[EM] Impractical districting idea, complexity

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 6/11/22 6:49 AM, Forest Simmons wrote:
> Kristofer,
> 
> It seems to be easier (in the virtual setting) to save the "district" 
> center's for last.
> 
> Start with a singular value decomposition of the scatter plot to get an 
> ellipsoidal approximation of the ballot distribution.
> 
> Make hyperplane cuts perpendicular to the ellipsoidal axes starting with 
> the longest axis, in such a way that each region so delineated has the 
> same number of voters, and that the regions are as compact as possible 
> given the constraint of cutting only perpendicular to the axes.
> 
> Then find the best allocation of candidates to districts. If there is a 
> district with no candidate interior to it, then the representative will 
> have to be from outside the district. If a representative cannot be 
> interior to the district she represents, that's not her fault: the 
> problem is a substantial void without any voter from that region willing 
> to run.

This sounds like a virtual k-tau space version of the splitline 
algorithm :-)

-km