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Redistricting Videogame Shows Problems in the System
An anonymous reader writes "This is a cool redistricting game that was launched out of the capitol building in Washington DC last week. It was created by the USC Game Innovation Lab and has been getting lots of press. It's about time someone took on a tough issue like redistricting reform using the power of the internet." It's crazy that gerrymandering is actually good fodder for a video game.
A good game has a well defined difficulty curve. What I found really interesting about this one is that the final stage is a hypothetical environment where redistricting reform is implemented and you're forced to define zones of near-equal population without any information provided for race or party affiliation.
That "final environment" is impossible to complete while keeping all the incumbents in their seats.
Which is the whole point, AFAIK, one I wholeheartedly agree with.
It's too bad there's no way to download the game and mirror it elsewhere or just hold onto a copy. Little gems like this are likely to disappear after a few months.
More Twoson than Cupertino
1. What... is redistricting?
2. What... is gerrymandering?
3. What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Sincerely,
--
The English-as-a-second-language population
STV has a serious problem. It is the only seriously proposed voting system I've ever heard of which fails the monotonicity criterion. This means that voting for someone can cause them to lose. I.e., if you don't vote for them, they win; if you do vote for them, they lose (assuming everyone else votes the same way in both cases). This actually holds for any instant run-off systems (i.e., with more than one transfer). This is fucked up. Just say no to STV.
I live in Florida - 20 years ago we tried to setup a logical redistricting system and were run out of town. The Republicans and Democrats would prefer to abuse each other every census. Any changes might allow for a thrid party and that will unite them against the people they represent everytime.
Remember that most states have 'winner-take-all' electoral votes, because the Republicans got with the Democrats to stop Teddy Roosevelt and his Bull Moose party.
This doesn't exactly ban or rule out the possibility of gerrymandering, but Iowa instituted a much fairer way of redistricting back in the early 80s. Instead of the legislature drawing the lines, an independent committee (4 appointments from each caucus, plus a chairperson) draws up three new redistricted maps with the following guidelines:
1 - population equality,
2 - contiguity,
3 - unity of counties and cities (maintaining county lines and "nesting" house districts within senate districts and senate districts within congressional districts), and
4 - compactness.
When you look at these guidelines, you'll find it tries to do the same thing that various mathematical algorithms, which others have suggested in response to the parent post, try to do. The three proposed maps are sent to the legislature, who attempt to choose one in a simple take-it-or-leave-it vote, with contingencies if the legislature can't decide on one.
The result is that four of five congressional districts in Iowa are consistently competitive and mirror the state's overall political makeup. Compare that to about 50 of 435 congressional districts nationwide being competitive, despite the nearly even split between Democrats and Republicans.
Some Iowa politicians grumble when they have to move their home to stay within their redrawn district, but by and large everyone feels that the system is fair and equitable. Neither party considers abusing the system, because they realize how blatant it would appear, and because they know that the next time the same abuse could be revisited on them.
Here is an interesting site which gives you some visualizations of voting methods. Take a look at IRV:
http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/
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