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The efficiency gap fails to guarantee or even optimize compactness, yet many gerrymandered districts are "thin slices" or strange shapes. (one simple defition o
by trendia 9y ago
The efficiency gap fails to guarantee or even optimize compactness, yet many gerrymandered districts are "thin slices" or strange shapes. (one simple defition of compactness is the ratio of perimeter^2/area)
What the author fails to do is explain why the efficiency gap is better than district compactness. If they are used together, then in what way are the two measures weighted? If not, why should we pick efficiency over compactness?
It should seem obvious that these two methods would result in different districts, but which mwthod to use is more a matter of personal values than objectivity.
- weeksie 9y agoThat's because compactness doesn't actually tell you anything about unfair voting, demographics, party representation, etc. . . . A district can be shaped like a busted IUD and still be perfectly fair and that's precisely why the efficiency gap is so much better at identifying gerrymandered districts. The gap shows the percentage of wasted votes, which is pretty much all that matters.
- PhineasRex 9y agoThe efficiency gap is just a measure of the actual effect of gerrymandering in an election, it doesn't say anything about how to draw a district for future elections. Compactness tells us nothing about the effects of gerrymandering. Less compact districts correlate with more gerrymandering but that doesn't tell us whether that gerrymandering was effective. Compactness could be a useful tool to limit the effects of gerrymandering when drawing districts.
- ClayShentrup 9y agoHere's a solution. https://youtu.be/kUS9uvYyn3A https://youtu.be/kUS9uvYyn3A