The Louisiana Legislature has until Jan. 15 to enact a new congressional map after a lower court ruled that the current boundaries weaken the power of Black voters in the state, an appeals court ruled Friday.
The Louisiana Legislature has until Jan. 15 to enact a new congressional map after a lower court ruled that the current boundaries weaken the power of Black voters in the state, an appeals court ruled Friday.
I’m a fan of Shortest Split-Line.
What you do is take a population map of the state and draw the shortest line possible to separate the population into two equal halves. Then you subdivide those halves with the shortest line to make equal population quarters.
Keep this up until you have all your districts.
There’s a little math trick to get equal populations for odd numbered districts.
Now, some people hate this method because it can break up historic neighborhoods and such. I don’t care because it ends gerrymandering completely. It’s 100% party neutral.
Also, the generated maps are often better than you’d think.
https://www.rangevoting.org/Splitline2009/la.png
vs this;
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Louisiana_Congressional_Districts%2C_118th_Congress.svg