Austin Buchanan For decades, researchers have complained that contiguity constraints make problems like districting much harder than other combinatorial optimization problems. This has prompted the use of integer programming models with inexact contiguity constraints that may be fast in practice but are invalid in the sense that they cut off or “overlook” some contiguous solutions. Examples include … Read more
This book chapter is a gentle introduction to the mathematics of congressional apportionment. It emphasizes the connections between mathematical optimization and the classical apportionment methods (e.g., Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Webster, Huntington-Hill, Dean). CitationPrepared for a forthcoming book edited by Bruce Golden and Doug ShierArticleDownload View PDF
We consider a fundamental question in political districting: How many counties can be kept whole (i.e., not split across multiple districts), while satisfying basic criteria like contiguity and population balance? To answer this question, we propose integer programming techniques based on combinatorial Benders decomposition. The main problem decides which counties to keep whole, and the … Read more
This paper studies the problems of partitioning the vertices of a graph G = (V,E) into (or covering with) a minimum number of low-diameter clusters from the lenses of approximation algorithms and integer programming. Here, the low-diameter criterion is formalized by an s-club, which is a subset of vertices whose induced subgraph has diameter at … Read more
The most successful approaches for the TSP use the integer programming model proposed in 1954 by Dantzig, Fulkerson, and Johnson (DFJ). Although this model has exponentially many subtour elimination constraints (SECs), it has been observed that relatively few of them are needed to prove optimality in practice. This leads us to wonder: What is the … Read more
Consider the task of dividing a state into k contiguous political districts whose populations must not differ by more than one person, following current practice for congressional districting in the USA. A widely held belief among districting experts is that this task requires at least k-1 county splits. This statement has appeared in expert testimony, … Read more
This mini survey covers optimization, heuristic, and sampling methods for political districting. CitationAccepted for publication in the Encyclopedia of Optimization (Springer, 3rd edition) edited by Panos M. Pardalos and Oleg A. Prokopyev. ArticleDownload View PDF
In the academic literature and in expert testimony, the Polsby-Popper score is the most popular way to measure the compactness of a political district. Given a district with area \(A\) and perimeter \(P\), its Polsby-Popper score is given by \( (4 \pi A)/P^2\). This score takes values between zero and one, with circular districts achieving … Read more
When partitioning a state into political districts, a common criterion is that political subdivisions like counties should not be split across multiple districts. This criterion is encoded into most state constitutions and is sometimes enforced quite strictly by the courts. However, map drawers, courts, and the public typically do not know what amount of splitting … Read more
Motivated by applications in political districting, we consider the task of partitioning the n vertices of a planar graph into k connected components. We propose an extended formulation that has two desirable properties: (i) it uses just O(n) variables, constraints, and nonzeros, and (ii) it is perfect. To explore its ability to solve real-world problems, … Read more