icegov2012 proceedings

The Use of Recursive Bisection in the Mapping of Sample
New York State Electoral Districts
David Molik
Tetherless World Constellation
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
110 8 th Street, Troy, NY 12180
+1 (716) 982-5235
molikd@rpi.edu
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we describe the use of open, linked data with the
utilization of recursive bisection in the mapping of sample New
York State Electoral Districts. The use of data in a novel way
provides a solution to complications caused from the creation of
electoral districts.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
J.1 [COMPUTER APPLICATIONS]: Administrative Data
Processing – Government.
General Terms
Algorithms, Management, Design
Keywords
Data integration, open data, electoral districts
1. INTRODUCTION
The emergence of large data sets that are formed through the
mining of the World Wide Web provides an opportunity for many
people such as politicians, social scientists, and economists to
correlate and visualize this data for its benefit to society and the
growth of knowledge around the world. The creation of such
analytical tools from this linkage of data is what this research
project has done using the latest practices in linked and open data.
In the State of New York Electoral state senate electoral districts
have been created through a political process. This process has
been referred to as gerrymandering. The District Mapping
algorithm used is an alternative to the more political process.
Vickers [1] describes complications in electoral district creation in
the Prevention of Gerrymandering, especially in the areas of
disproportionate representation of political parties among its
constituents. We have designed a general approach to the
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ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00
520
Michelle Sharer
Tetherless World Constellation
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
110 8 th Street ,Troy, NY 12180
+1 (518) 276-4384
sharem@rpi.edu
construction of electoral districts by leveraging the use of a
recursive bisection mapping algorithm and varied granularities of
Economic, Voter Registration, and Racial data. The initial demo 1
utilizes New York State, statewide voter registration data that it
combines with a linked data approach to public record data.
Minority data is kept by all county governments in New York
State and is also accounted for in the mapping. This algorithm
system seemingly removes the need for gerrymandering. Political
scientists, politicians, and economists predicting electoral polls
and assessing the importance of why such relationships exist
between race, voting, and the economy can use the demo, as an
analytical tool.
Figure 1. A visual on how
data is brought together
Figure 2. Shows the early use of recursive
bisection on a abstract square state
1 Published demo: http://aquarius.tw.rpi.edu/projects/districts/