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  • Queen Lion of the Animal Kingdom is giving more democracy to her citizens by adding a

  • legislative branch to the government.

  • The citizens each get one vote and are divided into ranges. Each range will elect one representative

  • to send to the newly created Jungle Council.

  • To best understand how this system works, lets look at a small colony where there are

  • just two political parties: Buffalo & Jackalope.

  • This colony is divided into four ranges. In the first election Jackalope candidates win

  • two of them and buffalo candidates win the rest.

  • All is well for several election cycles until the Animal Kingdom Census taker comes round

  • and shows that the population has both moved and grown.

  • To better represent the larger population a new seat is added to the Jungle council

  • so the ranges' boundaries must be re-drawn.

  • This is where the trouble begins. Re-drawing electoral boundaries is a huge political problem.

  • To help them, the representatives of the Jungle Council hire a weaselly consultant to figure

  • out where the new boundaries should go.

  • If Weasel draws rectangular boundaries everything is OK because the jungle council will, as

  • close as possible, reflect how the citizens vote.

  • However, Weasel doesn't do this. Instead he tells the Buffalo Party that, for a price,

  • he can turn their slim majority into a landslide victory in the election.

  • With a super-majority on the Jungle Council the Buffalo wouldn't have to listen to those

  • pesky Jackalope filibusters anymore, so the Buffalo gladly pay up.

  • How can Weasel deliver on his promise? It's depressingly simple: by packing together as

  • many jackalope voters into one range as possible and spreading the rest of them out, The Buffalo

  • Party can win an additional seat without any voters switching allegiance.

  • What Weasel and the Buffalo have done is called 'gerrymandering'. The intensional changing

  • of electoral boundaries for their benefit.

  • Several election cycles later the under-represented and disgruntled Jackalope party approaches

  • Weasel and asks if he can manipulate the ranges to be in their favor instead of the Buffalos'.

  • Indeed he can. Using the same trick, Weasel packs Buffalo voters into a few ranges and

  • spreads the rest among the Jackalope supporters.

  • After the election the Jackalopes, who represent a minority of the voters are now, nonetheless,

  • the majority party on the Jungle Council.

  • This is the terrible power of Gerrymandering: Weasel can take the exact same voters and

  • get either party to win the election.

  • Unsurprisingly, Weasel's business grows and eventually every colony in the Animal Kingdom

  • pays him to gerrymander their ranges.

  • With so many clients, Weasel now uses his computer test hundreds of thousands of range

  • combinations with elaborate statistical models of voter behavior to get the results he needs.

  • Queen Lion has seen what Weasel is up to and banishes him from her kingdom. But, the census

  • taker reminds her that ranges still need to be re-drawn as the population changes. So

  • how is it going to be decided?

  • Queen Lion suggests the obvious solution: a bi-partisan committee must agree on all

  • new range boundaries.

  • This seems like a good idea. After all, if both parties have to agree on the ranges,

  • then they must end up being fair to everyone.

  • But, after a few election cycles using this solution, Queen Lion notices that she always

  • sees the same faces on the Jungle Council. Representatives almost never get defeated

  • in their elections.

  • It turns out that the interests of the representatives and the interests of the citizens are not

  • the same. Citizens want elections where the candidates have to earn their vote. These

  • are close elections where either candidate has a chance of winning.

  • But, representatives don't want close elections, they want safe elections. Elections where

  • they run in a range that is filled with supporters.

  • Because the representatives are in change of the boundaries they make the safest ranges

  • possible.

  • So, bi-partisan committees are not enough. To truly fix gerrymandering there are three

  • options:

  • The first is to set up a politically independent commission of appointed experts or judges

  • to draw the boundaries.

  • Independent commissions are much better than bi-partisan committees, but still not ideal

  • because they usually group similar areas together so the elections are uncompetitive.

  • And there is always the possibility that the independent commission is not as independent

  • as it appears.

  • The second option is to let math decide the boundaries. There are a number of ways to

  • mathematically divide an area into equally populous ranges.

  • The simplest example of this is called the 'shortest split-line method'. Find the shortest

  • line that splits the voters in twain and repeat as necessary until all the ranges are made.

  • This is much better than an 'independent' commission, but it does have the problem of

  • occasionally producing skewed election results just through pure bad luck of where the boundaries

  • are drawn.

  • But by publishing the algorithm used, all citizens can check the results and be confident

  • that there is no intensional bias in the system.

  • The last solution is an unexpected one: hire back the weasel and embrace gerrymandering.

  • But this time, pay him make the winners most closely match the voters as a whole.

  • While it seems unsavory, this is actually the best way to avoid disproportionate representation

  • which is, by far, the the worst problem of gerrymandering.

  • But, considering these three solutions leaves Queen Lion grumpy.

  • The first two are improvements, but still may result in uncompetitive elections or disproportionate

  • results while the third just feels wrong. Gerrymandering to avoid the problems of gerrymandering

  • is... odd.

  • Remembering what she learned about voting before, she realizes all this gerrymandering

  • is really just a symptom of a more fundamental problem: the method by which each citizen

  • gets only one vote and elects only one representative.

  • There are ways to eliminate gerrymandering and restore competitive elections to make

  • her citizens happy, but to do that Queen Lion is going to have to make some big, fundamental

  • changes to her democracy.

Queen Lion of the Animal Kingdom is giving more democracy to her citizens by adding a

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ジェリーマンダリングの説明 (Gerrymandering Explained)

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    稲葉白兎 に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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