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clmckinley | 6 years ago

The problem with this analogy is that the 55/44 split is not equally distributed across a state. In virtually every case there are pockets of one or the other. As long as you keep the goals of uniform, compact and consistent sizes they should do a much better job of getting closer to the 4/5 you are looking for or maybe a couple of safer and a couple of swing districts. What happens now is that the party in control (which in 2010 was largely R) packs and cracks to get an unnatural advantage (looking at you Wisconsin)

My bigger question is when the political split is more like 80/20 case should the 20 be guaranteed representation?

discuss

order

runarberg|6 years ago

> My bigger question is when the political split is more like 80/20 case should the 20 be guaranteed representation?

Yes they should. They should get around 20% of the representatives.

clmckinley|6 years ago

So then without making other more fundamental changes we would have to gerrymander. In fact a number of strange looking districts are gerrymandered with creating a majority minority district as the stated goal.

I believe we need structural changes to really solve this problem but absent that, I think having a computer algorithm that has the following priorities in the following order:

1) Compact (ie smallest circumference)

2) Least number of axis points and smallest difference in the sides.(ie a square is the goal)

3) Least number of wasted votes (ie use the proposal from the supreme court case)

4) Least change from a previous district (maybe not for this first run)