Impartial Redistricting: A Markov Chain Approach

Understand

The gerrymandering problem is a worldwide problem which sets great threat to democracy and justice in district based elections.

• Thanks to partisan redistricting commissions, district boundaries are often manipulated to benefit incumbents.
• Since an independent commission is hard to come by, the possibility of impartially generating districts with a computer is explored in this thesis.
• We have developed an algorithm to randomly produce legal redistricting schemes for Pennsylvania.