The Mathematics of Partisan Gerrymandering
Dustin G. Mixon (OSU)
Abstract: Every decade, politicians update voting districts to account for population shifts as measured by the U.S. Census. Of course, partisan politicians are inclined to draw maps that favor their own party, resulting in partisan gerrymandering. In this talk, we will explore how tools from mathematics can help to deter this growing threat to democracy.
Our main result is that deciding whether there exists a fair redistricting among legal maps is NP-hard. Joint work with Richard Kueng and Soledad Villar.
computational complexitydiscrete mathematicsdata structures and algorithmsgame theorycombinatorics
Audience: researchers in the discipline
LA Combinatorics and Complexity Seminar
Series comments: Password is on the seminar page. www.math.ucla.edu/~pak/seminars/CCSem-Fall-2020.htm
| Organizers: | Igor Pak*, Greta Panova |
| *contact for this listing |