Algorithm for district boundaries

[Jonathan Buhacoff]

Drawing the district boundaries on a map should not be done on a whim, especially not by partisans because they might try to draw boundaries in a way that would give them an unfair advantage in future elections.

Part of ensuring that elections are fair is to ensure that the district boundaries are drawn fairly.

The algorithm for drawing district boundaries should be public. Anyone should be able to take a map and one or more public datasets with all the information that will be used by the algorithm to draw boundaries, apply the algorithm and arrive at the same result.

Some ideas for the algorithm:

In urban areas, draw concentric circles around the population centers. Divide the outer bands into sectors with approximately similar population counts.

[Author]

Posts