Kevin DeLuca, CSAP faculty affiliate and assistant professor of political science, collaborated with Maxwell Palmer of Boston University and Benjamin Schneer of Harvard Kennedy School to devise a new method for drawing districts that, in their words, “reduces partisan gerrymandering without requiring a neutral third party (such as an independent commission, judge, or tiebreaker) or bipartisan agreement.”
In a paper published in the journal Political Analysis in December, the researchers reveal the Define-Combine Procedure (DCP), in which one political party chooses contiguous, equal-population districts and the opposing party combines pairs of these selected districts to create the final districts. For example, if a state required 10 districts, the state’s Democratic representatives might define 20 districts, and then the Republicans would choose which neighboring pairs to combine and form a 10-district map.
Read the full story by Rick Harrison at the external link below.