Well, we continue our journey into the wonderful world of politics. And today we will talk about one of the very common methods of manipulating votes in parliamentary elections, related to the division of electoral districts. Enjoy watching :3

Lioness, Queen of the Animal Kingdom, expands democracy by creating a legislative body in the state. Citizens receive one vote each and are divided into districts. Each district elects one representative to the newly formed Jungle Council. To better understand the system, let’s look at a small settlement that has only two political parties: the Buffaloes and the Horned Hares.

The settlement is divided into four districts. In the first election, Horned Hare candidates win two districts, and Buffalo candidates win the rest. For several election cycles, everything goes well until the census taker comes and reveals that the population has grown and moved. To better represent the increased population, a new seat has been added to the Jungle Council, so the district boundaries need to be redone.

And this is where the problems begin. Redrawing electoral districts is a serious political challenge. To help with this, the Jungle Council hired a canny consultant to figure out where to draw the boundaries. If Weasel draws rectangular boundaries, then everything will be fine because the Jungle Council will reflect the choice of citizens as much as possible.

However, Weasel does not do this.
He tells the Buffalo Party that, for a price, he can turn their slim majority into a landslide election victory. With a supermajority on the Jungle Council, the Buffaloes won’t have to listen to those pesky obstructionist Horned Hares, so they’re happy to pay.

And how will Laska fulfill his promise??
It’s depressingly simple: by putting as many Horned Hares supporters into one district as possible and scattering the rest, the Buffalo Party can easily win an additional seat without turning over voters.

What Weasel and Bisons did is called "electoral geography". Deliberately changing the boundaries of electoral districts in one’s own interests. Several election cycles later, a disgruntled and underrepresented Horned Hares party approaches Weasel and asks if he can change the boundaries to benefit them rather than the Buffaloes?

Of course it can. Using Casinosnogamstop.co.uk the same technique, Weasel groups the Bisons into several districts, and scatters the rest among the supporters of the Horned Hares. Following the elections, the Horned Hares, while representing a minority of voters, now nevertheless have a majority on the Jungle Council.

This is the terrible power of electoral geography: Weasel can take the same voters and arrange a victory for either party. It is not surprising that Weasel’s business grows and, as a result, every settlement in the Animal Kingdom pays him to draw districts for them. With a large stream of clients, Laska now uses a computer with an advanced statistical model of voter behavior to test hundreds of thousands of district combinations to achieve the desired results.

Queen Lioness sees what Weasel is doing and banishes him from the Kingdom.
But the census taker reminds her that as the population changes, counties need to be redrawn.

And how to solve this problem?
Queen Lioness proposes an obvious solution: a bipartisan committee would have to approve all boundaries.

Seems like a good idea. In the end, if both parties had to agree on districts, it would suit everyone. But several election cycles later, the Lioness Queen notices that she always sees the same faces in the Jungle Council. Representatives almost never lose their elections.

As it turns out, the interests of representatives and citizens differ. Citizens want elections where the candidate must earn their vote. These are elections where opponents have approximately equal chances of winning. But representatives don’t want tense elections, they want guarantees.
An election where the district is full of their supporters. As representatives draw boundaries, they create the safest possible districts.

So a bipartisan committee is not enough.
There are three options to truly fix electoral geography:

Firstly, to draw boundaries you can create a politically independent commission appointed experts or judges.

An independent commission is much better than a bipartisan committee, but it is still not an ideal solution because it usually combines similar areas, which makes elections less competitive. And it is always possible that the independent commission will turn out to be not so independent.

Second option – let math draw the boundaries. There are several ways to mathematically divide a territory into equally populated districts. The simplest example would be the "Shortest Line Method". Find the shortest line that divides voters equally and repeat until you have more districts.

This is much better than an “independent” commission, but there is a risk that there will be bad luck when dividing districts, which sometimes leads to strange results in elections. But by publishing the algorithm used, all citizens are given the opportunity to check the results and make sure the system is unbiased.

The last decision is quite unexpected: hire Weasel back and accept electoral geography.

But now, pay him the winners, who maximally reflect the choice of the people. Although this sounds unpleasant, it will be the best way to avoid disproportionate representation – the worst problem of electoral geography.

But all three decisions do not please the Lioness Queen. The first two are better than what they are, but they can still lead to uncompetitive elections or disproportionate results, and the third solution just seems wrong. Using electoral geography to avoid the problems of electoral geography is somehow… strange.

Recalling what she learned about elections earlier, she realizes that electoral geography is just a symptom of a more fundamental problem: an approach where each citizen gets only one vote and elects only one representative.

There are ways to get rid of electoral geography, restore competitive elections, and make citizens happy. But to do this, the Lioness Queen will have to radically change her democracy.