Thursday, October 12, 2017

Patrick Honner — The Math Behind Gerrymandering and Wasted Votes

In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled extreme partisan gerrymanders unconstitutional. But without a reliable test for identifying unfair district maps, the court has yet to throw any out. Now, as the nation’s highest court hears arguments for and against a legal challenge to Wisconsin’s state assembly district map, mathematicians are on the front lines in the fight for electoral fairness.
Simple math can help scheming politicians draw up districts that give their party outsize influence, but mathematics can also help identify and remedy these situations. This past summer the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group, led by the mathematician Moon Duchin, convened at Tufts University, in part to discuss new mathematical tools for analyzing and addressing gerrymandering. The “efficiency gap” is a simple idea at the heart of some of the tools being considered by the Supreme Court. Let’s explore this concept and some of its ramifications....
Quanta Magazine

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