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Comment by pkkim | Hacker News Reader

(US centric response)

I'm not sure if this was a rhetorical question...but the answer is that districts are drawn by the ruling party in order to assure its continued dominance. The incentives for these legislators are totally different from Amazon's.

A very interesting example happened in Georgia in the 1990s. The Republicans and the Black Caucus (who are mostly Democrats) worked together to pack black voters into a few concentrated districts. This resulted in both more black Democratic legislators and more Republican legislators.

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Hence districts should be determined not manually, but through a certain rule that is agreed by both parties Nationally

I completely agree! But it is a very difficult problem because the job security of so many individual members of Congress depends on gerrymandering. Obama and former attorney general Eric Holder are working on an initiative related to this, though.

It's interesting that in a thread about how ai's are a threat to democracy people are suggesting replacing a human process with an algorithm.

Not necessarily replacing, but restricting. Algorithms would be difficult to implement perfectly, but putting geometric restrictions on district boundaries would be fairly easy and still allow human flexibility in specifying the lines. Also independent third party commissions do a better job than state legislatures.

Minimising the ratio of area to perimeter, ideally with some allowance for naturally 'crinkly' boundaries like coastlines, would be a great start.

[1] says there is already software to do this, and [2] gives a terrible example of a district in Pennsylvania.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/gerrym...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/01/this-...

Maximizing?

Minimising!

Oops. It's late here.

And first past the post ensures that only 2 parties are ever heard and all the rest utterly ignored, just as you just did.

Why do other parties not get a say?

So you propose moving the politicization of boundary drawing to the rule making process for the rules which govern the drawing of boundaries. After all, your goal hasn't changed, only the point at which you bring in the human factor which is pulling for one side or the other.

Unfortunately, as soon as you lay down some guideline, and perhaps a purely rational one, that puts one side or the other at a loss, you'll have objections to the rule.

I hate to say it, but I don't think your process solves anything and actually just adds complexity to the process. It probably makes matters worse.

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