The Geometry and Election Outcome (GEO) Metric
Marion Campisi (San Jose State University)
Abstract: We introduce the Geography and Election Outcome (GEO) metric, a new method for identifying potential partisan gerrymanders. In contrast with currently popular methods, the GEO metric uses both geographic information about a districting plan as well as district-level partisan data, rather than just one or the other. We motivate and define the GEO metric, which gives a count (a non-negative integer) to each political party. The count indicates the number of previously lost districts which that party potentially could have had a 50% chance of winning, without risking any currently won districts, by making reasonable changes to the input map. We then analyze GEO metric scores for each party in several recent elections. We show that this relatively easy to understand and compute metric can encapsulate the results from more elaborate analyses.
Mathematics
Audience: general audience
Comments: Marion Campisi is an Associate Professor in the department of Mathematics and Statistics at San José State University. Her research interests lie in low dimensional topology, knot theory and the mathematics of redistricting.
NYU CDS Math and Democracy Seminar
Series comments: The Math and Democracy Seminar features research on contact points between the mathematical sciences and the structure of democratic society. The purpose of the seminar is to stimulate mathematical activity on problems relating to democracy, and to foster interdisciplinary collaboration between mathematicians and other scholars and democratic stakeholders.
Examples of topics of interest include detection of gerrymandering, fairness and accountability of algorithms used in social decision-making, voting and apportionment theory, applications of statistics to discrimination law and the census, and mathematical modeling of democratic processes. The scope is not limited to these and is expected to expand as further applications emerge.
Seminars currently conducted via Zoom (with some events also in person). Look for links in individual talk descriptions.
| Organizers: | Ben Blum-Smith*, Jonathan Niles-Weed |
| *contact for this listing |