Wednesday, July 08, 2015

[lcczioav] Legislative districts partially at large

Assume laws permit some legislative districts to have multiple legislators representing them, all serving at large within the district.  Create an algorithm that will partition a state into non-gerrymandered districts, some with multiple legislators, some with only one.

We anticipate that a dense area will be a single district with multiple legislators, but sparse areas will be partitioned into single-legislator districts.

Not sure how to define the metric to optimize.  General idea is that geography defines ideology in rural areas, but in urban areas there is more mixing.  Try to avoid legislators having to represent multiple ideologies.

Inspired by the districts of Colorado, which if done by the splitline redistricting algorithm results awkward pie slices around Denver, with each legislator forced to represent a mix of urban and rural.

No comments :