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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.
Or did you think that American politics at the highest levels was actually about serving the public?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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
... It's called Qix!
I don't respond to AC's.
...before they hold a contest to see who can 'redistrict' the best? Nice cash prize for the top 'winners', and the politicos can then use the results to lobby for actual changes. I wonder which side will try it first?
1. What... is redistricting?
2. What... is gerrymandering?
3. What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Sincerely,
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The English-as-a-second-language population
Step 2: Gerrymander your seats into safe districts
Step 3: Gerrymander your opponent's into insane districts
Step 4: Win an election
Step 5: Repeat as needed
Seriously, people find ethical lapses in a political system? How is that possible!
I'm looking forward to "ReDistricting 2: Earmarks, or buying of the votes."
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
One of the big issues in redistricting is minority representation (or non-representation), which leads to districts that consist of urban regions connected by a thin corridor or other similarly bogus shapes. Instead of artificially trying to group minorities (or party strongholds, or whatever) into specific geographical areas, though, why not remove that layer and replace it with a system that inherently represents various groups proportionally?
Using a single transferable vote system like that used for Cambridge (MA) municipal elections could work quite well. In the city council race, there are 9 seats, and any group capable of generating at least 10% of the total votes can elect a councillor of their own, even if that group is spread from one end of Cambridge to the other. Some councillors do have unofficial "districts" where their support is strongest, but this is not a requirement in any way.
STV elections also avoid the "wasted vote" problem with independent or smaller-party candidates, since voters can put one of those as their #1 choice, and if they don't win, those votes transfer down the ballot to the #2 or later choice as necessary.
With the current breakdown of seats by state, a system with a maximum of 11 seats in a district would allow all but 11 states to operate as one large multi-member district; raising the threshold to 13 would add Georgia, New Jersey, and North Carolina to the single-election list.
To use Massachusetts as an example: the current 10 seats in the House are all held by the Democratic Party. I doubt there's any viable redistricting that would allow the Republicans to win even one seat. Under a 10 member STV system, though, the 13% of the state that's registered Republican could elect at least one, and with support from unenrolled voters, possibly more.
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.
Largely solves the redistricting problem.
Deleted
The game is good, making it easy for people to understand what is going on is great. But the whole political system is turning into a game. It's about winning, not the better policies. Remember those blogs after the 04 elections? "Seeing RED?!!" etc.. (Democrats do it too, just haven't been having big wins, once they do it'll be just as disgusting!)
It's about winning, which is what the last support of Bush is hanging on about right now, WE won, it's OUR victory, you can't say anything about it because YOU LOST. And it's really not about that. But making it a game, making it a badge "Proud Republican", "Texas Democrat" is not the way to go. If you're views are mostly in line with the Democrats there's a few republicans out there that you should vote for to stay in line with your views. And vice-versa.
It's the dumbing down of the process into a game. King of the Hill did it correctly when Bill said "I voted yesterday. I guessed right 4 out of 5 times." or something to that effect.
Oh, but this game is on the right track, explaining a complex concept to people in an easy to understand way is a great thing.
The best system for districting the US seems to me to be the one based on post offices. Each post office does define a community, especially in Federal services terms. It serves a small group of people who live very close, sharing mostly the same conditions other than those inside their private dwellings - which are also likely to be similar (and even homeless locals have the same access). It is the most common face of the Federal government, directly serving the community. And it already services election procedures like registration and delivery of election info.
I like the system where each person in a post office's service area (usually a ZIP code or two) selects the neighboring postal zones (up to the state border) to which they're most "connected" in order of "closeness" (as defined by the person selecting). Then all the responses are tabulated purely statistically to generate a map of the most interconnected regions, in a quantity equal to the number of representatives allowed in the state. There could be a second round to accommodate exceptions, like tiny islands (below some predetermined population size) or extremes of minimum/maximum populations in different districts, where the exceptional zones select their associations, as do the neighboring candidates for association to accept association with the exceptional zones.
We should choose our own fellow constituents who choose our mutual representatives. As long as the politicians themselves mediate the process with any discretion, the process will primarily serve them and their parties or other interest groups. We've got the stats and the sense of our neighbors to do it equitably and quickly. We should redistrict at least 10-20% of districts every odd-numbered year for reelection to the House of Representatives on the following year. After no more than a decade or two we should have equitable districts without a hasty conversion that will generate unmanageable sabotage from the existing order.
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make install -not war
To my thinking, the solution is simple: mandate convexity of the districts, with an exception for irregular district borders at state boundaries. Districting would then become a sort of Voronoi diagram over a non-uniform space due to population density. This would reduce the problem to one of choosing the centroids of each district, which would be much harder to manipulate inappropriately due to the complexity of the problem. Still, you could define the locations of the centroids based on some metric such as maximization of distance between the centroids.
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.
I was thinking about this idea a few months ago: You create a realistic sim-type game that when played, it encourages the player learn or develop a particular political point-of-view, simply by demonstrating how things work or don't work together. There was an old game from the mid-late 80's that sort of worked that way called Spheres of Influence.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
http://bolson.org/dist/
I think I've gotten pretty good results for CA, TX, IL, FL and PA
It tries to create impartial districts that keep people on average close to the center of their districts. It works pretty well, but is kinda computationally intense. It could almost become Redistricting@Home if there was interest in the approach.
Start Running Better Polls
I am in fact familiar with the concept of money...
The point here is social inequality. Money may be a proximate factor for social inequality, but I find it unlikely to be the ultimate cause. Money has been around a long time, and throughout that time there have been wide swings in social inequality - it seems desirable to minimize inequality, while maximizing both average and total wealth.
There are other ways to keep those born rich from staying rich, besides your modest proposal, such as inheritance and progressive taxes. These things exist today for that very purpose, but somebody's going to call any type of tax unfair. I think we could stand to be a tad more progressive, making things a little easier for the poor and a little harder for the rich and the corporation, especially in these days of increasingly consolidated wealth, shrinking middle class, and growing poverty.
Before anyone calls me a pinko commie, I think that that the promise of personal wealth is the greatest part of capitalism. However, the grubby capitalistic hand needs to be slapped from time to time to keep it from harding everybody else's cookies. Besides, while money necessarily provides an advantage, there is no reason why that advantage should pay such high dividends to the rich due mainly to its interest bearing nature, and yield such low returns to the poor.