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On Empirical Validation Of Compactness Measures For Electoral Redistricting And Its Significance For Application Of Models In The Social Science, Christine Chou, Steven O. Kimbrough, Frederic H. Murphy, John Sullivan-Fedock, C. Jason Woodard
On Empirical Validation Of Compactness Measures For Electoral Redistricting And Its Significance For Application Of Models In The Social Science, Christine Chou, Steven O. Kimbrough, Frederic H. Murphy, John Sullivan-Fedock, C. Jason Woodard
C. Jason Woodard
Use of optimization models in science and policy applications is often problematic because the best available models are very inaccurate representations of the originating problems. Such is the case with electoral districting models, for which there exist no generally accepted measures of compactness, in spite of many proposals and much analytical study. This article reports on an experimental investigation of subjective judgments of compactness for electoral districts. The experiment draws on a unique database of 116 distinct, legally valid districting plans for the Philadelphia City Council, discovered with evolutionary computation. Subjects in the experiment displayed, in the aggregate, remarkable agreement …
Using Interactive Evolutionary Computation (Iec) With Validated Surrogate Fitness Functions For Redistricting, Christine Chou, Steven O. Kimbrough, John Sullivan-Fedock, C. Jason Woodard, Frederic H. Murphy
Using Interactive Evolutionary Computation (Iec) With Validated Surrogate Fitness Functions For Redistricting, Christine Chou, Steven O. Kimbrough, John Sullivan-Fedock, C. Jason Woodard, Frederic H. Murphy
C. Jason Woodard
We describe a novel use of evolutionary computation to discover good districting plans for the Philadelphia City Council. We discovered 116 distinct, high quality, legally valid plans. These constitute a rich resource for stakeholders to base deliberation. This raises the issue of how to deal with large numbers of plans, especially with the aim of avoiding gerrymandering and promoting fairness. Interactive Evolutionary Computation (IEC) is a natural approach here, if practicable. The paper proposes development of Validated Surrogate Fitness (VSF) functions as a workable and generalizable form of IEC.