Redistricting Game

[2952-0-0]

I don't know if anyone else here have heard of this, but there's a new game where you work for a political party, and you need to gerrymander the district borders to reelect all your party's politicians. It's pretty interesting, simulating scheming politicians.

http://img461.imageshack.us/img461/3864/redistrictingkm4.png

[Democratic Hawk]

http://redistrictinggame.org/

[Speed of Sound]

Hahahahahaha....Im playing it now. Its fantastic!

[Verily]

That was really fun. I was disappointed when I finished the final one.

Anyone else get a weird glitch on the last one where the Democrats were upset that they gained no seats but the Republicans were upset that they were going to lose multiple districts?

[Gabu]

Wow, this is an awesome find.  I love it.

[Gabu]

Also, this one where you have to create a black district is really freaking hard.

EDIT: Oh, Lordy, Lordy, what have I done:



Somehow the courts threw out the challenge of lack of compactness.  I wasn't expecting that.

[Sensei]

Damn. Mine DID get thrown out on lack of compactness, and it looked a bit like that. I'm still working on it.

[Gabu]

Damn. Mine DID get thrown out on lack of compactness, and it looked a bit like that. I'm still working on it.

Did yours have incontiguities in it?  I think that will get it thrown out, but not simple snaking.

[Jake]

I actually did the last one so I had three fairly safe Democratic districts, and eliminated a GOP incumbent but it was thrown out for compactness because the yellow district was basically the oceanside city's northern parts with a long snake north of the black concentration, sweeping around from the northwest to collect some non-black democratic areas to the south.

Very cool find.

[Gabu]

I actually did the last one so I had three fairly safe Democratic districts, and eliminated a GOP incumbent but it was thrown out for compactness because the yellow district was basically the oceanside city's northern parts with a long snake north of the black concentration, sweeping around from the northwest to collect some non-black democratic areas to the south.

Very cool find.

Yeah, I'm currently trying to squeeze three Democratic districts out of the black district one just to see if I can do it.  I'm getting closer at kicking Val Hughes out of office, but not yet.

[2952-0-0]

I tried to beat the rule requiring contiguous districts...of course the courts stopped me because of the compactness...

[Gabu]

I decided to see how ridiculously and offensively bad I could make the gerrymander in mission 2 by paying close attention to the specific partisan makeup of each square.  I maxed out at making the new district 57% Democratic.



Arnie Surplus = pwned.  I even removed his house from the district as icing on the cake.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I won the one to create the majority black district by adding part of that small very Republican city in the north central area to the district in the southeast. And it got accepted.

[2952-0-0]

This one wasn't so bad, and it actually passed. Most amusing is how I skewed Arnie Surplus's house right so it touches the district, and how he just skims by the military base.

[Bacon King]

Does the Governor ever not sign?

[2952-0-0]

Here's the bipartisan gerrymandering one. It's so skewed it's not even funny.

Does the Governor ever not sign?

I guess so, since it doesn't even let you submit without the conditions. And does anyone else notice how the governor looks like Barack Obama?

[Gabu]

I have just completed a tour de force in Republican gerrymandering in mission 2:



Yes, that's a 66% Republican district I managed to get for Otto.

Does the Governor ever not sign?

I managed to get the Governor to veto it once, but I can't remember how.

[Smash255]

I did a few (could not save or link it for some reason though)

Took out Etz in one, and took out both Etz & Surplus in another, but gavethe GOP an open seat.  Did that by shoving Etz into otto's district and then chucking Surplus into Etz's old district making that Democratic as well, with a heavily GOP open seat.

[minionofmidas]

I actually did the last one so I had three fairly safe Democratic districts, and eliminated a GOP incumbent but it was thrown out for compactness because the yellow district was basically the oceanside city's northern parts with a long snake north of the black concentration, sweeping around from the northwest to collect some non-black democratic areas to the south.

Very cool find.

Yeah, I'm currently trying to squeeze three Democratic districts out of the black district one just to see if I can do it.  I'm getting closer at kicking Val Hughes out of office, but not yet.

You'll pretty much have to - her home's in a 62% Dem block that you more or less need to get both White Dems safely reelected.

The Governor vetoed that plan, but the legislature overrode it. The courts then threw it out but were easily appeased by minimal changes in the far northwest.

But now I'm stuck on the fifth one. Court keeps throwing out for lack of "contiguity", despite three of the four districts being, by now, wholly rectangular. Of course, maybe what the game is trying to tell me is that it's a Republican state court, and as long as the Reps are unhappy, the map goes out the window.

EDIT: Well, now they swallowed it. Although I daresay, given pop. distribution, the new map is actually worse than the old one.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This game is great!

[Democratic Hawk]

The game would be great if my computer didn't 'freeze' [i.e. go into unresponsive mode] after a couple of minutes

Dave

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

I love this game, even though I'm struggling to get a "65% Cuban" district in the "Minority" scenario (I chose GOP for that one).  The damn thing looks about as compact as it's ever going to get, I've got the two GOP incumbents barely sitting at 51%...but even though the bitch who files the compactness lawsuit says she's not sure if she's going to win, she wins every time.

Ah well, gotta keep plugging away at it!  Great find.

[Democratic Hawk]

The game would be great if my computer didn't 'freeze' [i.e. go into unresponsive mode] after a couple of minutes

Dave

I'm getting this message:

A script in this movie is causing Adobe Flash Player 9 to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive. Do you want to abort the script?

Anyone else?

Dave

[Verily]

I actually did the last one so I had three fairly safe Democratic districts, and eliminated a GOP incumbent but it was thrown out for compactness because the yellow district was basically the oceanside city's northern parts with a long snake north of the black concentration, sweeping around from the northwest to collect some non-black democratic areas to the south.

Very cool find.

Yeah, I'm currently trying to squeeze three Democratic districts out of the black district one just to see if I can do it.  I'm getting closer at kicking Val Hughes out of office, but not yet.

You'll pretty much have to - her home's in a 62% Dem block that you more or less need to get both White Dems safely reelected.

I managed to get all of the incumbents reelected in that one while creating the 65% black district. Swing the northern edge of the map over to the Republican man and then take some of his home area and give it to Hughes. That makes the Democratic woman safe (as the northern fringe of the map in her district is quite Republican), and you can leave Hughes in her district. The Democratic man's district was hardly changed at all.

The key is to make the black district exactly 65% black. That allows you to use some of the left over inner city areas to make the Democratic woman safe.

I'll do it again and post the map.

Edit: Well, I couldn't repeat my performance of leaving the coastal Democratic district intact, but in this one the least safe candidate is Flora Child, with 52%.

[minionofmidas]

Oh well, I reached a perfect 65 Black - 50 Dem - 50 Dem (- 52 Rep - about 60 Rep) map with MUCH less obvious gerrymandering - but the prize was Val Hughes. My Black district stretched into the uber-Republican area just north of it btw.