Gerrymandering: how district lines decide elections
Before a single vote is cast, the way electoral maps are drawn can lock in outcomes for a decade. Explore how gerrymandering works, the math used to detect it, and the fight over who should draw the lines.
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Packing concentrates opposition voters into single districts to neutralize their surplus voting power.
Cracking dilutes opposition voters across multiple districts to prevent them from reaching a majority.
The efficiency gap measures partisan bias by calculating the difference in wasted votes between parties.
Mathematical sampling of twenty-four thousand alternative maps can prove if a district plan is an outlier.
The Massachusetts Paradox shows how geographic sorting can leave one-third of voters with zero representation.
Proportional ranked choice voting in multi-member districts reduces the incentive for partisan map manipulation.
- 01Intro1 min
- 02The Mechanics of Cracking and Packing2 min
- 03The Random Walk: Math as a Yardstick3 min
- 04The Massachusetts Paradox and Racial Gerrymandering3 min
- 05Beyond the Lines: Structural Solutions2 min
- 06Outro1 min
- The political calculus—and actual math—of gerrymandering
- Q&A: The political calculus—and actual math—of gerrymandering
- Explainer: What's happening with gerrymandering in the ...
- Geometry Reveals the Tricks behind Gerrymandering | Scientific American
- Redistricting war accelerates winner-take-all politics straining American democracy | PBS News
- The Math of Gerrymandering. How Politicians Choose Their Voters | by Cole Frederick | Science Spectrum
- Gerrymandering - Institute for Mathematics and Democracy
- Congress in Plain English: Gerrymandering - UnderstandingCongress.org
- What to know about gerrymandering – That's Politics Podcast
- Gerrymandering: How drawing jagged lines can impact an | TED-Ed
- How to Quantify (and Fight) Gerrymandering | Quanta Magazine
- [PDF] 18-422 Rucho v. Common Cause (06/27/2019) - Supreme Court
- Partisan Gerrymandering and the Efficiency Gap
- Quantifying Gerrymandering in North Carolina
- Measuring partisan fairness
- Partisan Gerrymandering and the Efficiency Gap
- Measuring Efficiency in Redistricting
- How the New Math of Gerrymandering Works - The New York Times
- The Math Behind Gerrymandering and Wasted Votes | Quanta Magazine
- Recombination: A Family of Markov Chains for Redistricting · Issue 3.1, Winter 2021
- Introduction to Discrete MCMC for Redistricting
- https://export.arxiv.org/pdf/2209.00624v1.pdf
- How Math Has Changed the Shape of Gerrymandering | Quanta Magazine
- Carlo∗
- Don’t Trust a Single Gerrymandering Metric | La Matematica | Springer Nature Link
- [1709.01596] Evaluating Partisan Gerrymandering in Wisconsin
- 04 StephanopoulosMcGhee_ART_Final (ABF)
- [1705.10812] A formula goes to court: Partisan gerrymandering and the efficiency gap
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