In a state with about 1 million more registered Democrats than registered Republicans, it's not easy to carve out districts that virtually ensure GOP victories.
The word gerrymandering was coined in the 1810s to describe a particularly lizardy-looking district carved out of rural Massachusetts by Gov. Elbridge Gerry, who wanted a favorable constituency for a run at Congress.
The Schwartzberg score is similar to Polsby-Popper, except it's the ratio of a district's perimeter measured against the circumference a circle whose area is equal to the district's.
Olson's model uses numbers collected by the U.S. Census Bureau to ensure each district has the same number of voters and produces districts that are as compact as possible-garnering high scores on measures like Polsby-Popper and Reock-without regard for party registration or demographic information.
If the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't accept the Efficiency Gap as a bright line for ruling certain districts out of bounds, people will have to look for other ways to challenge maps they believe were drawn in bad faith.
Even if the justices come to the same conclusion when they rule in the Wisconsin case that they came to in '04, lawmakers in any given state could take the initiative and create a gerrymandering standard on their own-forbidding districts with a Polsby-Popper score of less than 0.25, for instance.
Will every subsequent change in the balance of the state Supreme Court mean congressional districts must be redrawn again to the majority of the bench's liking? If so, judicial elections in Pennsylvania just gained a new level of partisan significance-and the same thing could soon play out in other states.
http://reason.com/archives/2018/03/27/gerrymandering-is-out-of-control
The word gerrymandering was coined in the 1810s to describe a particularly lizardy-looking district carved out of rural Massachusetts by Gov. Elbridge Gerry, who wanted a favorable constituency for a run at Congress.
The Schwartzberg score is similar to Polsby-Popper, except it's the ratio of a district's perimeter measured against the circumference a circle whose area is equal to the district's.
Olson's model uses numbers collected by the U.S. Census Bureau to ensure each district has the same number of voters and produces districts that are as compact as possible-garnering high scores on measures like Polsby-Popper and Reock-without regard for party registration or demographic information.
If the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't accept the Efficiency Gap as a bright line for ruling certain districts out of bounds, people will have to look for other ways to challenge maps they believe were drawn in bad faith.
Even if the justices come to the same conclusion when they rule in the Wisconsin case that they came to in '04, lawmakers in any given state could take the initiative and create a gerrymandering standard on their own-forbidding districts with a Polsby-Popper score of less than 0.25, for instance.
Will every subsequent change in the balance of the state Supreme Court mean congressional districts must be redrawn again to the majority of the bench's liking? If so, judicial elections in Pennsylvania just gained a new level of partisan significance-and the same thing could soon play out in other states.
http://reason.com/archives/2018/03/27/gerrymandering-is-out-of-control
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