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Simple math can help scheming politicians manipulate district maps and cruise to victory. But it can also help identify and fix the problem.
Imagine fighting a war on 10 battlefields. You and your opponent each have 200 soldiers, and your aim is to win as many battles as possible. How would you deploy your troops? If you spread them out evenly, sending 20 to each battlefield, your opponent could concentrate their own troops and easily win a majority of the fights. You could try to overwhelm several locations yourself, but there's no guarantee you'll win, and you'll leave the remaining battlefields poorly defended. Devising a winning strategy isn't easy, but as long as neither side knows the other's plan in advance, it's a fair fight.
Now imagine your opponent has the power to deploy your troops as well as their own. Even if you get more troops, you can't win.
In the war of politics, this power to deploy forces comes from gerrymandering, the age-old practice of manipulating voting districts for partisan gain. By determining who votes where, politicians can tilt the odds in their favor and defeat their opponents before the battle even begins.
Anyone for a game of RISK?
(Score: 2) by number11 on Monday October 23 2017, @03:07AM (1 child)
#@%! I hit "submit" instead of "preview"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting [wikipedia.org]
In its simplest form, you rank the candidates in order of preference, as far as you want. They count all the #1 votes. If the #1 leader doesn't get a majority, the worst performer(s) is dropped and the rankings adjusted as if they hadn't existed. Count again. Sooner or later, there will be a #1 with a majority of the votes. So if I were to vote for: #1 Wild-eyed Anarchist, #2 Guy who used to be my roomate, #3 Stodgy conservative pol who believes in free speech, #4 Xenophobic warmonger, it's likely that my vote would end up being counted for #3. Maybe I'm an anarchist, but a realistic one.
In a nearby US city, the mayoral campaigns are underway. There are 16 candidates, of whom 4 or 5 could be called "serious" (qualified and actually mounting a significant campaign). The rest of the candidates are "some dude", a handful of perennial candidates who never get elected and the rest that no one except their mother has ever heard of. For city council seats, most of the races have 3 or 4 candidates, with 1 or 2 being "qualified".
(Score: 2) by number11 on Monday October 23 2017, @03:09AM
Feh. I should have noted that in that nearby city, they use RCV to count the votes.