How To Steal a Lost Election With Gerrymandering | Two Minute Papers #104

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How To Steal a Lost Election With Gerrymandering | Two Minute Papers #104

Two Minute Papers 02.11.2016 4 362 просмотров 166 лайков

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Gerrymandering, is the process of manipulating electoral district boundaries to turn the tide of an election. There are efficient mathematical techniques to optimally solve such a problem and we'll see how the different electoral districts in the US evolved over the last 20 years as a result of gerrymandering. ___________________ An article on the evolution of a district over 20 years: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/19/gerrymandering-supreme-court-us-election-north-carolina Recommended for you: Metropolis Light Transport - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0Uzit_-h3M Automatic Parameter Control for Metropolis Light Transport - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wOBkJJ-w2s The redistricting game seen in the video: http://www.redistrictinggame.org/game/launchgame.php WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK OUR GENEROUS PATREON SUPPORTERS WHO MAKE TWO MINUTE PAPERS POSSIBLE: Sunil Kim, Julian Josephs, Daniel John Benton, Dave Rushton-Smith, Benjamin Kang. https://www.patreon.com/TwoMinutePapers Subscribe if you would like to see more of these! - http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=keeroyz Music: Dat Groove by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Artist: http://audionautix.com/ Thumbnail background image credits: https://pixabay.com/photo-1594962/ Splash screen/thumbnail design: Felícia Fehér - http://felicia.hu Károly Zsolnai-Fehér's links: Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/TwoMinutePapers/ Twitter → https://twitter.com/karoly_zsolnai Web → https://cg.tuwien.ac.at/~zsolnai/

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Introduction

Dear Fellow Scholars, this is Two Minute Papers with Károly Zsolnai-Fehér. Let's talk about the mathematical intricacies of the elections! Here you can see the shape of the twelfth congressional district in North Carolina in the 90's. This is not a naturally shaped electoral district, is it? One might say this is more of an abomination. If we try to understand why it has this peculiar shape, we shall find a remarkable mathematical mischief.

The wasted vote effect

Have a look at this example of 50 electoral precincts. The distribution is 60% percent blue, and 40% red. So this means that the blue party should win the elections and gain seats with the ratio of 60 to 40, right? Well, this is not exactly how it works. There is a majority decision district by district, regardless of the vote ratios. If the electoral districts are shaped like this, then the blue party wins 5 seats to zero. However, if they are, instead, shaped like this, the red party wins 3 to 2. Which is kind of mind blowing, because the votes are the very same. And this is known as the wasted vote effect. This term doesn't refer to someone who enters the voting booth intoxicated, this means that one can think of pretty much every vote beyond 50% + 1 to a party in a district, to be irrelevant. It doesn't matter if the district is won by 99% of the votes or just by 50% + 1 vote. So, the cunning plan is now laid out. What if, instead, we could regroup all these extra votes to win in a different district where we were losing? And now, we have ceremoniously arrived to the definition of Gerrymandering, which is the process of manipulating electoral district boundaries to turn the tide of an election.

What is gerrymandering

The term originates from one of the elections in the USA in the 1800s, where Governor Elbridge Gerry signed a bill to reshape the districts of Massachusetts in order to favor his party. And at that time, understanably, all the papers and comic artists were up in arms about this bill. So how does one perform gerrymandering?

How to perform gerrymandering

Gerrymandering is actually a mathematical problem of the purest form where we are trying to maximize the number of seats that we can win by manipulating the district boundaries appropriately. It is important to note that the entire process relies on a relatively faithful prediction of the vote distributions per region, which in many countries, is not really changing all that much in time. This is a problem that we can solve via standard optimization techniques. Now, hold on to your papers, and get this: for instance, we can use Metropolis sampling to solve this problem, which is, absolutely stunning. So far, in an earlier episode, we have used Metropolis sampling to develop a super efficient light simulation program to create beautiful images of virtual scenes, and the very same

Conclusion

technique can also be used to steal an election. In fact, Metropolis sampling was developed and used during the Manhattan project, where the first atomic bomb was created in Los Alamos. I think it is completely understandable that the power of mathematics and research still give many of us sleepless nights, sometimes delightful, sometimes perilous. It is also important to note that in order to retain the fairness of the elections in a district-based system, it is of utmost importance that these district boundaries are drawn by an independent organization and that the process is as transparent as possible. I decided not to cite a concrete paper in this episode. If you would like to read up on this topic, I recommend searching for keywords, like redistricting and gerrymandering on Google Scholar. Please feel free to post the more interesting finding of yours in the comments section, we always have excellent discussions therein. Thanks for watching, and for your generous support, and I'll see you next time!

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