"I-Cut-You-Choose" Cake-Cutting Protocol Inspires Solution to Gerrymandering

CMU researchers say fair redistricting possible even with partisan maneuvering. Getting two political parties to equitably draw congressional district boundaries can seem hopeless, but Carnegie Mellon University researchers say the process can be improved by using an approach children use to share a piece of cake. Just as having one child cut the cake and giving the second child first choice of the pieces avoids either feeling envious, having two political parties sequentially divide up a state in an "I-Cut-You-Freeze" protocol would minimize the practice of gerrymandering, where a dominant political party draws districts to maximize its electoral advantage. The CMU protocol, developed by Ariel Procaccia, associate professor of computer science , and Wesley Pegden, associate professor of mathematical sciences , is the first to allow a fair division of a state into political districts without independent agents. It calls for one political party to divide a map of a state into the allotted number of districts, each with equal numbers of voters. Then the second party would choose one district to "freeze," so no further changes could be made to it, and re-map the remaining districts as it likes. The first party then would choose a second district to freeze from this map and proceed to redraw the remaining districts as it sees fit.