32 ms·

A Partisan Solution to Partisan Gerrymandering: The Define–Combine Procedure

129 points by headalgorithm 3y ago

jbaber 3y ago
What are the advantages over "I cut, you freeze"? https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2017/november/i-cut-you-choose-cake-cutting-protocol-inspires-solution-to-gerrymandering.html https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2017/november/i-cu...
jbaber 3y ago
There's also at least one method to create N districts canonically -- no human intervention: https://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html https://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html
consumer451 3y ago
Is this actual political science? If so, where I can I find more?
- madcaptenor 3y ago
  Looks like all the authors of this paper have web pages with more: Maxwell Palmer: https://maxwellpalmer.com https://maxwellpalmer.com Benjamin Schneer: https://www.benjaminschneer.com https://www.benjaminschneer.com Kevin Deluca: https://www.kevinmdeluca.com https://www.kevinmdeluca.com
- condercet 3y ago
  you might google “computational social justice” or “computational social choice” for some political science grounded in math and computer science
- maxpalmer 3y ago
  Yes! A lot of modern political science research uses computational methods, big data, etc. Here are some interesting papers on redistricting, by the research group that wrote the package we use in this paper. https://alarm-redist.org/applications.html https://alarm-redist.org/applications.html
  - oglop 3y ago
    And it's made the world such a better place! Please do more of it!
crotchfire 3y ago
You cut, I choose becomes I choose, you un-cut. Note that this paper contains no optimality proofs. There's a lot of mathy-looking stuff, but then instead of a proof we get "yeah we took this one particular Markov-chain algorithm and had it play against itself and it failed to generate a gerrymander". If deployed in real life, an immense amount of power -- and therefore money -- will be at stake: certainly more than enough money to hire persons with intelligence equal to or greater than the creator of "the ShotBurst Algorithm" as consultants. If an optimality proof is not possible, the only alternative is to test using real humans and (very substantial) real rewards.
- madcaptenor 3y ago
  I haven't digested the paper, but one thing I wonder - does it matter which party goes first?
  - iainmerrick 3y ago
    Yes, looks like there's an advantage (they argue only a small advantage) to the first mover: The defined subdistrict plan selected by the Democrats results in three seats for Democrats and two seats for Republicans. [...] Similarly, if the Republicans move first, then in equilibrium the Republicans win three seats and the Democrats win two seats. Thus [...] under DCP there is only a one-seat difference depending on who draws the define-stage map.
- maxpalmer 3y ago
  We have an analytic solution in the supplementary materials [1]. One of the biggest challenges to optimality proofs is how to capture the importance of geography as a constraint. I don't believe there are any papers on redistricting that include geographic constraints in analytic/formal solutions. That's why we prefer simulations for our main results. [1]: https://static.cambridge.org/content/id/urn%3Acambridge.org%3Aid%3Aarticle%3AS1047198723000396/resource/name/S1047198723000396sup001.pdf https://static.cambridge.org/content/id/urn%3Acambridge.org%...
  - 3y ago
iainmerrick 3y ago
If the analysis holds up in practice (and the methodology looks good at first glance) I really like this. It will allow fair districts to be drawn even by completely divided jurisdictions, without needing any kind of neutral arbitrator to step in. (The UK has reasonably neutral boundary commissions, but it seems for whatever reason there's no hope of that approach working in the US -- at best there's just an almighty legal battle in state supreme courts.)
- tivert 3y ago
  > but it seems for whatever reason there's no hope of that approach working in the US It's a technical solution to social problems: polarization and intolerance. Those never work. It would be very hard, but the only thing I see actually fixing the fundamental problem is limiting the degree of policy change per time period to something below what would trigger a backlash. That would lower the stakes, lower the perceived threat level, and maybe allow people to recover their sanity again. I think eventually the country would mellow out.
  - eru 3y ago
    > It's a technical solution to social problems: polarization and intolerance. Those never work. The opposite: technical solutions are the only ones that work. Approximately, you can't solve social problems.
    - Jensson 3y ago
      Yeah, voting is itself a technical solution to a social problem, those tend to work really well.
      - eru 3y ago
        I'm a bit more skeptical: I don't think technical solutions to social problems tend to work really well (on average); I just think that non-technical solutions have an even worse track record.
  - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
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jabl 3y ago
I only read the abstract and very briefly skimmed the article, but... So it claims that it doesn't require bipartisan agreement to reach 'optimality'. Fine, I won't argue that point as I haven't looked that deeply into it. But it still requires the parties to agree to adopt this Define-Combine procedure in the first place! And why would they do that? They're not, when the rubber hits the road, interested in "optimality" (however you define it), but power. Power at the expense of the other party, to be precise.
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  Are you just saying that any redistricting method needs to become law?
- cwmma 3y ago
  There are a few ways it could happen 1. it's imposed on them by an outside force like through a voter referendum or court order 2. the party is currently in power but thinks it might lose power soon, they could adopt this on the way out to limit the ability of the opposition to get a supermajority but in a way that will be harder for opponents to object to compared to other things they could try.
- Jensson 3y ago
  > Power at the expense of the other party, to be precise. Power at the expense of the people, that is the most important part by far. Gerrymandering corrupts the democracy by devaluing votes, giving more power to current politicians regardless of side. Giving power back to the people almost never happens.
maxpalmer 3y ago
I'm one of the authors. Thanks for reading our paper. Happy to answer any questions. If you're interested, here is a (still in-progress) simulator I wrote where you can try out Define-Combine on a simple grid. https://mpalmer.shinyapps.io/DefineCombine/ https://mpalmer.shinyapps.io/DefineCombine/
- mfrieswyk 3y ago
  Would it scale to beyond 2 parties?
  - maxpalmer 3y ago
    Potentially in some form, but we haven't investigated it. The utility functions for each party would be very different. Instead of trying to maximize the seats that they win, parties would also need to think about the coalitions that could form if no party won a majority of the seats.
- consumer451 3y ago
  I really appreciate your work. It appears to address one of the biggest issues of our time. Please do not get discouraged by anyone or anything. We need more of this.
- stephencanon 3y ago
  Biggest potential weakness seems like the ability for the merging party to strategically collapse districts such that two legislators from the opposing party are made to reside in the same district, creating a new district with no incumbent. Not all legislatures require that representatives live in the district, and there would be real trade-offs to doing so, but it would be a pretty powerful hammer to wield against up-and-coming opposition candidates. It doesn't matter at the abstraction of proportional representation, but it potentially matters quite a bit when you get into the nitty-gritty of actual elections.
  - maxpalmer 3y ago
    You're right that this method doesn't protect incumbents. However, protecting incumbency and avoiding open-seat elections isn't necessarily a bad thing, and could increase electoral competition in some places. Some states don't allow incumbency to be taken into account when redistricting already.
wkirby 3y ago
A worthy variation of "I cut you choose" --- the only fair way to divide anything.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  "I cut, you choose" is not a fair system if it's difficult to predict or control the cutting. Give the cutting task to your 4yo and then take the obviously big piece, or the one that has the larger, now-exposed, gooey center.
  - wkirby 3y ago
    Sounds fair to me, teach the 4 year old the consequences of unfair division --- that's the whole purpose of the exercise. The cutter _always_ has the ability to divide the whole in a way that will result in an unfair outcome: that's why the choice is given to the other party. The process is unfair when the division _and_ the choice is held by a single party.
BurningFrog 3y ago
The good thing about this is that it removes the problem of finding selfless competent people to carry out the process impartially. It works when both sides are cynical crooks.
thechao 3y ago
Gerrymandering is a political process; it can't be "solved" with math. If there were a technical solution to the 'gerrymandering problem' we'd've used any of the standard tools for drawing such maps. The major sociopolitical issue is that gerrymandering can be used for both good (minority-majority districts) and "bad" (supermajority plural houses when there's only a bare majority; or, worse). The root of the issue is that map-drawing is unfair and we'd like a fair system. I think for most of the interested parties, you can find middle ground on fair electoral mechanisms. For parties just trying to keep power you can make this argument: gerrymandering moves the election to the primary; the turnout for primaries is abysmal, and the result is that our government is weaker for having gerrymandering. In my state, Texas, there are some districts where the outcome of the election was decided by as little as 2% of the voters, i.e., only 3.5% of the voters showed up to the primary.
- iainmerrick 3y ago
  Gerrymandering is a political process; it can't be "solved" with math. I think that's a little too defeatist. It's like saying "tactical voting is a political process" and can't be "solved". But you can adopt voting mechanisms that reduce the effect of tactical voting, and many countries have! It doesn't completely solve the problem, sure, but it helps.
  - thechao 3y ago
    Let me drill down to Texas, where I am quite active. I have been privy to a conversation[1] with Governor Abbot where he described in detail his horse-trading to swap precincts between Congressional representatives in order to: (1) maximize the number of GOP seats; and, (2) ensure the 'safety' of the win of preferred US reps. Secondary goals include trying to pass (Texas) constitutional amendments to make the following things illegal in Texas: any voting system that's not first-past-the-post; at large proposition mechanisms; independent citizens redistricting committees; etc. [1] This occurred while I waited in line to vote.
  - oglop 3y ago
    I'm sorry but I respectfully disagree. Maybe I spent too much time in Ohio. You should read up on the maps there and the supreme court fight. Think about human motivations and desires more, and less about a math proof or abstract papers which literally has gone out the window now. People won't follow what a state supreme court jugde tells them, you think a proof will convince them or solve a very deep psychological problem? I don't, I used to, but Ohio cured me of that.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
This assumes the people doing gerrymandering want a solution They don’t The practice of gerrymandering is self acknowledged adversarial social engineering intended to create an unfair split to consolidate power. Is intentional and domination based The singular and only possible way to execute equitable democracy is enthusiastic engagement by the population in the running of the system. Until you can create a society that gives individuals the time, space, and resources they need to make fully informed decisions on the complexities and externalities of human action, societies will continue to be run by a small handful of high energy narcissists. I am unaware of any large scale (>1000 people) human communities that have demonstrated long term peaceful self organized society, spanning the lifetime of a citizen (~100 years) without a major destabilizing event in their community.
LocalH 3y ago
Part of the problem is the so-called "two-party system" that we effectively had. George Washington had the right idea - political parties will divide and ultimately destroy the nation. We see this happening right now, today, as the Democrats and Republicans argue over high-profile "moral" issues while colluding in the background to benefit the large corporations and disadvantage the individual citizen. Abolish political parties now, before it's too late. It may already be too late.
- JackFr 3y ago
  How to you reconcile abolishing political parties with the right of free association?
  - lupire 3y ago
    Communist China has a political party but only for historical reasons. If they dissolved the Party and kept the Government, it would work just as well.
- Alpha3031 3y ago
  Abolishing political parties is not possible, people form factions and coalitions based on common interests, and those coalitions form coalitions in order to achieve their goals. You can have a multi-party system, a two party system or a de facto one party system, the difference is that for the latter two, the final coalitions happen beforehand and are presented to voters as a fait accompli.
- adrianN 3y ago
  It’s impossible to abolish parties. It is possible to change the election system so that a plurality of parties form a government.
  - usefulcat 3y ago
    In theory it's possible to change the election system. In practice, effecting such a change requires the cooperation of at least the party in power and probably both parties, so...
sanj 3y ago
Is this a generalized version of sharing a cake? - I get to cut the cake in half - you get to choose which slice to eat
- Alpha3031 3y ago
  The paper states that this is indeed the case, and also cites previous proposals along similar lines: > Academic researchers have drawn inspiration from the cake-cutting problem to propose processes for fairer redistricting. While this logic has inspired several redistricting proposals (Alexeev and Mixon 2019; Benadè, Procaccia, and Tucker-Foltz 2023; Brams 2020; Ely 2019; Landau, Reid, and Yershov 2009; Pegden, Procaccia, and Yu 2017), none has addressed implementation across the full range of U.S. states and electoral contexts using real-world data. The complexity of previous proposals also precludes real- world applications or even simulation using modern computing techniques.
colonwqbang 3y ago
Can't you just draw the N districts that you want, then break out N new districts from those by extracting a "ring" from each. Then you have N districts each fully surrounded by another district. The only way to merge pairs of adjacent districts is to restore the original layout. Seems like a pretty trivial way to break the algorithm. But I probably misunderstood something.
- maxpalmer 3y ago
  Yes, that would work. The paper has a note about excluding districts like this: > "Valid districts are contiguous and have equal population. Strict constraints on compactness, geographic splits, or other restrictions are not necessary, but such limitations could be included. However, valid districts may not include “donuts,” where one district entirely encircles another."
- JackFr 3y ago
  No, I think you are absolutely onto something -- as you describe it, it is trivial to transform from N -> 2N districts in a manner which makes it impossible to combine them back 2N -> N in any other way than the original map. Maybe I'm missing something too. That seems like a pretty big deficiency.
bondarchuk 3y ago
This solution is still based on a concept of defining districts by presumed voting patterns of the inhabitants. Is it really that hard to define districts sensibly purely based on population density/distribution?
- spaceprison 3y ago
  I was thinking something similar. Carve the geography into small population density based chunks Identify boundaries like Bisecting Highways, railways, Rivers, mountains, etc. Create boundary informed population chunk clusters. Identify features Food Industry Schools Find the shortest road based path from each bounded cluster to each feature. Create convex hulls that enclose bounded population chunk clusters of the target population size and paths to features. Rerun after every census.
harimau777 3y ago
Couldn't we just use proportional representation?
cherryteastain 3y ago
There's a far better solution to gerrymandering than these creative ways to draw lines on a map. It's called proportional representation, and it's used in many countries in Europe (usually combined with the d'Hondt formula). FPTP leads to far more silliness than PR and therefore countries using PR have healthier political discourse and systems. Sad that the UK rejected the proposal to abolish FPTP in the early 10s. Edit: changed this tautological sounding sentence - "None of the countries using PR suffer from the sillinesses arising from FPTP."
- card_zero 3y ago
  > None of the countries using PR suffer from the sillinesses arising from FPTP Frankly, I'd be surprised if they did. It seems much more likely that they'd suffer from the problems of PR instead.
  - cherryteastain 3y ago
    I get what you mean, looking back that sentence reads like a tautology. I guess what I should've said is "FPTP leads to far more silliness than PR and therefore countries using PR have healthier political discourse and systems"
  - ensignavenger 3y ago
    I wanted to add some additional thoughts on what the problems of PR might be... - Clusters of minority populations tend to not get as much representation, because they are but a small voice in a bigger ocean of voices. - Representatives can't focus on representing a smaller geographic area, including field offices, outreach, constituent services, etc as easily, because they have to represent a much broader geographic area. - A lack of community ties, as representatives are representing a broader geography, the representative is less likely to know the names, places, and small cultural quirks associated with the communities they represent. Please feel free to add comments of your own with additional downsides. I am generally a fan of proportional voting systems, but I think it is important to have an honest discussion of the pros and cons, as there are ways to build representative systems that balance these concerns- but we have to be aware of and acknowledge them.
michaelbuckbee 3y ago
I've always felt that a simpler solution would be to just increase the number of representatives. In 1912 (the last time we added more), the US population was ~90 million, and it's currently at around ~340 mil and we still have only 435 representatives. 1912: 1 rep per 20,000 people 2024: 1 rep per 780,000 people This doesn't "solve" gerrymandering but it does blunt the effectiveness of it (among hopefully some other positive effects.)
- ajross 3y ago
  You can gerrymander a tiny district just as easily as you can a giant one. Fundamentally it's just a software problem and modern computers are really fast.
- jeffdn 3y ago
  In 1912, that's 1 representative per 207,000 people.
  - michaelbuckbee 3y ago
    Doh
- Alpha3031 3y ago
  You missed a zero with the 1921 figure, but it is an interesting question to consider: what exactly is the optimal size of a national assembly? Does it scale best to the square root or cube root of population? Or some other exponent? What are the constant factors? Do larger multi-regional blocs like the US and EU require different styles of representation, and if so does that change the scaling factors? The US could probably do with at least 600 though, minimum.
  - jcranmer 3y ago
    > what exactly is the optimal size of a national assembly? This is indeed an interesting question, and I submit that the US is in an awkward state where the national assembly is simultaneously too large and too small. I've seen some statistics that suggest that assemblies tend to start degrading in quality when you get past 300 or so: you end up in a situation where too many members just have nothing to do. At the same time, it's almost certainly the case that the US House has too few members for them to be sufficiently responsive to their constituents.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ClassyHacker 3y ago
Dirt don't vote, so why are we drawing circles on a map? Just section off a list a of eligible voter' names or IDs. After all you're not representing area, you're representing unity.
- dsr_ 3y ago
  Even better: have representatives who represent people. We have proper information systems, we can do this. A representative gets qualified by having the appropriate minimum number of people sign up as their constituents. They then represent exactly those people.
- grotorea 3y ago
  For all the examples of doing geographic districts I sometimes wonder why is that specific special interest group that gets privileged with a district separation instead of any other way to split people. Prussia split districts by wealth too but that was a way to give more power to the rich.
- nilstycho 3y ago
  How would you section off the list? If you do it uniformly randomly, then every constituency looks identical and you'll get identical results in each constituency. This creates a very non-representative result. Notably, large racial minorities would have their voting power diluted.
j2kun 3y ago
You do still need the controlling party to agree to enact this solution, which is a form of compromise. If you're willing to do that you may as well be willing to cede control to a nonpartisan third party. In either case the outcome will be a reduction in your party's power.
the_snooze 3y ago
In addition to these big-move structural proposals that will take a long time to actually be adopted, there's something everyone can do now that can have an immediate effect: vote in primaries. Gerrymandering has the effect of making the general election meaningless, so the dominant party's primary becomes the whole game. If you're a Republican in Berkeley, for example, you don't need a lot of Republican and moderate voters to tilt the local Democratic primary, because not a lot of people vote in them. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/primary-election-voting-party-switching/630171/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/primary-el...
bondarchuk 3y ago
To everyone in this thread who is stuck on the refrain "technical solutions to social problems never work": broadly shared agreement among people of flesh and blood to use a certain technical solution is ultimately a social solution. The value of a fair technical solution is as a rallying point around which a social solution can be formed. Besides, by the same token any democratic voting system would be deemed a "technical solution to a social problem", yet clearly some of those were adopted and now work.
crazygringo 3y ago
On the one hand -- I love this spirit, of trying to adapt the "I cut you choose" technique to something that might work for gerrymandering. We need as many ideas as we can get! On the other -- unfortunately I don't see how it would actually help, because the first party which defines the half-districts is generally going to "win". If party 1 is the Republican party which wants to maximize rural votes, they just split up every city like a pie, with each slice extending far into the countryside, halfway to the next city. Then it doesn't matter which slices party 2 (Democrats) combine, because they're always stuck with rural votes outweighing city votes. While if party 1 is the Democratic party which wants to concentrate city votes, they do the opposite and surround the city with two halves of a ring that is half-urban half-rural, so the city can't be diluted. Party 2 (Republicans) can combine rural areas only with the ring, while the inside remains totally protected. So one strategy is skinny pointed daggers to invade the cities, the other is about skinny ring shields to protect the cities. By controlling the initial shapes, you control nearly everything. (Of course with real geography it becomes more complex, but the general principle of districts shaped as skinny daggers or shields is still going to be the primary strategy here -- you're not going to win all the districts, but it'll get you the extra 10% or 15% you need.)
ThinkBeat 3y ago
Both parties heavily invest in gerrymandering and both parties apepar to (think) they get an advantage out of doing it. Neither wants the practice to stop. Politicians will pretend outrage when they personally are negatively impacted by a change of course. I think there ought to be precise rules and regulations for how and what you can do, but of course for the reason above, this wont happen.
- floren 3y ago
  Whoa now, I think it's only called gerrymandering when Republicans do it.
usefulcat 3y ago
This is yet another technical solution to what is fundamentally an incentives problem. Whoever benefits from the status quo (gerrymandering) will naturally be incentivized to resist any change which is objectively more 'fair'. That's the real problem. It's nothing to do with how we draw lines on a map, it's how do you get whoever is currently in power to agree to a more fair system, given that it's (by definition) not in their interest.
WalterBright 3y ago
This problem has been solved by mathematicians: A partisan districting protocol with provably nonpartisan outcomes https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.08781 https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.08781 by Wesley Pegden, Ariel D. Procaccia, Dingli Yu
cool_dude85 3y ago
What happens when there's collusion, e.g. protecting incumbency at all costs? This tends to be the M.O. here in Florida, where the Democrats in office are satisfied without statewide power as long as their asses continue to be the ones in the allotted seats. Algorithms prevent this situation but your way doesn't.
newsclues 3y ago
Technology for direct democracy makes the need for elected representatives obsolete.
mvc 3y ago
Haha, like my granny used to say when there was cake to share. "You cut, I choose".
yttribium 3y ago
Gerrymandering is required by federal law to make sure that blacks are able to elect black representatives; this has obvious second order effects in how the rest of the map is drawn under adversarial conditions. Somehow it seems unlikely that this requirement is going away anytime soon, so any proposed mechanism that does not accommodate this constraint is going to be impractical.
- alwa 3y ago
  Fortunately, the authors consider this and address it in part 4.2. They propose drawing and freezing-in-place the VRA-mandated majority-minority districts as a first step, before applying their technique to the rest of the districts. They test that approach and find that doing it that way still buys you approximately the same degree of neutrality on the overall map, relative to the status quo.
frud 3y ago
Even if it's stable in a game theory sense, it depends on the political class being partitioned into exactly two parties. Otherwise the two biggest parties would have an incentive to smother all smaller competitors. I think the answer has to lie in an algorithmic solution dependent on a high-resolution population density map.
dragonwriter 3y ago
The solution to gerrymandering is multimember district with proportional representation inside the districts, whether small (e.g., 5 member districts with STV) or large (whole-legislature “district" with party-list proportional) or hybrid (any form of Mixed Member Proportional). Better proportionality in representarion also has a whole host of other benefits. Everything with messing with how you draw lines in single-member winner-take-all districts is just shifting representation problems around and not actually solving them.
AlbertCory 3y ago
> 2 contiguous, equal-population districts What this seems to ignore is the legitimate desire to keep towns or counties in the same district. Most people would consider it silly to have the dividing line be a side street, or even in between two houses.
oglop 3y ago
" One party defines a map of 2 equal-population contiguous districts. Then the second party combines pairs of contiguous districts to create the final map of N districts." What a load of crap and what dream world do they think that could be accomplished? We can't even get ranked voting to work, and most places this past year where they did use it, it's gonna go away because they didn't get the nutjub they wanted, and this is the age of the nutjub. Most Americans want to gerrymander, so do their representatives. It's a total myth this will get fixed or people have the will to do it or that you can somehow have these 2 parties work together, at all. Even if that's some silly "contiguous and combine" setup. Shit, one party would get angry with you for even using a word like "contiguous", that's the bar you have to get passed. Good luck with that.
balderdash 3y ago
I always thought a simple geometric solution would make a huge difference (e.g. a district can have no more than 360 degrees of internal arc (with some modification for districts that border non linear state lines). It would be far from perfect, but it would take the precision out of the gerrymandering process which I think by would be a net positive.
TheGlav 3y ago
The problem isn't that there isn't good solutions to this problem. The problem is that the parties in charge don't want good solutions to the problem.
explaininjs 3y ago
The real problem is the “gerrymandering” of state boundaries and the Senate. CA has around 10 million non-Democrat voters who have had zero representation in the Senate since 1992. In fact the entire West Coast hasn’t had any non-Democrat senatorial representation since 2009. This is why states like the Stare of Jefferson need to be allowed to exist.
abdullahkhalids 3y ago
How about communities decide themselves which district they want to be part of? A community is a village, town, administrative parts of a city, etc. Every 10-15 years, there is a vote across the country in which every community rates adjacent and nearby communities according to who they want to be in the same district as. Then you run some pre-decided fixed algorithm that uses these ratings to join adjacent communities in a province/state in roughly equal populations. The design of this algorithm is left as an exercise to the reader.
daft_pink 3y ago
I wish they could come up with a solution to this that made sense. The things I find particularly troubling about gerrymandering in the US isn’t only that one party gets a few more representatives either way. The reason it’s absolutely terrible in the United States is that it creates uncompetitive districts on both sides and we get extreme candidates that don’t appeal to people in the middle at all and seem to have no ability to compromise and get basic things done. I’m not sure that proportional representation addresses this issue.
dh2022 3y ago
This methods only works for a two-party electoral system...

129 points by headalgorithm 3y ago

What are the advantages over "I cut, you freeze"? https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2017/november/i-cut-you-choose-cake-cutting-protocol-inspires-solution-to-gerrymandering.html https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2017/november/i-cu...

jbaber 3y ago

There's also at least one method to create N districts canonically -- no human intervention: https://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html https://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html

consumer451 3y ago

Is this actual political science? If so, where I can I find more?

madcaptenor 3y ago
Looks like all the authors of this paper have web pages with more: Maxwell Palmer: https://maxwellpalmer.com https://maxwellpalmer.com Benjamin Schneer: https://www.benjaminschneer.com https://www.benjaminschneer.com Kevin Deluca: https://www.kevinmdeluca.com https://www.kevinmdeluca.com
condercet 3y ago
you might google “computational social justice” or “computational social choice” for some political science grounded in math and computer science
maxpalmer 3y ago
Yes! A lot of modern political science research uses computational methods, big data, etc. Here are some interesting papers on redistricting, by the research group that wrote the package we use in this paper. https://alarm-redist.org/applications.html https://alarm-redist.org/applications.html
- oglop 3y ago
  And it's made the world such a better place! Please do more of it!

crotchfire 3y ago

You cut, I choose becomes I choose, you un-cut. Note that this paper contains no optimality proofs. There's a lot of mathy-looking stuff, but then instead of a proof we get "yeah we took this one particular Markov-chain algorithm and had it play against itself and it failed to generate a gerrymander". If deployed in real life, an immense amount of power -- and therefore money -- will be at stake: certainly more than enough money to hire persons with intelligence equal to or greater than the creator of "the ShotBurst Algorithm" as consultants. If an optimality proof is not possible, the only alternative is to test using real humans and (very substantial) real rewards.

madcaptenor 3y ago
I haven't digested the paper, but one thing I wonder - does it matter which party goes first?
- iainmerrick 3y ago
  Yes, looks like there's an advantage (they argue only a small advantage) to the first mover: The defined subdistrict plan selected by the Democrats results in three seats for Democrats and two seats for Republicans. [...] Similarly, if the Republicans move first, then in equilibrium the Republicans win three seats and the Democrats win two seats. Thus [...] under DCP there is only a one-seat difference depending on who draws the define-stage map.
maxpalmer 3y ago
We have an analytic solution in the supplementary materials [1]. One of the biggest challenges to optimality proofs is how to capture the importance of geography as a constraint. I don't believe there are any papers on redistricting that include geographic constraints in analytic/formal solutions. That's why we prefer simulations for our main results. [1]: https://static.cambridge.org/content/id/urn%3Acambridge.org%3Aid%3Aarticle%3AS1047198723000396/resource/name/S1047198723000396sup001.pdf https://static.cambridge.org/content/id/urn%3Acambridge.org%...
- 3y ago

iainmerrick 3y ago

If the analysis holds up in practice (and the methodology looks good at first glance) I really like this. It will allow fair districts to be drawn even by completely divided jurisdictions, without needing any kind of neutral arbitrator to step in. (The UK has reasonably neutral boundary commissions, but it seems for whatever reason there's no hope of that approach working in the US -- at best there's just an almighty legal battle in state supreme courts.)

tivert 3y ago
> but it seems for whatever reason there's no hope of that approach working in the US It's a technical solution to social problems: polarization and intolerance. Those never work. It would be very hard, but the only thing I see actually fixing the fundamental problem is limiting the degree of policy change per time period to something below what would trigger a backlash. That would lower the stakes, lower the perceived threat level, and maybe allow people to recover their sanity again. I think eventually the country would mellow out.
- eru 3y ago
  > It's a technical solution to social problems: polarization and intolerance. Those never work. The opposite: technical solutions are the only ones that work. Approximately, you can't solve social problems.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    Yeah, voting is itself a technical solution to a social problem, those tend to work really well.
    - eru 3y ago
      I'm a bit more skeptical: I don't think technical solutions to social problems tend to work really well (on average); I just think that non-technical solutions have an even worse track record.
- 3y ago

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jabl 3y ago

I only read the abstract and very briefly skimmed the article, but... So it claims that it doesn't require bipartisan agreement to reach 'optimality'. Fine, I won't argue that point as I haven't looked that deeply into it. But it still requires the parties to agree to adopt this Define-Combine procedure in the first place! And why would they do that? They're not, when the rubber hits the road, interested in "optimality" (however you define it), but power. Power at the expense of the other party, to be precise.

BurningFrog 3y ago
Are you just saying that any redistricting method needs to become law?
cwmma 3y ago
There are a few ways it could happen 1. it's imposed on them by an outside force like through a voter referendum or court order 2. the party is currently in power but thinks it might lose power soon, they could adopt this on the way out to limit the ability of the opposition to get a supermajority but in a way that will be harder for opponents to object to compared to other things they could try.
Jensson 3y ago
> Power at the expense of the other party, to be precise. Power at the expense of the people, that is the most important part by far. Gerrymandering corrupts the democracy by devaluing votes, giving more power to current politicians regardless of side. Giving power back to the people almost never happens.

maxpalmer 3y ago

I'm one of the authors. Thanks for reading our paper. Happy to answer any questions. If you're interested, here is a (still in-progress) simulator I wrote where you can try out Define-Combine on a simple grid. https://mpalmer.shinyapps.io/DefineCombine/ https://mpalmer.shinyapps.io/DefineCombine/

mfrieswyk 3y ago
Would it scale to beyond 2 parties?
- maxpalmer 3y ago
  Potentially in some form, but we haven't investigated it. The utility functions for each party would be very different. Instead of trying to maximize the seats that they win, parties would also need to think about the coalitions that could form if no party won a majority of the seats.
consumer451 3y ago
I really appreciate your work. It appears to address one of the biggest issues of our time. Please do not get discouraged by anyone or anything. We need more of this.
stephencanon 3y ago
Biggest potential weakness seems like the ability for the merging party to strategically collapse districts such that two legislators from the opposing party are made to reside in the same district, creating a new district with no incumbent. Not all legislatures require that representatives live in the district, and there would be real trade-offs to doing so, but it would be a pretty powerful hammer to wield against up-and-coming opposition candidates. It doesn't matter at the abstraction of proportional representation, but it potentially matters quite a bit when you get into the nitty-gritty of actual elections.
- maxpalmer 3y ago
  You're right that this method doesn't protect incumbents. However, protecting incumbency and avoiding open-seat elections isn't necessarily a bad thing, and could increase electoral competition in some places. Some states don't allow incumbency to be taken into account when redistricting already.

wkirby 3y ago

A worthy variation of "I cut you choose" --- the only fair way to divide anything.

fsckboy 3y ago
"I cut, you choose" is not a fair system if it's difficult to predict or control the cutting. Give the cutting task to your 4yo and then take the obviously big piece, or the one that has the larger, now-exposed, gooey center.
- wkirby 3y ago
  Sounds fair to me, teach the 4 year old the consequences of unfair division --- that's the whole purpose of the exercise. The cutter _always_ has the ability to divide the whole in a way that will result in an unfair outcome: that's why the choice is given to the other party. The process is unfair when the division _and_ the choice is held by a single party.

BurningFrog 3y ago

The good thing about this is that it removes the problem of finding selfless competent people to carry out the process impartially. It works when both sides are cynical crooks.

thechao 3y ago

Gerrymandering is a political process; it can't be "solved" with math. If there were a technical solution to the 'gerrymandering problem' we'd've used any of the standard tools for drawing such maps. The major sociopolitical issue is that gerrymandering can be used for both good (minority-majority districts) and "bad" (supermajority plural houses when there's only a bare majority; or, worse). The root of the issue is that map-drawing is unfair and we'd like a fair system. I think for most of the interested parties, you can find middle ground on fair electoral mechanisms. For parties just trying to keep power you can make this argument: gerrymandering moves the election to the primary; the turnout for primaries is abysmal, and the result is that our government is weaker for having gerrymandering. In my state, Texas, there are some districts where the outcome of the election was decided by as little as 2% of the voters, i.e., only 3.5% of the voters showed up to the primary.

iainmerrick 3y ago
Gerrymandering is a political process; it can't be "solved" with math. I think that's a little too defeatist. It's like saying "tactical voting is a political process" and can't be "solved". But you can adopt voting mechanisms that reduce the effect of tactical voting, and many countries have! It doesn't completely solve the problem, sure, but it helps.
- thechao 3y ago
  Let me drill down to Texas, where I am quite active. I have been privy to a conversation[1] with Governor Abbot where he described in detail his horse-trading to swap precincts between Congressional representatives in order to: (1) maximize the number of GOP seats; and, (2) ensure the 'safety' of the win of preferred US reps. Secondary goals include trying to pass (Texas) constitutional amendments to make the following things illegal in Texas: any voting system that's not first-past-the-post; at large proposition mechanisms; independent citizens redistricting committees; etc. [1] This occurred while I waited in line to vote.
- oglop 3y ago
  I'm sorry but I respectfully disagree. Maybe I spent too much time in Ohio. You should read up on the maps there and the supreme court fight. Think about human motivations and desires more, and less about a math proof or abstract papers which literally has gone out the window now. People won't follow what a state supreme court jugde tells them, you think a proof will convince them or solve a very deep psychological problem? I don't, I used to, but Ohio cured me of that.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

This assumes the people doing gerrymandering want a solution They don’t The practice of gerrymandering is self acknowledged adversarial social engineering intended to create an unfair split to consolidate power. Is intentional and domination based The singular and only possible way to execute equitable democracy is enthusiastic engagement by the population in the running of the system. Until you can create a society that gives individuals the time, space, and resources they need to make fully informed decisions on the complexities and externalities of human action, societies will continue to be run by a small handful of high energy narcissists. I am unaware of any large scale (>1000 people) human communities that have demonstrated long term peaceful self organized society, spanning the lifetime of a citizen (~100 years) without a major destabilizing event in their community.

LocalH 3y ago

Part of the problem is the so-called "two-party system" that we effectively had. George Washington had the right idea - political parties will divide and ultimately destroy the nation. We see this happening right now, today, as the Democrats and Republicans argue over high-profile "moral" issues while colluding in the background to benefit the large corporations and disadvantage the individual citizen. Abolish political parties now, before it's too late. It may already be too late.

JackFr 3y ago
How to you reconcile abolishing political parties with the right of free association?
- lupire 3y ago
  Communist China has a political party but only for historical reasons. If they dissolved the Party and kept the Government, it would work just as well.
Alpha3031 3y ago
Abolishing political parties is not possible, people form factions and coalitions based on common interests, and those coalitions form coalitions in order to achieve their goals. You can have a multi-party system, a two party system or a de facto one party system, the difference is that for the latter two, the final coalitions happen beforehand and are presented to voters as a fait accompli.
adrianN 3y ago
It’s impossible to abolish parties. It is possible to change the election system so that a plurality of parties form a government.
- usefulcat 3y ago
  In theory it's possible to change the election system. In practice, effecting such a change requires the cooperation of at least the party in power and probably both parties, so...

sanj 3y ago

Is this a generalized version of sharing a cake? - I get to cut the cake in half - you get to choose which slice to eat

Alpha3031 3y ago
The paper states that this is indeed the case, and also cites previous proposals along similar lines: > Academic researchers have drawn inspiration from the cake-cutting problem to propose processes for fairer redistricting. While this logic has inspired several redistricting proposals (Alexeev and Mixon 2019; Benadè, Procaccia, and Tucker-Foltz 2023; Brams 2020; Ely 2019; Landau, Reid, and Yershov 2009; Pegden, Procaccia, and Yu 2017), none has addressed implementation across the full range of U.S. states and electoral contexts using real-world data. The complexity of previous proposals also precludes real- world applications or even simulation using modern computing techniques.

colonwqbang 3y ago

Can't you just draw the N districts that you want, then break out N new districts from those by extracting a "ring" from each. Then you have N districts each fully surrounded by another district. The only way to merge pairs of adjacent districts is to restore the original layout. Seems like a pretty trivial way to break the algorithm. But I probably misunderstood something.

maxpalmer 3y ago
Yes, that would work. The paper has a note about excluding districts like this: > "Valid districts are contiguous and have equal population. Strict constraints on compactness, geographic splits, or other restrictions are not necessary, but such limitations could be included. However, valid districts may not include “donuts,” where one district entirely encircles another."
JackFr 3y ago
No, I think you are absolutely onto something -- as you describe it, it is trivial to transform from N -> 2N districts in a manner which makes it impossible to combine them back 2N -> N in any other way than the original map. Maybe I'm missing something too. That seems like a pretty big deficiency.

bondarchuk 3y ago

This solution is still based on a concept of defining districts by presumed voting patterns of the inhabitants. Is it really that hard to define districts sensibly purely based on population density/distribution?

spaceprison 3y ago
I was thinking something similar. Carve the geography into small population density based chunks Identify boundaries like Bisecting Highways, railways, Rivers, mountains, etc. Create boundary informed population chunk clusters. Identify features Food Industry Schools Find the shortest road based path from each bounded cluster to each feature. Create convex hulls that enclose bounded population chunk clusters of the target population size and paths to features. Rerun after every census.

harimau777 3y ago

Couldn't we just use proportional representation?

cherryteastain 3y ago

There's a far better solution to gerrymandering than these creative ways to draw lines on a map. It's called proportional representation, and it's used in many countries in Europe (usually combined with the d'Hondt formula). FPTP leads to far more silliness than PR and therefore countries using PR have healthier political discourse and systems. Sad that the UK rejected the proposal to abolish FPTP in the early 10s. Edit: changed this tautological sounding sentence - "None of the countries using PR suffer from the sillinesses arising from FPTP."

card_zero 3y ago
> None of the countries using PR suffer from the sillinesses arising from FPTP Frankly, I'd be surprised if they did. It seems much more likely that they'd suffer from the problems of PR instead.
- cherryteastain 3y ago
  I get what you mean, looking back that sentence reads like a tautology. I guess what I should've said is "FPTP leads to far more silliness than PR and therefore countries using PR have healthier political discourse and systems"
- ensignavenger 3y ago
  I wanted to add some additional thoughts on what the problems of PR might be... - Clusters of minority populations tend to not get as much representation, because they are but a small voice in a bigger ocean of voices. - Representatives can't focus on representing a smaller geographic area, including field offices, outreach, constituent services, etc as easily, because they have to represent a much broader geographic area. - A lack of community ties, as representatives are representing a broader geography, the representative is less likely to know the names, places, and small cultural quirks associated with the communities they represent. Please feel free to add comments of your own with additional downsides. I am generally a fan of proportional voting systems, but I think it is important to have an honest discussion of the pros and cons, as there are ways to build representative systems that balance these concerns- but we have to be aware of and acknowledge them.

michaelbuckbee 3y ago

I've always felt that a simpler solution would be to just increase the number of representatives. In 1912 (the last time we added more), the US population was ~90 million, and it's currently at around ~340 mil and we still have only 435 representatives. 1912: 1 rep per 20,000 people 2024: 1 rep per 780,000 people This doesn't "solve" gerrymandering but it does blunt the effectiveness of it (among hopefully some other positive effects.)

ajross 3y ago
You can gerrymander a tiny district just as easily as you can a giant one. Fundamentally it's just a software problem and modern computers are really fast.
jeffdn 3y ago
In 1912, that's 1 representative per 207,000 people.
- michaelbuckbee 3y ago
  Doh
Alpha3031 3y ago
You missed a zero with the 1921 figure, but it is an interesting question to consider: what exactly is the optimal size of a national assembly? Does it scale best to the square root or cube root of population? Or some other exponent? What are the constant factors? Do larger multi-regional blocs like the US and EU require different styles of representation, and if so does that change the scaling factors? The US could probably do with at least 600 though, minimum.
- jcranmer 3y ago
  > what exactly is the optimal size of a national assembly? This is indeed an interesting question, and I submit that the US is in an awkward state where the national assembly is simultaneously too large and too small. I've seen some statistics that suggest that assemblies tend to start degrading in quality when you get past 300 or so: you end up in a situation where too many members just have nothing to do. At the same time, it's almost certainly the case that the US House has too few members for them to be sufficiently responsive to their constituents.

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ClassyHacker 3y ago

Dirt don't vote, so why are we drawing circles on a map? Just section off a list a of eligible voter' names or IDs. After all you're not representing area, you're representing unity.

dsr_ 3y ago
Even better: have representatives who represent people. We have proper information systems, we can do this. A representative gets qualified by having the appropriate minimum number of people sign up as their constituents. They then represent exactly those people.
grotorea 3y ago
For all the examples of doing geographic districts I sometimes wonder why is that specific special interest group that gets privileged with a district separation instead of any other way to split people. Prussia split districts by wealth too but that was a way to give more power to the rich.
nilstycho 3y ago
How would you section off the list? If you do it uniformly randomly, then every constituency looks identical and you'll get identical results in each constituency. This creates a very non-representative result. Notably, large racial minorities would have their voting power diluted.

j2kun 3y ago

You do still need the controlling party to agree to enact this solution, which is a form of compromise. If you're willing to do that you may as well be willing to cede control to a nonpartisan third party. In either case the outcome will be a reduction in your party's power.

the_snooze 3y ago

In addition to these big-move structural proposals that will take a long time to actually be adopted, there's something everyone can do now that can have an immediate effect: vote in primaries. Gerrymandering has the effect of making the general election meaningless, so the dominant party's primary becomes the whole game. If you're a Republican in Berkeley, for example, you don't need a lot of Republican and moderate voters to tilt the local Democratic primary, because not a lot of people vote in them. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/primary-election-voting-party-switching/630171/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/primary-el...

bondarchuk 3y ago

To everyone in this thread who is stuck on the refrain "technical solutions to social problems never work": broadly shared agreement among people of flesh and blood to use a certain technical solution is ultimately a social solution. The value of a fair technical solution is as a rallying point around which a social solution can be formed. Besides, by the same token any democratic voting system would be deemed a "technical solution to a social problem", yet clearly some of those were adopted and now work.

crazygringo 3y ago

On the one hand -- I love this spirit, of trying to adapt the "I cut you choose" technique to something that might work for gerrymandering. We need as many ideas as we can get! On the other -- unfortunately I don't see how it would actually help, because the first party which defines the half-districts is generally going to "win". If party 1 is the Republican party which wants to maximize rural votes, they just split up every city like a pie, with each slice extending far into the countryside, halfway to the next city. Then it doesn't matter which slices party 2 (Democrats) combine, because they're always stuck with rural votes outweighing city votes. While if party 1 is the Democratic party which wants to concentrate city votes, they do the opposite and surround the city with two halves of a ring that is half-urban half-rural, so the city can't be diluted. Party 2 (Republicans) can combine rural areas only with the ring, while the inside remains totally protected. So one strategy is skinny pointed daggers to invade the cities, the other is about skinny ring shields to protect the cities. By controlling the initial shapes, you control nearly everything. (Of course with real geography it becomes more complex, but the general principle of districts shaped as skinny daggers or shields is still going to be the primary strategy here -- you're not going to win all the districts, but it'll get you the extra 10% or 15% you need.)

ThinkBeat 3y ago

Both parties heavily invest in gerrymandering and both parties apepar to (think) they get an advantage out of doing it. Neither wants the practice to stop. Politicians will pretend outrage when they personally are negatively impacted by a change of course. I think there ought to be precise rules and regulations for how and what you can do, but of course for the reason above, this wont happen.

floren 3y ago
Whoa now, I think it's only called gerrymandering when Republicans do it.

usefulcat 3y ago

This is yet another technical solution to what is fundamentally an incentives problem. Whoever benefits from the status quo (gerrymandering) will naturally be incentivized to resist any change which is objectively more 'fair'. That's the real problem. It's nothing to do with how we draw lines on a map, it's how do you get whoever is currently in power to agree to a more fair system, given that it's (by definition) not in their interest.

WalterBright 3y ago

This problem has been solved by mathematicians: A partisan districting protocol with provably nonpartisan outcomes https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.08781 https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.08781 by Wesley Pegden, Ariel D. Procaccia, Dingli Yu

cool_dude85 3y ago

What happens when there's collusion, e.g. protecting incumbency at all costs? This tends to be the M.O. here in Florida, where the Democrats in office are satisfied without statewide power as long as their asses continue to be the ones in the allotted seats. Algorithms prevent this situation but your way doesn't.

newsclues 3y ago

Technology for direct democracy makes the need for elected representatives obsolete.

mvc 3y ago

Haha, like my granny used to say when there was cake to share. "You cut, I choose".

yttribium 3y ago

Gerrymandering is required by federal law to make sure that blacks are able to elect black representatives; this has obvious second order effects in how the rest of the map is drawn under adversarial conditions. Somehow it seems unlikely that this requirement is going away anytime soon, so any proposed mechanism that does not accommodate this constraint is going to be impractical.

alwa 3y ago
Fortunately, the authors consider this and address it in part 4.2. They propose drawing and freezing-in-place the VRA-mandated majority-minority districts as a first step, before applying their technique to the rest of the districts. They test that approach and find that doing it that way still buys you approximately the same degree of neutrality on the overall map, relative to the status quo.

frud 3y ago

Even if it's stable in a game theory sense, it depends on the political class being partitioned into exactly two parties. Otherwise the two biggest parties would have an incentive to smother all smaller competitors. I think the answer has to lie in an algorithmic solution dependent on a high-resolution population density map.

dragonwriter 3y ago

The solution to gerrymandering is multimember district with proportional representation inside the districts, whether small (e.g., 5 member districts with STV) or large (whole-legislature “district" with party-list proportional) or hybrid (any form of Mixed Member Proportional). Better proportionality in representarion also has a whole host of other benefits. Everything with messing with how you draw lines in single-member winner-take-all districts is just shifting representation problems around and not actually solving them.

AlbertCory 3y ago

> 2 contiguous, equal-population districts What this seems to ignore is the legitimate desire to keep towns or counties in the same district. Most people would consider it silly to have the dividing line be a side street, or even in between two houses.

oglop 3y ago

" One party defines a map of 2 equal-population contiguous districts. Then the second party combines pairs of contiguous districts to create the final map of N districts." What a load of crap and what dream world do they think that could be accomplished? We can't even get ranked voting to work, and most places this past year where they did use it, it's gonna go away because they didn't get the nutjub they wanted, and this is the age of the nutjub. Most Americans want to gerrymander, so do their representatives. It's a total myth this will get fixed or people have the will to do it or that you can somehow have these 2 parties work together, at all. Even if that's some silly "contiguous and combine" setup. Shit, one party would get angry with you for even using a word like "contiguous", that's the bar you have to get passed. Good luck with that.

balderdash 3y ago

I always thought a simple geometric solution would make a huge difference (e.g. a district can have no more than 360 degrees of internal arc (with some modification for districts that border non linear state lines). It would be far from perfect, but it would take the precision out of the gerrymandering process which I think by would be a net positive.

TheGlav 3y ago

The problem isn't that there isn't good solutions to this problem. The problem is that the parties in charge don't want good solutions to the problem.

explaininjs 3y ago

The real problem is the “gerrymandering” of state boundaries and the Senate. CA has around 10 million non-Democrat voters who have had zero representation in the Senate since 1992. In fact the entire West Coast hasn’t had any non-Democrat senatorial representation since 2009. This is why states like the Stare of Jefferson need to be allowed to exist.

abdullahkhalids 3y ago

How about communities decide themselves which district they want to be part of? A community is a village, town, administrative parts of a city, etc. Every 10-15 years, there is a vote across the country in which every community rates adjacent and nearby communities according to who they want to be in the same district as. Then you run some pre-decided fixed algorithm that uses these ratings to join adjacent communities in a province/state in roughly equal populations. The design of this algorithm is left as an exercise to the reader.

daft_pink 3y ago

I wish they could come up with a solution to this that made sense. The things I find particularly troubling about gerrymandering in the US isn’t only that one party gets a few more representatives either way. The reason it’s absolutely terrible in the United States is that it creates uncompetitive districts on both sides and we get extreme candidates that don’t appeal to people in the middle at all and seem to have no ability to compromise and get basic things done. I’m not sure that proportional representation addresses this issue.

dh2022 3y ago

This methods only works for a two-party electoral system...