A Multi-Criteria Pen for Drawing Fair Districts: When Democratic and Demographic Fairness Matter

Eduardo Álvarez-Miranda, Camilo Campos-Valdés, Maurcio Morales Quiroga, Matías Moreno-Faguett and Jordi Pereira
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Eduardo Álvarez-Miranda: Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universidad de Talca, Campus Curicó, Curicó 3341717, Chile
Camilo Campos-Valdés: DSc Program on Engineering Systems, Faculty of Engineering, Universidad de Talca, Campus Curicó, Curicó 3341717, Chile
Maurcio Morales Quiroga: Faculty of Social and Juridical Sciences, Universidad de Talca, Campus Santiago, Santiago 8940583, Chile
Matías Moreno-Faguett: Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universidad de Talca, Campus Curicó, Curicó 3341717, Chile
Jordi Pereira: Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Campus Viña del Mar, Viña del Mar 2562340, Chile

Mathematics, 2020, vol. 8, issue 9, 1-26

Abstract: Electoral systems are modified by individuals who have incentives to bias the rules for their political advantage (i.e., gerrymandering). To prevent gerrymandering, legislative institutions can rely on mathematical tools to guarantee democratic fairness and territorial contiguity. These tools have been successfully used in the past; however, there is a need to accommodate additional meanings of the term fairness within the electoral systems of modern democracies. In this paper, we present an optimization framework that considers multiple criteria for drawing districts and assigning the number of representatives. Besides some typical districting criteria (malapportionment and contiguity), we introduce novel criteria for ensuring territorial equilibrium and incentives for candidates to deploy their representation efforts fairly during their campaign and period in office. We test the method, which we denote as Multi-criteria Pen, in a recent and a forthcoming reform of the Chilean electoral system. The results show the potential of our tool to improve the current territorial design and offers insights on the motivations, objectives, and deficiencies of both reform plans.

Keywords: multi-criteria optimization; OR applications; malapportionment; districting; electoral system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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