you had perfect gerrymandering, because of fluctuation in the voter population. Voters move in and out of districts some, and individuals move in and out of the electorate a lot.

If you go all the way to four Democratic districts, with perfect gerrymandering, that would give you 1/3 Democratic and 2/3 Republican voters in each of the Republican districts (spreading 8 districts' worth of Republicans and 4 districts' worth of Democrats evenly over the 12 districts). There's no need to go that far. Even the laziest and most unappealing incumbent can reliably get reelected with a weaker advantage in constituents than 2:1.

And you say they're going all the way to five Democratic districts. I conclude that legal and cultural barriers to gerrymandering have vastly more force than I would have imagined.

Crap ... meant 11/5

Not sure with Kucinich/Kaptur. But here in District 1 & 2 (Cincinnati & suburbs) I can tell you what they did.

The city itself is quite Democratic with the surrounding suburbs more conservative. So how you win both districts is to divide the city placing just enough Dems to lose in 3 Republican districts.

District 1 had been a tossup for the past 10 years. District 2 safer Republican. So they moved some of District 2's Republicans into District 1 while still trying to keep District 2. District 2 was where Jean Schmidt lost btw.

If you have roughly a 50/50 splits between Dems and Reps and 16 seats up for grabs, normally, you'd get a split of about 8/8 in terms of seats. However, if you could draw the districts to maximize the number of seats, you would have 4 districts which were 100% Democratic and 12 which were Republican. This is virtually impossible unless you went on a house by house basis, but they have gotten it to the point where we'll likely have a 13/5 split Republican/Democrat.

Though there might be some surprises due to an extremely unpopular Republican governor right now.

-David

Look at how they divided up Cincinnati (lower left hand corner) so Dems would struggle in districts 1, 2 and 8. It makes for a crazy map ...
http://images.dailykos.com/i/user/73/Ohio_Redistricting_Map__large_.png

Sorry, I should have mentioned that due to the recent census, Ohio lost 2 seats. So we went from 18 to 16 congressfolk and I think this influenced the gerrymandering.

At the moment, I'm inclined to think that if we're going to have geographic districts at all, we should embrace gerrymandering overtly.

Have you been to Ohio lately?

Since 2010, there is nothing much here that's overt :)

It's we're going after Democrats and we're going after anyone who supports Democrats and we don't give a *$#&%#@% because we own the airwaves.

Parties would have relatively equal opportunities (proportional to their numbers in the legislature) to pack their opponents into districts, or to set up districts for themselves.

Equal opportunity? That, my friend, is a progressive belief :). One we're unlikely to see in Ohio.

-David

p.s. My favorite quote from last night ...

"Breaking news: The polls are closed here in Tennessee. In a related development, so are most of the minds." :)

It would be roughly proportional. A vote for one party or the other would be counted in advance, as the legislators chose precincts to include in districts. Parties would have relatively equal opportunities (proportional to their numbers in the legislature) to pack their opponents into districts, or to set up districts for themselves.

I was with you right up to where you said, "Thing is....."

:D

Michale.....

Ditto.

Kucinich was a victim of redistricting. The state legislature took 2 strong Dems and put them in the same district to eliminate a Democratic seat

Thing is, you don't eliminate a Democratic seat by doing that unless something odd was going on. The way you get someone like Kucinich in the first place is by having a gerrymandered 100% Democratic district, to maximize the number of safely Republican districts. If you eliminate one Democratic district, you have to put the Democratic voters somewhere. If they could do that without jeopardizing a Republican seat last time, they would have.

At the moment, I'm inclined to think that if we're going to have geographic districts at all, we should embrace gerrymandering overtly. Stop trying to pretend we're making the districts contiguous, or following any other neutral rules.

Let municipalities set up precinct boundaries, a year or so before redistricting. Then a few months before redistricting, gather all available information about partisanship and ideology for each precinct, and publish it so parties and advocacy groups can strategize about districts.

Then let the state legislators organize themselves into groups, as many groups as there are districts to draw (minus one, because the last district is going to be whatever's left). Let the groups choose what order they're going to go in, with the biggest group choosing its spot in the order first and so on. Seniority or whatever can provide tie-breakers.

Then have the first group in the order throw together a district from any set of precincts scattered however they feel like throughout the state. If it has more than the state's population divided by the number of districts plus one precinct (or less than that average minus one precinct), go through the list and let other groups remove (respectively, add) precincts. Repeat down the list with groups of legislators choosing from the remaining precincts.

It would be roughly proportional. A vote for one party or the other would be counted in advance, as the legislators chose precincts to include in districts. Parties would have relatively equal opportunities (proportional to their numbers in the legislature) to pack their opponents into districts, or to set up districts for themselves.

Nope.. Haven't seen anything like that..

I am guessing that you logged in in "god mode" and it had to do with the security certificates of that particular mode..

Us pheasants wouldn't see such things not meant for mere mortals :D

Michale.....

dsws-
Kucinich was a victim of redistricting. The state legislature took 2 strong Dems and put them in the same district to eliminate a Democratic seat:

Marcy Kaptur & Dennis Kucinich

Kucinich is more nationally known, but Kaptur is also a strong progressive. It's basically a redistricting win for the GOP.

Jean Schmidt's district was also redrawn and this may have influenced her loss to Brad Wenstrup. I hadn't watched this but Schmidt has been relatively unpopular here typically winning only because the district tilts Republicans and Dems have been unable to run a strong candidate since Paul Hackett so it's no surprise that a strong Republican beat her. I've seen lots of Wenstrup signs around the area even though I'm not in her District.

A few notes from Southern Ohio ... :)
Best
-David

I, too, got the crawly ad. I'll send a note to Banter about it, as I found it just as annoying as you guys.

I'm also getting two "unknown certificate" warnings sometimes when loading the page, anyone having this problem too?

dsws -

Kucinich was redistricted out. Ohio lost two House districts as a result of the 2010 census, and they merged his district with Kaptur's. So they both were "incumbents," although Kaptur had more of her former district in the new one, which is likely why she won.

-CW

safecount.net / Your Opinion Matters / Please take a short survey. / Start

Good.. I thought I was freakin' out! :D

That's bizarre.

I have a feeling this is gonna be the operative word for the 2012 Election... :D

Michale.....

That's bizarre. (google ...) Apparently an anti-abortion fanatic won most of them.

safecount.net / Your Opinion Matters / Please take a short survey. / Start

THAT was wierd...

I just had a banner ad actually scroll across the bottom third of my screen.. It was a blue/yellow ad for "Safe Count" or something like that asking me to take a survey..

It disappeared before I could take a screenshot...

I usually have about a half dozen browser windows open, so I can't say for sure that it came from CW.COM.. But none of my other windows showed the ad.

There is only one thing more annoying than audio ads.. And that's ads that block your view of the webpage yer viewing... :D

Just a heads up...

Michale....

Yea, but Kenya is not a state.... :D

There has been some polling out of Oklahoma, but not very much. Even without the polls, though, Oklahoma is easy to call for Rick Santorum. The state is extremely conservative socially, and is a good fit for Santorum -- possibly the best of the whole evening.

Interesting to note..

Obama LOST in 15 counties in OK... :D

Still, 9-for-10 is pretty good!

That's an awesome record! Congrats.. :D

Michale.....

Still, 9-for-10 is pretty good!

-CW

Now, see, this is why I like you. We may disagree about everything under the sun, but we're both wonky to the core.

:-)

-CW

-CW

Woo hoo! 9 for 9!

Go Ron Paul! Take Alaska! Give me a clean sweep!

Heh.

-CW

I could say the same about Jean Schmidt, who also lost her primary.

I think they both might have been redistricted out of existence. I know it's true for Kucinich, but not sure about Schmidt.

-CW

Ohio reports these numbers, among others:

Obama 530,270
Romney 442,486

http://vote.sos.state.oh.us/pls/enrpublic/f?p=130:MYRESULTS:0

OH's up to 98.9% returns in, and still no call. I heard NBC isn't even going to try to call it tonight...

I also heard there was a monster snowstorm in AK today, so maybe that's why the numbers are nonexistent? Dunno...

-CW

"Super Wednesday" -- OK, now that's funny!

I just wasted an hour of my life watching BriWi on NBC, and it was pathetic -- whoever is in charge of the graphics needs to be fired immediately. I flipped over at the end of the hour to CBS, and got more solid info in TWO MINUTES than I had gotten in a full hour of NBC.

Sigh.

-CW

i've actually enjoyed fox's coverege on this race. usually when i flip there it takes about fifteen seconds to hear something so absurdly disconnected with reality i can't continue to watch.

They aren't that important. Romney will likely get more delagates in OH than Santorum, no matter what the vote totals are. But the media has chosen to obsess over who "won" Ohio, so that's going to be the theme of the media story all week long -- which is why both camps really, really want to win.

ID called for Mitt! 8 for 8! Mitt leading in OH by 5,300 votes... still no word from Alaska yet, though...

-CW

-CW

yes, ohio is shaping up to be a real squeaker. i admit it's fun to watch.

Heh. Wondered if anyone would appreciate that one.

When VA's deadline passed, I think Newt still thought he was on a book tour, and Rick had no money to collect signatures. Or something...

:-)

TN wasn't nearly as close as I thought it'd be, but OH is proving to be all it was billed...

-CW

Well, that sounds completely ... oh, he already said it.

-CW

Not too bad, so far, but most of these races were easy to call (which is why they are calling the winners so early).

-CW

Anyone out there?

-CW