Electoral District Design via Constrained Clustering

The paper studies the electoral district design problem where municipalities of a state have to be grouped into districts of nearly equal population while obeying certain politically motivated requirements. We develop a general framework for electoral district design that is based on the close connection of constrained geometric clustering and diagrams. The approach is computationally efficient and flexible enough to pursue various conflicting juridical demands for the shape of the districts. We demonstrate the practicability of our methodology for electoral districting in Germany.

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