Related papers: Nonparametric Detection of Gerrymandering in Multi…
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…
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…
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…
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…
In a representative democracy, the electoral process involves partitioning geographical space into districts which each elect a single representative. These representatives craft and vote on legislation, incentivizing political parties to…
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…
Every representative democracy must specify a mechanism under which voters choose their representatives. The most common mechanism in the United States -- Winner takes all single-member districts -- both enables substantial 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.…
This paper presents a novel mechanism to endogenously determine the fair division of a state into electoral districts in a two-party setting. No geometric constraints are imposed on voter distributions or district shapes; instead, it is…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Roughly speaking, gerrymandering is the systematic manipulation of the boundaries of electoral districts to make a specific (political) party win as many districts as possible. While typically studied from a geographical point of view,…
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…
This note outlines three intellectually distinct but not mutually exclusive strategies for measuring partisan gerrymandering: partisan symmetry, efficiency gap, and algorithmic sampling.
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…
Bizarrely shaped voting districts are frequently lambasted as likely instances of gerrymandering. In order to systematically identify such instances, researchers have devised several tests for so-called geographic compactness (i.e., shape…
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…