Even though gerrymandering stretches US voting districts into absurd geometric complexity, this book shows how the guiding principles of sound mathematics can still be used to measure and demonstrate how unfairly partisan they have become. Anyone interested in the technical trickery of gerrymandered districts will benefit from an understanding of the mathematical spaces they exist in. Drawing from a series of workshops at Tufts University for training mathematicians to be expert witnesses in court cases about redistricting and gerrymandering, academics working in the legal system, public policy, and mathematics weigh in on the legal history of the Voting Rights Act and its subsequent renewals, extensions, and clarifications; “traditional districting principles,” especially compactness; metric geometry and mathematical ideas for perimeter-free compactness; basic rudiments of GIS and the technical side of how shapefiles work; the role of a mathematician as an expert witness; ideas for incorporating voting and civil rights into mathematics teaching.weiterlesen