The name's Mander. Gerry Mander.

May 14, 2017 5:19 PM

Gerrymandering is the practice of manipulating boundaries in such a way that favors a political party. If you slice and group in various ways, you can end up with different election results. How many different ways can you draw boundaries though? And can results really change that much, depending on you draw the boundaries? District, by Christopher Walker, is a puzzle game that shows you how it works. The goal: Group circles in such a way that favors your color. (Works on my iPhone but not on my iPad. YMMV.) [via]
posted by Room 641-A (22 comments total)

A+ for game concept alone
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 5:35 PM on May 14, 2017

See also The Redistricting Game and Districts.
posted by RobotHero at 5:40 PM on May 14, 2017 [3 favorites]

What a great, simple illustration of gerrymandering.
posted by photoelectric at 5:58 PM on May 14, 2017

Interesting, but the instructions are a bit too vague in the later levels, I think.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:16 PM on May 14, 2017 [5 favorites]

I can't figure out #8
posted by empath at 6:40 PM on May 14, 2017

On #8, you have to lose. The best you can do is 1 out of 4 districts.
posted by miguelcervantes at 6:46 PM on May 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

Also, I wonder how many people playing this from here select "red" as their color. I'm going to guess not many.
posted by miguelcervantes at 6:46 PM on May 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

#8 definitely should be clarified.
posted by solarion at 6:48 PM on May 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

Unless, perhaps, you are in Canada where red is the colour of the Liberal party and Blue is the colour of the Conservative party.
posted by borsboom at 6:49 PM on May 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

Single-winner districts ... increase polarization

I don't think this is true but am not looking at research right now? We know that gerrymandering or districting more generally is at most tangentially connected to polarization.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:03 PM on May 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

Uh.... how do you play the game? Nothing happens. I click on a corner and drag my mouse and it creates a gray line and it does nothing.
posted by engelgrafik at 7:30 PM on May 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

I selected red because DSA.
posted by egypturnash at 7:52 PM on May 14, 2017

I picked Red as the color of gerrymandering bastards.
posted by Artw at 7:56 PM on May 14, 2017

I swear this sounds like a smart arse troll, but is, so far as I can tell, totally true - "Gerrymander" was originally pronounced with a hard G.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 8:28 PM on May 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

If you want to move on to the real thing: Dave's Redistricting App.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 9:16 PM on May 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

On the last one I was still able to do better than proportional, by making one group straight 7/7 and still getting 1/3 of the win in the other group.
posted by ctmf at 9:18 PM on May 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

@englegrafik: You have to go from one end to the other. Drag your cursor starting at the black box and then connect it to another space on the black box—a vertex of the rectangle.
posted by koavf at 9:36 PM on May 14, 2017

How do you solve #9? And yes, agreed that the instructions are a little too subtle.
posted by koavf at 9:37 PM on May 14, 2017

Unless, perhaps, you are in Canada where red is the colour of the Liberal party and Blue is the colour of the Conservative party.

I think it's the case basically everywhere that the leftermost party is red and the rightermost party is blue.
Also, didn't the US only fairly recently (Ah, yes, Wikipedia suggests it was the 2000 election) settle on a formal colour choice for the two parties, because they both insisted on their colours being Red, White and Blue.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 2:35 AM on May 15, 2017

Wow, I really overthought #9. I did not make that mistake again on the next one.
posted by koavf at 4:08 AM on May 15, 2017

I just made it harder to register and screwed around with the voting machines towards the end. Much easier.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 4:25 AM on May 15, 2017 [7 favorites]

The name's Mander. Jerry Mander.
posted by lenore at 12:33 PM on May 15, 2017 [1 favorite]