Algorithms for gerrymandering over graphs

Abstract

We initiate the systematic algorithmic study for gerrymandering over graphs that was recently introduced by Cohen-Zemach, Lewenberg and Rosenschein. Namely, we study a strategic procedure for a political districting designer to draw electoral district boundaries so that a particular target candidate can win in an election. We focus on the existence of such a strategy under the plurality voting rule, and give interesting contrasts which classify easy and hard instances with respect to polynomial-time solvability. For example, we prove that the problem for trees is strongly NP-complete (thus unlikely to have a pseudo-polynomial-time algorithm), but has a pseudo-polynomial-time algorithm when the number of candidates is constant. Another example is to prove that the problem for complete graphs is NP-complete when the number of electoral districts is two, while is solvable in polynomial time when it is more than two.