Regarding Gerrymandering:
Has anyone here actually used their GIS and tried to produce a voting district model that is bipartisanly* fair, demonstrably competitive, and quantitatively compact?
If so, I'd like to bow deeply and sit at your feet, Zen Master Redistrictor.
There are many challenges to drawing district lines: First, you have to rely on an underlying geography like county lines, townships, sections, and sometimes even smaller aliquat parts because your average county election official can't be expected operate with census or zip code geography.
Any other kind of establishe geography might require very precise geocoding of the voter's residence of record. So, think of the existing geography as legos. How do you assemble the districts in a fair way when one standard sized lego has 18,000 voters and another has 23?
Second, you have to define competitive in a way the parties and press will accept. Good luck there.
Next, to give the appearance of bipartisanship you have to have avoided ALL past entanglements with politics. Who among you is pure enough to survive the state version of a Kavanaugh hearing focused on diving deeply into your public and private life? Then, if you are somehow that squeaky clean you'll be dismissed as a political novice, incapable of playing in the big leagues.
My challenge to those who decry their state's gerrymandered condition, is to come back with your own GIS model, push it out to the public, complete with your base data, GIS files, and model assumptions. Then defend it. I think you'll find yourself having one or more Custer Moments.
I've dabbled with redistricting models and it isn't easy to arrive at a universally acceptable solution.
*Bipartisanship is bullship. Its designed to deny other parties fertile soil.
