RT @AP: Republicans poised to win state legislatures, critical power over congressional redistricting: http://apne.ws/bLFqct -AS
RT @AP: Republicans poised to win state legislatures, critical power over congressional redistricting: http://apne.ws/bLFqct -AS
If there is not already an app for the iPad that allows you to draw gerrymandered districts based on the latest census data and number of congressional seats in the state, there ought to be one soon.
As long as it is written transparently, whereby anyone can see and review the code used, redistricting by programmatic means would be one %^#^^%% of a lot better than the current pseudofractal gerrymandering …
Is the iPad sufficiently high-power for such an app ? Are IPad app designers going to soil their fingertips with such mundane matters ?
I have to admit, this is a rare time where I agree with Alasdair. An automated solution would be far preferable to what we have. Seems like you could use population maps and come up with some good distributions based on a few reasonable parameters (cities should be within the same district when possible, urban vs rural areas should not be grouped together when possible, etc.
Use zip codes.
Ah redistricting. Where politicians get to pick their voters, instead of voters picking their politicians. Partisan redistricting is truely the Newark, NJ of American politics.
Umm, AML was being cynical I do believe. I think he was probably suggesting the creation of an app that would aid the politicos in determining where the most advantageous district borders were. Not an app that would fairly set up districts.
Perhaps. Bur an app that set up fair districts would rock. So long as it was transparent.
This magical gerrymander-free land you are looking for is called “Iowa.”
http://archive.fairvote.org/redistricting/reports/remanual/ia.htm
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=505850
http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=1317
The problem with zip codes is that they aren’t uniform in population amounts, although that might be a building block to start with.
Given all the questions that the census asks, and upon which redistricting is *supposed* to be based, it should be fairly trivial to take census data per zip code, do the arithmetic for required average sizes for a State’s given quota of Congressional districts, and have the program divide the Stae up the requisite n ways …
Allow some flexibility to keep small counties/cities within the same district … allow some +/- % flexibility in district size, say 2-5% … where a county or city has more population than can fit within integral district(s), divide the city up into whole districts, then the surrounding leftovers get added togethr with suburbs and nearby rural …
Have a certain allowed variability in ‘aspect ratio’ – no district can be more than x times as long as it is across …
What have I missed ?
(grin) How close is the above to the Iowa ‘model’/algorithms ?