Related papers: Spanning Trees and Redistricting: New Methods for …
Sampling-based methods such as ReCom are widely used to audit redistricting plans for fairness, with the balanced spanning tree distribution playing a central role since it favors compact, contiguous, and population-balanced districts.…
In the design and analysis of political redistricting maps, it is often useful to be able to sample from the space of all partitions of the graph of census blocks into connected subgraphs of equal population. There are influential Markov…
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…
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…
Ensemble analysis has become an important tool for quantifying gerrymandering; the main idea is to generate a large, random sample of districting plans (an "ensemble") to which any proposed plan may be compared. If a proposed plan is an…
Redistricting is the problem of partitioning a set of geographical units into a fixed number of districts, subject to a list of often-vague rules and priorities. In recent years, the use of randomized methods to sample from the vast space…
As granular data about elections and voters become available, redistricting simulation methods are playing an increasingly important role when legislatures adopt redistricting plans and courts determine their legality. These simulation…
This paper gives a new algorithm for sampling tree-weighted partitions of a large class of planar graphs. Formally, the tree-weighted distribution on $k$-partitions of a graph weights $k$-partitions proportional to the product of the number…
Eliciting preferences from human judgements is inherently imprecise, yet most decision analysis methods force a single priority vector from pairwise comparisons, discarding the information embedded in inconsistencies. We instead leverage…
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…
"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…
Evaluating the degree of partisan districting (Gerrymandering) in a statistical framework typically requires an ensemble of districting plans which are drawn from a prescribed probability distribution that adheres to a realistic and…
This paper is to obtain a simple dividing-diagram of the congressional districts, where the only limit is that each district should contain the same population if possibly. In order to solve this problem, we introduce three different…
In the United States, regions are frequently divided into districts for the purpose of electing representatives. How the districts are drawn can affect who's elected, and drawing districts to give an advantage to a certain group is known as…
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…
Working with tree graphs is always easier than with loopy ones and spanning trees are the closest tree-like structures to a given graph. We find a correspondence between the solutions of random K-satisfiability problem and those of spanning…
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…
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…
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…
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…