Related papers: Alleviating partisan gerrymandering: can math and …
A recently proposed graph-theoretic metric, the influence gap, has shown to be a reliable predictor of the effect of social influence in two-party elections, albeit only tested on regular and scale-free graphs. Here, we investigate whether…
We propose three novel gerrymandering algorithms which incorporate the spatial distribution of voters with the aim of constructing gerrymandered, equal-population, connected districts. Moreover, we develop lattice models of voter…
Graph Partitioning is widely used in many real-world applications such as fraud detection and social network analysis, in order to enable the distributed graph computing on large graphs. However, existing works fail to balance the…
The margin of victory of an election is a useful measure to capture the robustness of an election outcome. It also plays a crucial role in determining the sample size of various algorithms in post election audit, polling etc. In this work,…
We define a distance metric between partitions of a graph using machinery from optimal transport. Our metric is built from a linear assignment problem that matches partition components, with assignment cost proportional to transport…
Redistricting is the problem of dividing a state into a number $k$ of regions, called districts. Voters in each district elect a representative. The primary criteria are: each district is connected, district populations are equal (or nearly…
We consider the measures of partisan symmetry proposed for practical use in the political science literature, as clarified and developed in Katz, King, and Rosenblatt (2020). Elementary mathematical manipulation shows the symmetry metrics…
State delegations are often chosen through single-member district elections, creating a tension between respecting district majorities and reflecting the statewide electorate. First-past-the-post (FPTP) follows each district's majority but…
Using an ensemble of redistricting plans, we evaluate whether a given political districting faithfully represents the geo-political landscape. Redistricting plans are sampled by a Monte Carlo algorithm from a probability distribution that…
When auditing a redistricting plan, a persuasive method is to compare the plan with an ensemble of neutrally drawn redistricting plans. Ensembles are generated via algorithms that sample distributions on balanced graph partitions. To audit…
The Kemeny aggregation problem consists of computing the consensus rankings of an election with respect to the well-known Kemeny-Young voting method. These consensus rankings satisfy various fundamental properties and are the geometric…
The outcome of elections is strongly dependent on the districting choices, making thus possible (and frequent) the gerrymandering phenomenon, i.e.\ politicians suitably changing the shape of electoral districts in order to win the…
American democracy is currently heavily reliant on plurality in single-member districts, or PSMD, as a system of election. But public perceptions of fairness are often keyed to partisan proportionality, or the degree of congruence between…
Our main contribution is the introduction of the map of elections framework. A map of elections consists of three main elements: (1) a dataset of elections (i.e., collections of ordinal votes over given sets of candidates), (2) a way of…
Our main contribution is the introduction of the map of elections framework. A map of elections consists of three main elements: (1) a dataset of elections (i.e., collections of ordinal votes over given sets of candidates), (2) a way of…
Many people believe that it is disadvantageous for members aligning with a minority party to cluster in cities, as this makes it easier for the majority party to gerrymander district boundaries to diminish the representation of the…
"Compactness," or the use of shape as a proxy for fairness, has been a long-running theme in the scrutiny of electoral districts; badly-shaped districts are often flagged as examples of the abuse of power known as gerrymandering. The most…
Gerrymandering is a pervasive problem within the US political system. In the past decade, methods based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling and statistical outlier tests have been proposed to quantify gerrymandering and were used as…
The U.S. Supreme Court is currently deliberating over whether a proposed mathematical formula should be used to detect unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering. We show that in some cases, this formula will only flag bizarrely shaped…
Changes in political geography and electoral district boundaries shape representation in the United States Congress. To disentangle the effects of geography and gerrymandering, we generate a large ensemble of alternative redistricting plans…