14 ms·

Math Professor Fighting Gerrymandering with Geometry

225 points by seycombi 10y ago

ende 10y ago
The best way to get rid of gerrymandering of congressional districts is to get rid of congressional districts.
- vanattab 10y ago
  What would you do instead? Have all house seats state wide elections?
  - frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago
    Proportional representation probably
    - jandrese 10y ago
      The downside of that is it makes all but one or two of the seats noncompetitive. The voters can't oust one politician specifically unless that politician is already on the party's shitlist and the voters manage to move the needle enough to make them lose a seat. Most of the candidates end up being completely safe.
      - frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago
        Perhaps we could combine it with some sort of ranking primary.
      - kalleboo 10y ago
        Some election systems let you rank candidates in addition to the party (e.g. Sweden lets you in a limited fashion)
- tomjen3 10y ago
  That is a nice soundbite. Congressional districts exist for a good reason - how would you keep the benefit?
  - scholia 10y ago
    You could assign representatives to cover the area where they were most popular. In fact, given modern technology, you could easily draw the boundaries after the election. If you did, I bet they'd look a lot more "natural" than the results of current GOP gerrymandering.
  - esturk 10y ago
    Just like congressional districts that cover the entire state (ie. WY, ND, SD, etc.), there's no reason that multiple representatives can't all represent the entire state. They can cover the entire state's interest through compromises as oppose to infighting for district vs. district within a state.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Congressional districts exist for a good reason The universal rule of single member districts is relatively recent, and it was a blunt (though effective) tool to deal with the threat of a form of super-gerrymandering by which states would assign some or all of their representatives to state-wide at-large seats so that the statewide majority would elect them, as a means of preventing the existence of majority-black districts in majority-rule states. Multimember districts with a proportional (even candidate-centered, like STV) electoral system rather than plurality or majority-runoff deals with both that problem and the problem with single-member FPTP districts.
- asdfologist 10y ago
  Why not take a step further and get rid of states?
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    That's actually a really good idea for the House.
    - CalChris 10y ago
      Agreed since Wyoming already gets two Senators and a House member for their 584,153.
  - koenigdavidmj 10y ago
    American states are sovereign entities, not mere administrative districts that exist at the pleasure of the Feds.
    - CalChris 10y ago
      The sovereignty of states most definitely does not exist outside of the Constitution. For example, states can be split into two; Kentucky was originally part of the State of Virginia and became a separate state in 1792, the 15th. West Virginia was a part of Virginia, Maine was a part of Massachusetts, Vermont was a part of New York. This is covered in Article IV, Section 3, clause 1 of the Constitution which says: no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State... without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress. This too can be changed. States are mere administrative districts that exist at the pleasure of the Constitution. This state sovereignty under the Articles of Confederation was done away with by the Constitution.
      - ende 10y ago
        No they are not. The states share sovereignty through the Federal government. That's the very definition of Federalism. We are not a single Unitary state. The mere fact that any partition of union requires the approval of the legislatures of the involved states is demonstative of this.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Well, single member districts at least; 5-member districts with STV would kill any value in gerrymandering, achieve reasonably proportional representation, and retain (unlike party list systems) strict accountability of representatives to the general electorate.
- mtgx 10y ago
  Or you could enlarge them and guarantee 3-5 winners, where each party can have only a single winner. That makes it almost impossible for any party to monopolize the districts (which right now they are by definition, because they are winner-takes-all elections): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS62N5b5L7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS62N5b5L7Y
  - ende 10y ago
    Multi-member districts would certainly be better than single member.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  Did you read the Efficiency Gap article? You may not have guessed because of the context of the article, but this metric isn't just geometric. It directly measures the efficiency of converting party constituent votes into seats. That's cutting the Gordian Knot! Want to measure Gerrymandering? Then directly measure what it's trying to achieve! https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legal-work/How_the_Efficiency_Gap_Standard_Works.pdf https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legal-work...
  - spott 10y ago
    The problem with the efficiency gap metric is that it incentivizes cooperation between the parties to generate "safe" districts. You can turn it into an optimization problem instead if you try to minimize the wasted votes for the entire state. This ensures that you don't get states with districts that all have huge -- but equal! -- efficiency gaps.
    - stcredzero 10y ago
      So instead of efficiency gap, measure inefficiency excess?
    - ouid 10y ago
      what's wrong with safe districts? I would like to have better representation and lower volatility.
      - thrden 10y ago
        They have a tendency to become more ideologically extreme, which means overtime the country as a whole becomes more divided, which would likely result in higher volatility and cyclical levels of representation.
      - jellicle 10y ago
        Those are opposites.
j_s 10y ago
[...] a need for expert witnesses who understand the mathematical concepts applicable to gerrymandering. To meet that need, she’s spearheaded the creation of a five-day summer program at Tufts that aims to train mathematicians to do just that [...] over 900 people have indicated their interest by signing up for a mailing list http://tufts.us15.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=3529c170e5d9b7aa8ab22ea62&id=a979bdf71d http://tufts.us15.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=3529c170e5d9b7...
- j2kun 10y ago
  I applied! Note that there will be regional programs in the next year that follow this initial program at Tufts.
stcredzero 10y ago
Bouncing things off of diverse audiences has taught me things I didn’t already know about how rhetorically accessible different ideas are. This is well-known to educators: Once you achieve a certain level of expertise, it can be hard to find the difficult spots and the reasoning anymore because they’re so familiar to you. A lot of the Dunning-Kruger problem in the Programming field is due to this. I think that Programming has a number of problems with training and making information accessible to its practitioners. Furthermore, I think many of these problems have tribal and sub-cultural elements to them. (Along language community lines, not ethnic ones.)
travmatt 10y ago
The upcoming fight over redistributing is likely to decide our country for the next ten years. On one hand, republicans have waged a legal campaign against the voting rights act, drafted various pieces of legislation aimed at disenfranchising minorities and college students, and chosen for their attorney general a prosecutor who viewed mintority voter registration a felonious offense. This isn't mentioning a president who has not wavered from the view that the 3 million vote margin he lost the popular vote by is the byproduct of fraud. On the other hand, you have a former president and possibly the most popular/powerful politician in America signal this will be his primary focus, an opposition party looking to expand use of the efficiency gap metric as a tool for enforcing fairness, and possibly a justice system willing to step embrace these concepts (the wisc. decision). Not to mention a motivated and very angry base.
- pyronik 10y ago
  > waged a legal campaign against the voting rights act, drafted various pieces of legislation aimed at disenfranchising minorities and college students Showing your ID isn't waging a war against voting rights, its straight up common sense like we have to do for every other thing in society. Many people find it surprising around the world that we don't check IDs.
  - grzm 10y ago
    I understand where you're coming from. That said, voter ID has been used in the US to restrict voting rights. The issue is unfortunately not as straightforward as "straight up common sense". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_St... https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-sheet https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...
  - travmatt 10y ago
    Please don't misconstrue what I said, the republicans have been engaged in litigation to repeal various portions of the voting rights act in numerous courts through America. This is quite separate from voter laws and it is a separate voting suppression tactic altogether. To the voter id laws, I can provide studies showing that in person vote fraud is non existent in America - the majority of cases last election stemmed from trump voters who tried to defend their actions as 'testing the system.' I can also provide studies that show those voter is laws disproportionately impact minority voters, as well as court judgements where republicans were found to target said voter with these laws explicitly - as in that was their explicit goal, and acted with 'surgical orecision6', in the courts words. This is not to mention the circumstantial evidence, like republican operatives explaining their long term goal is disenfranchisement, or the actions of governors instructing dmv employees to deceive the public and closure of dmv's in minority areas. I'd be open to hear alternative interpretations as to what is happening, but so far my experience has been that those in favor of said laws either approve of disenfranchisement, or have an emotional response as to the 'fairness' of the law, and assume i should adopt their viewpoint.
strictnein 10y ago
This isn't really a new thing. From a professor at the University of Florida (@ElectProject) who specializes in this sort of thing: "Math prof claims she's invented new form of compactness, which Mexico has used for decades & programmed into our DistrictBuilder software" https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/834570289728147457 https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/834570289728147457
- kaitai 10y ago
  "I’m always a little bit wary of coming off sounding like I’m the very first person to work on this idea; I just want to be clear that’s not the claim." -- from the article
tunesmith 10y ago
Can I just point out that every time a gerrymandering article is posted to hacker news, the thread is quickly overwhelmed by people professing various forms of proportional representation? This is striking me as becoming close to Wolfram Derangement Syndrome, and I think it's bad for the quality of discourse on this subject. Just to sketch out the brief reasons why, let's first accept that the gerrymandering conversation is about the United States. As such, we have to accept the reality of the United States Constitution. Finally, most arguments about gerrymandering are focused more on federal districts, as in the districts that make up the House of Representatives. Given all that, talking about proportional representation is a complete waste of time, and it gets in the way of having constructive conversation about this subject. It is constitutionally impossible to disband the House of Representatives and switch to proportional representation. It will not happen. Arguments about how it should happen are completely irrelevant to the gerrymandering subject, and counterproductive. For people that know this, arguments about proportional representation are not all that different than hijacking threads and trolling - the only difference being the high likelihood that people are not educated enough civically to understand that proportional representation is impossible on the Federal level. Every time I see a thread here I really do look forward to reading thoughts that are actually about gerrymandering and solving gerrymandering - I would like to see more focus on those subjects rather than the completely unrelated subject of proportional representation. One caveat - many people don't realize this, but some state constitutions DO theoretically allow proportional representation for STATE governments. That's worth exploring.
- Fej 10y ago
  It is not strictly impossible to abolish the House of Representatives. We have the amendment process. Incredibly unlikely, yes. If you weren't exaggerating, I would legitimately love to hear your logic, it sounds quite interesting to me. The reason people love to talk about proportional representation is because it is a comparatively easy and elegant method to solve the problem. Legislating math is hard. Folks won't understand it. People feel their vote doesn't matter. I say this as someone whose district just became a swing one out of nowhere.
  - tunesmith 10y ago
tunesmith 10y ago
I do find the focus on compactness and contiguousness kind of strange. There was a recent image[1] going around that describes how gerrymandering works, and what struck me is that having three completely blue districts and two completely red districts is considered "most fair", in that every voter in the district feels completely represented. In reality, voters are more scrambled than that - so if you try to retain that "most fair" sense, then you are by definition going to have extremely non-compact, non-contiguous districts. You can get back to more compactness by making some voters "unrepresented" (meaning, a representative other than the one they voted for). As long as that balances out between parties, then you're okay (which is what the "efficiency gap" is all about). But by itself non-compactness is not a guarantee that the district is unfair. It's really just an indication, that so far, it probably means that the district drawers were up to shenanigans. It's just not necessarily so. You may want to get more creative with district shapes to help more voters feel represented. By the way, I should point out again that there are plenty of other weird tradeoffs like this. For instance, Schwarzenegger was recently complaining about "non-competitive" districts, while others regularly complain that the Federal house districts are not very representative of the voting population as a whole. These two aims are actually in tension with one another! The "most fair" scenario above is about as non-competitive as you can get. [1] http://i.imgur.com/jK8VFZx.jpg http://i.imgur.com/jK8VFZx.jpg
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > I do find the focus on compactness and contiguousness kind of strange. They are "looks nice" (in a picture of district outlines) criteria that actually (given the geographical distribution of party members) are equivalent to deliberately gerrymandering in favor of Republicans. And that's really the key point: as long as you have single member districts and data about the existing distribution of voting preferences (which people in a position to adopt or sell policies do), you can design facially neutral criteria whose application will result in any distortions of representation you could seek to gain from gerrymandering, and say "let's automate with these criteria, take people out of the loop, and avoid gerrymandering", when all you are really doing is automating gerrymandering.
  - 10y ago
Fej 10y ago
Gerrymandering won't go away because it is beneficial to both major parties.
- clavalle 10y ago
  It is a zero sum game so that statement cannot be true unless you mean over time and in different places. If that is the case then it is a great argument for coming up with a set of rules beforehand that both parties agree is fair.
  - tripa 10y ago
    I agree with your comment; but I do have to point out the comment you're replying to specifically conceives a political landscape with more than two parties, that can indeed be considered as zero sum as well, yet two major parties can feasibly agree on something at a net loss for others.
  - handedness 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duopoly
- telchar 10y ago
  I've often heard that but I think it's more correct to say that both parties may think it's beneficial to them. Ultimately it is a zero-sum situation where it benefits one party more. When one party decides it's getting the short end of the stick and not likely to regain the long end they'll have plenty of incentive to oppose it. The non-zero sum benefit of not having to compete in as many districts can't outweigh the harm of being relegated to the minority party. Surely a party would rather compete and win than not compete and lose.
cschmidt 10y ago
There have been a number of attempts to automatically do redistricting using Operations Research techniques. Here's one such slide deck, using integer programming. http://www.illc.uva.nl/COST-IC1205/documents/Caen-2014-Slides/Scozarri.pdf http://www.illc.uva.nl/COST-IC1205/documents/Caen-2014-Slide...
arca_vorago 10y ago
I've said before that after long thought I think the right way to deal with gerrymandering is to increase the number of districts (and therefor make them smaller). The primary problem is how would we fit all those extra people on the Hill? Also that I imagine there would be some muathmateically based demographic issues due to the center of the country getting more seats than the coasts which could be offset in a few different ways. The size of my district is larger than most states! It was also gerrymandered in 2003 by the R's seeking to regain territory from D's who had a suprising grip in Texas up until the late 90's.
kruipen 10y ago
What is wrong with gerrymandering? It is a political solution to political problem. It pushes decisions locally (to the "laboratories of democracy"). It is responsive to "We The People" but with a built in delaying mechanism to smooth out changes. It generally leads to competitive (but not toss-up) districts (the goal is to get as many seats as possible so huge margins are wasteful). What's not to like?
- Floegipoky 10y ago
  The problem is that it prevents people from voting out representatives that fail to advocate for their constituents and represent their interests. The entire concept of a representative democracy is that we elect people to represent our interests, and then if they fail they can be voted out when their term ends. With gerrymandering on the table, they're able to almost literally move the goalposts. It also violates the principle of "one person, one vote", because politicians are manipulating districts to essentially make votes opposing them meaningless. This is the reasoning that was recently used to reject Wisconsin's redistricting, specifically because they exceeded a reasonable "efficiency gap"- the number of votes wasted in a district. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/23/wisconsins-gerrymander-being-struck-down-should-scare-republicans-nationwide/?utm_term=.656d3c810e20 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/23/wisco... >>It pushes decisions locally (to the "laboratories of democracy"). It is responsive to "We The People"... I would love for you to elaborate a little more about this. I happen to think that it does the opposite by making representatives less accountable to their constituents (they can just pick new ones). In general, it seems like a mechanism designed to advance the power of a given political party by repressing the will of the people. That just doesn't seem like it can possibly lead to better outcomes.
fixxer 10y ago
I find it amusing that Holder and Obama are making this their focus given the extreme gerrymandering in the state of Illinois.
- handedness 10y ago
  It would be amusing if it wasn't so unsurprising. The article neglected to mention that neither side wants to actually fix the problem, but both sides want to gain an advantage under the guise of fixing the problem. It's like players arguing calls in contemporary sports–it's not based on what's correct, it's based on trying to win at all costs.
- Declanomous 10y ago
  If you look at why the districts are drawn the way they are they kind of make sense. For instance, the fourth district looks ridiculous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois%27s_4th_congressional_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois%27s_4th_congressional... The funky shape ensures that minorities get representation though. The weird path it takes is because of the 7th district, which I live in, which is 54% black. If it was cut any farther East, black people would be a minority. I think the shape is a bit ridiculous, but it would be possible to make a more fair looking shape that had a white majority in each district, so I think this is the lesser of two evils. There is probably a better way to district this area though, but proportional representation would make the entire situation a bit less ridiculous overall.
  - fixxer 10y ago
    So, the district was carved up to ensure the electorate matched a certain demographic voting block... Sounds like gerrymandering to me. I guess it is OK when the demo isn't white, eh?
    - Declanomous 10y ago
      I'd say it's more like the decision was made to make sure that the districts represented the demographics of the state. It would be significantly less fair if every single district was majority white just because the white areas were more contiguous than the minority areas, especially when the reason that minorities live in those areas is in part because they were forced there due to policies like redlining. The way you've represented what I've said is absurd. If representatives are to be representative of the population you'll have to create some funny looking districts somewhere. If Illinois was really gerrymandering as much as say, Wisconsin, our district map would look like a tentacled monster extending from Chicago and reaching down through the rest of the state.
macawfish 10y ago
I recently saw an illuminating video about how Robert Mercer, a billionaire quantitative wall st. trader and computer scientist, not only backed Trump with $15 million, but madeover his whole team. Mercer's analytics companies, which make him money faster than Warren Buffet, were set to the task of winning the election. Not to mention Peter Thiel. Now, we don't know how they did it, but I can only imagine that with deep learning, etc, this is only going to get worse. Shameless plug for the video. I doubt it'll get traction on HN, but it was 100% a wakeup call for me. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13719646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13719646 Now I recognize it for what it is. Its a techno-hyper-capitalist power grab.
- philipkglass 10y ago
  In 2012 there was a bunch of gee-whiz about how software built by a dream team of engineers drove Obama's re-election: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-the-nerds-go-marching-in/265325/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-... I suspect that it's fun to read and write about new tech applied to Presidential elections but that the new doesn't actually matter more than the same old. If you wanted a really simple model to predict Presidential elections, this would be it: incumbents get re-elected, and then after 8 years American voters are sick enough of one party to try the other party again. One-term presidents are rare. Maybe you remember the idea of a "permanent Republican majority" from GWB's first term. That wasn't very permanent at all. Maybe you remember the post-2012 fear among conservatives that demographic changes had given Democrats a permanent lock on the presidency. That was short lived too.
  - macawfish 10y ago
    well bla•sé (blä) :p seriously though, whether or not you are concerned about the role of data technology in elections, check out that documentary clip I linked to. it helped me peel back the curtain on the wizard of trump.
brokenmasonjars 10y ago
I've been having the amusing thought lately that one possible solution is perhaps making the system a bit more chaotic. Maybe with the safety of levels through tricameralism or maybe even tetracameralism. So.. in the house of rep districts you allow for popular vote to recall reps and also to hold popular referendum in said districts on whether to split them. If people are upset enough with their representation and can get enough to vote to spit the district then the district is split. This would intensify the situation some however you enable merging so when the popular will exists to merge then there is the chance as well. A lower level would exist under the house of representatives in which instead of people in the district voting for that lower rep, people from a random generated district that votes differently would have the ability to vote someone in. Essentially San Fransisco would be able to vote for a lower rep in some random super conservative district and vice versa. The entire point of the lower rep is to essentially troll the house of rep. We'd give them powers such as being able to call for a town hall meeting twice a year, a direct debate twice a year, petitions without the usual required permits, an an ability to freedom of information act everything the house rep does. The upper end of the tetracameral system would be two senators appointed by the state legislature prior to the 17th amendment restoring some state power. The mid level would be directly elected senators, however states would gain a few more based on population. Nonetheless, the districts portion is what I wanted to cover but felt I'd share most of the idea so there would be more background around the concept. The ideal would be both on the state level and federal level, the lower houses would be open to recall and open to popular vote for district splitting or merging. With a lower house rep voted on by outside parties to try to curtail silo thinking. While the upper chamber returns state interests back to the federal government; some populist sentiment I personally feel needs to be curtailed and think our biggest constitutional mistake was that of the 17th amendment. It'll never happen of course. But it's fun to think about.
Nomentatus 10y ago
This computer programmer solved gerrymandering in his spare time By Christopher Ingraham June 3, 2014 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/06/03/this-computer-programmer-solved-gerrymandering-in-his-spare-time/?utm_term=.615f246b5f38 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/06/03/this-...

225 points by seycombi 10y ago

ende 10y ago

The best way to get rid of gerrymandering of congressional districts is to get rid of congressional districts.

vanattab 10y ago
What would you do instead? Have all house seats state wide elections?
- frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago
  Proportional representation probably
  - jandrese 10y ago
    The downside of that is it makes all but one or two of the seats noncompetitive. The voters can't oust one politician specifically unless that politician is already on the party's shitlist and the voters manage to move the needle enough to make them lose a seat. Most of the candidates end up being completely safe.
    - frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago
      Perhaps we could combine it with some sort of ranking primary.
    - kalleboo 10y ago
      Some election systems let you rank candidates in addition to the party (e.g. Sweden lets you in a limited fashion)
tomjen3 10y ago
That is a nice soundbite. Congressional districts exist for a good reason - how would you keep the benefit?
- scholia 10y ago
  You could assign representatives to cover the area where they were most popular. In fact, given modern technology, you could easily draw the boundaries after the election. If you did, I bet they'd look a lot more "natural" than the results of current GOP gerrymandering.
- esturk 10y ago
  Just like congressional districts that cover the entire state (ie. WY, ND, SD, etc.), there's no reason that multiple representatives can't all represent the entire state. They can cover the entire state's interest through compromises as oppose to infighting for district vs. district within a state.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Congressional districts exist for a good reason The universal rule of single member districts is relatively recent, and it was a blunt (though effective) tool to deal with the threat of a form of super-gerrymandering by which states would assign some or all of their representatives to state-wide at-large seats so that the statewide majority would elect them, as a means of preventing the existence of majority-black districts in majority-rule states. Multimember districts with a proportional (even candidate-centered, like STV) electoral system rather than plurality or majority-runoff deals with both that problem and the problem with single-member FPTP districts.
asdfologist 10y ago
Why not take a step further and get rid of states?
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  That's actually a really good idea for the House.
  - CalChris 10y ago
    Agreed since Wyoming already gets two Senators and a House member for their 584,153.
- koenigdavidmj 10y ago
  American states are sovereign entities, not mere administrative districts that exist at the pleasure of the Feds.
  - CalChris 10y ago
    The sovereignty of states most definitely does not exist outside of the Constitution. For example, states can be split into two; Kentucky was originally part of the State of Virginia and became a separate state in 1792, the 15th. West Virginia was a part of Virginia, Maine was a part of Massachusetts, Vermont was a part of New York. This is covered in Article IV, Section 3, clause 1 of the Constitution which says: no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State... without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress. This too can be changed. States are mere administrative districts that exist at the pleasure of the Constitution. This state sovereignty under the Articles of Confederation was done away with by the Constitution.
    - ende 10y ago
      No they are not. The states share sovereignty through the Federal government. That's the very definition of Federalism. We are not a single Unitary state. The mere fact that any partition of union requires the approval of the legislatures of the involved states is demonstative of this.
dragonwriter 10y ago
Well, single member districts at least; 5-member districts with STV would kill any value in gerrymandering, achieve reasonably proportional representation, and retain (unlike party list systems) strict accountability of representatives to the general electorate.
mtgx 10y ago
Or you could enlarge them and guarantee 3-5 winners, where each party can have only a single winner. That makes it almost impossible for any party to monopolize the districts (which right now they are by definition, because they are winner-takes-all elections): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS62N5b5L7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS62N5b5L7Y
- ende 10y ago
  Multi-member districts would certainly be better than single member.
stcredzero 10y ago
Did you read the Efficiency Gap article? You may not have guessed because of the context of the article, but this metric isn't just geometric. It directly measures the efficiency of converting party constituent votes into seats. That's cutting the Gordian Knot! Want to measure Gerrymandering? Then directly measure what it's trying to achieve! https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legal-work/How_the_Efficiency_Gap_Standard_Works.pdf https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legal-work...
- spott 10y ago
  The problem with the efficiency gap metric is that it incentivizes cooperation between the parties to generate "safe" districts. You can turn it into an optimization problem instead if you try to minimize the wasted votes for the entire state. This ensures that you don't get states with districts that all have huge -- but equal! -- efficiency gaps.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    So instead of efficiency gap, measure inefficiency excess?
  - ouid 10y ago
    what's wrong with safe districts? I would like to have better representation and lower volatility.
    - thrden 10y ago
      They have a tendency to become more ideologically extreme, which means overtime the country as a whole becomes more divided, which would likely result in higher volatility and cyclical levels of representation.
    - jellicle 10y ago
      Those are opposites.

j_s 10y ago

[...] a need for expert witnesses who understand the mathematical concepts applicable to gerrymandering. To meet that need, she’s spearheaded the creation of a five-day summer program at Tufts that aims to train mathematicians to do just that [...] over 900 people have indicated their interest by signing up for a mailing list http://tufts.us15.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=3529c170e5d9b7aa8ab22ea62&id=a979bdf71d http://tufts.us15.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=3529c170e5d9b7...

j2kun 10y ago
I applied! Note that there will be regional programs in the next year that follow this initial program at Tufts.

stcredzero 10y ago

Bouncing things off of diverse audiences has taught me things I didn’t already know about how rhetorically accessible different ideas are. This is well-known to educators: Once you achieve a certain level of expertise, it can be hard to find the difficult spots and the reasoning anymore because they’re so familiar to you. A lot of the Dunning-Kruger problem in the Programming field is due to this. I think that Programming has a number of problems with training and making information accessible to its practitioners. Furthermore, I think many of these problems have tribal and sub-cultural elements to them. (Along language community lines, not ethnic ones.)

travmatt 10y ago

The upcoming fight over redistributing is likely to decide our country for the next ten years. On one hand, republicans have waged a legal campaign against the voting rights act, drafted various pieces of legislation aimed at disenfranchising minorities and college students, and chosen for their attorney general a prosecutor who viewed mintority voter registration a felonious offense. This isn't mentioning a president who has not wavered from the view that the 3 million vote margin he lost the popular vote by is the byproduct of fraud. On the other hand, you have a former president and possibly the most popular/powerful politician in America signal this will be his primary focus, an opposition party looking to expand use of the efficiency gap metric as a tool for enforcing fairness, and possibly a justice system willing to step embrace these concepts (the wisc. decision). Not to mention a motivated and very angry base.

pyronik 10y ago
> waged a legal campaign against the voting rights act, drafted various pieces of legislation aimed at disenfranchising minorities and college students Showing your ID isn't waging a war against voting rights, its straight up common sense like we have to do for every other thing in society. Many people find it surprising around the world that we don't check IDs.
- grzm 10y ago
  I understand where you're coming from. That said, voter ID has been used in the US to restrict voting rights. The issue is unfortunately not as straightforward as "straight up common sense". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_St... https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-sheet https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...
- travmatt 10y ago
  Please don't misconstrue what I said, the republicans have been engaged in litigation to repeal various portions of the voting rights act in numerous courts through America. This is quite separate from voter laws and it is a separate voting suppression tactic altogether. To the voter id laws, I can provide studies showing that in person vote fraud is non existent in America - the majority of cases last election stemmed from trump voters who tried to defend their actions as 'testing the system.' I can also provide studies that show those voter is laws disproportionately impact minority voters, as well as court judgements where republicans were found to target said voter with these laws explicitly - as in that was their explicit goal, and acted with 'surgical orecision6', in the courts words. This is not to mention the circumstantial evidence, like republican operatives explaining their long term goal is disenfranchisement, or the actions of governors instructing dmv employees to deceive the public and closure of dmv's in minority areas. I'd be open to hear alternative interpretations as to what is happening, but so far my experience has been that those in favor of said laws either approve of disenfranchisement, or have an emotional response as to the 'fairness' of the law, and assume i should adopt their viewpoint.

strictnein 10y ago

This isn't really a new thing. From a professor at the University of Florida (@ElectProject) who specializes in this sort of thing: "Math prof claims she's invented new form of compactness, which Mexico has used for decades & programmed into our DistrictBuilder software" https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/834570289728147457 https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/834570289728147457

kaitai 10y ago
"I’m always a little bit wary of coming off sounding like I’m the very first person to work on this idea; I just want to be clear that’s not the claim." -- from the article

tunesmith 10y ago

Can I just point out that every time a gerrymandering article is posted to hacker news, the thread is quickly overwhelmed by people professing various forms of proportional representation? This is striking me as becoming close to Wolfram Derangement Syndrome, and I think it's bad for the quality of discourse on this subject. Just to sketch out the brief reasons why, let's first accept that the gerrymandering conversation is about the United States. As such, we have to accept the reality of the United States Constitution. Finally, most arguments about gerrymandering are focused more on federal districts, as in the districts that make up the House of Representatives. Given all that, talking about proportional representation is a complete waste of time, and it gets in the way of having constructive conversation about this subject. It is constitutionally impossible to disband the House of Representatives and switch to proportional representation. It will not happen. Arguments about how it should happen are completely irrelevant to the gerrymandering subject, and counterproductive. For people that know this, arguments about proportional representation are not all that different than hijacking threads and trolling - the only difference being the high likelihood that people are not educated enough civically to understand that proportional representation is impossible on the Federal level. Every time I see a thread here I really do look forward to reading thoughts that are actually about gerrymandering and solving gerrymandering - I would like to see more focus on those subjects rather than the completely unrelated subject of proportional representation. One caveat - many people don't realize this, but some state constitutions DO theoretically allow proportional representation for STATE governments. That's worth exploring.

Fej 10y ago
It is not strictly impossible to abolish the House of Representatives. We have the amendment process. Incredibly unlikely, yes. If you weren't exaggerating, I would legitimately love to hear your logic, it sounds quite interesting to me. The reason people love to talk about proportional representation is because it is a comparatively easy and elegant method to solve the problem. Legislating math is hard. Folks won't understand it. People feel their vote doesn't matter. I say this as someone whose district just became a swing one out of nowhere.
- tunesmith 10y ago

tunesmith 10y ago

I do find the focus on compactness and contiguousness kind of strange. There was a recent image[1] going around that describes how gerrymandering works, and what struck me is that having three completely blue districts and two completely red districts is considered "most fair", in that every voter in the district feels completely represented. In reality, voters are more scrambled than that - so if you try to retain that "most fair" sense, then you are by definition going to have extremely non-compact, non-contiguous districts. You can get back to more compactness by making some voters "unrepresented" (meaning, a representative other than the one they voted for). As long as that balances out between parties, then you're okay (which is what the "efficiency gap" is all about). But by itself non-compactness is not a guarantee that the district is unfair. It's really just an indication, that so far, it probably means that the district drawers were up to shenanigans. It's just not necessarily so. You may want to get more creative with district shapes to help more voters feel represented. By the way, I should point out again that there are plenty of other weird tradeoffs like this. For instance, Schwarzenegger was recently complaining about "non-competitive" districts, while others regularly complain that the Federal house districts are not very representative of the voting population as a whole. These two aims are actually in tension with one another! The "most fair" scenario above is about as non-competitive as you can get. [1] http://i.imgur.com/jK8VFZx.jpg http://i.imgur.com/jK8VFZx.jpg

dragonwriter 10y ago
> I do find the focus on compactness and contiguousness kind of strange. They are "looks nice" (in a picture of district outlines) criteria that actually (given the geographical distribution of party members) are equivalent to deliberately gerrymandering in favor of Republicans. And that's really the key point: as long as you have single member districts and data about the existing distribution of voting preferences (which people in a position to adopt or sell policies do), you can design facially neutral criteria whose application will result in any distortions of representation you could seek to gain from gerrymandering, and say "let's automate with these criteria, take people out of the loop, and avoid gerrymandering", when all you are really doing is automating gerrymandering.
- 10y ago

Fej 10y ago

Gerrymandering won't go away because it is beneficial to both major parties.

clavalle 10y ago
It is a zero sum game so that statement cannot be true unless you mean over time and in different places. If that is the case then it is a great argument for coming up with a set of rules beforehand that both parties agree is fair.
- tripa 10y ago
  I agree with your comment; but I do have to point out the comment you're replying to specifically conceives a political landscape with more than two parties, that can indeed be considered as zero sum as well, yet two major parties can feasibly agree on something at a net loss for others.
- handedness 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duopoly
telchar 10y ago
I've often heard that but I think it's more correct to say that both parties may think it's beneficial to them. Ultimately it is a zero-sum situation where it benefits one party more. When one party decides it's getting the short end of the stick and not likely to regain the long end they'll have plenty of incentive to oppose it. The non-zero sum benefit of not having to compete in as many districts can't outweigh the harm of being relegated to the minority party. Surely a party would rather compete and win than not compete and lose.

cschmidt 10y ago

There have been a number of attempts to automatically do redistricting using Operations Research techniques. Here's one such slide deck, using integer programming. http://www.illc.uva.nl/COST-IC1205/documents/Caen-2014-Slides/Scozarri.pdf http://www.illc.uva.nl/COST-IC1205/documents/Caen-2014-Slide...

arca_vorago 10y ago

I've said before that after long thought I think the right way to deal with gerrymandering is to increase the number of districts (and therefor make them smaller). The primary problem is how would we fit all those extra people on the Hill? Also that I imagine there would be some muathmateically based demographic issues due to the center of the country getting more seats than the coasts which could be offset in a few different ways. The size of my district is larger than most states! It was also gerrymandered in 2003 by the R's seeking to regain territory from D's who had a suprising grip in Texas up until the late 90's.

kruipen 10y ago

What is wrong with gerrymandering? It is a political solution to political problem. It pushes decisions locally (to the "laboratories of democracy"). It is responsive to "We The People" but with a built in delaying mechanism to smooth out changes. It generally leads to competitive (but not toss-up) districts (the goal is to get as many seats as possible so huge margins are wasteful). What's not to like?

Floegipoky 10y ago
The problem is that it prevents people from voting out representatives that fail to advocate for their constituents and represent their interests. The entire concept of a representative democracy is that we elect people to represent our interests, and then if they fail they can be voted out when their term ends. With gerrymandering on the table, they're able to almost literally move the goalposts. It also violates the principle of "one person, one vote", because politicians are manipulating districts to essentially make votes opposing them meaningless. This is the reasoning that was recently used to reject Wisconsin's redistricting, specifically because they exceeded a reasonable "efficiency gap"- the number of votes wasted in a district. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/23/wisconsins-gerrymander-being-struck-down-should-scare-republicans-nationwide/?utm_term=.656d3c810e20 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/23/wisco... >>It pushes decisions locally (to the "laboratories of democracy"). It is responsive to "We The People"... I would love for you to elaborate a little more about this. I happen to think that it does the opposite by making representatives less accountable to their constituents (they can just pick new ones). In general, it seems like a mechanism designed to advance the power of a given political party by repressing the will of the people. That just doesn't seem like it can possibly lead to better outcomes.

fixxer 10y ago

I find it amusing that Holder and Obama are making this their focus given the extreme gerrymandering in the state of Illinois.

handedness 10y ago
It would be amusing if it wasn't so unsurprising. The article neglected to mention that neither side wants to actually fix the problem, but both sides want to gain an advantage under the guise of fixing the problem. It's like players arguing calls in contemporary sports–it's not based on what's correct, it's based on trying to win at all costs.
Declanomous 10y ago
If you look at why the districts are drawn the way they are they kind of make sense. For instance, the fourth district looks ridiculous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois%27s_4th_congressional_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois%27s_4th_congressional... The funky shape ensures that minorities get representation though. The weird path it takes is because of the 7th district, which I live in, which is 54% black. If it was cut any farther East, black people would be a minority. I think the shape is a bit ridiculous, but it would be possible to make a more fair looking shape that had a white majority in each district, so I think this is the lesser of two evils. There is probably a better way to district this area though, but proportional representation would make the entire situation a bit less ridiculous overall.
- fixxer 10y ago
  So, the district was carved up to ensure the electorate matched a certain demographic voting block... Sounds like gerrymandering to me. I guess it is OK when the demo isn't white, eh?
  - Declanomous 10y ago
    I'd say it's more like the decision was made to make sure that the districts represented the demographics of the state. It would be significantly less fair if every single district was majority white just because the white areas were more contiguous than the minority areas, especially when the reason that minorities live in those areas is in part because they were forced there due to policies like redlining. The way you've represented what I've said is absurd. If representatives are to be representative of the population you'll have to create some funny looking districts somewhere. If Illinois was really gerrymandering as much as say, Wisconsin, our district map would look like a tentacled monster extending from Chicago and reaching down through the rest of the state.

macawfish 10y ago

I recently saw an illuminating video about how Robert Mercer, a billionaire quantitative wall st. trader and computer scientist, not only backed Trump with $15 million, but madeover his whole team. Mercer's analytics companies, which make him money faster than Warren Buffet, were set to the task of winning the election. Not to mention Peter Thiel. Now, we don't know how they did it, but I can only imagine that with deep learning, etc, this is only going to get worse. Shameless plug for the video. I doubt it'll get traction on HN, but it was 100% a wakeup call for me. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13719646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13719646 Now I recognize it for what it is. Its a techno-hyper-capitalist power grab.

philipkglass 10y ago
In 2012 there was a bunch of gee-whiz about how software built by a dream team of engineers drove Obama's re-election: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-the-nerds-go-marching-in/265325/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-... I suspect that it's fun to read and write about new tech applied to Presidential elections but that the new doesn't actually matter more than the same old. If you wanted a really simple model to predict Presidential elections, this would be it: incumbents get re-elected, and then after 8 years American voters are sick enough of one party to try the other party again. One-term presidents are rare. Maybe you remember the idea of a "permanent Republican majority" from GWB's first term. That wasn't very permanent at all. Maybe you remember the post-2012 fear among conservatives that demographic changes had given Democrats a permanent lock on the presidency. That was short lived too.
- macawfish 10y ago
  well bla•sé (blä) :p seriously though, whether or not you are concerned about the role of data technology in elections, check out that documentary clip I linked to. it helped me peel back the curtain on the wizard of trump.

brokenmasonjars 10y ago

I've been having the amusing thought lately that one possible solution is perhaps making the system a bit more chaotic. Maybe with the safety of levels through tricameralism or maybe even tetracameralism. So.. in the house of rep districts you allow for popular vote to recall reps and also to hold popular referendum in said districts on whether to split them. If people are upset enough with their representation and can get enough to vote to spit the district then the district is split. This would intensify the situation some however you enable merging so when the popular will exists to merge then there is the chance as well. A lower level would exist under the house of representatives in which instead of people in the district voting for that lower rep, people from a random generated district that votes differently would have the ability to vote someone in. Essentially San Fransisco would be able to vote for a lower rep in some random super conservative district and vice versa. The entire point of the lower rep is to essentially troll the house of rep. We'd give them powers such as being able to call for a town hall meeting twice a year, a direct debate twice a year, petitions without the usual required permits, an an ability to freedom of information act everything the house rep does. The upper end of the tetracameral system would be two senators appointed by the state legislature prior to the 17th amendment restoring some state power. The mid level would be directly elected senators, however states would gain a few more based on population. Nonetheless, the districts portion is what I wanted to cover but felt I'd share most of the idea so there would be more background around the concept. The ideal would be both on the state level and federal level, the lower houses would be open to recall and open to popular vote for district splitting or merging. With a lower house rep voted on by outside parties to try to curtail silo thinking. While the upper chamber returns state interests back to the federal government; some populist sentiment I personally feel needs to be curtailed and think our biggest constitutional mistake was that of the 17th amendment. It'll never happen of course. But it's fun to think about.

Nomentatus 10y ago

This computer programmer solved gerrymandering in his spare time By Christopher Ingraham June 3, 2014 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/06/03/this-computer-programmer-solved-gerrymandering-in-his-spare-time/?utm_term=.615f246b5f38 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/06/03/this-...