[EM] District continuity preserving re-districting

[Ernest Prabhakar]

Hi Matt,

On Mar 14, 2004, at 8:23 AM, matt at tidalwave.net wrote:
> 5) Establish a district compactness measure such as minimizing total
> perimeter lengths.  The government can then hire two or three out of 
> state
> operations research companies to submit re-districtings and give a 
> bonus to the company that offers the most compact districting.  The 
> government can also make the data and an initial feasible solution 
> public and offer a monetary award for whoever submits the most compact 
> re-districting.

We were just discussing this a couple months ago.   The general 
consensus seemed to be that there were two useful compactness measures:

	a) Weighted perimeter length (# lanes of traffic cut)
	b) 'moment of intertia' - extended distribution of population

In principle, I suspect both of these criteria would over time preserve 
continuity of communities and districts based on natural geography, 
without the need for explicit district continuity requirements like 
your first four points.

Using existing census data, one could trivially create open source 
software that would suggest possible districts.  Anyone could submit 
potential redistricting, and  and one could have a university collect 
and publish the results based on objectively verifiable criteria.   I 
suppose one could even add a third measure of 'minimal population 
transfers' to reward proposals that minimized discontinuities, if the 
first two weren't definitive enough.

-- Ernie P.