Seats, Votes, and Gerrymandering: Estimating Representation and Bias in State Legislative Redistricting

The Davis V. Bandemer case focused much attention on the problem of using statistical evidence to demonstrate the existence of political gerrymandering. In this paper, we evaluate the uses and limitations of measures of the seat-votes relationship in the Bandemer case. We outline a statistical method we have developed that can be used to estimate bias and the form of representation in legislative redistricting. We apply this method to Indiana state House and Senate elections for the period 1972 to 1984 and demonstrate a maximum bias of 6.2% toward the Republicans in the House and a 2.8% bias in the Senate.Governmen

Democratic Representation and Partisan Bias in Congressional Elections

T h e translation of citizen votes into legislative seats is of central importance in democratic electoral systems. It has been a longstanding concern among scholars in political science and in numerous other disciplines. Throughout this literature, two fundamental tenets of democratic theory, partisan bias and democratic representation, have often been confused. We develop a general statistical model of the relationship between votes and seats and separate these two important concepts theoretically and empirically. In so doing, we also solve several methodological problems with the study of seats, votes, and the cube law. An application to U.S. congressional districts provides estimates of bias and representation for each state and demonstrates the model's utility. Results of this application show distinct types of representation coexisting in U.S. states. Although most states have small partisan biases, there are some with a substantial degree of bias.Governmen

Natural resources of Lake Earl and Smith River Delta

The Lake Earl/Smith River Delta area is a key coastal wetland situated in northern California. The Lake and Delta have retained much of their value to wildlife and serve as an important link in a chain of such wetlands that extend southward along the Pacific Ocean from Alaska to South America. Millions of water-associated birds of the Pacific Flyway utilize these areas as feeding and resting stops along their migration paths. In California, these wetlands also serve as a significant portion of the available wintering grounds for a major share of the birds within the flyway. The Smith River is also one of the State's most productive salmon and steelhead streams. Anadromous fish produced here provide thousands of angler use days to sport fishermen and contribute substantially to the commercial fishing catch off the northern coast. Because of the importance of coastal wetlands to the fish and wildlife of California, the Department of Fish and Game has initiated a high priority statewide inventory and assessment of these wetlands. This publication is an integral part of that program. This report identifies specific resources and uses; directs attention to problems; and recommends courses of action needed to insure resource protection. It is intended as a guide for citizens, planners, administrators and other interested in the use and development of California's coastal land and waters. (132pp.

Natural resources of the Eel River delta

The purpose of this report is to document the natural resources of the Eel River Delta, Humboldt County; to outline and evaluate the problems and conflicts of use that affect those resources; and, to recommend measures that will protect and enhance the Delta and its environs. The Eel River Delta is an important segment of the coastal wetlands of California. Over two-thirds of the State's original bays, estuaries, lagoons and coastal marshes has already been lost to development and reclamation. Because of the importance of coastal wetland ecosystems to fish and wildlife, the Department has initiated a high priority, statewide inventory of the remaining wetland areas. This publication is an integral part of that program and one of a "Coastal Wetland Series" that includes reports on Upper Newport Bay, Orange County; Goleta Slough, Santa Barbara County; Bolinas Lagoon, Marin County; Elkhorn Slough, Monterey County; San Diego Bay, San Diego County; Humboldt Bay, Humboldt County; Los Penasquitos Lagoon, San Diego County; and Morro Bay, San Luis Obispo County. (111pp.

Magnetohydrodynamics dynamical relaxation of coronal magnetic fields. I. Parallel untwisted magnetic fields in 2D

Context. For the last thirty years, most of the studies on the relaxation of stressed magnetic fields in the solar environment have onlyconsidered the Lorentz force, neglecting plasma contributions, and therefore, limiting every equilibrium to that of a force-free field. Aims. Here we begin a study of the non-resistive evolution of finite beta plasmas and their relaxation to magnetohydrostatic states, where magnetic forces are balanced by plasma-pressure gradients, by using a simple 2D scenario involving a hydromagnetic disturbance to a uniform magnetic field. The final equilibrium state is predicted as a function of the initial disturbances, with aims to demonstrate what happens to the plasma during the relaxation process and to see what effects it has on the final equilibrium state. Methods. A set of numerical experiments are run using a full MHD code, with the relaxation driven by magnetoacoustic waves damped by viscous effects. The numerical results are compared with analytical calculations made within the linear regime, in which the whole process must remain adiabatic. Particular attention is paid to the thermodynamic behaviour of the plasma during the relaxation. Results. The analytical predictions for the final non force-free equilibrium depend only on the initial perturbations and the total pressure of the system. It is found that these predictions hold surprisingly well even for amplitudes of the perturbation far outside the linear regime. Conclusions. Including the effects of a finite plasma beta in relaxation experiments leads to significant differences from the force-free case

Foucault: Politics, History and Discourse

Foucault’s changing formulations of approaches to the history of discourses and forms of power are outlined from Madness and Civilisation to his late lectures on governmentality. Foucault is shown to be a radical who deconstructs agential authorial views of meaning to point up the role of discourses and regimes of power in framing the ways in which social life is experienced. His archaeological and genealogical approaches to history are examined. He provides a challenging reading of politics and the history of political ideas. He broadens the scope of the operations of power and the nature of the political. He challenges conventional readings of liberalism and the Enlightenment by observing how power operates in ways that are not tracked in standard liberal accounts, even if he does not provide a critical justification of either his own perspectivalism or that of his predecessor, Nietzsche

Ariel - Volume 4 Number 3

Editors David A. Jacoby Eugenia Miller Tom Williams Associate Editors Paul Bialas Terry Burt Michael Leo Gail Tenikat Editor Emeritus and Business Manager Richard J. Bonnano Movie Editor Robert Breckenridge Staff Richard Blutstein Mary F. Buechler Steve Glinks Len Grasman Alice M. Johnson J.D. Kanofsky Tom Lehman Dave Mayer Bernie Odd