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Published April 1998 | public
Journal Article

How to gerrymander: A formal analysis

Abstract

The paper combines the optimal gerrymandering approach in political science with the "fair cake division" results in mathematics and economics to consider optimal partisan gerrymandering schemes on a given territory. We analyze existence and properties of an optimal districting map for a strategic party that has control over redistricting process, given arbitrary continuous distributions of voters and party supporters over the electoral territory. Interestingly, we find that imposition of certain equality-type constraints on districting might often help to prevent gerrymandering and sustain fairness.

Additional Information

© 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Accepted 14 November 1995. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. I would like to thank Peter Bardsley, Marcus Berliant, Kim Border, Morgan Kousser and Richard McKelvey for their suggestions and helpful discussion of this paper. Any errors are my own.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 17, 2023