Researchers at the University of Vermont have recently designed a new mathematical approach to judge when gerrymandering political districts goes beyond fairness and into manipulation of voting. A team led by UVM mathematician Gregory S. Warrington published the new tool in the latest edition of the Election Law Journal under the title, “Quantifying Gerrymandering Using the Vote Distribution”.

Warrington is a star researcher with an expertise in algebra at the University of Vermont’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics, a branch of UVM with a “long and proud tradition of excellence in teaching undergraduate students as well as an international reputation for world-class research and mentoring graduate students to a Master’s degree or a PhD degree”.

According to Warrington, “It’s called the declination. Because there is no single standard of what exactly gerrymandering is, there is no one way to test for it. But our measure is better in a lot of ways than the other approaches now being used.” According to a summary of this valuable work by Science Daily:

A mathematician has developed a new tool to identify gerrymandered voting districts. The research shows Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina strongly gerrymandered for Republicans, while Maryland’s and California’s voting districts have been strongly tipped in favor of Democrats. The new tool could be important in the wake of two Supreme Court cases now being considered that might outlaw certain partisan gerrymanders.

Other influential research on American gerrymandering by Warrington include studies titled “Gerrymandering and the net number of US House seats won due to vote-distribution asymmetries” and “Introduction to the declination function for gerrymanders“.