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Gerrymandering and Compactness: Implementation Flexibility and Abuse

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  • Barnes, Richard
  • Solomon, Justin

Abstract

Political districts may be drawn to favor one group or political party over another, or gerrymandered. A number of measurements have been suggested as ways to detect and prevent such behavior. These measures give concrete axes along which districts and districting plans can be compared. However, measurement values are affected by both noise and the compounding effects of seemingly innocuous implementation decisions. Such issues will arise for any measure. As a case study demonstrating the effect, we show that commonly used measures of geometric compactness for district boundaries are affected by several factors irrelevant to fairness or compliance with civil rights law. We further show that an adversary could manipulate measurements to affect the assessment of a given plan. This instability complicates using these measurements as legislative or judicial standards to counteract unfair redistricting practices. This paper accompanies the release of packages in C++, Python, and R that correctly, efficiently, and reproducibly calculate a variety of compactness scores.

Suggested Citation

  • Barnes, Richard & Solomon, Justin, 2021. "Gerrymandering and Compactness: Implementation Flexibility and Abuse," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 29(4), pages 448-466, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:polals:v:29:y:2021:i:4:p:448-466_2
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    Cited by:

    1. David Niven & Barbara Harris Combs & Carolette Norwood & Kalyn E. Rossiter & Michael E. Solimine, 2022. "The boundaries of confusion: Gerrymandering and racial disparities in state House and congressional district line congruity," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 103(6), pages 1507-1518, November.
    2. Amariah Becker & Dara Gold, 2022. "The gameability of redistricting criteria," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 1735-1777, November.
    3. Ewa Szymczyk & Mateusz Bukowski & Jeffrey Raymond Kenworthy, 2024. "Understanding the Relationship between Urban Form and Urban Shrinkage among Medium-Sized Cities in Poland and Its Implications for Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(16), pages 1-34, August.

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