Related papers: A Comparison of Metrics for the Identification of …
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…
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…
We introduce simulated packing and cracking as a technique for evaluating partisan-gerrymandering measures. We apply it to historical congressional and legislative elections to evaluate four measures: partisan bias, declination, efficiency…
This note outlines three intellectually distinct but not mutually exclusive strategies for measuring partisan gerrymandering: partisan symmetry, efficiency gap, and algorithmic sampling.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
We introduce the Geography and Election Outcome (GEO) metric, a new method for identifying potential partisan gerrymanders. In contrast with currently popular methods, the GEO metric uses both geographic information about a districting plan…
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…
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…
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…
The process of drawing electoral district boundaries is known as political redistricting. Within this context, gerrymandering is the practice of drawing these boundaries such that they unfairly favor a particular political party, often…
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…
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…
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 is a practice of manipulating district boundaries and locations in order to achieve a political advantage for a particular party. Lewenberg, Lev, and Rosenschein [AAMAS 2017] initiated the algorithmic study of a…
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…