RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Mathematical political districting taking care of minority groups
A1 Arredondo, Verónica
A1 Martínez Panero, Miguel
A1 Peña García, María Teresa
A1 Ricca, Federica
K1 Circunscripciones electorales
K1 Political districting
K1 Minorities’ representation
K1 Respect of administrative boundaries
K1 Graph partitioning
K1 Mixed integer linear programming
K1 12 Matemáticas
K1 5905.01 Elecciones
AB Political districting (PD) is a wide studied topic in the literature since the 60s. It typicallyrequires a multi-criteria approach, and mathematical programs are frequently suggested tomodel the many aspects of this difficult problem. This implies that exact models cannot besolved to optimality when the size of the territory is too large. In spite of this, an exact formulationcan also be exploited in a heuristic framework to find at least a sub-optimal solution forlarge size problem instances.We study the design of electoral districts in Mexico, where thepopulation is characterized by the presence of minority groups (“indigenous community”)who have a special right to be represented in the Parliament. For this, the Mexican electorallaw prescribes that a fixed number of districts must be designed to support the representationof the indigenous community.We formulate mixed integer linear programs (MILP) followingthese two principles, but also including the basic PD criteria of contiguity and populationbalance. The district map is obtained in two stages: first we produce the fixed number ofindigenous districts established by the Law; then we complete the district map by formingthe non-indigenous districts. This two-phase approach has two advantages: a dedicatedobjective function can be formulated in Phase 1 to form indigenous districts at best; in thesecond phase the instance size is reduced (both in the number of territorial units and in thenumber of districts) so that the computational effort to solve the problem is reduced as well.We test our procedure on the territory of Chiapas in Mexico and on some fictitious probleminstances in which the territory is represented by a grid graph. We also compare our districtmap with the Institutional one currently adopted in Chiapas
PB Springer
SN 0254-5330
YR 2021
FD 2021
LK https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/74206
UL https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/74206
LA eng
NO Annals of Operations Research, agosto 2021, vol. 305, n. 1-2, p. 375-402
NO Producción Científica
DS UVaDOC
RD 22-ene-2025