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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

#61

Post by SubiculumCode »

psadauskas wrote: post #52
SubiculumCode wrote: post #21

The number of voting members has been strictly capped at 435 since the passage of the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. In 1930, there was an average of 294k citizens per Rep. In 2020, there was an average of 761k citizens per Rep. At some points in U.S. history, the ratio was 30k:1. I am not sure whether having very small districts would help or hurt gerrymandering, because it all depends on spatial constraints a…

I'm also a fan of making it 30k:1. You wouldn't even need to send everyone to DC, it could be done nearly 100% remote these days. As long as I'm waving my magic wand around, I'd also like to see it handled more like jury duty, the representative just gets picked at random from the pool of 30k. Or maybe randomly select 10 people, and that's who we get to vote for. Then after 2 years, they get to run for re-election on…

The problem with random, is that people just won't believe it was random.

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

#62

Post by soupspaces »

helterskelter wrote: post #48

There has to be a better way of representing a population than our current system. There is just no way you can represent real, complex, demographics in a fair and proportional way -- there are an unlimited number of ways to categorize people, and by grouping them one way you will often exclude grouping them in other, and perhaps not less significant ways. What you end up with is a very skewed representation of a pop…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_cake-cutting

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

#63

Post by rainsford »

dmurray wrote: post #50
eig wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In real-life, before the election there is a margin of error on the support of a bloc. If you interpret a "tie" in this game as "either party could win within the margin of error", then it becomes a lot closer to solving the problem that gerrymandering algorithms try to solve in real life!

Have you played the game? The board today has three parties and the winning solution is to make sure your party wins one district and the other parties tie in the other four. Under any real world system, you will lose this election if you rig it this way. You just can't predict who will win it instead.

Edit: Per a comment below, this does not seem like a regular feature of the game, just an oddity of today. It would still be worth figuring out a way to eliminate the tie issue or at least ensure it's less of a factor in future games, but the game is much more fun on average overall than today's game suggests

Yeah I don't know if that was just the puzzle today, since this is the first time I've heard of or played this game, but that feature seemed like a disappointing execution of an otherwise genuinely unique idea.

Winning a single district for your extremely minority party while locking the other two parties out of winning anything isn't even remotely analogous to how real world gerrymandering works, at least in the US where the term is typically used. It also feels like cheating, since it relies primarily on exploiting a flaw that exists exclusively in the game but not in real life. I'm all for simplification of real world factors in games, but not to the point where the entire path to victory relies on that simplification.

A more accurate and more interesting variation would be to just have two parties with puzzles that rely on crafting districts where the party with fewer voters wins the majority of seats, with the challenge coming from voter distribution patterns that make it hard to create winning districts while following the game's rules. The addition of a third party and ties that result in nobody winning seem both unnecessary and worse.

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

#64

Post by [deleted] »

sfRattan wrote: post #55
shagie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a board game from a few years ago that I'd recommend for such a situation: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/252997/mapmaker-the-gerr... - it was a kickstarter and available beyond that for a few years: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1639370584/mapmaker-the... The designer diary: https://boardgamegeek.com/blog/1/blogpost/111646/designer-di... We're three siblings from a gerrymandered district in Austi…

I picked up a copy on ebay a while after the Kickstarter! Mapmaker is a great game for tabletop veterans and newbies alike, although the first playthrough can be a little opaque even to regular gamers (especially the first few moves when there are no established district boundaries yet). It definitely benefits from repeat play, goes quickly once you know the rules, and has you doing only one thing each turn. Definite…

[deleted]

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

#65

Post by toast0 »

cyode wrote: post #10

I could see this being a great activity in a high school civics class. Very creative. One rule that tripped me up is: > If two parties tie in a district, nobody wins it. This isn't realistic as ties don't happen in practice in elections, and some party will end up representing it. But the spirit of the gerrymandering concept is conveyed well enough.

> This isn't realistic as ties don't happen in practice in elections, and some party will end up representing it.

Ties happen from time to time. Here's one I could find [1], and I recall one that I can't find maybe a decade ago in coastal northern california that they resolved by throwing dice.

[1] https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2024/dec/4/election-tie-blue-la...

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

#66

Post by waterTanuki »

rainsford wrote: post #63
dmurray wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you played the game? The board today has three parties and the winning solution is to make sure your party wins one district and the other parties tie in the other four. Under any real world system, you will lose this election if you rig it this way. You just can't predict who will win it instead.

Edit: Per a comment below, this does not seem like a regular feature of the game, just an oddity of today. It would still be worth figuring out a way to eliminate the tie issue or at least ensure it's less of a factor in future games, but the game is much more fun on average overall than today's game suggests Yeah I don't know if that was just the puzzle today, since this is the first time I've heard of or played thi…

The goal of this puzzle appears to be to get more people to talk about the issue and push for change. In these things, you can have either popularity or nuance but not both. The average American can't even read, let alone understand the nuance or complexity in how gerrymandering "actually" works.

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

#68

Post by Brendinooo »

realmofthemad wrote: post #5
coder97 wrote: post #3

I think I did not understand this game well. May I suggest adding a few introductory levels of increasing difficulty for beginners.

I'm sorry you've found it a bit difficult to pick up! There is an introduction below the game, but it can still be a bit hard to follow since it's all text. I'll see about adding an additional, optional, interactive tutorial.

I LOVE this game, but it took a little while to pick up, mostly because I didn't realize that ties were a part of the mix.

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

#69

Post by jmpavlec »

I got a flawless victory in a landslide with 0 hints but the result screen is a bit confusing. There are players that used hints that are to the "right" of where it shows me. Makes me feel like those people did better than me... But actually they did worse since they needed a hint or 4. Fun little game.

How do you curate the puzzle each day? Can you easily automate a bunch of puzzles then hand select them so back to back days aren't too similar? Or is it manual?

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

#70

Post by MarkusQ »

realmofthemad wrote: post #49
MarkusQ wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[spoilers] https://snipboard.io/NZ8sa7.jpg

That helps a lot, thank you! A district is a connected group of hexes. With the other districts you have drawn, there is no way to create a connected group of hexes containing all remaining colored ones

Connected hexes meaning "connected _occupied_ hexes"? It certainly seems to let you select empty hexes. Is it that the "size" of a district is based on area, rather than population (as in the real world)?

No, that's not it. Is it that some empty hexes (not just outside the map, but inside as well) are mysteriously not allowed?

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