[EM] A computationally feasible method (algorithmic redistricting)

[Michael Rouse]

There was a discussion of district-drawing algorithms on the 
election-methods list a few years back. I've always thought that taking 
centroidal Voronoi cells with equal populations was an elegant way to do 
it. Here's an example of standard Voronoi cells and the centroidal 
version I pulled off of Google:
http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/~ajsecord/npar2002/html/stipples-node2.html

The other possibility I liked was allowing voters to vote for the 
districts they wanted -- either for the next election, or more 
entertainingly, the current one. People have a pretty good feel for what 
mapping is compact and reasonable, and which ones are ridiculous, 
especially if they can compare them. You could have certain criteria 
that must be met -- like all districts must be contiguous  -- and sort 
the maps by some metric, like from shortest to longest aggregate 
perimeter. You could have all qualifying parties submit a map, as well 
as any group that gets above a certain number of signatures in a petition.

Michael Rouse

(The last time I posted, things like line breaks disappeared, so I 
apologize if this happens again.)


greg wrote:
>> From: "Kathy Dopp" <kathy.dopp at gmail.com>
>>     
>>> From: "Raph Frank" <raphfrk at gmail.com>
>>> Brian Olson suggests this approach for his anti-gerrymandering proposals.
>>>
>>> http://bolson.org/dist/USIRA.html
>>> and
>>> http://bolson.org/dist/
>>>       
>> I suggested a similar mathematical method for drawing Congressional
>> districts a few years ago. I like Brian's suggestion - and
>> particularly like his side-by-side state district maps, so I modified
>> my page on drawing districts to include links to his:
>>
>>  See http://electionmathematics.org/  and click on "Drawing Districts".
>>     
> I've added this link to my collection of algorithmic redistricting proposals.
>
> I've been collecting references to algorithmic redistricting proposals
> on my site on a post related to comments by the 'Rose Report' on the topic.
>
> See:
>  http://allaboutvoting.com/2007/12/01/the-rose-report-on-algorithmic-redistricting/
> and
>  http://allaboutvoting.com/category/algorithmic_redistricting/
>
> -Greg Wolfe
> http://AllAboutVoting.com
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