Maps and Decisions: Part III, Redistricting

Abstract

General Introduction

Tournament level duplicate bridge is a card game that is a sport. As is the case with sports, generally, there is an overseeing body: in basketball it is the National Basketball Association (NBA); in bridge it is the American Contract Bridge League for North America (ACBL) and the World Bridge Federation (WBF) for all nations in the world. The ACBL is a non-profit organization based in Memphis, Tennessee. The ACBL has about 150,000 members in the U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico. The WBF has more than 10 million members. The ACBL owns two buildings in Memphis where they house a large staff to maintain records, databases, publications, and a host of other operations associated with this business in the entertainment/sports sector of the business world. The second author of this work is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the ACBL. This Board, as do equivalent boards of other corporations, sets policy for the organization, makes decisions that affect the entire population of ACBL members, and oversees the work of the Chief Executive Officer. There are 25 Board members, each representing one geographical "district" of the ACBL. Thus, the members of the Board of Directors are also referred to, even though their charge is to represent the interests of the entire ACBL, "District Directors."

Redistricting

The second author was also a member of the "Redistricting Committee," an ACBL Board committee, during the year 2005. A quick glance at the numbers in Figure 1, however, suggests that perhaps the system might work better if the size, shape, or number of districts were altered. ACBL staff and management has been interested, for a number of years, in having a more streamlined organization. One way to consider such a process is to reduce the number of districts and shrink the size of the Board of Directors. Naturally, Directors from different regions have various viewpoints on this matter. During 2005, a "redistricting" committee was convened to consider the possibility of redistricting the ACBL. Maps offered some useful information for decisions; because the maps were created in a GIS with database and map interaction, it was relatively straightforward to create various scenarios for the Redistricting Committee to consider.