Quantifying Gerrymandering

For over 200 years, state legislatures in this country have drawn oddly shaped voting districts, often with the intention of increasing the voting power of the party controlling the legislature. For just as long, critics have cried foul, denouncing such attempts as “gerrymandering.” More recently, technology has enabled legislatures to “gerrymander on steroids” and draw district maps that greatly favor one party over the other, even when there is a fairly even split among voters in the state. Dr. Brawner discusses recent mathematical attempts to quantify gerrymandering, featured in recent arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, and implications for the future