What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case? • Hacker News Board

Re: What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

#91

Post by maxerickson » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 3:10 PM UTC

andrewla wrote: post #89

maxerickson wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are stating the efficiency gap incorrectly in the single district case. There can never be one, because the seat goes to the party with more votes (the party with less votes should have 0 seats, no efficiency gap). The simplest example you can work is with 2 districts.

The efficiency gap, as described, is the number of "wasted" votes for one party, minus the number of wasted votes for the other party, summed over all districts and divided by the total voting population. So fundamentally it's just a normalized version of the wasted votes metric. Wasted votes is the thing that concerns me as a metric, and it has the discontinuity noted. Notably, if you have a circular uniformly popul…

Right, but the efficiency gap isn't obsessed with net 0 districts, it is looking for excess wasted votes. No matter how you draw the line through your circle, the net wasted votes across the districts will be 0, so the state wide efficiency gap will always be 0.

I think it's actually literally impossible to use a straight line there for partisan gerrymanding, so it isn't a real useful scenario.

Re: What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

#92

Post by TheCoelacanth » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 3:53 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #13

A proportional representation voting system would also largely solve the gerrymandering problem (no district would be dominated by a single party anymore so exploiting the gerrymandering system wouldn't help much), along with having many other benefits for democracy: http://www.fairvote.org/fair_representation > They complied with the Constitution’s one person, one vote requirement That line is interesting. How is th…

The electoral college is in conflict with the one person/one vote requirement, but it is also part of the Constitution so it is still legal.

Re: What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

#93

Post by TheCoelacanth » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 3:55 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #74

ouid wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why does it start off low for the youngest?

Because younger people have less life experience than older people? How many times do you see articles about 18-23 year old people doing something stupid, and people come to their defense saying something along the lines of 'They're only children!'?

And on the other hand, old people's poor decisions are often blamed on their age as well. The elderly are prime targets for most scams because they are perceived as more likely to fall for them.

Re: What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

#94

Post by andrewla » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 6:37 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #91

andrewla wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The efficiency gap, as described, is the number of "wasted" votes for one party, minus the number of wasted votes for the other party, summed over all districts and divided by the total voting population. So fundamentally it's just a normalized version of the wasted votes metric. Wasted votes is the thing that concerns me as a metric, and it has the discontinuity noted. Notably, if you have a circular uniformly popul…

Right, but the efficiency gap isn't obsessed with net 0 districts, it is looking for excess wasted votes. No matter how you draw the line through your circle, the net wasted votes across the districts will be 0, so the state wide efficiency gap will always be 0. I think it's actually literally impossible to use a straight line there for partisan gerrymanding, so it isn't a real useful scenario.

That's a fair point. Still seems off to me in terms of sensitivity, and once again putting aside the discussion of what the goal of districting should be.

Simplifying the algebra in the calculation, though, the efficiency gap is actually independent of the inefficiencies of any particular district, but dependent only on the population of the districts -- the numerator simplifies to

D - R + sum_i { I(D_i Where D and R are the total Democratic/Republican votes in the state (across all districts) and the I(x) is an indicator function, +1 if true, -1 if false.

If you hold the size of districts to be about even, then this just says that the ratio of the total population of districts that vote R to the total population of districts that vote D should be approximately equal to the ratio of the total state population of R voters to the total state population of D voters.

That seems reasonable, just seems like a roundabout way to get there, and is sensitive to unequal population distributions.

Re: What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

#95

Post by maxerickson » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 8:18 PM UTC

andrewla wrote: post #94

maxerickson wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but the efficiency gap isn't obsessed with net 0 districts, it is looking for excess wasted votes. No matter how you draw the line through your circle, the net wasted votes across the districts will be 0, so the state wide efficiency gap will always be 0. I think it's actually literally impossible to use a straight line there for partisan gerrymanding, so it isn't a real useful scenario.

That's a fair point. Still seems off to me in terms of sensitivity, and once again putting aside the discussion of what the goal of districting should be. Simplifying the algebra in the calculation, though, the efficiency gap is actually independent of the inefficiencies of any particular district, but dependent only on the population of the districts -- the numerator simplifies to D - R + sum_i { I(D_i Where D and R…

An uncontroversial (perhaps the only uncontroversial) goal of redistricting is to make the population of the districts in a state as similar as possible.

Conceptually, I like the idea of having a test for excessive unfairness; states can do whatever they want to deal with their special cases as long as the result is reasonable.

Re: What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

#96

Post by ouid » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 9:56 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #74

ouid wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why does it start off low for the youngest?

Because younger people have less life experience than older people? How many times do you see articles about 18-23 year old people doing something stupid, and people come to their defense saying something along the lines of 'They're only children!'?

You misunderstand. if you are operating only under the assumption that your voting power should be proportional to the time you have left to live, then there's a pretty clear age-power relationship.

If you add an assumption about life experience though, You're going to have to be a lot more specific to explain how these two functions interact. why is the optimum in the middle? Why isn't it bumpy?

As soon as you start adding other factors into your weighting function, I don't know how you can be confident in the shape of your graph without being precise with your functions.

To be fair though, I think that there's a pretty good argument for inverse age weighting. If you're 20, you will eventually have to be 35, so it wouldn't make any sense for you to screw over 35 year olds. If you're 35 though, you'll never be 20 again. There is no incentive for you to not screw over 20 year olds. (unless you have kids, but at that point, everyone has equal investment in society and the premise falls apart).

Re: What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

#97

Post by ouid » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 9:59 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #61

ouid wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why does it start off low for the youngest?

I think that there are some factors that favor younger people when it comes to decision making, and some factors that favor older people. Younger people tend to be more creative and flexible in their thinking. As they get older those tend to diminish, but they gain knowledge and experience. I suspect that until somewhere in middle age the gains from knowledge and experience beat out their thinking becoming less flexi…

it's not about decision making, it's about incentives. No one is arguing for a performance based voting algorithm. A young person will eventually have to be an old person, so they must balance the interests of both. An old person will never have to be a young person again though, so they only vote in the interest of themselves.