This story was funny. Look at this proposed Congressional district.
I can't believe a Federal judge would approve that district. Unfortunately, State thugs may do as they please.
The legal standard for approving voting districts is "As long as the Federal judge doesn't laugh too hard, it's OK."
There's an obvious Math rule that would work. Voting districts should be convex.
"Convex" means "For any two points X and Y in the district, a straight line joining X and Y must be in that district."
"Voting districts must be convex!" would eliminate flagrant gerrymandering abuse. Unfortunately, judges are Mathematically illiterate. It's now a precedent that politicians may manipulate district lines. They won't give up that perk.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Math And Gerrymandering
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3 comments:
Why is it that the districts must be convex? What is the political difference between a convex and a concave district? Let's see...
We have a democracy in US, where a bum who never worked in his entire life, has an equal voting power as someone who produced all his life. So, the meaning of the democracy as it applies within the US, is this: the bum says that the producer must earn some money then give it to the bum. The producer says nope. The true meaning of the American style democracy is that once there are more bums, then the answer of the producers don't matter.
In terms of voting geography, the entire US is a convex voting district. Considered in terms of black and white division on bums and producers, this would be two extremely concave districts, with most complicated configurations.
To me, it is the top of the importance to separate the districts of bums from the districts of the producers (in simplified terms) in order to negate the communist nature of us democracy.
I am surprised to hear that you would prefer to see a perfectly convex districts, which empowers the bums to vote, in order to receive the spoils of the income redistributing skimmed of the producers.
Myself, I would want nothing less than to enclose bums in their own 100 % bum districts, where they can vote all the freaking want to redistribute their own wealth.
This approach is imperfect, as in perfection, there should be NO TAX, and no democracy, while any attempt to vote on any wealth belonging to others should be immediately punishable by death. But we don't live in a perfect world.
If one voting district is convex, wouldn't the adjacent district have to be concave?
No. Consider rectangular districts.
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