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Show HN: Gerrymandle - Daily puzzle game where you redraw electoral districts

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Re: Show HN: Gerrymandle - Daily puzzle game where you redraw electoral districts

#31

Post by summarybot »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #26
summarybot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The House of Representatives is already a cacophonous, boisterous coliseum.

The House is a group of individuals that are so afraid to defy the president because the President can send a bunch of money to primary any one who disagrees with them. Big districts require a lot of money to run a campaign. Small districts mean you don't need a lot of money, and heck they might already know you. A larger house means more political independence from the bully-pulpit. And the House is MEANT to be caco…

It'd be interesting to run some numerical simulations to see at what number of Reps coordination becomes unfeasible or leads to perennial grid-lock. The Senate, on the other hand, is the "saucer" for the hot tea of the Lower House. Back in the day, people would pour tea from the tea cup straight into the saucer to cool it down, and sup from the saucer directly. Which means that the saucer "cooled down" the ferocity and fiery intensity of the "discussions" in the Lower House. Does this relationship still hold if the Lower House is significantly more populated? Probably. But that might also be worth investigating.

Re: Show HN: Gerrymandle - Daily puzzle game where you redraw electoral districts

#32

Post by Georgelemental »

collinmcnulty wrote: post #27
WalterBright wrote: post #23

Some mathematicians worked out a way to fairly do districting, similar to having one kid cut the cake and the other kid gets first choice: "A partisan districting protocol with provably nonpartisan outcomes" by Wesley Pegden, Ariel D. Procaccia, Dingli Yu https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.08781

An interesting mathematical curiosity, but kinda seems to ignore the political realities that make gerrymandering happen in the first place. If you had the will to make this happen, why would you not just do proportional representation? The modern point of having districts is to gerrymander.

Because local representation is important too?

Re: Show HN: Gerrymandle - Daily puzzle game where you redraw electoral districts

#33

Post by thechao »

gnerd00 wrote: post #16

great idea to make Gerrymandle! congrats on the alpha US/California etc gerrymandering is dramatically illegal IMHO. I see the recent gerrymandering in the USA as a kind of political cancer actually....

I know your threw an "etc" in there; but, all fingers point to my home state: Texas. We need two legislative changes at the federal level: (1) uncap the house from 435 to at least cube-root or (better) max 500k; and, (2) you can't be sworn in unless your district was from an ICRC or statistically equivalent object.

Re: Show HN: Gerrymandle - Daily puzzle game where you redraw electoral districts

#35

Post by collinmcnulty »

Georgelemental wrote: post #32
collinmcnulty wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting mathematical curiosity, but kinda seems to ignore the political realities that make gerrymandering happen in the first place. If you had the will to make this happen, why would you not just do proportional representation? The modern point of having districts is to gerrymander.

Because local representation is important too?

Then run a hyperlocal party if you really have a constituency that cares deeply about their local issues and win enough votes to get a seat.

Re: Show HN: Gerrymandle - Daily puzzle game where you redraw electoral districts

#36

Post by TSiege »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #12
convolvatron wrote: post #9

very basic issue, its not clear to me how to start a new district, it just extends the old one. I managed to do it accidentally a couple times, but I don't know how

By default, you work on one district at a time. Clicking adds tiles to the current district until the current district is full, then clicking will create a new district. District size is determined per round, described at the top as eg. "draw 5 districts of 4 populated tiles". You can also click a square in the "Districts" section of the header to switch to a different district, including an empty one to create a new…

I’m on mobile and that works for me sometimes but other times it just decides the district I’m working on is done and starts a new one. It’s not clear to me why or how to get that to not happen

Cool concept tho! Would like to play it if I could only understand how

Re: Show HN: Gerrymandle - Daily puzzle game where you redraw electoral districts

#37

Post by SubiculumCode »

summarybot wrote: post #31
SubiculumCode wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The House is a group of individuals that are so afraid to defy the president because the President can send a bunch of money to primary any one who disagrees with them. Big districts require a lot of money to run a campaign. Small districts mean you don't need a lot of money, and heck they might already know you. A larger house means more political independence from the bully-pulpit. And the House is MEANT to be caco…

It'd be interesting to run some numerical simulations to see at what number of Reps coordination becomes unfeasible or leads to perennial grid-lock. The Senate, on the other hand, is the "saucer" for the hot tea of the Lower House. Back in the day, people would pour tea from the tea cup straight into the saucer to cool it down, and sup from the saucer directly. Which means that the saucer "cooled down" the ferocity a…

Larger house does impose some needs for restructuring business in the House. An expansion of the committee system, a reworking of important comittees into small Houses, where those houses have various committees,because clearly the current comittee system would concentrate important positions to too few (as a proportion) of Representatives. This could allow for greater specialization of comittees and people, which is probably a good thing given today's complexities.
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