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Sunday, June 10, 2007
Law - Play the redistricting game yourself
Starting tomorrow (Monday), according to this Washington Post story, you will be able to play the Redistricting Game:
Okay, wonks: Think you know how the political game works?Now you can actually play it, or at least one part of it, from within the window of a computer browser.
A new, free game developed by a team at the University of Southern California makes a simple, quickly graspable point for those of us with short attention spans: It's not always the issues that determine the outcome of an election; it's how the congressional district map was drawn in the first place.
The Redistricting Game lets players bend the borders of congressional districts in a series of missions set in fictional states. Protect the incumbents, oust the opposition -- it's amazing what a few mouse-clicks can do. You read about gerrymandering in civics class, but it's much more involving to actually try your hand at it. * * *
Jonathan D. Aronson, a professor and political scientist at USC, is a little exasperated that Americans sometimes worry about the potential for voting-machine tampering when there may be a more fundamental -- though, perhaps, drier and harder-to-explain -- problem in how districts are drawn.
"My question was, why would you need to rig the voting machines if you'd already rigged the election by making seats safe?" he said. He took the issue to USC's game-design school to see whether it could build a game on the topic. * * *
The Redistricting Game takes place in imaginary states named Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton, but its developers are hoping it will draw enough interest and support to warrant making a version that uses real-world maps and census data. * * *
The game is scheduled to be available tomorrow at http://www.redistrictinggame.org.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 10, 2007 12:07 PM
Posted to General Law Related