The Third Criterion: Compactness as a Procedural Safeguard Against Partisan Gerrymandering

@article{Polsby1991TheTC,
  title={The Third Criterion: Compactness as a Procedural Safeguard Against Partisan Gerrymandering},
  author={Daniel D. Polsby and Robert D. Popper},
  journal={Yale Law \& Policy Review},
  year={1991},
  volume={9},
  pages={6}
}
This paper addresses partisan gerrymandering and proposes a formal remedy. In addition to adhering to criteria which mandate that representational districts be composed of contiguous territories and have equal populations, we suggest that those who define district boundaries must also be required to respect a third criterion, the constraint of compactness. 
View via Publisher
digitalcommons.law.yale.edu
138 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
6
Background Citations
29
Methods Citations
24
Results Citations
1

Figures from this paper

138 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Fair redistricting is hard
Reviving Legislative Avenues for Gerrymandering Reform with a Flexible, Automated Tool
  • J. Saxon
  • Political Science
    Political Analysis
  • 2020
After seeking a “manageable standard” to apply to claims of partisan gerrymandering for over three decades, the Supreme Court has finally given up the chase, ruling that such claims are…
Gerrymandering and Compactness: Implementation Flexibility and Abuse
TLDR
It is shown that when the full range of implementation flexibility is used, it can be abused to make clearly gerrymandered districts appear quantitatively reasonable, complicates using compactness as a legislative or judicial standard to counteract unfair redistricting practices.
Institutional Control of Redistricting and the Geography of Representation
A number of states have empowered independent redistricting commissions (IRCs) to redraw legislative districts each decade following the US Census. Reformers see IRCs, which have binding authority…
Gerrymandering and the Impossibility of Fair Districting Systems
Voting district boundaries are often manipulated, or gerrymandered, by politicians in order to give one group of voters an unfair advantage over another during elections. To make sure a system of…
Can Compactness Constrain the Gerrymander?
Gerrymandering – the manipulation of electoral boundaries to maximize constituency wins – is often seen as a pathology of democratic systems. A commonly cited cure is to require that electoral…
Partisan gerrymandering with geographically compact districts
TLDR
It is demonstrated that under certain conditions, a party can gerrymander a competitive state into geographically compact districts to win an average of over 70% of the districts.
An Impossibility Theorem for Gerrymandering
TLDR
It is shown that in some cases, a proposed mathematical formula to help detect unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering only flags bizarrely-shaped districts as potentially constitutional.
Measuring the circularity of congressional districts
TLDR
This paper introduces a novel and parameter-free circularity measure that is based on Hu moment invariants and finds that the fall of the average circularity value of the new measure indicates potential gerrymandering.
Modeling the effect of mandatory district compactness on partisan gerrymanders
...
...

References

SHOWING 1-3 OF 3 REFERENCES
Engstrom , The Supreme Court and Equipopulous Gerrymandering : A Remaining Obstacle in the Questfor Fair and Effective Representation , 1976 ARIZ
  • 1960
Although this is one of the best of the compactness measures, for unknown reasons Colorado's judges have chosen to ignore it in favor of the contrived standard of Acker v. Love; see
    Another constitutionally permissible goal of legislative districting, see
    • 1986