Redistricting and the Will of the People

Abstract

We introduce a non-partisan probability distribution on congressional redistricting of North Carolina which emphasizes the equal partition of the population and the compactness of districts. When random districts are drawn and the results of the 2012 election were re-tabulated under the drawn districtings, we find that an average of 7.6 democratic representatives are elected. 95% of the randomly sampled redistrictings produced between 6 and 9 Democrats. Both of these facts are in stark contrast with the 4 Democrats elected in the 2012 elections with the same vote counts. This brings into serious question the idea that such elections represent the "will of the people." It underlines the ability of redistricting to undermine the democratic process, while on the face allowing democracy to proceed.

10 Figures, Preliminary Version

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Evaluating Partisan Gerrymandering in Wisconsin
• Non-reversible Markov chain Monte Carlo for sampling of districting maps
• Compactness statistics for spanning tree recombination
• The Essential Role of Empirical Validation in Legislative Redistricting Simulation
• Measuring Geometric Similarity Across Possible Plans for Automated Redistricting