Redistricting Utopia Abstract
Walker Lindley and Randy Bentson

    Throughout the history of America , there have been many issues surrounding fair voting. One problem involves the deliberate creation of unfair voting districts. Redistricting is often very contentious and can have a tremendous impact on the way future elections turn out (the 2004 redistricting in Texas is a prime example of this). Many people have proposed new voting systems that improve upon the current method by doing away with voting districts or by minimizing their importance, but they rarely examine methods for creating fair voting districts. Fair voting districts minimize the impact that voting systems have on the outcome of elections. There are two factors that have a large impact fair voting districts, good apportionment (the principle of "one person, one vote") and the minimization of gerrymandering. We propose that the Gerrymander Factor (GF) be used to measure the compactness of districts. We define the GF of a voting district as the square of the perimeter of the district divided by the area of the district. Circles, the most regular and compact shape, have a GF of 4 regardless of size. Less regular shapes have larger GF values. We will develop an algorithm that, given a set of voting precincts, creates the set of voting districts with a minimized GF while meeting apportionment requirements which will result in more fair elections.