And I anticipate that there must be someone argue that "for some problems, there is no solution, math is useless in these areas". If there is no solution, you still get nothing no matter how hard you study sociology/politics.
Math doesn’t tell us what outcome to prefer — only how to accomplish it once we do. Eg, do we prefer an outcome that gives everyone maximum individual impact or one that maximally balances the power of racial tribes?
The reason the US doesn’t use math to solve gerrymandering is that it prefers to have districts focus on maximizing the power of minority racial tribes ahead of equal representation of all voters.
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Of course, that’s a contentious choice — with some people believing that such racist policies favoring minority groups are akin to the divide-and-conquer used to subjugate India by the British.
Understanding the pushback against “DIE” requires understanding the view of elites engaging in neo-colonial tactics to subjugate the average American, eg by disrupting class movements along racial fault lines.
The US uses math to maximise partisan outcomes, when US Republicans have the chance to set boundaries they use software and consultants to crack Democrat districts and maximise chances for Republican county wins (and, of course, vice versa).
Countries such as Australia also use math to lay out districts, however they don't put the fozes in charge of the henhouse and instead have independant groups proposing new maps on the basis of party neutral constraints, take submissions and challenges onboard and operate in a transparent manner.
No system is perfect and naturally Australia at various times and in various locales has had "gerymandering" complaints and scandals - but nothing on the order of the US skews .. even after normalising for population scales.
They’ve chosen a different strategy, with different outcomes. That’s the sense in which mathematics can’t solve a political problem. US voting maps hinge on the “one drop” rule — where the government says anyone who is multi-racial counts as black but not their other races.
> Based on that guidance, census responses from people who marked both the "Black" and "White" boxes should be counted with the Black population. And when focused on discrimination specifically against Black people, responses marking boxes for two or more minority races including "Black" should also be counted as Black.
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/18/1126287827/redistricting-supr...
True, but only one of these parties ever talks about fixing the system. To be fair, of course, that's partially because the data says they'd win almost every election if it came down to a straight popular vote, so any system not specifically gamed against them is in their favor.
Democrats in New York produced a map so gerrymandered, it would have counterbalanced Republican gerrymandering elsewhere, but it was struck down by the courts:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/videos/new-yorks-gerrymander-mig...