gerrymandering

Math Can’t Solve GerrymanderingResearchers use powerful geometrical methods to try fixing unfair districts. That alone isn’t enough; we need to fight the values behind gerrymanderingBy Matthew R. FrancisVoters cast their ballots at a polling station inside the Adamsville Baptist Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, US, on Tuesday, March 5, 2024. This year's Super Tuesday primaries will put Donald Trump on the cusp of the Republican nomination and launch the longest general election battle in recent US history. Credit:…

Cartogram of new congressional districts, each shaded by the difference between the probability of a party representing the district under the enacted plan and the voter-weighted average of the probability of a party representing the voters in that district under a nonpartisan baseline. Numbers represent the congressional district’s number in the enacted plan. Congressional districts are roughly equal in population, so the cartograms are drawn to be…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Voting districts are redrawn following each census in the United States. In most states, new district maps are implemented by the state legislature. This makes the process prone to manipulation by the current majority party, or gerrymandering. Although the Supreme Court has ruled that gerrymandering violates the Fourteenth Amendment, it has not established criteria to evaluate cases, making the…

Hardly anyone reckoned that struggling in high school to calculate the area of a triangle or the volume of a prism could be used one day to influence the outcome of an election. Geometry, however, can be a powerful tool in shaping results of an electoral contest—at least in plurality voting systems. Designing a perfect election system for multiple parties is impossible, even with mathematical tools. But if, by and large, there are only two dominant parties, as in the U.S., things should be fairly clear-cut. The party…

Ohio’s districting map (shaded box, left) alongside one of 5,000 alternative maps the researchers simulated. Credit: Algorithm-Assisted Redistricting Methodology Project New waves of statisticians, including a team at Harvard, have developed tools they think can help police the longstanding problem of gerrymandering of congressional and legislative districts in states by parties seeking to tip the scales for their candidates.…

Credit: Steve Nass, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons During midterm elections this November, voters across the country will head to the polls to decide who should represent them for the next two years in the U.S. House of Representatives. But, in some states, they may have a harder time making their voices heard this year, in part, because it's the first election following a redistricting cycle. New research from UC Santa…