How to Quantify (and Fight) Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering – the redrawing of voting maps to provide one party with an unfair advantage in elections – has just gotten a lot more sophisticated. Clever gerrymandering can virtually guarantee a party’s majority for years to come – even if it has a minority in the state overall. Voters from the left and the right condemn partisan gerrymandering, but how do you show that a map indeed favors one party over another? Writing for Quanta Magazine, Erica Klarreich explains which quantitative techniques mathematicians suggest to measure gerrymandering and discusses whether it’s intentional. getAbstract recommends this article to lawmakers, politicians and the US electorate.