From the article: That’s the hook, but there is more about gerrymandering in general in the article. Here is the paper.
From the article:
This year, for the first time, the Census Bureau has added random noise to its data that makes it slightly inaccurate at the smallest, most zoomed-in level, but accurate at an aggregate, wide-angle view. The approach, known as “differential privacy,” aims to protect the anonymity of census respondents amid a glut of third-party online data that could otherwise make it possible to personally identify census respondents. The move has prompted a wave of criticism that redistricting based on those “noisy” numbers will be inaccurate.
Duchin, who has studied the Census’ use of differential privacy for the past year, has come to a different conclusion: that, in terms of drawing districts and enforcing Voting Rights Act provisions, the effect of the noise is negligible. But, in something of a surprise, Duchin also found that this noise might actually make it more difficult to do extreme gerrymandering in the new districts—which could actually complicate partisans’ designs for the 2022 congressional maps.
“If you build your district starting with the tiniest particles—in other words, if you do the practices that are associated with gerrymandering and make microdetailed plans—[differential privacy] is going to mess up your numbers more than if you start with larger units and only use the little units to tune at the end,” said Duchin.
That’s the hook, but there is more about gerrymandering in general in the article. Here is the paper.
I cannot for the life of me understand why we're having this conversation aside from sheer unmitigated partisan corruption of the US political system. It would be trivial to come up with a...
I cannot for the life of me understand why we're having this conversation aside from sheer unmitigated partisan corruption of the US political system. It would be trivial to come up with a mathematical model for drawing districts that is nonpartisan and at least somewhat better than letting politicians do it.
I would listen to 538's Gerrymandering Project. Fixing gerrymandering is a surprisingly complex problem even if you have the right intentions. In particular, they have an article "Hating...
It would be trivial to come up with a mathematical model for drawing districts that is nonpartisan
I would say that's not true in the current US. In fact, it's a common point for infighting among democrats - CA and NY, for instance, use a third party commission to do districting. More pragmatic...
I would say that's not true in the current US. In fact, it's a common point for infighting among democrats - CA and NY, for instance, use a third party commission to do districting.
More pragmatic members of the Democratic party criticize this decision, since it means that despite the total control in state legislature both states have far more Republican districts than their gerrymandered Red state counterparts (note that the House minority leader represents a CA district), thereby losing in the tit-for-tat battle for congressional districts.
Whereas others say that gerrymandering is fundamentally wrong and disenfranchisement of voters should not be sought for national political power.
Not everything is both sideism. In fact, few things are when delved deeper into.
This seems a bit too pessimistic. We don’t really have gerrymandering in California anymore, as far as I can tell. But I think it’s easier when when one party effectively has control anyway....
This seems a bit too pessimistic. We don’t really have gerrymandering in California anymore, as far as I can tell. But I think it’s easier when when one party effectively has control anyway.
From the article:
That’s the hook, but there is more about gerrymandering in general in the article. Here is the paper.
I cannot for the life of me understand why we're having this conversation aside from sheer unmitigated partisan corruption of the US political system. It would be trivial to come up with a mathematical model for drawing districts that is nonpartisan and at least somewhat better than letting politicians do it.
I would listen to 538's Gerrymandering Project. Fixing gerrymandering is a surprisingly complex problem even if you have the right intentions. In particular, they have an article "Hating Gerrymandering Is Easy. Fixing It Is Harder" which gets right to the heart of this issue.
Yeah, it's simple. Both parties love gerrymandering, they only get angry about it when the other one does it.
I would say that's not true in the current US. In fact, it's a common point for infighting among democrats - CA and NY, for instance, use a third party commission to do districting.
More pragmatic members of the Democratic party criticize this decision, since it means that despite the total control in state legislature both states have far more Republican districts than their gerrymandered Red state counterparts (note that the House minority leader represents a CA district), thereby losing in the tit-for-tat battle for congressional districts.
Whereas others say that gerrymandering is fundamentally wrong and disenfranchisement of voters should not be sought for national political power.
Not everything is both sideism. In fact, few things are when delved deeper into.
This seems a bit too pessimistic. We don’t really have gerrymandering in California anymore, as far as I can tell. But I think it’s easier when when one party effectively has control anyway.
https://www.pe.com/2019/04/08/gerrymandering-california-doesnt-but-that-doesnt-mean-voting-maps-are-easy/