I totally see it
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The thoughts and prayers worked!
(Dan is busy going fully blind right now, be nice.)
But if you don’t break up all those cities into 5 and 6 different districts, they might elect (gasp) Democrats! From Texas!! (Much clutching of pearls, much fanning of face!)
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My understanding of Maryland’s districting is that it is an intentional example of why gerrymandering is bad and why it should be done away with. It’s also about the detente of warning the GOP that gerrymandering can be used against them as easily as for them.
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IMO if we were to shrink-wrap a district (in a convex hull) and less than some high percentage (at least 70-75%) of the area inside the shrink wrap is actually part of the district, that smells like gerrymandering and that district should probably be redrawn.
At a quick eyeball, it looks like the 2nd consists of about 40% of its shrink wrapped area. The 18th is almost completely contained in the 2nd’s convex hull.
Something like the 9th is a little better example of a reasonable district. Sure, you get a little bit of the tail of the 7th and a bit of whatever that bottom district is, but I’d guess it occupies between 60% to 70% of its convex hull.
Its not just about the shape. Human settlements often don’t follow geometric shapes, so I can imagine some pretty funky looking districts that follow water or mountains that are still drawn with the intent of equal representation.
The problem here is that the shapes are created to get just the desired republican/democrat ratio to maximize the overall voting power of the republicans. I live in Crenshaw’s district near the southern tip in Montrose which is a very liberal area. Putting a sliver of far left with the right leaning north suburbs and exurbs that comprise most of the district prevents my neighborhood from having much representation.
If you look at the liberal Austin, TX its even more pronounced. One Austin district stretches out to Houston suburbs (the red in the upper left of the map I posted), another stretches out to the Dallas suburbs, another to San Antonio, and one goes out to Waco through miles of ranch land. Its succeeded in greatly reducing the representaion of the millions of progressive texans
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The Party of “Stand for the Flag, Kneel for the Cross” T-shirts.
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