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Open Source Tool Lets Anyone Redistrict New York

Posted by timothy on from the move-staten-island-a-bit-closer-to-the-bronx dept.

First time accepted submitter Micah_Altman writes "As the next redistricting battle shapes up in New York, members of the public have an opportunity to create viable alternatives. Unlike the previously reported crowdsourced redistricting of Los Angeles, the public mapping of New York is based on open source software — anyone can use this to set up their own public web-based redistricting effort."

2 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Eliminate districts by FooAtWFU · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And the incumbents / established players in charge of districting to begin with... they are going to cede their power and weaken themselves why exactly now?

    --
    The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
  2. Re:Eliminate districts by The+Conductor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I like to describe it like this: First-past-the-post forces coalition building into the political parties, whereas proportional elections have coalition-building in the legislature. Gerrymandering is like coding theory: The party in control of the districts can trade margin of victory (bit error rate) for number of seats (data rate), but if you design for a large number of seats (high data rate) a small decline in popular support (signal-to-noise ratio) will cause a large number of seats to flip (catastrophic rise in bit error rate).