Can gerrymandering ever be a good thing and help America to be a more flourishing democracy?

 In this blog post, I want to explore an idea if gerrymandering can ever be a good thing and help tAmerica to be a more flourishing democracy.


Scarlett in her blog post addresses the idea of using data to help people by promoting content that may help users to better care for themselves. She describes a situation in which user interactions are being analysed and the algorithm senses users’ negative emotions from the content they are browsing. I agree with Scarlett that despite the good cause, it is a privacy concern and data is not used as we would like it to be. However, I think there is an argument to be made that there is an extent to which our data can be used by third parties. I do not have a framework which we could apply and see if this extent of data use is already a privacy concern or not. However, one of the qualifications for doing so would be using the data for a good cause. After all, our data is already circulating and is being used, thus we can not now turn the tide of time but rather work with what we have. 


Moreover, I think we could extend this argument to the idea of gerrymandering. We could use data, which is already used anyways, and through manipulating it by independent committees we could redraw districts in a way that is most optimal for the working of democracy. Would that mean on the base of partisan lines, as Tim is pointing out in his blog post. I would hope not, I would hope that committees with the use of data could create districts with a true variation of options and political opinions. 


Is this just social engineering which goes against democracy? Probably, would it be better from what the US has right now? I do not know but maybe? Tim questions if American politics came full circle, and in trying to ensure that every aspect of governance is democratic, ironically made itself more undemocratic. I think so as well but maybe there are undemocratic actions which can actually reverse the harm that was done and make the US democratic again.


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