by JTDC » Fri Jul 12, 2013 6:09 pm
Astrogirl wrote:http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=3047
I don't get this one, either. I know what gerrymandering is, cutting voting districts to favor one party. But what's this with the 1/3 shape and being subsumed and why are the letters suddenly at the borders.
The notion is that if the district looks like it's been gerrymandered (making 1/3 have the word gerrymandering in it), then it won't be desirable to gerrymander.
However, this proposal is terrible for a number of reasons:
First, equal area means that gerrymandering is actually
easier, because you just put the population-dense district in the are that supports the party you don't like, and put the other districts in the non-population dense areas. Look at New York: NYC would be one district in New York--12 million people, one district. The other 7 million people would be divided among 26 districts. I wonder how that would skew?
Secondly, this proposal embarrasses the
loser in the gerrymander war--the districts are set up to cram as many of one party into a single district, giving them exactly one district, and distribute as much as possible members of the other party, giving them more districts. So the incentive here is to basically screw the other party harder, not avoid gerrymandering.
In short, author doesn't understand gerrymandering.
[quote="Astrogirl"]http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=3047
I don't get this one, either. I know what gerrymandering is, cutting voting districts to favor one party. But what's this with the 1/3 shape and being subsumed and why are the letters suddenly at the borders.[/quote]
The notion is that if the district looks like it's been gerrymandered (making 1/3 have the word gerrymandering in it), then it won't be desirable to gerrymander.
However, this proposal is terrible for a number of reasons:
First, equal area means that gerrymandering is actually [i]easier[/i], because you just put the population-dense district in the are that supports the party you don't like, and put the other districts in the non-population dense areas. Look at New York: NYC would be one district in New York--12 million people, one district. The other 7 million people would be divided among 26 districts. I wonder how that would skew?
Secondly, this proposal embarrasses the [i]loser[/i] in the gerrymander war--the districts are set up to cram as many of one party into a single district, giving them exactly one district, and distribute as much as possible members of the other party, giving them more districts. So the incentive here is to basically screw the other party harder, not avoid gerrymandering.
In short, author doesn't understand gerrymandering.