F NagleJohn

Bio: F NagleJohn is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Contingent vote. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 12 citations.

How Competitive Should a Fair Single Member Districting Plan Be

Abstract: Partisan unfairness is easily detected when the statewide vote is equally divided between two parties. But when the vote is not evenly divided, even the determination of which party is disfavored becomes controversial. This article examines the ideal fair outcome in a two party single member district system when the statewide vote is not equally divided. It is shown that equal voter empowerment, implied by readings of the First Amendment (Shapiro v. McManus and Whitford v. Nichol), requires that the fraction of seats be proportional to the fraction of the statewide vote. However, strict proportionality conflicts with the single member district system, so alternative approaches are explored. Generalized party inefficiency and voter effectiveness are defined and shown to encompass many possibilities for an ideal fair seats-votes function. The best choice is fundamentally determined by the degree of geographical heterogeneity of voters of like mind. Based upon historical election results, it appears...

Three Tests for Practical Evaluation of Partisan Gerrymandering

Abstract: Since the United States Supreme Court’s Davis v. Bandemer ruling in 1986, partisan gerrymandering for statewide electoral advantage has been held to be justiciable. The existing Supreme Court standard, culminating in Vieth v. Jubelirer and LULAC v. Perry, holds that a test for gerrymandering should demonstrate both intents and effects, and that partisan gerrymandering may be recognizable by its asymmetry: for a given distribution of popular votes, if the parties switch places in popular vote, the numbers of seats will change in an unequal fashion. However, the asymmetry standard is only a broad statement of principle, and no analytical method for assessing asymmetry has yet been held by the Supreme Court to be manageable. This Article proposes three statistical tests to reliably assess asymmetry in state-level districting schemes: (a) an unrepresentative distortion in the number of seats won based on expectations from nationwide district characteristics; (b) a discrepancy in winning vote margins between the two parties; and (c) the construction of reliable wins for the party in charge of redistricting, as measured by either the difference between mean and median vote share, or an unusually even distribution of votes across districts. The first test relies on computer simulation to estimate appropriate levels of representation for a given level of popular vote, and provides a way to measure the effects of a gerrymander. The second and third tests, which evaluate intent, rely on well-established statistical principles, and can be carried out using a hand calculator without examination of maps or redistricting procedures. I apply these standards to a variety of districting schemes, starting from the original “Gerry-manderˮ of 1812 up to modern cases. In post-2010 Congressional elections, partisan gerrymandering in a handful of states generated effects that are larger than the total nationwide effect of population clustering. By applying these standards in two recent cases, I show that Arizona legislative districts (Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission) fail to qualify as a partisan gerrymander, but Maryland’s Congressional districts (Shapiro v. McManus) do. I propose that an intents-and-effects standard based on these tests is robust enough to mitigate the need to demonstrate predominant partisan intent. The three statistical standards offered here add to the judge’s toolkit for rapidly and rigorously identifying the effects of redistricting.

The Efficiency Gap, Voter Turnout, and the Efficiency Principle

Abstract: Recently, scholars from law and political science have introduced metrics which use only election outcomes (and not district geometry) to assess the presence of partisan gerrymandering. The most high-profile example of such a tool is the efficiency gap. Some scholars have suggested that such tools should be sensitive enough to alert us when two election outcomes have the same percentage of votes going to political party $A$, but one of the two awards party $A$ more seats. When a metric is able to distinguish election outcomes in this way, that metric is said to satisfy the efficiency principle. In this article, we show that the efficiency gap fails to satisfy the efficiency principle. We show precisely how the efficiency principle breaks down in the presence of unequal voter turnout. To do this, we first present a construction that, given any rationals $1/4< V<3/4$ and $0

What Criteria Should Be Used for Redistricting Reform

Abstract: Congressional redistricting plans for Pennsylvania, with an emphasis on the newly enacted 2018 plan, have been evaluated for fairness and responsiveness to voters. This and other submitted...

A Comparison of Partisan-Gerrymandering Measures

Abstract: We compare and contrast 14 measures that have been proposed for the purpose of quantifying partisan gerrymandering. We consider measures that, rather than examining the shapes of districts...

Measuring Political Gerrymandering

Abstract: In 2018, a Pennsylvania court struck down the state’s congressional map due to unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering, and a new map was established in time for the midterm elections. Recent laws...