Method to share cake may make US voting fairer

Abstract

The method to fairly split a cake between two people is tried, tested and mathematically proven. One person cuts the cake and the other chooses which slice they get. To get the biggest piece of cake possible, the cutter must split it fairly resulting in no hard feelings between the two eaters. In US politics, however, cutting states into electoral districts doesn't have a similarly fair method. The political party in charge often decides where the electoral lines are drawn and does so in such a way as to gain an advantage--a process called gerrymandering. Now, Ariel Procaccia, Wesley Pegden and Dingli Vu at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania have devised a way to extend the cake cutting technique to redrawing electoral districts to make the system fairer.