PolicyMap has published an interesting article titled “A deeper look at gerrymandering” on their blog as part of a three-part series. The article is an explainer on redistricting, set strictly in the political context of the USA (hence: gerrymandering1):
Packing concentrates a group’s voters into as few districts as possible. Those districts are won overwhelmingly, every vote beyond what was needed to win is wasted, and the group’s influence everywhere else drops accordingly.
Cracking does the reverse: it splits a group across many districts so that it constitutes a majority in none of them.
I find this interesting not so much because of the theoretical underpinnings (the MAUP2) and the redistricting / gerrymandering mechanics, but because this article invites a look in the mirror with regard to our discipline, the concepts, the methods and the tools it produces and their ethical implications – whether or not you care about the specific context presented.
Footnotes
The manipulation of electoral district boundaries to favour a party or group, typically by “packing” opposing voters into few districts or “cracking” them across many.↩︎
The Modifiable Areal Unit Problem: the results of aggregating spatial data depend on the scale and on how the boundaries of the areal units are drawn.↩︎