A Rational Approach and Process for Congressional Redistricting: March 11 Featured Talk

Are you interested in how the Congressional gerrymandering crisis might be addressed? If so, join us at a presentation on pioneering work being accomplished by University of Maine System researchers to guide State legislatures and the courts towards far more defensible redistricting results.
When: Wednesday, March 11, 3:30-4:30 pm
Where: Rm 140 Bennett Hall , University of Maine
Presentation Title:  Glory, Glory, Pareidolia: A Method for Addressing Gerrymandering through Topological rather than Geometric Means
Who: Dr. Matthew Dube, Assistant Professor, University of Maine Augusta and University of Maine Alumni
Open to the campus community.
Abstract:  With the 2020 Census on the horizon, the United States is about to embark upon the latest round of redistricting, a paramount process in a republic such as ours. Numerous ways have been suggested to address the intentional drawing of districts for a specific interest, a phenomenon known as gerrymandering. This talk details a pioneering type of method to simulate plausible representative districts, based in Tobler’s First Law of Geography and graph algorithms from computer science. An analysis of our current Congressional districts will be presented, as well as a discussion of opportunities for projects you could get involved with in this particular area computationally.
Sponsored by: University of Maine Spatial Data Science Institute