[EM] Even simplier anti-gerrymandering rule

[Brian Olson]

True, unless we dissolve such irrelevant boundaries! ;-)
If we had fair congressional districting in every state I might be  
happy enough to spend a few minutes ignoring the even more gross  
misrepresentation apportioned in the US Senate.

Ideally a good algorithm for solving districting problems will scale  
well. Congressional districts (within a state). State legislature  
districts. County board districts. City council districts, and so on  
wherever districted representation happens.

On Nov 8, 2006, at 7:16 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:

> At 6:50 PM -0800 11/8/06, Brian Olson wrote:
>> 0.5% is readily achievable by my solver. A US House district is
>> 300000000/435 = 689655 people. 1% of that is of course a 6897 person
>> variability from district to district. I think people might whine
>> about this; it affects the degree to which they are represented. It
>> won't necessarily be a logical argument.
>>
>> Also the wider the margin the greater possibility for distortion to
>> malicious ends (depending on the exact method of picking within the
>> constraint). Of course current districts are equal population to
>> within 100 people according to Census data and are still distorted in
>> some extreme ways.
>
> Wyoming and Montana each have one district, and 509,294 & 935,670
> people respectively. Rhode Island has two districts and 1,076,189
> people.
>
> The 1% rule (or whatever) must be intra-state only.
> -- 
> /Jonathan Lundell.