Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts • Hacker News Board

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#31

Post by AlanSE » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

EForEndeavour wrote: post #26

labster wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that it uses non-gerrymandered districts from California, where elected officials are not allowed to draw the lines. So any statement is lost, but I guess it’s a fun art project.

Only three letters in this project include California; only the letters T and X are represented exclusively by California. The statement is powerful and hilarious, not "lost."

It's not even a very good T. Some letters are more impressive than others. Q is totally worthless for the political point.

But N, D, U, and a few others are real gems.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#32

Post by taude » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

yholio wrote: post #2

In case it's not entirely clear, the font ridicules the practice of gerrymandering: toying with electoral district borders so that the results favor the incumbent while corralling the voters of the adversaries. So extensive is this practice that the resulting shapes can approximate any letter of the alphabet. Quite readable too.

How accurate are the rest of the districts? Or were there some tweaks to make it work out as the alphabet a little better?

Pretty amazing, though.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#33

Post by munk-a » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

TomK32 wrote: post #14

This needs to be coloured in shades of Blue and Red.

Both parties are equally terrible when it comes to gerrymandering, I, thankfully, vote in a state that is one of seven that has absolutely solved gerrymandering for all time... Vermont - it's hard to creatively draw districts when everyone is in the same one.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#34

Post by mLuby » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

TomK32 wrote: post #14

This needs to be coloured in shades of Blue and Red.

Nah, both parties are complicit; no need to trigger tribalism here, just stop gerrymandering.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#35

Post by furyofantares » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

AlanSE wrote: post #31

EForEndeavour wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only three letters in this project include California; only the letters T and X are represented exclusively by California. The statement is powerful and hilarious, not "lost."

It's not even a very good T. Some letters are more impressive than others. Q is totally worthless for the political point. But N, D, U, and a few others are real gems.

I’m imagining this debate playing out in my head.

I’m not sure if gerrymandering is all that bad. Wait, what’s this, a font made out of gerrymandered districts? It must be really bad, we should do something about it. Except the T doesn’t look that great, and it’s from California anyway. Maybe this isn’t such a big deal after all. And the Q! The Q is barely even gerrymandered. Fuck it, I’m gonna go play some video games.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#36

Post by jandrese » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

toddsiegel wrote: post #24

It says tweet your reps. To be clear, you should probably contact your state rep about this (and send an email, not a tweet). They have the power to do something about it. This is very important, esp. in light the recent US Supreme Court decision on this subject[1]. Gerrymandering creates safe districts that make primaries hold increasingly more weight then general elections, which is leading, in a significant way, t…

Rep's response: Why would I want any of that?

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#37

Post by jandrese » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

AndrewHampton wrote: post #3

FiveThirtyEight did a great podcast series on gerrymandering in 2017 [1]. It turns out to be a much more complicated topic than I expected. Some gerrymandering is even legally required to ensure proper representation of minority groups even if they live in somewhat distributed communities. 1: https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/gerrymandering-podcast/

Which is so hilariously misguided it might be taken as a form of racism. By lumping minorities into a single candidate they create a token representative who has a very safe seat but no power in the state senate and allow all other candidates to effectively ignore that minority entirely. They don't have to worry about angering 5% of their electorate and losing the next election by a 2% margin.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#38

Post by schoen » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

jypepin wrote: post #21

yholio wrote: post #2

In case it's not entirely clear, the font ridicules the practice of gerrymandering: toying with electoral district borders so that the results favor the incumbent while corralling the voters of the adversaries. So extensive is this practice that the resulting shapes can approximate any letter of the alphabet. Quite readable too.

Thanks for clarifying! Was not aware of the practice and didn't even notice the states represented the alphabet! (Non US resident here).

Note that these are Congressional districts (a sub-state district used for electoral purposes). The states' shapes themselves exist for other historical reasons that are probably not mainly related to gerrymandering.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#39

Post by Spivak » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

jascii wrote: post #22

sergiotapia wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they do this doesn't this mean 5 cities will dictate who is in charge of the country?

I'm not quite sure I follow you, could you elaborate?

One of the arguments in favor of the electoral college is that it boosts the voice of people who are in areas with lower population density. This is to ensure that minority interests are respected and taken into account by presidential hopefuls.

Without this protection the voices of people who live outside the 5 major metropolitan areas simply wouldn't matter and candidates would have no reason to listen to their issues and have no repercussions for hurting them to favor city-dwellers.

This would be bad. Very bad. A straight population vote ends up being a scheduling algorithm for issues where rural interests have unbounded wait time.

One could say that the solution of weighting rural votes higher is a clunky system but any replacement voting system needs to take this into account as those small towns are where almost all of our primary industry is.

Re: Ugly Gerry – Font created from congressional districts

#40

Post by tunesmith » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

toddsiegel wrote: post #24

It says tweet your reps. To be clear, you should probably contact your state rep about this (and send an email, not a tweet). They have the power to do something about it. This is very important, esp. in light the recent US Supreme Court decision on this subject[1]. Gerrymandering creates safe districts that make primaries hold increasingly more weight then general elections, which is leading, in a significant way, t…

More competitive? Or more representative of the overall population? Because those two things are at odds.

Say you have a state that is split 55/44, and has nine districts. Do you want nine districts each at 55/44, meaning 9-0? That's more competitive, but less representative of the state. Or do you want five districts for one, and four for the other? That's more representative of the state, but less competitive. Redistricting is hard.

(I suspect my scenario is a false choice if you wrestle with the math enough, but I'm not sure. I prefer the Wisconsin test that we all thought Justice Kennedy would decide in favor of, but then he took the coward's way out, probably corrupt too.)