dimonium_anonimo t1_iuigmhk wrote on October 31, 2022 at 4:05 PM

AlphaPhoenix has an amazing video on the topic. It's also extremely closely related to Simpson's paradox in statistics. minutephysics also does a good video on that where he puts together an extremely simplified example of you you can draw from different datasets to get different results.

The overall idea is this: if you make sure that for every 10 Democrats in a district, there are 11 Republicans, then the Republicans are more likely to win that district. You repeat this for as many districts as possible. You obviously can't guarantee this for all districts, especially if there are more Democrats in the state than Republicans, but you can shove all the remaining Democrats in the few remaining districts, so even though those districts are nearly guaranteed to go Democrat, they are the minority of the results for that state.

As a simplified example, let's say there are 6 districts with 11 voters each. Districts 1 to 5 (or A to E if you prefer to avoid confusion with the numbers coming up) have 5 D voters and 6 R voters that so 5 out of 6 districts end up Republican. The last district has 9 D voters and 2 R voters. This district is a landslide D result, but it doesn't matter because R wins 5 to 6. If you actually count up the R voters, there are 32. However, there were 34 D voters in the state. So D should have won.

rzezzy1 t1_iuii80k wrote on October 31, 2022 at 4:16 PM

AlphaPhoenix's video is amazing. Opened my eyes to a new perspective.

dimonium_anonimo t1_iuin6nd wrote on October 31, 2022 at 4:49 PM

I just wonder why we can't do the opposite: tell the computer to accurately represent the actual voting community as closely as possible, mathematically as perfect as we can get (without eliminating the electoral college, which would be better, but old habits (and people with money and power) die hard.

bloodalchemy t1_iuipp33 wrote on October 31, 2022 at 5:05 PM

We can. But there is no strong incentive for politicians to do that. Both sides like the current manual process because either it's in their favor and they win, or they lose but they can stir up rumors that the vote was rigged. Either way the politician remains relevant in the public's mind.

dimonium_anonimo t1_iuiqejo wrote on October 31, 2022 at 5:10 PM

The strong incentive is that they should ideally be voting for what their constituents want. And most people want fair voting.

Artemis__ t1_iuir84y wrote on October 31, 2022 at 5:16 PM

Yes, ideally is the problem here. Once in power, many people tend to want to stay in power. You think you're doing the right thing, so it should be you staying in power and not the other person. Additionally, you can take bribes… I mean donations… to increase your income, as long as you are in power!

bloodalchemy t1_iuiy9kb wrote on October 31, 2022 at 6:02 PM

Ideally that's true. And I'm sure for some individuals it is how they act.

In general politicians vote for things that keep themselves in power, which means avoiding things that piss the public off enough for them to take action. If the public is annoyed but doesn't actually do anything the politicians are safe to continue doing what they want.

rzezzy1 t1_iuj67yr wrote on October 31, 2022 at 6:55 PM

I think a major problem here would be how to mathematically define "accurately represent[ing] the actual voting community" in a way that is as objective as possible. If you want to skew the results in your favor, you don't need a perfectly objective description as long as it gets roughly the results you want, but to prevent such abuse does require every detail to be fixed in place.

dimonium_anonimo t1_iujazxp wrote on October 31, 2022 at 7:27 PM

The expected outcome of the election results for a state is the exact same as the popular vote in that state. Representatives still hold the right to decide not to vote the same way as the majority of their districts, but the majority of the votes in their districts are fore the same candidate that the majority of the districts vote for.