Related papers: Simulated packing and cracking
We compare and contrast fourteen measures that have been proposed for the purpose of quantifying partisan gerrymandering. We consider measures that, rather than examining the shapes of districts, utilize only the partisan vote distribution…
Currently, there is currently no effective, standardized way to identify the presence of partisan gerrymandering. A relatively newly proposed method of identification is ensemble analysis. This is done by generating a large neutral ensemble…
We explore the Declination, a new metric intended to detect partisan gerrymandering. We consider instances in which each district has equal turnout, the maximum turnout to minimum turnout is bounded, and turnout is unrestricted. For each of…
To assess the presence of gerrymandering, one can consider the shapes of districts or the distribution of votes. The "efficiency gap," which does the latter, plays a central role in a 2016 federal court case on the constitutionality of…
This note outlines three intellectually distinct but not mutually exclusive strategies for measuring partisan gerrymandering: partisan symmetry, efficiency gap, and algorithmic sampling.
Using the recently introduced declination function, we estimate the net number of seats won in the US House of Representatives due to asymmetries in vote distributions. Such asymmetries can arise from combinations of partisan gerrymandering…
Partisan gerrymandering is a major cause for voter disenfranchisement in United States. However, convincing US courts to adopt specific measures to quantify gerrymandering has been of limited success to date. Recently, Stephanopoulos and…
In recent years, in an effort to promote fairness in the election process, a wide variety of techniques and metrics have been proposed to determine whether a map is a partisan gerrymander. The most accessible measures, requiring easily…
Recently, a proposal has been advanced to detect unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering with a simple formula called the efficiency gap. The efficiency gap is now working its way towards a possible landmark case in the Supreme Court. This…
We study the problem of a partisan gerrymanderer who assigns voters to equipopulous districts so as to maximize his party's expected seat share. The designer faces both aggregate uncertainty (how many votes his party will receive) and…
Several measures of partisan bias are reviewed for single member districts with two dominant parties. These include variants of the simple bias that considers only deviation of seats from 50% at statewide 50% vote. Also included are…
Political districts may be drawn to favor one group or political party over another, or gerrymandered. A number of measurements have been suggested as ways to detect and prevent such behavior. These measures give concrete axes along which…
The colloquial phrase "partisan bias" encompasses multiple distinct conceptions of bias, including partisan advantage, packing & cracking, and partisan symmetry. All are useful and have their place, and there are several proposed measures…
We investigate the distribution of partisanship in a cross-section of ten diverse States to elucidate how votes translate into seats won and other metrics. Markov chain simulations taking into account partisanship distribution agree…
The efficiency gap formula was introduced in to measure political gerrymandering. It played a key role in the Gill v. Whitford case whose appeal is currently before the Supreme Court, but it was very recently shown by Bernstein and Duchin…
The recent wave of attention to partisan gerrymandering has come with a push to refine or replace the laws that govern political redistricting around the country. A common element in several states' reform efforts has been the inclusion of…
Partisan gerrymandering poses a threat to democracy. Moreover, the complexity of the districting task may exceed human capacities. One potential solution is using computational models to automate the districting process by optimizing…
Recently, scholars from law and political science have introduced metrics which use only election outcomes (and not district geometry) to assess the presence of partisan gerrymandering. The most high-profile example of such a tool is the…
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…
We consider two symmetry metrics commonly used to analyze partisan gerrymandering: the Mean-Median Difference (MM) and Partisan Bias (PB). Our main results compare, for combinations of seats and votes achievable in districted elections, the…