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Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

750 points by rgardaphe 7y ago

yholio 7y ago
In case it's not entirely clear, the font ridicules the practice of gerrymandering: toying with electoral district borders so that the results favor the incumbent while corralling the voters of the adversaries. So extensive is this practice that the resulting shapes can approximate any letter of the alphabet. Quite readable too.
- swebs 7y ago
  There's currently a push to take it to the supreme court so it can be stopped once and for all. Archive link because the Baltimore Sun doesn't like Europe: http://archive.is/a3mMR http://archive.is/a3mMR
  - GavinMcG 7y ago
    That's an article from several months ago. The Supreme Court already ruled, and said that federal courts couldn't do anything about it, so state governments that are controlled by one party can continue to entrench their power. https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/06/gerrymandering-symposium-supreme-court-confirms-that-it-will-not-save-our-maps-only-voters-can/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/06/gerrymandering-symposium-...
  - non-entity 7y ago
    > There's currently a push to take it to the supreme court so it can be stopped once and for all. I may be mistaken, but I thought I read the court ruled it constitutional
    - Delmania 7y ago
      Their ruling was that the Supreme Court is not the decider here, this has to be done at a state level.
  - sergiotapia 7y ago
    If they do this doesn't this mean 5 cities will dictate who is in charge of the country?
    - jascii 7y ago
      I'm not quite sure I follow you, could you elaborate?
      - Spivak 7y ago
        One of the arguments in favor of the electoral college is that it boosts the voice of people who are in areas with lower population density. This is to ensure that minority interests are respected and taken into account by presidential hopefuls. Without this protection the voices of people who live outside the 5 major metropolitan areas simply wouldn't matter and candidates would have no reason to listen to their issues and have no repercussions for hurting them to favor city-dwellers. This would be bad. Very bad. A straight population vote ends up being a scheduling algorithm for issues where rural interests have unbounded wait time. One could say that the solution of weighting rural votes higher is a clunky system but any replacement voting system needs to take this into account as those small towns are where almost all of our primary industry is.
        TheBranca18 7y ago
        If this is the issue, the electoral college doesn't solve this. Because what happens is the campaigning for the general election is usually dictated by swing state status and when the caucus or primary takes place in the election calendar. If you look at the distribution of states visited during the campaigning for the general election, it backs this up. Also, the Senate is supposed to combat the House in this instance. That's what it's there for, and frankly, because of the importance of the Senate, a voter in Wyoming has more voting power than a voter in California. This isn't good either as you mention in your last statement.
        andrekandre 7y ago
  - hsnewman 7y ago
    If I'm not mistaken, there is nothing in the constitution about doing this. It is unfortunately completely legal.
  - agjm 7y ago
    I think the Baltimore Sun probably likes Europe just fine - what they don't like are self-contradictory rule sets that can cost them $20,000,000+ on top of the cost of achieving "compliance." 'Sarah Toporoff, a Massachusetts native who works in Paris for the Global Editors Network, which promotes newsroom innovation, raised similar questions. She said U.S. newsrooms “are a benchmark for digital innovation” — and it’s important that their content be available in Europe.' 'It is naive and wholly irresponsible to think that U.S. news holds no relevance beyond U.S. borders...' Perhaps, then, Europe should've had some international discussion about their hyper-aggressive legislation, to try and prevent this situation. I am dumbfounded that anyone thinks the U.S. corporations are to blame for not spending millions to comply with a foreign law from countries where they have no legal representation. Preventing that sort of 'taxation without representation' is something of a popular idea over here. https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/08/more-than-1000-u-s-news-sites-are-still-unavailable-in-europe-two-months-after-gdpr-took-effect/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/08/more-than-1000-u-s-news-si...
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - zimpenfish 7y ago
      > on top of the cost of achieving "compliance." Compliance with GDPR is easy though - don't aggressively track and monitor European visitors. If you've stuffed your website that full with invasive trackers et al that you can't show it to Europeans for fear of broaching personal privacy legislation, you should probably have a good long think about where you've gone wrong.
      - erik_seaberg 7y ago
        GDPR is not merely a list of bad things to avoid, it adds a lot of ongoing burdens to every company active in the region. Hire more people. Actively investigate your own compliance. Wait months for government permission to deliver features. There are people who aren't doing anything wrong, who did the math and decided they can't clear a profit on proving they aren't doing anything wrong.
- labster 7y ago
  Except that it uses non-gerrymandered districts from California, where elected officials are not allowed to draw the lines. So any statement is lost, but I guess it’s a fun art project.
  - EForEndeavour 7y ago
    Only three letters in this project include California; only the letters T and X are represented exclusively by California. The statement is powerful and hilarious, not "lost."
    - AlanSE 7y ago
      It's not even a very good T. Some letters are more impressive than others. Q is totally worthless for the political point. But N, D, U, and a few others are real gems.
      - furyofantares 7y ago
        I’m imagining this debate playing out in my head. I’m not sure if gerrymandering is all that bad. Wait, what’s this, a font made out of gerrymandered districts? It must be really bad, we should do something about it. Except the T doesn’t look that great, and it’s from California anyway. Maybe this isn’t such a big deal after all. And the Q! The Q is barely even gerrymandered. Fuck it, I’m gonna go play some video games.
      - aqme28 7y ago
        What's wrong with D? That looks like a pretty reasonable district. B is the worst one I think.
      - caf 7y ago
        K and H are pretty egregious at first glance.
    - raldi 7y ago
      The T district doesn't even look problematic to me. Nor does the other California letter, X, which is made up of a combination of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_8th_congressional_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_8th_congression... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_14th_congressional_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_14th_congressio... ...both of which seem like textbook examples of what a good, non-gerrymandered district should look like.
- jypepin 7y ago
  Thanks for clarifying! Was not aware of the practice and didn't even notice the states represented the alphabet! (Non US resident here).
  - schoen 7y ago
    Note that these are Congressional districts (a sub-state district used for electoral purposes). The states' shapes themselves exist for other historical reasons that are probably not mainly related to gerrymandering.
- taude 7y ago
  How accurate are the rest of the districts? Or were there some tweaks to make it work out as the alphabet a little better? Pretty amazing, though.
AndrewHampton 7y ago
FiveThirtyEight did a great podcast series on gerrymandering in 2017 [1]. It turns out to be a much more complicated topic than I expected. Some gerrymandering is even legally required to ensure proper representation of minority groups even if they live in somewhat distributed communities. 1: https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/gerrymandering-podcast/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/gerrymandering-podcast/
- deleted 7y ago
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- jandrese 7y ago
  Which is so hilariously misguided it might be taken as a form of racism. By lumping minorities into a single candidate they create a token representative who has a very safe seat but no power in the state senate and allow all other candidates to effectively ignore that minority entirely. They don't have to worry about angering 5% of their electorate and losing the next election by a 2% margin.
  - Spivak 7y ago
    Now let's take the other extreme. You split the minority population among 10 different seats where their population in each district is so small that their interests are ignored entirely in each one.
    - TheHypnotist 7y ago
      These are both extreme's which make total sense but the degree at which the entire drawing of borders is taken is extreme by itself. Are there any feasible solutions? Does simply squaring out a district make sense? Would that have unintended side effects?
    - bzbarsky 7y ago
      Yep. It's hard to effectively wield political power as a minority in a democracy based on voting power alone...
    - 7y ago
noonespecial 7y ago
Here's a good explanation with a graphic. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/01/this-is-the-best-explanation-of-gerrymandering-you-will-ever-see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/01/this-...
Endy 7y ago
This looks cute. Does the author expect to actually bring about any result by creating it? I see a Twitter link for various reps, but there's no link to any funded campaign to overturn recent legislation which has enshrined gerrymandering as the standard practice for districting. Perhaps if there was a donation link there it might be of more benefit. On the other hand, a political statement in a font is a very interesting idea. I hope it helps drive a campaign to normalize legal districting in the future.
- jascii 7y ago
  I see it as a playful way to bring attention to an issue, and refreshing to see any attempts at keeping money out of politics. If you are looking for a more funded, formalized campaign, those exist as well, for instance: https://www.fairvote.org/ https://www.fairvote.org/
- headcanon 7y ago
  Does every political statement need to include all of these things? If I espouse a political opinion on an online forum like this: "Gerrymandering is bad and has negative effects on our democracy" Am I expected to include donation links and organize a Call Your Rep campaign every time I say something like that? Thats effectively what OP is doing, making a statement, not trying to singlehandledly solve the issue in question.
  - Endy 7y ago
    There's a call to action on the webpage which goes to Twitter; which won't change anything. If instead there was a donation link, it would be contributing. Also, saying that on a forum is one thing; taking a stand with art should be backed by actually trying to do something about it and pointing people to groups or individuals who are doing more about it than creating art (no small feat in itself, but not an immediate cause of legal change).
Waterluvian 7y ago
Not saying Ontario's EDs are bias-free but the difference is just day and night when you've got an independent body delineating them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Centre_(provincial_electoral_district)#/media/File:Toronto_Centre_in_relation_to_the_other_Toronto_ridings_(2015_boundaries).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Centre_(provincial_ele...
cj 7y ago
How often is this font redrawn? Where's the changelog?
- uptown 7y ago
  That's a paid upgrade. Please consult with your local Super PAC.
thih9 7y ago
Technically 'A', 'B', 'R', 'Y', 'Z' letters consist of two districts. Still, even with fewer single-district letters, the project proves a point.
doc_gunthrop 7y ago
Some time ago I wrote a coding challenge based on the concept of gerrymandering[0]. [0]: https://www.codewars.com/kata/5a70285ab17101627a000024 https://www.codewars.com/kata/5a70285ab17101627a000024
- Billybobbbonnet 7y ago
  That's fun, I just started & enjoyed the katas from cw and planned to do yours after skyscraper 6x6
roland35 7y ago
I am not surprised to see Ohio is well represented here! We have a particularly egregious gerrymandered map with 75% Republican representatives in a state that leans slightly Republican. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio%27s_congressional_districts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio%27s_congressional_distric...
- bzbarsky 7y ago
  Sure, but note Illinois is also well-represented in the font, this time with significant Democratic party over-reprentation (13 out of 18, for a state that is not nearly that skewed in presidential elections, say). Turns out, gerrymandering gets done by whoever happens to be in power. :(
  - roland35 7y ago
    Yes, it does go both ways, I didn't mean to single out the RS!
TomK32 7y ago
This needs to be coloured in shades of Blue and Red.
- munk-a 7y ago
  Both parties are equally terrible when it comes to gerrymandering, I, thankfully, vote in a state that is one of seven that has absolutely solved gerrymandering for all time... Vermont - it's hard to creatively draw districts when everyone is in the same one.
  - mikeash 7y ago
    It should be obvious that you can’t trust any political party with the power to decide who their own voters will be. It’s not a partisan issue. If Republicans are doing it more in recent years it’s only because they’ve had more opportunity. I’m not usually a “both sides” sort of person, but in this case it’s like putting a steak in front of a dog and expecting them not to eat it.
- mLuby 7y ago
  Nah, both parties are complicit; no need to trigger tribalism here, just stop gerrymandering.
  - dmix 7y ago
    Indeed, the previous time the US Supreme Court was dealing with gerrymandering rules/tests it was a republicans accusing the democrat's of unfair gerrymandering in Maryland: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-333_b97c.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-333_b97c.pdf Then the latest one was democrats challenging republicans in Wisconsin. It has a long complicated history of courts and politicians trying to balance the lines. As long as there's a way to game the system in your favour, someone will try - regardless of party.
- jandrese 7y ago
  According to the cook political report[1]: California 3 - D+5 Texas 35 - D+15 Ohio 12 - R+7 Ohio 7 - R+12 Connecticut 1 - D+12 Missouri 8 - R+24 Missouri 6 - R+16 Oregon 5 - EVEN Ohio 4 - R+14 North Carolina 6 - R+9 Texas 15 - D+7 Illinois 18 - R+15 Alabama 1 - R+15 New York 7 - D+38 New York 8 - D+36 Illinois 11 - D+9 Arizona 6 - R+9 Florida 25 - R+4 Texas 12 - R+18 Ohio 10 - R+4 Michigan 13 - D+32 Tennessee 4 - R+20 California 43 - D+29 Illinois 4 - D+33 New Jersey 5 - R+3 New York 8 - D+36 (yes they used it twice) California 8 - R+9 California 14 - D+27 Illinois 12 - R+5 Indiana 8 - R+15 Ohio 8 - R+17 What you are looking for is states where you see a lot of one party with +5-9 districts and then a handful of districts that are +20 or more for the other party. https://cookpolitical.com/pvi-map-and-district-list https://cookpolitical.com/pvi-map-and-district-list
aaronbrethorst 7y ago
The call to action on the site is to “tweet at your rep.” This isn’t going to do anything. Donate to groups that are fighting for unrigging the system, vote for candidates in off year elections that will help create fairer maps (VA residents: your vote this November will determine who creates your district maps).
- jascii 7y ago
  We are discussing it right now, so I would say its already doing something.. Nothing wrong with creating awareness, though other avenues will certainly be needed before meaningful change will happen.
toddsiegel 7y ago
It says tweet your reps. To be clear, you should probably contact your state rep about this (and send an email, not a tweet). They have the power to do something about it. This is very important, esp. in light the recent US Supreme Court decision on this subject[1]. Gerrymandering creates safe districts that make primaries hold increasingly more weight then general elections, which is leading, in a significant way, toward our increasingly hyper-partisan politics in the US. In some states this also heavily tilts the balance of power to one party over the other. The bottom line is this. Fairer redistricting will lead to more competitive races, which will lead to less partisan, saner politics with more compromise. (Oh dear god I hope!) Related: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/voters-are-stripping-partisan-redistricting-power-from-politicians-in-anti-gerrymandering-efforts/2018/11/07/2a239a5e-e1d9-11e8-b759-3d88a5ce9e19_story.html?utm_term=.209cfc5a9e3d https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/voters-are-stripping... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/us/politics/supreme-court-gerrymandering.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/us/politics/supreme-court...
- jandrese 7y ago
  Rep's response: Why would I want any of that?
- tunesmith 7y ago
  More competitive? Or more representative of the overall population? Because those two things are at odds. Say you have a state that is split 55/44, and has nine districts. Do you want nine districts each at 55/44, meaning 9-0? That's more competitive, but less representative of the state. Or do you want five districts for one, and four for the other? That's more representative of the state, but less competitive. Redistricting is hard. (I suspect my scenario is a false choice if you wrestle with the math enough, but I'm not sure. I prefer the Wisconsin test that we all thought Justice Kennedy would decide in favor of, but then he took the coward's way out, probably corrupt too.)
  - legitster 7y ago
    This is SUPER important. People think redistricting is a panacea, but it actually sounds like a super tough nut to crack. Even states that have non-partisan districting enshrined in law are going through their own controversies and it doesn't (at first blush) appear to be solving anything. 99pi/538 did an excellent series on the topic I would recommend.
moate 7y ago
NJ Resident here: I'd like to point out that the "V" shape is basically just the southern border of the state along the coast. It could be considered a Gerrymander (I haven't invested the time to look at district representation) but I will say it could also just be a weird geographical feature. Fun project none the less.
- bzbarsky 7y ago
  For what it's worth, a bunch of the things in this font are weird-shaped because of coastlines...
aarongray 7y ago
While humorous, a high percentage of these districts look this way due to rivers and lakes.
- Ambele 7y ago
  I just looked at Florida's districts and the districts all include the rivers and lakes. Key examples are the Everglades and the St. Johns rivers. https://www.flsenate.gov/Senators/Districts https://www.flsenate.gov/Senators/Districts
bcatanzaro 7y ago
Could we reduce the power of gerrymandering by increasing the number of districts? At the first census, there were 3.9M people and 65 districts. Now we have 327M people and 435 districts, so the number of people per district has increased by 12.5X. I would think this makes gerrymandering more lucrative, since gerrymandering works because of quantization error.
- padobson 7y ago
  Let's do a 100x - 43,500 districts. This would probably fix Citizens United too, it'd be really expensive to buy 43,500 congress members.
  - slim 7y ago
    why not 327M district? (direct democracy)
    - padobson 7y ago
      Mob rule is not what you want. It's terrifying. What you want is a slow projection of the will of the people onto the seats of power. That's why separation of powers is so brilliant. Judges are completely insulated from the people, unelected with lifetime appointments. The President - when chosen by a real electoral college rather than the funky thing the EC has actually evolved into - is more answerable to the will of the people, but still insulated enough to do the job without the daily whims of the mob plunging the ship of state into chaos. It takes time and slow calculated movements to steer the ship of state. We want an executive who can make those calculations without constant fear of political turmoil. The Senate, as it was originally designed, is closer to the people but also insulated. Senators get six years to advocate for the interests of their state. Before the 17th amendment, they were chosen by the state legislatures to directly represent the interests of the state as a whole. And the House is directly answerable to the people, with each member representing a portion of them - 700k or 70k or 7k. It's the most powerful part of the government and also the most distributed. It's the beating heart of democracy and the starting point for all discussion on what constitutes the rights of the citizens, as directed by the citizens. But it is just a starting point. How the will of the people filters its way into the senate and the executive and the judicial branch is the refining process of a representative republic, the best form of government yet implemented by humans.
tictoc 7y ago
This is fun!
legitster 7y ago
If you want to play around with district mapping, 538 has a neat tool: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-maps/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-maps/ Their podcast series is a must if you are remotely interested in the topic.
realYitzi 7y ago
Tweet all the reps... https://theunitedstates.io/congress-legislators/legislators-social-media.json https://theunitedstates.io/congress-legislators/legislators-...
dfeojm-zlib 7y ago
Here's a sample https://is.gd/KAduzx https://is.gd/KAduzx (.jpg)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
hammock 7y ago
Reminds me of the butterfly alphabet: https://mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/archive/Vm4Dpvy9icwn4uhLu8l7_1082134851.jpeg https://mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/archive/Vm4Dpv... Sad there are no examples of the font in a sentence though. Is it readable? If it was the point would be stronger.
- schoen 7y ago
  You can download the OTF font file from the bottom of the page and try rendering text in it yourself. I made a sample for you at https://imgur.com/TjqUYQt https://imgur.com/TjqUYQt
  - hammock 7y ago
    Awesome, thank you!
zw123456 7y ago
I think that a solution this problem as well as many others like undo influence, too much money needed and so on, could be solved by increasing the number of representatives. I believe that the only stipulations in the constitution is that each state must have at least one and that a representative cannot represent less than 30K citizens. The number was frozen 35 in 1911 by the house, but they could change that if they wanted to without changing the constitution. The reason I think this would help on a number of levels is as follows 1) Gerrymandering becomes more difficult if there are a lot more districts. 2) influence peddling and lobbying is diluted if there are more representatives. 3) the voter can have more influence and contact with their representative if their congress person represents a smaller sized constituency. I think arguments around the size of the building (the capital) are silly, who cares where they meet, it can be in a stadium, or even better why bother having them all in Washington DC. it can all be done with telepresence in todays world and then you as a citizen could go down to say the court house and sit in the audience as your representatives interact via telepresence. I get it that perhaps all this seems crazy or whatever, but none of it would require any changes to the constitution. It could be done by the House itself with no consent from the Senate or President.
- undersuit 7y ago
  Prior to the Civil War our Representatives voted and worked from the same desk, the one they had in the Capitol Building in the House Chambers. Now they have offices and support staff. Why don't we just convert those ~5000 support staff( and their offices ) into a much more representative democracy?
  - zw123456 7y ago
    Perfect, I agree completely.
- H8crilA 7y ago
  It seems that across countries the size of the parlament is proportional to the square root of the population size: https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/364/is-there-an-optimal-size-of-a-parliament https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/364/is-there-an...
dabernathy89 7y ago
A funny looking district != a gerrymandered district. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gerrymandering-strange-maps_n_5a848498e4b0ab6daf454f1e https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gerrymandering-strange-maps_n... I mean, just imagine if every district were a simple polygon. How could that possibly work with population density variations, minority voter distribution, physical barriers like mountains and rivers, etc?
- deleted 7y ago
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balthasar 7y ago
Pointing out the obvious injustice and loss of adjacency imposed on voters in these districts is the obvious reason for this project but leave it to Hacker News readers to fixate on the technical aspects of redistricting while ignoring the political and social reasons which led to this issue.
JimmaDaRustla 7y ago
Can I get a monospaced version for my IDE?
jonnycomputer 7y ago
The obvious thing to do with this is to print out letters using this font to send to your representatives.
drummyfish 7y ago
No Rights Reserved -- this is great, all fonts should be public domain, but I would love to see actual CC0 attached, otherwise I can't trust it really being public domain legally, which discourages me from using it.
jlv2 7y ago
Massachusetts created Gerrymandering yet we are not represented by a single glyph. Rewrite them! https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/where-did-term-gerrymander-come-180964118/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/where-did-term-gerrym...
- benatkin 7y ago
  Massachusetts also has an unusual shape that makes sense on closer inspection, like I'm guessing some of the glyphs do.
TomMckenny 7y ago
In Wisconsin, the now permanent ruling party won 60% of seats with only 48.6% of the vote. The politicized SCOTUS' 5 to 4 decision to up hold that gerrymandering was hardly a surprise: https://www.wpr.org/us-supreme-court-ruling-effectively-ends-wisconsin-gerrymandering-challenge https://www.wpr.org/us-supreme-court-ruling-effectively-ends...
artur_makly 7y ago
I just love it when deft minimal art...spurs such comprehensive critical conversation. We need more of this on HN ;-)

750 points by rgardaphe 7y ago

In case it's not entirely clear, the font ridicules the practice of gerrymandering: toying with electoral district borders so that the results favor the incumbent while corralling the voters of the adversaries. So extensive is this practice that the resulting shapes can approximate any letter of the alphabet. Quite readable too.

swebs 7y ago
There's currently a push to take it to the supreme court so it can be stopped once and for all. Archive link because the Baltimore Sun doesn't like Europe: http://archive.is/a3mMR http://archive.is/a3mMR
- GavinMcG 7y ago
  That's an article from several months ago. The Supreme Court already ruled, and said that federal courts couldn't do anything about it, so state governments that are controlled by one party can continue to entrench their power. https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/06/gerrymandering-symposium-supreme-court-confirms-that-it-will-not-save-our-maps-only-voters-can/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/06/gerrymandering-symposium-...
- non-entity 7y ago
  > There's currently a push to take it to the supreme court so it can be stopped once and for all. I may be mistaken, but I thought I read the court ruled it constitutional
  - Delmania 7y ago
    Their ruling was that the Supreme Court is not the decider here, this has to be done at a state level.
- sergiotapia 7y ago
  If they do this doesn't this mean 5 cities will dictate who is in charge of the country?
  - jascii 7y ago
    I'm not quite sure I follow you, could you elaborate?
    - Spivak 7y ago
      One of the arguments in favor of the electoral college is that it boosts the voice of people who are in areas with lower population density. This is to ensure that minority interests are respected and taken into account by presidential hopefuls. Without this protection the voices of people who live outside the 5 major metropolitan areas simply wouldn't matter and candidates would have no reason to listen to their issues and have no repercussions for hurting them to favor city-dwellers. This would be bad. Very bad. A straight population vote ends up being a scheduling algorithm for issues where rural interests have unbounded wait time. One could say that the solution of weighting rural votes higher is a clunky system but any replacement voting system needs to take this into account as those small towns are where almost all of our primary industry is.
      - TheBranca18 7y ago
        If this is the issue, the electoral college doesn't solve this. Because what happens is the campaigning for the general election is usually dictated by swing state status and when the caucus or primary takes place in the election calendar. If you look at the distribution of states visited during the campaigning for the general election, it backs this up. Also, the Senate is supposed to combat the House in this instance. That's what it's there for, and frankly, because of the importance of the Senate, a voter in Wyoming has more voting power than a voter in California. This isn't good either as you mention in your last statement.
        andrekandre 7y ago
- hsnewman 7y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, there is nothing in the constitution about doing this. It is unfortunately completely legal.
- agjm 7y ago
  I think the Baltimore Sun probably likes Europe just fine - what they don't like are self-contradictory rule sets that can cost them $20,000,000+ on top of the cost of achieving "compliance." 'Sarah Toporoff, a Massachusetts native who works in Paris for the Global Editors Network, which promotes newsroom innovation, raised similar questions. She said U.S. newsrooms “are a benchmark for digital innovation” — and it’s important that their content be available in Europe.' 'It is naive and wholly irresponsible to think that U.S. news holds no relevance beyond U.S. borders...' Perhaps, then, Europe should've had some international discussion about their hyper-aggressive legislation, to try and prevent this situation. I am dumbfounded that anyone thinks the U.S. corporations are to blame for not spending millions to comply with a foreign law from countries where they have no legal representation. Preventing that sort of 'taxation without representation' is something of a popular idea over here. https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/08/more-than-1000-u-s-news-sites-are-still-unavailable-in-europe-two-months-after-gdpr-took-effect/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/08/more-than-1000-u-s-news-si...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - zimpenfish 7y ago
    > on top of the cost of achieving "compliance." Compliance with GDPR is easy though - don't aggressively track and monitor European visitors. If you've stuffed your website that full with invasive trackers et al that you can't show it to Europeans for fear of broaching personal privacy legislation, you should probably have a good long think about where you've gone wrong.
    - erik_seaberg 7y ago
      GDPR is not merely a list of bad things to avoid, it adds a lot of ongoing burdens to every company active in the region. Hire more people. Actively investigate your own compliance. Wait months for government permission to deliver features. There are people who aren't doing anything wrong, who did the math and decided they can't clear a profit on proving they aren't doing anything wrong.
labster 7y ago
Except that it uses non-gerrymandered districts from California, where elected officials are not allowed to draw the lines. So any statement is lost, but I guess it’s a fun art project.
- EForEndeavour 7y ago
  Only three letters in this project include California; only the letters T and X are represented exclusively by California. The statement is powerful and hilarious, not "lost."
  - AlanSE 7y ago
    It's not even a very good T. Some letters are more impressive than others. Q is totally worthless for the political point. But N, D, U, and a few others are real gems.
    - furyofantares 7y ago
      I’m imagining this debate playing out in my head. I’m not sure if gerrymandering is all that bad. Wait, what’s this, a font made out of gerrymandered districts? It must be really bad, we should do something about it. Except the T doesn’t look that great, and it’s from California anyway. Maybe this isn’t such a big deal after all. And the Q! The Q is barely even gerrymandered. Fuck it, I’m gonna go play some video games.
    - aqme28 7y ago
      What's wrong with D? That looks like a pretty reasonable district. B is the worst one I think.
    - caf 7y ago
      K and H are pretty egregious at first glance.
  - raldi 7y ago
    The T district doesn't even look problematic to me. Nor does the other California letter, X, which is made up of a combination of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_8th_congressional_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_8th_congression... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_14th_congressional_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_14th_congressio... ...both of which seem like textbook examples of what a good, non-gerrymandered district should look like.
jypepin 7y ago
Thanks for clarifying! Was not aware of the practice and didn't even notice the states represented the alphabet! (Non US resident here).
- schoen 7y ago
  Note that these are Congressional districts (a sub-state district used for electoral purposes). The states' shapes themselves exist for other historical reasons that are probably not mainly related to gerrymandering.
taude 7y ago
How accurate are the rest of the districts? Or were there some tweaks to make it work out as the alphabet a little better? Pretty amazing, though.

AndrewHampton 7y ago

FiveThirtyEight did a great podcast series on gerrymandering in 2017 [1]. It turns out to be a much more complicated topic than I expected. Some gerrymandering is even legally required to ensure proper representation of minority groups even if they live in somewhat distributed communities. 1: https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/gerrymandering-podcast/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/gerrymandering-podcast/

deleted 7y ago
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jandrese 7y ago
Which is so hilariously misguided it might be taken as a form of racism. By lumping minorities into a single candidate they create a token representative who has a very safe seat but no power in the state senate and allow all other candidates to effectively ignore that minority entirely. They don't have to worry about angering 5% of their electorate and losing the next election by a 2% margin.
- Spivak 7y ago
  Now let's take the other extreme. You split the minority population among 10 different seats where their population in each district is so small that their interests are ignored entirely in each one.
  - TheHypnotist 7y ago
    These are both extreme's which make total sense but the degree at which the entire drawing of borders is taken is extreme by itself. Are there any feasible solutions? Does simply squaring out a district make sense? Would that have unintended side effects?
  - bzbarsky 7y ago
    Yep. It's hard to effectively wield political power as a minority in a democracy based on voting power alone...
  - 7y ago

noonespecial 7y ago

Here's a good explanation with a graphic. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/01/this-is-the-best-explanation-of-gerrymandering-you-will-ever-see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/01/this-...

Endy 7y ago

This looks cute. Does the author expect to actually bring about any result by creating it? I see a Twitter link for various reps, but there's no link to any funded campaign to overturn recent legislation which has enshrined gerrymandering as the standard practice for districting. Perhaps if there was a donation link there it might be of more benefit. On the other hand, a political statement in a font is a very interesting idea. I hope it helps drive a campaign to normalize legal districting in the future.

jascii 7y ago
I see it as a playful way to bring attention to an issue, and refreshing to see any attempts at keeping money out of politics. If you are looking for a more funded, formalized campaign, those exist as well, for instance: https://www.fairvote.org/ https://www.fairvote.org/
headcanon 7y ago
Does every political statement need to include all of these things? If I espouse a political opinion on an online forum like this: "Gerrymandering is bad and has negative effects on our democracy" Am I expected to include donation links and organize a Call Your Rep campaign every time I say something like that? Thats effectively what OP is doing, making a statement, not trying to singlehandledly solve the issue in question.
- Endy 7y ago
  There's a call to action on the webpage which goes to Twitter; which won't change anything. If instead there was a donation link, it would be contributing. Also, saying that on a forum is one thing; taking a stand with art should be backed by actually trying to do something about it and pointing people to groups or individuals who are doing more about it than creating art (no small feat in itself, but not an immediate cause of legal change).

Waterluvian 7y ago

Not saying Ontario's EDs are bias-free but the difference is just day and night when you've got an independent body delineating them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Centre_(provincial_electoral_district)#/media/File:Toronto_Centre_in_relation_to_the_other_Toronto_ridings_(2015_boundaries).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Centre_(provincial_ele...

cj 7y ago

How often is this font redrawn? Where's the changelog?

uptown 7y ago
That's a paid upgrade. Please consult with your local Super PAC.

thih9 7y ago

Technically 'A', 'B', 'R', 'Y', 'Z' letters consist of two districts. Still, even with fewer single-district letters, the project proves a point.

doc_gunthrop 7y ago

Some time ago I wrote a coding challenge based on the concept of gerrymandering[0]. [0]: https://www.codewars.com/kata/5a70285ab17101627a000024 https://www.codewars.com/kata/5a70285ab17101627a000024

Billybobbbonnet 7y ago
That's fun, I just started & enjoyed the katas from cw and planned to do yours after skyscraper 6x6

roland35 7y ago

I am not surprised to see Ohio is well represented here! We have a particularly egregious gerrymandered map with 75% Republican representatives in a state that leans slightly Republican. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio%27s_congressional_districts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio%27s_congressional_distric...

bzbarsky 7y ago
Sure, but note Illinois is also well-represented in the font, this time with significant Democratic party over-reprentation (13 out of 18, for a state that is not nearly that skewed in presidential elections, say). Turns out, gerrymandering gets done by whoever happens to be in power. :(
- roland35 7y ago
  Yes, it does go both ways, I didn't mean to single out the RS!

TomK32 7y ago

This needs to be coloured in shades of Blue and Red.

munk-a 7y ago
Both parties are equally terrible when it comes to gerrymandering, I, thankfully, vote in a state that is one of seven that has absolutely solved gerrymandering for all time... Vermont - it's hard to creatively draw districts when everyone is in the same one.
- mikeash 7y ago
  It should be obvious that you can’t trust any political party with the power to decide who their own voters will be. It’s not a partisan issue. If Republicans are doing it more in recent years it’s only because they’ve had more opportunity. I’m not usually a “both sides” sort of person, but in this case it’s like putting a steak in front of a dog and expecting them not to eat it.
mLuby 7y ago
Nah, both parties are complicit; no need to trigger tribalism here, just stop gerrymandering.
- dmix 7y ago
  Indeed, the previous time the US Supreme Court was dealing with gerrymandering rules/tests it was a republicans accusing the democrat's of unfair gerrymandering in Maryland: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-333_b97c.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-333_b97c.pdf Then the latest one was democrats challenging republicans in Wisconsin. It has a long complicated history of courts and politicians trying to balance the lines. As long as there's a way to game the system in your favour, someone will try - regardless of party.
jandrese 7y ago
According to the cook political report[1]: California 3 - D+5 Texas 35 - D+15 Ohio 12 - R+7 Ohio 7 - R+12 Connecticut 1 - D+12 Missouri 8 - R+24 Missouri 6 - R+16 Oregon 5 - EVEN Ohio 4 - R+14 North Carolina 6 - R+9 Texas 15 - D+7 Illinois 18 - R+15 Alabama 1 - R+15 New York 7 - D+38 New York 8 - D+36 Illinois 11 - D+9 Arizona 6 - R+9 Florida 25 - R+4 Texas 12 - R+18 Ohio 10 - R+4 Michigan 13 - D+32 Tennessee 4 - R+20 California 43 - D+29 Illinois 4 - D+33 New Jersey 5 - R+3 New York 8 - D+36 (yes they used it twice) California 8 - R+9 California 14 - D+27 Illinois 12 - R+5 Indiana 8 - R+15 Ohio 8 - R+17 What you are looking for is states where you see a lot of one party with +5-9 districts and then a handful of districts that are +20 or more for the other party. https://cookpolitical.com/pvi-map-and-district-list https://cookpolitical.com/pvi-map-and-district-list

aaronbrethorst 7y ago

The call to action on the site is to “tweet at your rep.” This isn’t going to do anything. Donate to groups that are fighting for unrigging the system, vote for candidates in off year elections that will help create fairer maps (VA residents: your vote this November will determine who creates your district maps).

jascii 7y ago
We are discussing it right now, so I would say its already doing something.. Nothing wrong with creating awareness, though other avenues will certainly be needed before meaningful change will happen.

toddsiegel 7y ago

It says tweet your reps. To be clear, you should probably contact your state rep about this (and send an email, not a tweet). They have the power to do something about it. This is very important, esp. in light the recent US Supreme Court decision on this subject[1]. Gerrymandering creates safe districts that make primaries hold increasingly more weight then general elections, which is leading, in a significant way, toward our increasingly hyper-partisan politics in the US. In some states this also heavily tilts the balance of power to one party over the other. The bottom line is this. Fairer redistricting will lead to more competitive races, which will lead to less partisan, saner politics with more compromise. (Oh dear god I hope!) Related: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/voters-are-stripping-partisan-redistricting-power-from-politicians-in-anti-gerrymandering-efforts/2018/11/07/2a239a5e-e1d9-11e8-b759-3d88a5ce9e19_story.html?utm_term=.209cfc5a9e3d https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/voters-are-stripping... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/us/politics/supreme-court-gerrymandering.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/us/politics/supreme-court...

jandrese 7y ago
Rep's response: Why would I want any of that?
tunesmith 7y ago
More competitive? Or more representative of the overall population? Because those two things are at odds. Say you have a state that is split 55/44, and has nine districts. Do you want nine districts each at 55/44, meaning 9-0? That's more competitive, but less representative of the state. Or do you want five districts for one, and four for the other? That's more representative of the state, but less competitive. Redistricting is hard. (I suspect my scenario is a false choice if you wrestle with the math enough, but I'm not sure. I prefer the Wisconsin test that we all thought Justice Kennedy would decide in favor of, but then he took the coward's way out, probably corrupt too.)
- legitster 7y ago
  This is SUPER important. People think redistricting is a panacea, but it actually sounds like a super tough nut to crack. Even states that have non-partisan districting enshrined in law are going through their own controversies and it doesn't (at first blush) appear to be solving anything. 99pi/538 did an excellent series on the topic I would recommend.

moate 7y ago

NJ Resident here: I'd like to point out that the "V" shape is basically just the southern border of the state along the coast. It could be considered a Gerrymander (I haven't invested the time to look at district representation) but I will say it could also just be a weird geographical feature. Fun project none the less.

bzbarsky 7y ago
For what it's worth, a bunch of the things in this font are weird-shaped because of coastlines...

aarongray 7y ago

While humorous, a high percentage of these districts look this way due to rivers and lakes.

Ambele 7y ago
I just looked at Florida's districts and the districts all include the rivers and lakes. Key examples are the Everglades and the St. Johns rivers. https://www.flsenate.gov/Senators/Districts https://www.flsenate.gov/Senators/Districts

bcatanzaro 7y ago

Could we reduce the power of gerrymandering by increasing the number of districts? At the first census, there were 3.9M people and 65 districts. Now we have 327M people and 435 districts, so the number of people per district has increased by 12.5X. I would think this makes gerrymandering more lucrative, since gerrymandering works because of quantization error.

padobson 7y ago
Let's do a 100x - 43,500 districts. This would probably fix Citizens United too, it'd be really expensive to buy 43,500 congress members.
- slim 7y ago
  why not 327M district? (direct democracy)
  - padobson 7y ago
    Mob rule is not what you want. It's terrifying. What you want is a slow projection of the will of the people onto the seats of power. That's why separation of powers is so brilliant. Judges are completely insulated from the people, unelected with lifetime appointments. The President - when chosen by a real electoral college rather than the funky thing the EC has actually evolved into - is more answerable to the will of the people, but still insulated enough to do the job without the daily whims of the mob plunging the ship of state into chaos. It takes time and slow calculated movements to steer the ship of state. We want an executive who can make those calculations without constant fear of political turmoil. The Senate, as it was originally designed, is closer to the people but also insulated. Senators get six years to advocate for the interests of their state. Before the 17th amendment, they were chosen by the state legislatures to directly represent the interests of the state as a whole. And the House is directly answerable to the people, with each member representing a portion of them - 700k or 70k or 7k. It's the most powerful part of the government and also the most distributed. It's the beating heart of democracy and the starting point for all discussion on what constitutes the rights of the citizens, as directed by the citizens. But it is just a starting point. How the will of the people filters its way into the senate and the executive and the judicial branch is the refining process of a representative republic, the best form of government yet implemented by humans.

tictoc 7y ago

This is fun!

legitster 7y ago

If you want to play around with district mapping, 538 has a neat tool: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-maps/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-maps/ Their podcast series is a must if you are remotely interested in the topic.

realYitzi 7y ago

Tweet all the reps... https://theunitedstates.io/congress-legislators/legislators-social-media.json https://theunitedstates.io/congress-legislators/legislators-...

dfeojm-zlib 7y ago

Here's a sample https://is.gd/KAduzx https://is.gd/KAduzx (.jpg)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

hammock 7y ago

Reminds me of the butterfly alphabet: https://mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/archive/Vm4Dpvy9icwn4uhLu8l7_1082134851.jpeg https://mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/archive/Vm4Dpv... Sad there are no examples of the font in a sentence though. Is it readable? If it was the point would be stronger.

schoen 7y ago
You can download the OTF font file from the bottom of the page and try rendering text in it yourself. I made a sample for you at https://imgur.com/TjqUYQt https://imgur.com/TjqUYQt
- hammock 7y ago
  Awesome, thank you!

zw123456 7y ago

I think that a solution this problem as well as many others like undo influence, too much money needed and so on, could be solved by increasing the number of representatives. I believe that the only stipulations in the constitution is that each state must have at least one and that a representative cannot represent less than 30K citizens. The number was frozen 35 in 1911 by the house, but they could change that if they wanted to without changing the constitution. The reason I think this would help on a number of levels is as follows 1) Gerrymandering becomes more difficult if there are a lot more districts. 2) influence peddling and lobbying is diluted if there are more representatives. 3) the voter can have more influence and contact with their representative if their congress person represents a smaller sized constituency. I think arguments around the size of the building (the capital) are silly, who cares where they meet, it can be in a stadium, or even better why bother having them all in Washington DC. it can all be done with telepresence in todays world and then you as a citizen could go down to say the court house and sit in the audience as your representatives interact via telepresence. I get it that perhaps all this seems crazy or whatever, but none of it would require any changes to the constitution. It could be done by the House itself with no consent from the Senate or President.

undersuit 7y ago
Prior to the Civil War our Representatives voted and worked from the same desk, the one they had in the Capitol Building in the House Chambers. Now they have offices and support staff. Why don't we just convert those ~5000 support staff( and their offices ) into a much more representative democracy?
- zw123456 7y ago
  Perfect, I agree completely.
H8crilA 7y ago
It seems that across countries the size of the parlament is proportional to the square root of the population size: https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/364/is-there-an-optimal-size-of-a-parliament https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/364/is-there-an...

dabernathy89 7y ago

A funny looking district != a gerrymandered district. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gerrymandering-strange-maps_n_5a848498e4b0ab6daf454f1e https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gerrymandering-strange-maps_n... I mean, just imagine if every district were a simple polygon. How could that possibly work with population density variations, minority voter distribution, physical barriers like mountains and rivers, etc?

deleted 7y ago
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balthasar 7y ago

Pointing out the obvious injustice and loss of adjacency imposed on voters in these districts is the obvious reason for this project but leave it to Hacker News readers to fixate on the technical aspects of redistricting while ignoring the political and social reasons which led to this issue.

JimmaDaRustla 7y ago

Can I get a monospaced version for my IDE?

jonnycomputer 7y ago

The obvious thing to do with this is to print out letters using this font to send to your representatives.

drummyfish 7y ago

No Rights Reserved -- this is great, all fonts should be public domain, but I would love to see actual CC0 attached, otherwise I can't trust it really being public domain legally, which discourages me from using it.

jlv2 7y ago

Massachusetts created Gerrymandering yet we are not represented by a single glyph. Rewrite them! https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/where-did-term-gerrymander-come-180964118/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/where-did-term-gerrym...

benatkin 7y ago
Massachusetts also has an unusual shape that makes sense on closer inspection, like I'm guessing some of the glyphs do.

TomMckenny 7y ago

In Wisconsin, the now permanent ruling party won 60% of seats with only 48.6% of the vote. The politicized SCOTUS' 5 to 4 decision to up hold that gerrymandering was hardly a surprise: https://www.wpr.org/us-supreme-court-ruling-effectively-ends-wisconsin-gerrymandering-challenge https://www.wpr.org/us-supreme-court-ruling-effectively-ends...

artur_makly 7y ago

I just love it when deft minimal art...spurs such comprehensive critical conversation. We need more of this on HN ;-)