JISAR

Abstract: Gerrymandering is the practice of manipulating voting district boundaries to gain political advantage in democratic voting. The geographic information system (GIS) becomes a versatile tool for that. This paper describes how to use the GIS for gerrymandering, in the practice of both cracking - diluting the opponents voting into many districts, and packing - concentrating the opponent’s voters into fewer districts. The use of GIS makes extreme gerrymandering relatively easy to do. Even when we understand it to be bad for democracy since it facilitates for the politician to choose his/her voters, gerrymandering is generally allowed by law. Restricting the practice of gerrymandering turns out to be a legally challenging proposition. We discuss some approaches to legislation against gerrymandering. Believing that the GIS can be part of the solution, we call for GIS researchers to work with legal professionals to formulate regulations to contest and disallow gerrymandering.

Download this article: JISAR - V13 N3 Page 4.pdf

Recommended Citation: Wu, P., DePlato, J., Combs, A., (2020). Geographic Information System For and Against Gerrymandering. Journal of Information Systems Applied Research13(3) pp 4-10. http://JISAR.org/2020-3/ ISSN : 1946 - 1836. A preliminary version appears in The Proceedings of CONISAR 2019