LogFAQs > #986092360

VectorAgent posted...

Im not in favor of gerrymandering, so please no one take my question to be a stealth way of supporting it:

If there were no gerrymandering of any kind, how would the district boundaries be determined? Would it be, likelaying a square grid across a map of the country and then just roll with the divisions the grid reflects? Or do you go within each state individually and base the divisions around geographic things like rivers and whatnot?

Setting the districts up in grid patterns may look nice on a map, but it doesn't really solve the problem since people don't actually live in grid patterns. And population centers like major cities will inherently need more districts in order to be able to more evenly represent the larger amount of people in those areas. Using independent commissions to draw districts following each census is the real answer to stop gerrymandering, but setting that up requires lawmakers to willingly give up the power to draw their own districts.

Ideally, a district would be able to elect someone who represents the majority of the voters within while also separating different groups that might hold different values, even if those groups tend to both vote for a specific party (both black and Hispanic populations tend to favor the Democratic party, but having one representative to represent both in an area may not align with the values of one of the two groups). Obviously that's a lot easier said than done since drawing districts requires a lot of balancing between various demographics like ethnicities, age brackets, income levels, etc. But at the very least, you'd expect that a majority black area would be part of a single district and able to more likely elect someone who would best represent them and their values instead of being split apart and being wrapped into the tail end of multiple districts with different demographics which is what happens when political parties are directly drawing the maps.