Protecting representation and preventing gerrymandering
By: Erin McGee Paper title: Sequential Monte Carlo for Sampling Balanced and Compact Redistricting Plans Authors and year: Cory McCartan, Kosuke Imai, 2023 Journal: Annals of Applied Statistics (Forthcoming 2023), https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2008.06131 In 2011, the Pennsylvania General Assembly was accused of drawing a redistricting plan for the state that diluted the power of Democratic voters, while strengthening the Republican vote. The case made its way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, where it was determined to be an unfairly drawn map. With more complicated techniques, gerrymandering, or altering districts to purposefully amplify the voting power of some, while reducing others, becomes harder to recognize. Gerrymandered districts are usually identifiable by the ‘jigsaw’ shapes that split counties and municipalities in an attempt to pack certain voting groups into the same district, while splitting others. However, proving that a district map has been purposefully manipulated, as it was in Pennsylvania, is no easy task.…