I'm sorry but this is the kind of "solution" that gives analytical thinking a bad name. Ignoring the political will to implement this, this solution's biggest problem is its willful ignorance of physical boundaries. A four lane highway can be as stark a dividing line between groups as miles of physical space. This article simply dismisses this reality by saying "well politicians never consistently considered those boundaries either, so there"
Ironically, this ostensibly logical argument ends up going further into anti-intellectual territory than the politicians it derides. The thinkers behind this can't think of any other way that math might be used to accommodate or weight the effect of these different boundaries? Really? Or would the resulting boundaries be so aesthetically unappealing that its just better to go for the elegance of straight lines? That is among the stupidest rationales I've read in the whole gerrymandering debate.
The whole post just smacks of incredible naïveté. No wonder engineers and scientists have a bad reputation in representative politics.
Putting aside the problems of districted voting, is this naive attempt really that bad? Why is it a problem if I am in a different voting district than my next door neighboor, we both still go to vote, then have our votes evaluated by the system resulting in a winner. The goal is to make said system as fair as possible (while maintaing the concept of districts). I do not see why physical boundries are relevent at all.
As cduan pointed out, this algorithm might have a bias favoring urban or rural voters, which is a problem.
I have an even simpler algorithm that I think solves all problems of bias. Say you want a state to have N districts. Create N district labels (probably the numbers 1 through N). Now assign each voter in the state to a randomly selected district. For each district, take all but the largest contious regions and re-asign each voter within them. Repeat until all districts are continuous.
Or we could move to a popular vote.
Congratulations, the two of you have aptly demonstrated why these things are never implemented.
There is more than one way to algorithmically draw district lines. The different ways will benefit different people. The people who benefit from a particular method will then conspicuously be found arguing that the way that benefits them is the One True Way, and hire a bunch of lawyers and the RIAA's copyright mathematicians to come up with plausible-sounding arguments for why they're right.
And since neither of them is actually "right" because there is no One True Way, it immediately degenerates into a cynical political battle to choose the best automated gerrymandering algorithm for one's own political party.
As far as the relevance of physical geography, I do see some benefits for the original idea of representatives actually representing an area in Washington. That's more likely to happen if boundaries are drawn along somewhat coherent lines that delineate cities or neighborhoods. On the other hand, those concerns are clearly not the main thing that goes into drawing today's gerrymandered boundaries anyway, so maybe losing that notion for geometrically drawn boundaries isn't a large price to pay.
Ironically, this ostensibly logical argument ends up going further into anti-intellectual territory than the politicians it derides. The thinkers behind this can't think of any other way that math might be used to accommodate or weight the effect of these different boundaries? Really? Or would the resulting boundaries be so aesthetically unappealing that its just better to go for the elegance of straight lines? That is among the stupidest rationales I've read in the whole gerrymandering debate.
The whole post just smacks of incredible naïveté. No wonder engineers and scientists have a bad reputation in representative politics.