# Cory McCartan (Workshop in Applied Statistics) #### calendar\_today Date and Time **September 14, 2022** 12:00PM - 01:30PM EDT #### pin\_drop Location **CGIS Knafel Building, room K354 or Online via Zoom** ### **Today's Speaker** Cory McCartan (Department of Statistics), "Individual and Differential Harm in Redistricting" ### **Abstract** Social scientists have developed dozens of measures for assessing partisan bias in redistricting. But these measures cannot be easily adapted to other groups, including those defined by race, class, or geography. Nor are they applicable to single- or no-party contexts such as local redistricting. To overcome these limitations, we propose a unified framework of harm for evaluating the impacts of a districting plan on individual voters and the groups to which they belong. We consider a voter harmed if their chosen candidate is not elected under the current plan, but would be under a different plan. Harm improves on existing measures by both focusing on the choices of individual voters and directly incorporating counterfactual plans. We discuss strategies for estimating harm, and demonstrate the utility of our framework through analyses of partisan gerrymandering in New Jersey, voting rights litigation in Alabama, and racial dynamics of Boston City Council elections. *The Applied Statistics Workshop (Gov 3009) meets all academic year, Wednesdays, 12pm-1:30pm, in CGIS K354. This workshop is a forum for advanced graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars to present and discuss methodological or empirical work in progress in an interdisciplinary setting. The workshop features a tour of Harvard's statistical innovations and applications with weekly stops in different fields and disciplines and includes occasional presentations by invited speakers.* *More information is available at the Gov 3009 website: * *All interested Harvard affiliates are invited to attend.* See also:- [ Workshops, Seminars & Classes ](/event-type/workshops-seminars-classes) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#) Save: [ Add to calendar calendar\_today ](https://www.iq.harvard.edu/node/1650465/event-feed.ics) Copy link link