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Switching from one electoral system to another one is frequently criticized by the opposition and is viewed as a means for the ruling party to stay in power. In particular, when the new electoral system is a parallel voting (or a…
"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…
Geographical considerations such as contiguity and compactness are necessary elements of political districting in practice. Yet an analysis of the problem without such constraints yields mathematical insights that can inform real-world…
Republican candidates often receive between 30 and 40 percent of the two-way vote share in statewide elections in Massachusetts. For the last three Census cycles, MA has held 9-10 seats in the House of Representatives, which means that a…
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…
After every U.S. national census, a state legislature is required to redraw the boundaries of congressional districts in order to account for changes in population. At the moment this is done in a highly partisan way, with districting done…
The American winner-take-all congressional district system empowers politicians to engineer electoral outcomes by manipulating district boundaries. Existing computational solutions mostly focus on drawing unbiased maps by ignoring political…
Gerrymandering voting districts is one of the most salient concerns of contemporary American society, and the creation of new voting maps, along with their subsequent legal challenges, speaks for much of our modern political discourse. The…
Gerrymandering is a long-standing issue within the U.S. political system, and it has received scrutiny recently by the U.S. Supreme Court. In this note, we prove that deciding whether there exists a fair redistricting among legal maps is…
Assuming that partisan fairness and responsiveness are important aspects of redistricting, it is important to measure them. Many measures of partisan bias are satisfactory for states that are balanced with roughly equal proportions of…
Gerrymandering, the deliberate manipulation of electoral district boundaries for political advantage, is a persistent issue in U.S. redistricting cycles. This paper introduces and analyzes a new phenomenon, 'votemandering'- a strategic…
In this paper, we apply techniques of ensemble analysis to understand the political baseline for Congressional representation in Colorado. We generate a large random sample of reasonable redistricting plans and determine the partisan…
The gerrymandering problem is a worldwide problem which sets great threat to democracy and justice in district based elections. Thanks to partisan redistricting commissions, district boundaries are often manipulated to benefit incumbents.…
Examination of precinct level data in US presidential elections reveals a correlation of large precincts and increased fraction of Republican votes. The large precinct bias is analyzed with respect to voter heterogeneity and voter…
In the context of modern sampling methods for redistricting, we define a natural measurement of the clustering of a political party, and we study how clustering affects the expected election outcome. We first prove general results and then…
The boundaries of electoral constituencies for assembly and parliamentary seats are drafted using a process referred to as delimitation, which ensures fair and equal representation of all citizens. The current delimitation exercise suffers…
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…
In representative democracy, a redistricting map is chosen to partition an electorate into districts which each elects a representative. A valid redistricting map must satisfy a collection of constraints such as being compact, contiguous,…
Recently, an increasing number of researchers, especially in the realm of political redistricting, have proposed sampling-based techniques to generate a subset of plans from the vast space of districting plans. These techniques have been…
Partisan gerrymandering, i.e., manipulation of electoral district boundaries for political advantage, is one of the major challenges to election integrity in modern day democracies. Yet most of the existing methods for detecting partisan…