Show HN: Gerrymandle - 一款每日重画选区的益智游戏

Show HN: Gerrymandle - 一款每日重画选区的益智游戏
Show HN: Gerrymandle - Daily puzzle game where you redraw electoral districts

《杰利蝾螈》（*Gerrymandle*）是一款展示“杰利蝾螈”机制的游戏，即通过战略性操纵选区边界来偏袒某一政党。玩家必须将地图板块划分为选区，并利用“聚拢”（将对手选票集中）和“分散”（将对手选票稀释）的策略，以少数总票数赢得多数席位。除了游戏本身，“杰利蝾螈”对民主完整性构成了重大威胁。由于预先决定了选举结果，它助长了政治极端化，削弱了温和派的影响力，并常剥夺少数群体的政治权利。尽管这种做法始于 1812 年，但现代算法如今已能实现精准的选区划分。尽管最高法院承认党派性的“杰利蝾螈”破坏了民主原则，但近期的裁决使其愈发难以受到挑战。因此，各州现在频繁在十年一度的普查周期内重新划分边界，以确立党派优势，将选区重划从一项十年一次的普查要求，演变成了一种极具侵略性的持续性政治武器。

Hacker News | 最新 | 过往 | 评论 | 提问 | 展示 | 招聘 | 提交 | 登录 Show HN: Gerrymandle - 每日益智游戏，通过重划选区来玩（gerrymandle.cc） 11 分，由 realmofthemad 于 1 小时前发布 | 隐藏 | 过往 | 收藏 | 3 条评论 | 帮助 coder97 1 分钟前 | 下一条 [–] 我觉得我没太玩懂这个游戏。建议为初学者增加几个难度递增的入门关卡。回复 srameshc 6 分钟前 | 上一条 [–] 我很喜欢这个点子……你把一个重要的议题转化成了游戏，这或许能提升公众意识。我不是专家，但这类决策通常影响深远，却很少有人花时间去了解。这是一种很有趣的学习方式。谢谢！！回复 realmofthemad 0 分钟前 | 父评论 [–] 很高兴你喜欢它！回复指南 | 常见问题 | 列表 | API | 安全 | 法律 | 申请 YC | 联系搜索：

原文

How to play Gerrymandle

You are in charge of drawing the district lines for the elections. Click adjacent tiles on the map to group them into a district. Each district must be one connected shape, no islands allowed.

Coloured houses show where voters live. Not every tile on the board has one, some are just empty land.

A hex grid with a handful of coloured houses scattered across it, most tiles empty, showing that only some tiles have voters on them.

A party wins a district by having more houses in it than any other party. If two parties tie in a district, nobody wins it. It is your job to draw regions so that your party wins more regions than anyone else and wins the election.

Two diagrams: on the left, a 4-by-3 grid split into fair column districts with a red X; on the right, the same grid gerrymandered so one party wins three of four districts, with a green tick.

Every house must be assigned to a district. The districts are all the same size.

Submit your answer when you think you have found the best distribution for your party. There is also a hint button available if you get stuck. Good luck gerrymandering!

What is gerrymandering?

Gerrymandering is drawing electoral district lines to favour one party over another. Two techniques do most of the work. Packing concentrates opponents into a few districts they win by a landslide, burning their surplus votes on margins they didn't need. Cracking splits their remaining voters across other districts so they fall just short everywhere. Together, a party can win a majority of seats with a minority of the overall vote.

Three-panel illustration: the same 50-tile grid drawn without districts, with a gerrymander where the minority wins 3 of 5 districts, and with fair horizontal bands where the majority wins all 5, showing how the same voters produce different winners depending on where the lines are drawn. — Packing and cracking: how gerrymandering turns a minority of votes into a majority of seats.

The name comes from Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry, who in 1812 approved a district so oddly shaped that a Boston newspaper compared it to a salamander and coined "Gerry-mander". The practice is older: Patrick Henry tried to draw Virginia's first congressional map to keep James Madison out of Congress. Today the mechanics are unchanged, but algorithms model thousands of map variants and tune each district with surgical precision.

Why is gerrymandering bad?

When a map guarantees an outcome, general elections stop mattering. The primary winner takes the seat, so incumbents only need to keep their party's base happy. The centre gets ignored; the extremes perform better.

The effects are measurable. When courts struck down North Carolina's partisan map in 2022, the state elected equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats. Republicans redrew it, and in 2024 won 10 of 14 seats in a state that is closely divided. The vote totals barely shifted. The lines did.

It also concentrates harm on minority communities. Residential patterns make packing or cracking a minority neighbourhood one of the most efficient ways to tip a district. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled it could not police partisan maps, even while calling gerrymandering "inconsistent with democratic principles". A 2026 ruling went further, requiring proof of discriminatory intent rather than discriminatory effect alone, making maps far harder to challenge.

That ruling has accelerated an already aggressive cycle. More than 25% of all congressional seats have been redrawn mid-decade since 2020, something that used to happen only after a census, once per decade. Texas redrew its maps in 2025 to add five Republican seats. California suspended its independent redistricting commission and redrew in response. Virginia and Florida followed. Redistricting has become an ongoing political instrument.