[HN Gopher] Topologists tackle the trouble with poll placement
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Topologists tackle the trouble with poll placement
Author : jyunwai
Score : 29 points
Date : 2024-03-26 18:14 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
| klyrs wrote:
| > Porter notes that mathematicians have had success using
| sophisticated mathematical techniques to quantify gerrymandering,
| the deliberate skewing of legislative districts.
|
| If only politics followed science, and not partisan loyalties!
| alkonaut wrote:
| A simple hack used elsewhere is to simply open for voting in
| select locations a few weeks earlier. If 1/4 or a 1/2 of voters
| already voted the queues will be much smaller.
|
| Another simple hack is to ensure it's a Sunday so more people can
| vote throughout the day and don't need to vote outside of work
| hours.
|
| Or let's vote everyone all at once on a _Tuesday_ and try to
| solve the queue problem with...math.
| reidjs wrote:
| Or better yet, have the majority of people vote by mail and
| make it easier for everyone.
| pulisse wrote:
| If a jurisdiction is reducing the number of election day
| polling places in an area, they're also going to reduce
| opportunities to vote in other ways. An egregious example is
| Houston, where there is now one (1) place to drop off early
| ballots in a county of 4 million people.
| klyrs wrote:
| Spoiler: disenfranchisement is tactical. If serving all voters
| was a shared goal, we'd find it extremely easy.
| mlazos wrote:
| lol or just use mail! Done!
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Banned in so many countries because it's rife for abuse, yet
| somehow people think it's a safe option in a country as big
| as the US.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Citation needed. For all the claims of massive voter fraud,
| I've seen about three convictions in the news. I certainly
| haven't seen evidence of massive fraud in the many, many
| states that allow mail in voting.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| It is very difficult if not impossible to catch
| fraudulent mail in votes. The rules surrounding mail-in
| and absentee ballots seem like they're actually designed
| to make fraud easier (ie ballot harvesting).
| alkonaut wrote:
| If people believe it threatens the integrity of the
| election then it already is a problem, whether it
| _actually_ causes fraud or not.
|
| Holding fair elections has no meaning unless people
| actually believe they are fair.
|
| Also "abuse" doesn't necessarily mean voter fraud. It can
| be as simple as being pressured by a family member to
| vote a certain way if you do it without privacy. If you
| vote alone in a booth that's not an issue (and again -
| it's an issue as soon as someone thinks it's an issue).
|
| Setting up mini polling places where people can cast
| early votes using the same procedure as on Election Day
| solves many problems without causing any new concerns.
| Other solutions have concerns however small.
| vundercind wrote:
| A lot of folks also think the counting was rigged and
| that partisan observers were prevented from watching the
| count, despite that stuff evidently _not being the case
| at all_.
|
| So... do we just stop doing elections because some evil
| oligarchy-hungry assholes successfully lied to a bunch of
| idiots, since it's made a lot of people not trust the
| process of _counting votes, period_ despite the actual
| presence of observers who are on their side? How can that
| possibly be accommodated any further than it _already has
| been for a long time_ without just not doing elections
| anymore?
|
| My core question, distilled, is: _how much_
| disenfranchisement is proper to cater to the anxieties of
| morons led astray by authoritarians and grifters? Do we
| stop at mail-in voting, or just keep rolling with
| disenfranchising more and more folks as long as they can
| continue to lie with sufficient success?
| klyrs wrote:
| > early [voting]... solves many problems without causing
| any new concerns.
|
| You don't trawl political discourse much, do you? Early
| voting is _specifically_ called out as a problem by
| people who claim that their political enemies are voting
| multiple times. Whether or not that 's a bona fide
| concern is somewhat irrelevant.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Whatever it is you are proposing is making me nervous
| about upcoming elections.
| pulisse wrote:
| Voting in Oregon has been exclusively by mail since 2000
| without any such abuse materializing.
| mlavrent wrote:
| Since moving to Washington, I've discovered just how easy
| voting can be, and how we can drive voter participation
| (oh, if only that's what everyone wanted). I always voted
| when I needed to in person in other states, but now ballots
| just show up in my mailbox without me even knowing there
| was an election; it makes having 3-4 elections every year a
| complete non-issue since all it involves is finding a pen,
| and making the trek back to my mailbox to drop it off.
|
| I buy that it's rife for abuse in many countries, but the
| US has such a well-protected (legally-speaking) postal
| service that it's probably the best country of any I know
| to do mail-in voting.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| It's hard to solve social problems (intentional voter
| disenfranchisement) with technological solutions.
| JohnVideogames wrote:
| I love persistent homology; it's such a weirdo bit of maths that
| topologists keep trying to make useful. Similarly its bigger
| cousin, Topological Data Analysis, which as far as I can tell is
| used by people who love weirdo maths but also want to be paid.
|
| I don't see how much good the persistent topology adds here,
| though. Why bother to do the abstract birth-death diagram and
| measure the variance in lifetime of these simplices, when the
| variance and median of the areas in the Voronoi diagram will give
| you a much easier and more interpretable result?
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > I don't see how much good the persistent topology adds here,
| though. Why bother to do the abstract birth-death diagram and
| measure the variance in lifetime of these simplices, when the
| variance and median of the areas in the Voronoi diagram will
| give you a much easier and more interpretable result?
|
| Well, my personal feeling as someone who has published math
| papers is that there is a bit of a pressure in mathematics to
| continually do things in new ways, even if they are not the
| _best_ ways of doing things. Topological data analysis seems to
| be of that sort.
|
| Of course, there could be debate here...but I do think that a
| lot of mathematics has gone past the point of diminishing
| returns when it comes to its usefulness or _even_ artistic
| elegance as an abstract art of the intellect. Yet, the show
| must go on I suppose.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| > a lot of mathematics has gone past the point of diminishing
| returns when it comes to its usefulness or even artistic
| elegance as an abstract art of the intellect.
|
| This reads like a quote from 200 years ago.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Just because something might have been incorrect 200 years
| ago does not mean it is not correct now. At some point, the
| false claims of diminishing returns will turn out to be
| true. It is foolishness to believe in an infinite supply of
| wealth from anything, including scientific research.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| I didn't claim it was incorrect. I was just observing
| that it sounded like an echo of the past, which it does.
|
| ...however, surely if we're reaching some sort of plateau
| in mathematical understanding, it's the end of _all_
| research -- and that is slightly hard to believe.
|
| Do you think we're nearing a proof of the Collatz
| conjecture? Or is the theory we have just totally
| inadequate?
| dmckeon wrote:
| In my opinion, wait times for voters of more than 30 minutes
| should be grounds for civil suit or impeachment of the election
| officials responsible. Other variables of interest would include
| voter dwell time - the time it takes for one voter to cast their
| ballot - and the likelihood of machine malfunction, whether from
| inadequate preparation or maintenance, or from active sabotage by
| voters. Worst case is a polling place with minimal staff, fragile
| and antiquated machines, and a high proportion of impatient,
| frustrated, or angry voters. The procedure for repair of machines
| (never use the word "fixed" during an election) is to mark the
| machine as out of order, call the elections office, and begin a
| long wait. For non-Americans, note that US general elections
| typically involve 2 or 3 dozen contests, so marking paper ballots
| just for one party or another is not an effective option in the
| US.
| codeflo wrote:
| I'm sorry, but as evidenced by literally the rest of the world,
| voting wait times are not a research-level mathematics problem,
| but purely one of resources. Census data and a tiny bit of
| queuing theory (or alternatively, historical data) will tell you
| the peak load of a voting booth. Staff accordingly, problem
| solved.
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