A Practical Procedure for Detecting a Partisan Gerrymander

Abstract The United States Supreme Court may be open to reconsidering the standards for judging the constitutionality of partisan gerrymanders. This article presents a workable criteria for determining when districting arrangements so distort the process of translating votes into seats in a legislature that the process or the redistricting plan rises to a constitutional violation. The procedure uses an adjusted normal partisan vote (ANPV) measure to determine the number of seats that the preferred party would receive when the vote is equally divided between the parties and how that distribution of seats would change as the ANPV is adjusted up or down. This procedure would show that a gerrymander is long lasting, severe, and intentional.