It would be nice if we could get a constitutional amendment that would redraw all districts, regions, and precincts in simple squares and rectangles. It should ignore everything else. No favoritism. No gerrymandering. Nothing. If you can gerrymander in favor of one group then you can gerrymander in favor of another group. Take the control out of human hands. Just a simple algorithm. Once you hit either a certain number of people or a certain amount of land mass then that’s it. Make another zone. I’m tired of cheating.
That is also fairly trivial to set up- the rectangles just become fractals subdivided by population density such that every rectangle has close to the same absolute population across the entire US. Center each fractal origin area on city centers and census designated places with higher density and you’ll quickly build a fairly natural representation map that doesn’t wreck geographic area relations too much. Cool side effect is that this auto balances the number of reps to population size so you don’t run into issues where a district with 250k people has the same representation weight as Assfuck, Wyoming with 1.5k.
I bet a comp sci class could have this coded out and applied to the entire US in a couple weeks.
It’s perfect for an algorithm based districting. But so is ranked choice voting, and look how far that’s gotten. The devil is in the details I’m sure, but it is better than we have at fairly representing the us population. And until the us political system is razed to the ground and rebuilt, I’m not holding my breath.
Although, districting is a state prerogative. So maybe it’s possible is states with the least pressure from national political parties to maximize congressional seats. Like Vermont if they want to make a point, or maybe even New Hampshire if the libertarians would start acting like libertarians again.