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Give-And-Take heuristic model to political redistricting problems

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Abstract

Political redistricting is a process used to redraw political boundaries based on a number of criteria that include demographic criteria (e.g. population equality and minority representation) and geographic criteria (e.g. contiguity and compactness). Redistricting can be highly controversial because it is possible that the drafters can be involved in the decision making where to draw political boundaries. The use of computers in political redistricting can remove several factors such as intentions of the decision makers or the majority in political views or race from the redistricting process. The main purpose of this paper is to develop a heuristic approach called Give-And-Take Greedy model in order to solve large scale political redistricting problem with respect to a strict population equality and contiguity. The heuristic follows the basic greedy concept to accept a best solution every iteration. The distinctive concept of the heuristic is to exchange or swapping population units within specified districts as well as to use the more efficient contiguity checking method. The computational results from Give-And-Take greedy heuristic can successfully be applied to real redistricting plans, especially for a congressional redistricting in the United States in satisfying with a strict equal population.

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  1. http://www.spatialdatamining.org/iRedistrict.

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  1. Policy Research Division, Gygeonggido Business & Science Accelerator (GBSA), 107 Gwanggyo, Youngtong, Suwon, Gyeonggi, 16229, Republic of Korea

    Myung Jin Kim

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Appendix: The process of Give-And-Take greedy algorithm

Appendix: The process of Give-And-Take greedy algorithm

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Kim, M.J. Give-And-Take heuristic model to political redistricting problems. Spat. Inf. Res. 27, 539–552 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41324-019-00254-4

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