Multi-region electoral districting using computational geometry

Maw-Kae Hor, Kai-Hsuan Chan, Yi-Fan Peng, Hung-Min Hsu

Abstract: Electoral Districting has received much attention recently due to electoral regulations changes. Traditionally, these process were done manually which generally require huge human resources and may introduce controversies. We have developed the two-partitioning algorithm that solved the simple electoral districting problems intelligently. However, this algorithm can not be used directly to solve the multi-region electoral districting problems. In this paper, we present a new computational geometry based two-partitioning algorithm and use it to solve the multi-region electoral districting problems through recursively applying of this algorithm. The problem of huge amount of feasible solutions can be reduced substantially by introducing the concept of "indivisible region". Using this concept, the new partitioning algorithm, and the simple bricklayer method, we developed a mechanism for solving the multi-region districting problems. We choose a local city to illustrate the entire mechanism. The experimental results show that our mechanism solves the multi-region electoral districting problems successfully.