The starting point for most of the districts had simply been to ask incumbent members of both parties how they wanted their districts to look.
You will have rediscovered some of the basic keys to good districting, namely: compactness, with districts looking more like turtles than snakes or octopuses; practical contiguity, meaning that all sections of a district are accessible by road connections without having to leave the district; and congruence with the boundaries of other political subdivisions, such as counties and cities.
A Republican strategist could simply approach black legislators and ask them to draw their "Perfect district." Wildly noncompact districting was accepted as legitimate in many VRA situations; indeed, it's not uncommon for districts that show up on lists of the worst partisan gerrymanders to have been created by legislators under a VRA rationale.
Of the 10 most gerrymandered districts, four were in states that had Democratic legislatures at the time of drawing, three were in states controlled by Republicans, and three were split.
Most districting reform successes in recent years have come in states where advocates either ran a ballot initiative or credibly threatened to do so, starting with Western states and more recently extending to Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri.
The Apportionment Act of 1901, whose relevant terms remained in effect until 1929, stated that districts must be made up of "Contiguous and compact territory and containing as nearly as practicable an equal number of inhabitants." There is no reason why such rules could not be re-enacted today, updated to specify a quantitative test of the sort that political scientists regularly employ.
Of the 18 states that already have a legal compactness requirement for House districts on their books, none currently has any districts with a "G score" above 150.
You will have rediscovered some of the basic keys to good districting, namely: compactness, with districts looking more like turtles than snakes or octopuses; practical contiguity, meaning that all sections of a district are accessible by road connections without having to leave the district; and congruence with the boundaries of other political subdivisions, such as counties and cities.
A Republican strategist could simply approach black legislators and ask them to draw their "Perfect district." Wildly noncompact districting was accepted as legitimate in many VRA situations; indeed, it's not uncommon for districts that show up on lists of the worst partisan gerrymanders to have been created by legislators under a VRA rationale.
Of the 10 most gerrymandered districts, four were in states that had Democratic legislatures at the time of drawing, three were in states controlled by Republicans, and three were split.
Most districting reform successes in recent years have come in states where advocates either ran a ballot initiative or credibly threatened to do so, starting with Western states and more recently extending to Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri.
The Apportionment Act of 1901, whose relevant terms remained in effect until 1929, stated that districts must be made up of "Contiguous and compact territory and containing as nearly as practicable an equal number of inhabitants." There is no reason why such rules could not be re-enacted today, updated to specify a quantitative test of the sort that political scientists regularly employ.
Of the 18 states that already have a legal compactness requirement for House districts on their books, none currently has any districts with a "G score" above 150.
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