[EM] Re: redistricting

[Andrew Myers]

> From: bql at bolson.org
> Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 18:22:26 -0800 (PST)
> Subject: Re: [EM] redistricting
> To: "election-methods-electorama.com at electorama.com"
> 	<election-methods-electorama.com at electorama.com>
> Message-ID: <Pine.OSX.4.60.0501071818390.21723 at bolson.org>
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
> 
> On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Forest Simmons wrote:
> >
> > Yes, let the candidates (and any others who want to) submit their favorite 
> > redistricting proposal, and then choose from among them, not by voting, but 
> > by applying some objective standard of compactness ... minimal total number 
> > of traffic lanes cut by the boundaries, minimal total boundary length in some 
> > appropriate metric, minimal average distance between members of the same 
> > district where the distance is some combination of cost, time, and taxicab 
> > mileage, etc.
> >
> >
> > Forest
Brian Olson replies:
> 
> This sounds like one of the parts of a classic set of problems in Computer 
> Science that are like cryptography in that a solution is hard to find, but 
> easy to verify.

Actually, it sounds to me like a minimum graph cut problem. There are
efficient network flow algorithms for solving these problems.

-- Andrew