Partisan gerrymandering with geographically compact districts
Partisan gerrymandering with geographically compact districtsBizarrely shaped voting districts are frequently lambasted as likely instances of gerrymandering. In order to systematically identify such instances, researchers have devised several tests for so-called geographic compactness (i.e., shape niceness). We demonstrate that under certain conditions, a party can gerrymander a competitive state into geographically compact districts to win an average of over 70% of the districts. Our results suggest that geometric features alone may fail to adequately combat partisan gerrymandering.
Boris Alexeev and Dustin G. Mixon
Partisan gerrymandering with geographically compact districts
Journal of Applied Probability 55 (2018), no. 4, 1046–1059.
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