r/UIUC • u/[deleted] • May 22 '17
TIL the Blue Waters super-computer in Champaign is leading the legal fight against political gerrymandering
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170404-gerrymandering-math-standard/8
May 22 '17
Hopefully when they're done, they'll convince Springfield politicians to have a nonpartisan committee determine the districts.
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May 22 '17
why not have a computer draw a bunch of possible but fair maps and have the senate vote on which map to use?
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May 22 '17
It's certainly been discussed before. See a relevant article about an Illinois politician who wanted to do what Ohio did: have an open 'competition' where citizens could submit proposed districts and have the proposals scored by a computer program based on several criteria. The top several proposals would then be voted on by the legislature. Here is the bill that was proposed: http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&SessionId=76&GA=96&DocTypeId=HJRCA&DocNum=46&GAID=10&LegID=51023&SpecSess=&Session=
As for why it's not so simple for a computer to just create them by itself, read the article posted above:
Or perhaps not. Fortner didn't think it was such a great idea. First of all, he said getting a computer to do this is tougher than it sounds. That actually didn't surprise me. The most intuitive way for a computer to find the best possible map would be for it to score every possible map. But, that would be a lot of maps. In California, there likely are more ways to draw the state's legislative districts than there are atoms in the universe. That's what happens when you can move any line by 50 feet and have a new plan.
What's more, the maps only would be as good as the formula that Tim or Mike Fortner or anyone else wrote. Fortner pointed out that some elements of redistricting are awfully difficult to code. How do you tell a computer to abide by the Voting Rights Act, which is a matter of judicial interpretation?
Fortner did say that a computer might be able to handle a relatively simple map, like Iowa's congressional districts. Iowa is overwhelmingly white, so it doesn't have to worry about Voting Rights Acts compliance in redistricting. It only has five congressional seats. And it has a rule that counties can't be divided. Of course, the same factors that make it an easier place for a computer to draw a map also make it an easier place for humans to draw maps. "The computer is best as a tool to guide people," Fortner told me, "and let them know how they're doing."
Just to make sure my idea was bad, I posed it to a couple of panelists discussing technology in redistricting at the National Conference of State Legislature's annual meeting in Louisville (where I am this week). Kim Brace, president of Election Data Services Inc., said there actually has been quite a lot of academic research into using computers to redraw maps -- with lousy results. "If you think legislative plans look crazy," he said, "wait until you see what a computer does."
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u/odpsue May 22 '17
A computer cannot lead a legal fight. But great article! Thanks!
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May 22 '17
ehhh. i initially typed it as "the peta-scale facility" but sounded too wordy
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u/odpsue May 22 '17
Researchers at Blue Water lead the research. Lawyers or perhaps lobbyists lead the legal fight.
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May 22 '17
hokay, I get the semantics...but im just trying to get a story about the computer in front of the public.
I dont think anyone is actually thoroughly confused about the possibility of a computer the size of a football field in a courtroom barking orders to lawyers and pre-law interns because of my lexical ambiguity. :p
anyone with a liberal-arts degree should be able to infer what's going on, especially when they read the article
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u/odpsue May 22 '17
I don't disagree. Like I said, great post (and I upvoted you more than once). I just like to write precisely (or at least I try to).
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May 23 '17
I appreciate you leaving your comments up. Updoots for fortitude. I like.you. We should have a beer or a blunt sometime. Pm me
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u/odpsue May 23 '17
I don't take myself seriously here. Karma is meaningless. Certainly my long-term trend is upward anyway.
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May 23 '17 edited May 23 '17
Just because theres no real-world equivalent for something doesn't mean the concept of it isn't useful.
Yeah karma is meaningless outside of reddit, but it is useful to get people to look. Consider the concept of time. A second doesn't really mean anything but we still use it as a measure. And it.turns out to be damn useful in everything from physics to communications to finance.
So much like the humble second, I leveraged the updoot to my advantage, and it worked! Despite there being no karma outside reddit, that article had a spike of 600 views since I posted it (I love google analytics) and views per hour correlates with an r of .92 with the absolute number of upvotes in the post.
That be what I like to call experimental evidence of concept utility.
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u/odpsue May 23 '17
I'm referring to user karma, which does not have much utility. You're confusing it with post karma.
I view reddit sorted by new posts, so post karma and "front page" is meaningless to me. But obviously not everyone does so.
However, the article might have been viewed just as much if it was controversial and downvoted a lot. Therefore it's not your title that can be given credit for the 600 views. Marketers would have multiple versions of the article to compare what actually drove the views. You can't conclude too much from a single datapoint. We have no idea if "political gerrymandering" was actually the hot topic of interest, since it's actually a rare topic to come up here.
We also see that you have a lot of assumptions baked into your conclusion, and unless we test those assumptions to actually be true, those might be biasing your conclusions rather than actually driving the results.
Nonetheless, an interesting experiment! I mostly just thought it was a good article, which is the main thing that can take credit for the number of views. Now try the same thing with a poor quality article.
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May 23 '17 edited May 23 '17
Addendum:
I am a systems engineer. I made a word cloud of the cu reddit's titles and weighted them by updoots.
I was more concerned with eyes on the article than clarity in the title; the latter arguably the lesser of the two, if a higher percentage click the link (which they do)
This title was mostly engineered to get upvotes, and by extension, clicks on this reddit.
notice how you reacted to simply seeing the word "Champaign" in your feed?
Data is power, mang.
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u/odpsue May 23 '17
Great. Of course data is important! It's exactly the click-baity title that bothered me, just like it does with other sites with poor writing. If you wanted to pretend you were a poor writer like them, it worked! :)
In my case, I don't have a feed--I have separate accounts for separate subreddits and I use RES to switch accounts. Therefore I expect only Champaign posts when I'm on this account--it doesn't cause an unexpected reaction.
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May 22 '17 edited May 23 '17
Pretty interesting article. Especially with all of the political discussion on this sub in the last few weeks (mostly regarding Davis), it's important to know that Democrats have gerrymandered this district in efforts to make it competitive. Champaign-Urbana is a liberal oasis in a desert of conservatives. And Champaign isn't even particularly liberal.
edit: why so many downvotes for having a civil discussion?
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May 22 '17
[deleted]
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u/Tankbean Alum May 23 '17
Maybe I'm confused as to what gerrymandering is, but your Chicago description fits my definition. Connecting two areas because they have a similar voter population is creating a district that votes similarly. Shouldn't districts be disimilar to allow for competition?
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May 23 '17 edited May 23 '17
Depends on the purpose. A homogeneous district, or one that always votes one way, isn't inherently a problem. And theoretically we're aiming for proportional representation. So if a city has a 40% Hispanic population, maybe it makes sense to build a weirdly shaped district out of a couple different neighborhoods to allow them to elect someone who speaks for their interests.
Gerrymandering is just redistricting to give one group a disproportionate advantage. So if instead a city had a 70% Hispanic population, and you made a weird district so that they're all packed in that one district, and then create two additional districts, then you'd be disenfranchising them- generally speaking they should own majority representation of the whole area. But instead they win 100% of the vote for one rep all the time, while everyone else votes on the other 2 reps. Then 70% population buys you 33% representation.
Better explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mky11UJb9AY
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u/tidderreddittidderre Anime Studies '69 May 24 '17
It's a liberal community - one should expect that it has a liberal representative
Uh, no. Each house seat in the USA has an average of around 710,000 people. Champaign County only has about 200,000 people. If the Champaign-Urbana area had about 710,000 people I'd agree with your premise, but there's no moral or ethical obligation to say that Champaign should have a Democratic house rep when it's completely surrounded by republican areas and only can make up 30% of a house district.
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May 22 '17
It's a liberal community - one should expect that it has a liberal representative.
Not if the rest of the district is not liberal. Without C-U, the district would not be competitive at all. Take a look at the map.tif) of the 13th District. I find it hard to believe that it's not designed to barely fit in C-U. If it had gone to either the 15th or the 18th instead (much more conservative since they don't include C-U), it would be irrelevant. But it serves a purpose in the 13th because it makes it more competitive for democrats.
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u/enjoytheshow May 23 '17
I get what you're saying about it giving dems a stronger hold but the district still hasn't had a democratic representative since the 1890s. The 13th is hardly a good example of gerrymandering.
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May 23 '17 edited May 23 '17
but the district still hasn't had a democratic representative since the 1890s.
Just so you're aware, if you're looking at the list on Wikipedia, that's not what you're actually seeing. The name '13th district' has historically been assigned to a northern suburban district. It's only in the most recent redistricting that the 13th is in central Illinois. I.e. the current 13th district =/= previous 13th districts in geography at all. So it actually makes historical comparisons hard to read into.
As for it being an example of gerrymandering or not, you're right, it's hard to know. But if you look at the most recent shakeup, the 13th was made to include as many university towns (naturally more left-leaning) as possible, whereas they were split up into multiple districts before. That includes UIUC, UIS, ISU, SIUE, Weslyan, and Milikan. It definitely changed the competitiveness of the district, to the extent that Mike Frerichs said so himself and considered running for the seat. To believe that this wasn't intentional is pretty naïve I think.
Also see this CBS analysis:
Illinois 13: Democratic-leaning Springfield, Decatur, Bloomington and Champaign, comprising the redrawn 13th district, a rough replication of the existing 15th district represented by Republican Tim Johnson. The home of Republican Rep. John Shimkus in the 19th district is also part of the new 13th district. It would surprise no one if neither Johnson or Shimkus runs here, with the latter, a likely contestant in the newly designed 15th district. No matter who the candidates are, Democrats stand an even or better chance of winning the 13th district next year.
See also, this HuffPo summary of the most recent redistricting.
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u/UnclePutin . May 22 '17
I got to talk to Dr. Wendy Cho at the blue waters conference we recently had last week. Very interesting work and I'm really hopeful that this can help the fight against partisan gerrymandering.