427 – Contributed Poster Presentations:Government Statistics Section
An Exploration of a Potential Solution to Gerrymandering
Lisa W. Kay
Eastern Kentucky University
Shane P. Redmond
Eastern Kentucky University
Elections in the United States, such as for the U.S. House of Representatives, typically divide a state into n voting districts with equal populations. It has been shown that this method does not tend to produce proportional representation, where the percent of the state's districts won by a certain political party matches the total statewide percent of the vote won by that party. For example, in Wisconsin's 2016 congressional elections, Republicans won 62.5% of districts but had only 45.8% of the statewide vote in that election. This phenomenon has frustrated some citizens' sense of fairness and has led to charges of gerrymandering by one party or another. A hypothesized solution to this issue is the suggestion that increasing the number of voting districts makes it more likely that elections will be proportional. This project investigates this hypothesis through simulated elections to track the percentage of elections that are proportional as the number of districts varies.