GerryBuster wins Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in New York’s 16th District

When asked what inspired the creation of GerryBuster, the student said, “When someone hears ‘America’, one of the first things that they often think of is Democracy. However, we often glide over Gerrymandering in the United States. Said to be first done by Elbridge Gerry, Gerrymandering is a problem that exists around the world, but also in New York.  It is the practice of drawing electoral district boundaries in a way that gives one party an unfair advantage over another. This can be done by packing voters of one party into a small number of districts, or by cracking them across multiple districts, so that they are a minority in each district. Historically, this has been done to minorities in order to quell their voice in the government. My passion for political science and mathematics merged together to create this app: the GerryBuster. Gerrymandering is a serious threat to democracy. It undermines democracy, and it can lead to elected officials who do not represent the interests of the people they serve. It is important to solve the problem of gerrymandering in order to protect our democracy and ensure that all voters have an equal voice.

In order to solve this problem, I set out on using one of the things I love most – math and use it to solve this political problem. To do this, I used a technique called fractal dimension to analyze the different orders in New York Congressional Districts. This science project won First place in my local Tri-County science fair in Math and Computers and secured me a spot as an alternate for NYS Science Congress.

The Special Master who created this map, Jonathan Cervas, agrees with me that measures we use today to identify Gerrymandering are inadequate. With this project, I hope to bring light to a buried issue that plagues society silently.”