Legendas (46)
0:01Every 10 years after the Census, states redraw
the borders of their legislative districts.
0:07In most states, politicians get to control
that process,
0:10And if they’re clever about how the districts
are drawn...
0:13they can make it easier for their own party
to win more of them.
0:16It’s called “partisan gerrymandering”
and it’s bad for democracy, but the Supreme
0:21Court hasn’t intervened in decades.
0:23the Supreme Court has yet to settle on a standard
or definition of political fairness.
0:27They just simply don't want to declare a partisan
gerrymander without some way to measure them.
0:31That’s what Cho’s research team is trying
to fix...with a supercomputer.
0:36[Vox]
So we're trying to build a measurement tool
0:38to help the court measure whether political
parties have manipulated a map to gain an
0:43In other words, they’re making a gerrymandering
ruler.
0:46So when you re-district there's a phenomenal
degree of possible manipulation.
0:50Almost any shape you want to make is possible.
0:52That’s led to a bunch of oddly shaped districts.
0:55The court wants to be able to determine the
intent behind the district maps.
0:59Basically they want to read the mind of the
map drawer.
1:01It doesn't have any way to do this.
1:03The team started developing their tool by
identifying what criteria are important to
1:08Some criteria are required by law
for instance we have to have about the same
1:12number people in every district,
1:13and all districts have to be contiguous.
1:16Contiguous means they can’t be broken up
into a bunch of pieces, with some exceptions.
1:20The court wants districts to preserve political
subdivisions like cities, counties, municipal
1:26Whenever you find an identifiable community
of like minded individuals, the court likes
1:30it when those people are kept together in
the same district.
1:33Wendy’s team is using a supercomputer to
generate district maps based on those criteria.
1:39so we can create a million or billion maps
using only the criteria required by law, and
1:43the traditional districting principles.
1:44And we don't use any political information.
1:47... So these are by definition non partisan
maps because they don't use political information.
1:51If the current map doesn’t look like any
of the possibilities generated by the algorithm...
1:56That’s a good indication a partisan gerrymander
has occurred.
1:58If a billion of these different possible nonpartisan
maps are really different from the map the
2:03court is evaluating then the Supreme Court
has some evidence that partisanship was part
2:07of the motivation behind the alleged partisan
gerrymander.
2:11If we then have a computer draw another billion
maps where we we actually code in partisan
2:14information in addition to these other criteria
that the court likes and those maps actually
2:18appear similar to the map in question then
the Supreme Court can rightly infer partisan
2:24Right now, there’s no guarantee that this
particular algorithm will ever be used as
2:28evidence in a court argument.
2:29But a handful of cases could be heard by the
Court this year.
