The Ohio redistricting shitshow continues

 The state Supreme Court here in Ohio has rejected the redistricting plan.  Again.  Actually, let me reformat that.  Shall we go with bold or italicization?  Let's do both.  Again.  After all, this was the third time the Court rejected the redistricting plan.  If you aren't following the ins and outs of this lunacy, basically, the Republicans who run the upper and lower chamber are trying one helluva power grab.  The redistricting reforms the state adopted were intended to prevent partisan gerrymanders, and the Republicans are basically saying, nah, let's do a partisan gerrymander.  The courts are blocking them.  Kinda.  Lemme see if I can explain this.

It's a game of chicken.  Only we're the car being driven off the road.  Here's the deal, kids.

Remember, not all gerrymanders are created equal.  They are separate and unequal.  Bipartisan gerrymanders, also called incumbent protection gerrymanders, are good.  They give you partisan representation according to the partisan balance of the state, and the people telling you that they cause polarization are doing so because they've never done the empirical analysis.

Partisan gerrymanders are bad.  They distort representation.  They work via the pack-and-crack scheme, so named based on what you do to the other party's voters.  Imagine you have a state with 33 voters, 12 Republicans, 21 Dems.  Divide them into three districts.  What if you drew them as follows?  District 1:  6R 5D, District 2: 6R 5D, District 3: 11D.  Did you catch that?  By "packing" 11 Democrats into District 3, and then "cracking" the other 10 between Districts 1 and 2, the GOP gives the Dems only one district, even though they make up 2/3 of the population.  Cool, right?  That's "packing-and-cracking."  This is what Ohio Republicans are doing.  They're not allowed to do it, sort of, and so Democrats aren't going along with it, which is throwing it into the courts, the courts are rejecting the plans, and the Republicans are basically just saying, yeah, this is kinda what we want to do!

So this is rather different from a normal process.  Normally, when a court strikes down a redistricting plan with specific instructions, a legislature obeys.  The legislature doesn't push it like this.  And we're coming up on a basically un-meet-able deadline now.  May 3.  Primary day.  It's a little difficult to have elections without district lines.  What's going on?  Chicken.  The classical game from game theory.

Two drivers drive towards each other, in an attempt to get the other to swerve.  Whoever swerves is the "chicken."  If I get you to swerve, I get bragging rights.  Yay me and my big... bragging rights.

Anyway, there are four outcomes.  Both players drive, both players swerve, and two split outcomes.  How does Player 1 rank these outcomes?

    1. 1 drives, 2 swerves (bragging rights)

    2. Both swerve (two chickens, no bragging rights)

    3. 1 swerves, 2 drives (live chicken)

    4. Both drive (dead chicken)

Player 2 will have a similar ranking, but reversing the first and third outcomes.

OK, what happens?  Chicken must be analyzed as a simultaneous move game.  As such, it cannot be solved with iterated deletion.  Instead, there are two "pure strategy Nash equilibria."  They are the equilibria in which one player is driving, and the other is swerving.  Huh?  Here's what that means.  A Nash equilibrium is an arrangement of strategies in which every player is playing an optimal strategy given the other players' strategies, such that no one has an incentive to deviate, given the other players' strategies.  "Pure strategy" means no randomization.  If both players were driving, then any one could improve by swerving and living.  If both players were swerving, then any one could improve by driving to acquire bragging rights.  In either of the drive/swerve combinations, neither player can do better by changing strategy given the other player's strategy.  So, it's Nash.

But the thing is, this is all about simultaneous move, and the question posed to every professor who teaches game theory is as follows.  How do the players in a one-shot, simultaneous move game reach a Nash equilibrium?  There are two here.

You know what we do when asked?  Mostly... we shrug and mumble and yank at our collars and other such indications that, um...

Fuck.  Hey, I've got a good book lined up for tomorrow's sci-fi post!  Well, I'll do my obligatory grumble, but really, there's some cool stuff in it!

So anywho, what's happening right now is a game of chicken in sequence, incrementally approaching a point at which the disastrous impossibility of the May 3 election reaches certainty.  The Court wants a plan that isn't pack-and-crack.  The GOP wants to rape and murder every Democrat, not necessarily in that order, but they'll settle for a hardcore pack-and-crack redistricting plan.

Who caves?

So far, nobody has caved.  Incremental refusal to swerve, as a crash approaches, with neither player knowing if the other player will respond sequentially by serving.  This is not actually a simultaneous move game.  It is sequential, but with neither player knowing the other player's willingness to swerve, it reduces to something similar, and a failure to coordinate on either of the two Nash equilibria from the one-shot, simultaneous move game.  Blah, blah, brinksmanship, blah, blah, repeated games, loser, loser, chicken dinner.  You just have to scrape it off the road yourself.

So right now, nobody really knows what happens because we don't have a way to hold the May 3 primaries, and nobody looks to cave.

The state Supreme Court has made their decision.  Now let them enforce it, right?

So here's the fucking stupid thing.  The fix is easy, it's just not written into the round of reforms that created this shitshow.  A court-drawn plan.  Or a special master, or whoever.  The legislature won't obey the law, as interpreted by the courts?  OK, then they lose the right to draw the lines.  Plenty of states have that as a back-up.  Court-drawn plans are a thing.  S.  Things.  Are things.  They are things that are.  See me with my words?

You know what else happens?  Shitshows.  Shitshows happen.  Shitshows don't need to happen.  Shitshows can be canceled.  Generally speaking, I am not a proponent of cancel culture.  Then again, there are plenty of shows to be canceled.  I presume someone will tell me when Better Call Saul returns because other than that, I think those of us who are indifferent to shows can allow even the shittiest to exist with a live and let live philosophy.  Yes, I judge you for your taste in entertainment, but my judgment and a nickel are worth a nickel.  Perhaps less, even before we consider the current rate of inflation.  So fine.  Watch whatever shows you want.  For the most part.

Shitshows, though?  We can cancel these, and I advocate the cancelation of anyone who perpetuates shitshows.  This is an easy shitshow to cancel.  A simple fix.  Reform the law so that if the courts reject a plan, the courts appoint someone to draw a plan.  Done.

Yeah.  So this is what happens when goo-gooism collides with crass, maximalist opportunism.  Crash.

Gurf Morlix, "The Greatest Show On Earth," from Toad of Titicaca.