Gerrymandering Is Illegal, But Only Mathematicians Can Prove It

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Riddick
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Gerrymandering Is Illegal, But Only Mathematicians Can Prove It

Post by Riddick » 04-17-2017 08:31 PM

Partisan gerrymandering—the practice of drawing voting districts to give one political party an unfair edge—is one of the few political issues that voters of all stripes find common cause in condemning.

The Supreme Court agrees, at least in theory: In 1986 it ruled that partisan gerrymandering, if extreme enough, is unconstitutional. The problem is that there is no such thing as a perfect map—every map will have some partisan effect.

So how much is too much? In 2004, in a ruling that rejected nearly every available test for partisan gerrymandering, the Supreme Court called this an “unanswerable question.” Meanwhile, as the court wrestles with this issue, maps are growing increasingly biased, many experts say.

Even so, the current moment is perhaps the most auspicious one in decades for reining in partisan gerrymandering. New quantitative approaches—measures of how biased a map is, and algorithms that can create millions of alternative maps—could help set a concrete standard for how much gerrymandering is too much. FULL STORY
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