There was a discussion of district-drawing algorithms on the
election-methods list a few years back. I've always thought that taking
centroidal Voronoi cells with equal populations was an elegant way to do
it. Here's an example of standard Voronoi cells and the centroidal
version I pulled off of Google:
http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/~ajsecord/npar2002/html/stipples-node2.html
The other possibility I liked was allowing voters to vote for the
districts they wanted -- either for the next election, or more
entertainingly, the current one. People have a pretty good feel for what
mapping is compact and reasonable, and which ones are ridiculous,
especially if they can compare them. You could have certain criteria
that must be met -- like all districts must be contiguous -- and sort
the maps by some metric, like from shortest to longest aggregate
perimeter. You could have all qualifying parties submit a map, as well
as any group that gets above a certain number of signatures in a petition.
Michael Rouse
(The last time I posted, things like line breaks disappeared, so I
apologize if this happens again.)
greg wrote:
From: "Kathy Dopp" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: "Raph Frank" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Brian Olson suggests this approach for his anti-gerrymandering proposals.
http://bolson.org/dist/USIRA.html
and
http://bolson.org/dist/
I suggested a similar mathematical method for drawing Congressional
districts a few years ago. I like Brian's suggestion - and
particularly like his side-by-side state district maps, so I modified
my page on drawing districts to include links to his:
See http://electionmathematics.org/ and click on "Drawing Districts".
I've added this link to my collection of algorithmic redistricting proposals.
I've been collecting references to algorithmic redistricting proposals
on my site on a post related to comments by the 'Rose Report' on the topic.
See:
http://allaboutvoting.com/2007/12/01/the-rose-report-on-algorithmic-redistricting/
and
http://allaboutvoting.com/category/algorithmic_redistricting/
-Greg Wolfe
http://AllAboutVoting.com
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