Say you are one of the millions of people who go to the casino once a week. Your great Aunt Lulu doesn’t approve of this, but she does leave you $100 in her will. The condition is you either keep the $100 or bet $1 a week on red at the roulette wheel until you either win a total of $100 or lose the bankroll.
The roulette wheel is evenly divided between 18 reds and blacks, with two greens. Once you double the money, there is $10,000 in trust for you. How many weeks before you can collect the 10 grand?
Well, Aunt Lulu must have been a semi-pious woman who studied the work of the great French mathematician and Catholic mystic Blaise Pascal. Aside from inventing the public bus and having a computer language named after him, he also had a thing or two to say about gambling. He came up with Pascal’s Wager to demonstrate why, even from a worldly point of view, it is always a good bet to embrace the faith, live morally, and dedicate yourself to God.
He also came up with what is called the gambler’s ruin. What is the theory of the gambler’s ruin? It is the principle that even the slightest of disadvantages in a speculative venture is ruinous. (In contrast, even the slightest advantage will guarantee success.)
What does this have to do with politics? First, another question. At what point is a congressional election decided in most cases? Election day? Two weeks before? Six months to a year before? Two to five years before? The debate about this is what makes horse races, barroom discussions, if not ballroom brawls, not to mention now smoke-free smoke-filled rooms where political deals are cut.
The thesis of the voter’s ruin is that elections are settled in most cases when census data is collected, or “fudged” as in the last census, and the majority political party in a state capital draws district lines to select its voters, rather than voters selecting them.
Gerrymandering is named after Eldridge Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, whose salamander-shaped district gave rise to the name. In old England, they called these “rotten boroughs.” These unrepresentative districts guaranteed the rich and powerful secure places in Parliament. There is nothing new under the sun.
It is little surprise that, according to Ballotpedia, in the 2024 general elections, 95% of incumbents nationwide were re-elected. This includes congressional, state executive, state legislative, state judicial, and local offices. For congressional incumbents, it was a whopping 97%. Ah, democracy at work.
Moe Dalitz, the mobster who was a founding father of Las Vegas, would be envious. Yes, good candidates, like lucky streaks, come along, but the house always wins over time. Oddly enough, even the federal government gerrymanders under the guise of “civil rights laws” to create safe black or Hispanic districts in the South. The truth is, whether it is the deep state or political parties, given the chance, they will draw partisan lines. It’s a bad system.
For voters, an ideal world would keep communities intact, with a close balance between parties. Some states do that through commissions. Minority parties and majority parties both love gerrymandering. Anything that guarantees non-competitive victories for insiders has its upside.
If rank-and-file citizens want to change the outcome of elections, the most practical way is to actually change the party registration in your district, as was done in Wisconsin in the last election. Party registration directly influences how district lines get drawn. And despite the elimination of the old party-line lever in all but nine states, people tend to vote for the party they’re registered in.
Related: The Left Is Trying to Have It Both Ways on Gerrymandering
If you want to change the political world, as with the casinos, you can only do it if voters, not politicians, have an edge in the game, no matter how slight. This is the way to avoid the voter’s ruin, where incumbents dominate, and seats usually only change hands when they are pried from the dead fingers of incumbents who don’t retire in time.
Oh, and as for sneaky old Aunt Lulu and her $100. If you are smart, you will take the $100 and run. It will probably take you 6,400 years, give or take a few weeks, to overcome the approximately 5.26% disadvantage and win that $100. With interest, the $10,000 will be worth a fortune, but you’ll be dead.I Voter’s ruin, gambler’s ruin indeed.
