
The Supreme Court discussed my research on gerrymandering: some misconceptions - clarkevans
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/10/06/the-supreme-court-discussed-my-research-on-gerrymandering-there-were-some-misconceptions/
======
djrogers
I think the author may be getting a bit too defensive of his work here - not
that he doesn't have a right to defend it, but he may be seeing attacks on it
where they don't really exist.

It's exceedingly common for Supreme Court justices to ask controversial
questions they think/know others will have, regardless of their own opinions -
many times you will see them ask questions or dig in to areas that are in
direct contrast to their leanings.

The reasons for this are two-fold. First, these _are_ Supreme Court Justices;
their opinions become law, and they have a responsibility to understand both
sides on an argument. Second, they understand that it's best for the court and
the country if controversial/questionable things are brought up and addressed
in session rather than debated endlessly after their decisions are issued.

In short, don't read too much in to what questions the justices ask, or what
aspects of a case they question...

~~~
dcow
This is, in a nutshell, both why I love hackernews and what's so frustrating
about discussing a topic these days. It's impossible to explore something you
may totally disagree with without people generally reducing that exploration
to a proxy for your worldview and consequently making character judgements or
finding a way to get offended to the point where the identity politics card
gets played and you get labeled a bigot for some conclusion you never
supported but was obviously present in the undercurrents of your questions.
The Supreme Court judges aren't special in that respect. Anyone should be
allowed to question and explore a topic without having to issue trigger
warnings or generally be expected to manage the "visceral" response their
questions might evoke from a bystander observing the discussion or even the
participants. The way you handle input into your personal biological process
is your responsibility not mine. And society does not exist to protect you
from malicious input, although you are free to choose networks where the
chances frequency of receiving such input is relatively low.

~~~
eduren
One prerequisite to having those sorts of meaningful exploratory discussions
is trust between the participants. When I was a member of my college's debate
team, there were plenty of times I had to not only explore distasteful
viewpoints, but also defend them. But because all participants (debaters,
judges, audience) were participating in a structured activity there was less
fear that my words would be tied to my worldview.

But in general social contexts, there are vastly different rules. When it
comes to dealing with possibly distasteful words or actions, then the safest
assumption is that the speaker means what he says (walks like a duck...)

Now, whether that has always been as apparent, I can't say. I didn't live in
the golden years before the internet. But I don't like the automatic
assumption that "these days" are somehow incapable of fostering well-
intentioned rhetoric.

~~~
kbenson
I would say another prerequisite is allowing that you might have
misinterpreted the other party, and exploring what they said that you disagree
with before assuming you know all the details of their stance, or whether what
you think is their position is actually their position.

That's what confused me about the following, if I'm interpreting it correctly:

> But in general social contexts, there are vastly different rules. When it
> comes to dealing with possibly distasteful words or actions, then the safest
> assumption is that the speaker means what he says (walks like a duck...)

I would say the safest assumption is to assume as little as possible
initially, and try to dig out the details. Assuming they mean what they say is
always problematic because you are assuming they mean what you _interpreted_
them as saying, when in reality they may mean what they _intended to express_.
And lest someone say that's uncommon, I find that it's at least in part true
of the _vast majority_ of positions I don't agree with here when solicit more
details from the other party.

Edit: Cleaned up for clarity

~~~
eduren
Thanks for responding, I think I get what you're saying.

>I would say the safest assumption is to assume as little as possible
initially, and try to dig out the details

Just to clarify, when I said _safest_ assumption I actually meant in the
context of personal safety (not trying to spread FUD, just acknowledging we
live in uncertain times).

I would characterize your assumption as the _fairest_ because it avoids
misunderstanding and makes sure all participants get to fully articulate what
they believe. While fair discourse ought to be the bedrock of a just society,
it might not always be irrational to take people at their word.

~~~
kbenson
That's true, I was still looking at it from the perspective of a safe setting
(such as an internet comment). In physical contexts, my strategy is a bit more
nuanced, in that I'll assume I may have misinterpreted[1], but make certain
decisions as to involvement with the assumption I interpreted correctly. In
other words, I'll choose to disassociate myself from situations where I feel
danger. What I endeavor to do after situations like that is to not assume I
was correct (without further evidence) and use that in future decisions. That
is, I try not to say or think "the guy driving in front of me was drunk so I
made sure not to drive close to him" but instead "the guy driving in front of
me was swerving a lot and it appeared he might be drunk, so I made sure not to
drive close to him." To some it seems like a small difference, but keeping
your assumptions classified as assumptions in your head can be hard.

1: Of course this is with respect to how possible it is to misinterpret. "Kill
the Jews!" is unlikely to result in a different interpretation on examination
that results in a different action on your part.

------
indubitable
I never understand why at large proportional voting systems are never even
considered. Even without gerrymandering, district based plurality elections
are an extremely flawed system. Imagine we have a perfectly well distributed
state - 35% democrat, 30% republican, 20% libertarian, 15% green. And we draw
up perfectly fair lines for our 10 representatives. And this state now has
their election. What any person would rationally expect would be about 3.5
democratic representatives, 3 republican representatives, 2 libertarian
representatives, and about 1.5 green representatives. Instead we get 100%
democratic representatives as they get a plurality of votes in each district.
35% of the support, no gerrymandering whatsoever, and 100% of the seats. I
don't see how anybody can find this system defensible, let alone desirable.

And this is even more true now a days where geographic vicinity to a
representative doesn't really mean much of anything. In the times these laws
were drawn up good chunks of the population would have known their
representatives personally, or at worst have a very minimal number of degrees
of separation. So there would be some good argument for having geographically
close representatives. In today's society we're very disconnected from our
representatives, physically and metaphorically. There's no intimacy between
constituent, so much as we can even be considered constituents anymore, and
representative. They're simply the person we send our letters to and whom gets
to respond with focus tested form letters.

~~~
durgiston
Several US states have in fact had a various times at-large representatives
(most notably Hawaii and New Mexico since the time they were admitted into the
Union). In 1967, the Single-Member Districting Mandate
([https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/2c](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/2c))
was passed to mandate geographically based single-member districts. One reason
it was passed was because of fears that southern states would use at-large
districts to dilute the black vote. The other is that at the time, Indiana was
under court-order to elect all 11 of its representatives at-large unless it
could come up with a satisifactory districting plan. This was an attempt by
Congress to claw back some power from the judiciary after the 1962 Baker case
declaring the one-person/one-vote principle that districts must be of roughly
equal population. I think that it is an interesting debate and definitely
doesn't get talked about enough (or at all!) in school.

~~~
ykler
This is very interesting. Why was it thought that at-large districts would
dilute the black vote? Blacks were a minority in every southern state, I
believe, so naively one would think that they would stand to benefit from at-
large districts and suffer from gerrymandering. The only way I can think this
might not happen is if the plan were to only have a very small number of the
representatives (like one) be at-large, but presumably the relevant proposal
should be to have all representatives be elected on an at-large basis (?)

~~~
bonyt
This is because an at-large system isn't the same as a proportional
representation system. In an at-large system, 51 percent of voters can still
control 100 percent of the seats. This is because each voter gets one vote
_per seat_. For example, if a hypothetical state had 5 Representatives elected
on at at-large basis, and 51% of the state favored one party, they could win
51% of the vote _for each seat_ , and win every seat.

------
emodendroket
Maybe I'm way off-base here, but I find it highly unlikely that Samuel Alito
is going to rule in favor of reining in gerrymanders regardless of what he
reads, and it seems much more likely that this is post-hoc reasoning on his
part.

------
rayiner
I don't think I agree with the author's characterization of Justice Alito's
questions. The transcript is here:
[https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcr...](https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2017/16-1161_bpm1.pdf).

The first quote comes from page 61-62:

> JUSTICE ALITO: You paint a very dire picture about gerrymandering and its
> effects, but I was struck by something in the seminal article by your
> expert, Mr. McGhee, and he says there, " _I show that the effects of party
> control on bias are small and decay rapidly_ , suggesting that redistricting
> is at best a blunt tool for promoting partisan interests."

The author edits out the italicized portion, but that's probably what Justice
Alito was focused on.

The second point is addressed at pages 42-44. Justice Alito states:

> And then a year later you bring this suit and you say: There it is, that is
> the constitutional standard. It's been finally -­ after 200 years, it's been
> finally discovered in this paper by a young researcher, who concludes in the
> end -- this is the end of his paper -- after saying symmetry and
> responsiveness have shown to be -- looked to be inappropriate, "The measure
> I have offered here, relative wasted votes, is arguably" -­ arguably -- "a
> more valid and flexible measure of -- of partisan -- of partisan
> gerrymandering."

> Now, is this -- is this the time for us to jump into this? Has there been a
> great body of scholarship that has tested this efficiency gap? It's full of
> questions.

The author's response misses the point. Law is not science. It iterates, but
it's not free to change the rule every year to get incrementally better
results. What's at stake in this case is nothing less than peoples' right to
self determination. Both on the side of each person's vote counting fairly and
equally, but also on the side of elected, sovereign state governments being
permitted to run their elections without undue federal meddling.

It's one thing to say that this standard is better than what's come before.
But that's not what the Justices care about. They want a rule they can carve
into stone and leave in place for decades if not centuries hence.

I happen to think that the Supreme Court should affirm the district court's
invalidation of Wisconsin's redistricting plan. But Justice Alito was asking
questions that needed to be asked.

~~~
wpietri
Regarding the "small and decays rapidly" bit, it appears that, at best, Alito
didn't know what he was talking about:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fake-news-comes-
to-t...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fake-news-comes-to-the-
supreme-court/2017/10/03/3a17f86c-a87b-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html)

~~~
mikeyouse
Right. And the commenter that you're replying to coincidentally left the next
paragraph off of the WaPo article:

> _The paper referenced by Alito drew on data from the 1970s through the
> 1990s. At that point, the impact of gerrymandering was, in fact, relatively
> small. I have since extended the analysis with more recent data, and the
> results indicate that the effect of gerrymandering is now much larger. In
> fact, the size and scale of partisan gerrymandering has accelerated rapidly
> in just the last two redistricting cycles, as voters have become more
> committed to their parties and the tools for drawing gerrymanders have
> become more sophisticated._

------
j_s
Math Professor Fighting Gerrymandering with Geometry |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13713252](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13713252)
(Feb 2017)

What convinced the Supreme Court to take the Wisconsin gerrymandering case? |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14751953](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14751953)
(Jul 2017)

Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group – Tufts University |
[http://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/](http://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/)

 _a need for expert witnesses who understand the mathematical concepts
applicable to gerrymandering. To meet that need, she’s spearheaded the
creation of a five-day summer program at Tufts [the first in a series of
regional trainings] that aims to train mathematicians to do just that [...]
over 900 people have indicated their interest by signing up for a mailing
list_

[http://tufts.us15.list-
manage.com/subscribe?u=3529c170e5d9b7...](http://tufts.us15.list-
manage.com/subscribe?u=3529c170e5d9b7aa8ab22ea62&id=a979bdf71d)

(re-post of mailing list link)

edit: To be clear, I don't have a pony in this race; I just believe the info
and opportunity is important and may reach members of its intended audience
here. The July article dug into the reasoning behind the efficiency gap and
pursuit of mathematical models:

> _The efficiency gap is an elegant way to quantify the extent of partisan
> gerrymandering. But more than that is needed to win a case. The challenged
> plan must also be more biased than other maps, inconsistent with the state’s
> spatial patterns, and durable in its effects. And these elements can only be
> established by additional studies._

Another HN user shared a higher-level summary I will try to TL;DR here:

> paulmd: _SCOTUS turns based on which side of the bed Kennedy wakes up on (on
> most issues). [...] mathematicians heard [Kennedy might be open to striking
> gerrymandering down] And now the court cases are working their way back up
> to SCOTUS, only with the academic models that Kennedy has indicated he
> wants._
> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14753909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14753909)

~~~
sukilot
Why does this project need research mathematicians to study simple statistical
problems that have known solutions. It seems that they are recruiting
"mathematicians just to provide an aura of authority to their work, in the one
field where results can always speak for themselves.

~~~
j_s
> simple statistical problems that have known solutions

Can you please share the key terms allowing further research of the known
solutions?

------
erentz
In this era, the whole idea of having many small winner take all districts is
the problem. Gerrymandering is small by comparison and removing gerrymandering
won’t result in much change.

The solution is to moved to STV and expanding the size of districts to elect 3
to 5 representatives instead.

~~~
criddell
Is there any reason to not remove gerrymandering?

~~~
andrewla
This is a complicated question, because it isn't defining what the alternative
is.

Redistricting is the process of setting the boundaries of districts. This has
to be done for two principle reasons:

1\. To adjust for population changes over time. This is undisputed.

2\. It can be argued that this also makes sense to group together areas that
have similar concerns -- in an extreme example, separating primarily
agricultural districts from primarily urban districts. This is relatively
uncontroversial.

Gerrymandering is a term that describes a third reason:

3\. Redistricting with the intent of producing a bias towards a particular
party. This is pretty uncontroversially considered bad.

It's difficult to prove that this is happening; that's what this whole case is
about, or at least a subset of it. Namely, to establish the "efficiency gap"
as a metric on a state-wide basis for saying whether the redistricting is
trying to do #3 in the guise of doing #2.

Many proposed solutions to the redistricting problem attempt to take some
basic heuristic and apply it in an objective way, but although it's possible
to solve #1 pretty easily, solving #2 is inherently subjective and that's
where the wiggle room for #3 is created.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
> It can be argued that this also makes sense to group together areas that
> have similar concerns -- in an extreme example, separating primarily
> agricultural districts from primarily urban districts. This is relatively
> uncontroversial.

If geography is the most important concern to voters, then surely voters would
be able to handle grouping themselves according to geography in at-large
elections with proportional representation. There could even be an explicit
urban party and rural party if that is what matters most to voters.

------
guelo
Republicans used their state-level gains from the Obama backlash in 2010 to
implement extreme gerrymandering and capture Congress for a decade. But now
that Democrats are set to gain from a Trump backlash leading up to the 2020
census all of a sudden there's a lot of movement to neutralize gerrymandering
nationwide. I'm probably seeing conspiracy theories where there are none, but
conservatives have always played a much better strategical long game working
the refs, so to speak, to maintain power. Starting with the national-level
gerrymandering from the 19th century where we ended up with bullshit states
like Wyoming that permanently tip the scales in their favor.

~~~
vanattab
Bullshit states? What is that? Is that just a state that does not constantly
vote the way you would prefer?

~~~
sukilot
Wyoming is a low population that gets 3.6 as much voting power per capita as
California. Parent should have included Vermont alongside Wyoming for partisan
balance, though.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_w...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2012/11/presidential_election_a_map_showing_the_vote_power_of_all_50_states.html)

------
_petronius
I find it really interesting that there's no political will in the US to
create a non-partisan body like the UK's Boundary commissions in the US. Even
if just for congressional districting, it would be a huge improvement over the
current state of affairs. (I get that the US is huge, and in general there is
a tendency to delegate these sorts of things to states for various reasons
both political and practical, but it would seem to be a a straightforward if
not easy solution to this issue.)

~~~
r00fus
There is at a state level - see how California moved to non-partisan primaries
(jungle primaries) and non-partisan redistricting board.

The party in power (Democrats) agreed to this several years ago despite being
the majority. The result ended up being that they got a subsequent
supermajority, because I guess CA is really progressive/liberal in aggregate.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The party in power (Democrats) agreed to this several years ago

No, they were both adopted by citizen initiative, and the California
Democratic Party opposed both (the Republican Party supported the
redistricting one, all six of California’s ballot-qualified parties opposed
the jungle primary, which got put on the ballot as part of a deal to pass a
budget back when the supermajority budget requirement made holding the budget
hostage a regular occurrence.)

------
phailhaus
The efficiency gap is calculated by taking the number of net wasted votes and
dividing it by the number of total votes. Every vote for a losing party in a
district is wasted, as is every vote for the winning party over 50% + 1.

This metric was very convincing to me until I noticed one thing: if a district
election is split 75%-25%, then it seems that the net wasted votes is 0. But a
state where every district is split 75-25 is clearly heavily gerrymandered! Am
I missing something?

~~~
smeyer
I don't think you're understanding the calculation correctly. If a district
election is 75-25, then the wasted votes is 24 (75 minus the 51 required to
win). I believe the computation of net wasted votes comes from looking across
several districts.

Here's an example from another article:

>Suppose, for example, that a state has five districts with 100 voters each,
and two parties, Party A and Party B. Suppose also that Party A wins four of
the seats 53 to 47, and Party B wins one of them 85 to 15. Then in each of the
four seats that Party A wins, it has 2 surplus votes (53 minus the 51 needed
to win), and Party B has 47 lost votes. And in the lone district that Party A
loses, it has 15 lost votes, and Party B has 34 surplus votes (85 minus the 51
needed to win). In sum, Party A wastes 23 votes and Party B wastes 222 votes.
Subtracting one figure from the other and dividing by the 500 votes cast
produces an efficiency gap of 40 percent in Party A’s favor.

[https://newrepublic.com/article/118534/gerrymandering-
effici...](https://newrepublic.com/article/118534/gerrymandering-efficiency-
gap-better-way-measure-gerrymandering)

~~~
snarf21
He is saying, _if_ you could gerrymanderer every district at 75-25 the gap
would be 0 even though it would be likely that couldn't happen without being
heavily gerrymandered.

I think _all_ districts being 75-25 is not really possible based on how
communities grow and group together socially and economically.

~~~
smeyer
But if every district is 75-25, neither party is gaining a net advantage. If
you have 10 districts and split them into 5 that are 51-49 and 5 that are
49-51 or if you split them into 5 that are 75-25 and 5 that are 25-75, you
have 5 representatives from each party either way. The point of the gap is to
distinguish between cases like this (where districts are designed to lump
together people of a similar part) from examples of packing and cracking used
to give one party an advantage.

~~~
phailhaus
If every district is 75-25, then the issue is that one party is getting 25% of
the votes but 0% of the seats. All of their votes have been split across all
districts, keeping them from winning any one.

~~~
mjw1007
One way for that to happen is if party support is evenly spread throughout the
region; then however you draw the districts the result will be the same.

In that sort of situation it doesn't seem to be reasonable to call what's
going on "gerrymandering"; I think the finger of blame should be pointed (if
anywhere) at the system of single-member-constituency plurality voting.

~~~
phailhaus
Our voting system is definitely an issue, but if we want to use the efficiency
gap as a metric of gerrymandering then I think this is a big problem. As it
stands, the efficiency gap treats a 75-25 split as a "perfect election", which
means that it's actually a measure of how far elections are from this ideal.
So if we start using the efficiency gap, then there will be a huge incentive
for states to draw lines to be as close to 75-25 as possible, which is
obviously not what we want. It could even further polarize the country.

------
trendia
The efficiency gap fails to guarantee or even optimize compactness, yet many
gerrymandered districts are "thin slices" or strange shapes. (one simple
defition of compactness is the ratio of perimeter^2/area)

What the author fails to do is explain why the efficiency gap is better than
district compactness. If they are used together, then in what way are the two
measures weighted? If not, why should we pick efficiency over compactness?

It should seem obvious that these two methods would result in different
districts, but which mwthod to use is more a matter of personal values than
objectivity.

~~~
weeksie
That's because compactness doesn't actually tell you anything about unfair
voting, demographics, party representation, etc. . . . A district can be
shaped like a busted IUD and still be perfectly fair and that's precisely why
the efficiency gap is so much better at identifying gerrymandered districts.
The gap shows the percentage of wasted votes, which is pretty much all that
matters.

