How to Avoid Gerrymandering: A New Algorithmic Solution

Authors

Gregory B. Lush, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Esteban Gamez
Vladik Kreinovich, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow

Publication Date

10-2007

Comments

Technical Report: UTEP-CS-07-51a

Published in Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Technology InTech'07, Sydney, Australia, December 12-14, 2007, pp. 146-151.

Abstract

Subdividing an area into voting districts is often a very controversial issue. If we divide purely geographically, then minority groups may not be properly represented. If we start changing the borders of the districts to accommodate different population groups, we may end up with very artificial borders -- borders which are often to set up in such a way as to give an unfair advantage to incumbents. In this paper, we describe redistricting as a precise optimization problem, and we propose a new algorithm for solving this problem.