[bloaf]

I'm not sure I like the name "Efficiency Gap" but the metric of "require the overall district results be within a certain range of the popular results" seems pretty straightforward to me.

I've always thought they should just reverse the order of operations. Instead of having people draw the districts, then machines evaluate them, they should have machines draw a bunch of potential "low efficiency gap" districts, then let people pick the best ones.

[mathfan2]

The main takeaway from the article is that sometimes there is a trade-off between nice geometrical shapes and proportional district results.

If a machine gave you a crazy-shaped district map because that's the only way to get "low efficiency gap", would you agree to them?

[bloaf]

Why not? My issue with districts are that they are not representative, not that they look weird. The only "real" issue with crazy districts is that the administrative costs might be higher (i.e. they might require more polling places.)

[sova]

How often are districts able to be redrawn? The same crazy shaped map that is valid in 2020 may not be very good in 2025 or even 2021.

[dragontamer]

Districts are always redrawn every Census, as it has been for hundreds of years.

[sova]

I see. Thank you. Considering the Census: Voter distribution and Voter Mobility are probably socio-economically determinable factors (numerically speaking) since the state legislature or whatever body is responsible for redrawing the lines gets access to the census data [per obligation of their task] that is, "age and race" ... I'd like to point out to friends from around the world that the United States census questionnaire is rather unsightly when it comes to the section entitled "race" [0].

[0] https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/2010questionnaire.pdf Page 2 question #6.