Congressional districts

 

 

I don’t know why, but I got to thinking about congressional districts.  As the populations of each state change, states get allocated more or less votes in congress so that every voter in the country gets equal representation.  With every new census, if the number of representatives changes for a state, the state has to redraw districts so that each district represents roughly the same number of voters.  Don’t want to have a thousand voters in one district getting a representative, and then ten thousand voters in a different district, still getting only one representative.  It all makes sense.

 

It is up to each state to determine how to redraw their districts, but there are guidelines from the National Conference of State Legislatures for redrawing congressional districts fairly.  This is a clip of the major points.

 

 

 

Pick a state at random, like say, Iowa.  It’s a simple rectangular state.  It could easily accommodate the first three concepts listed above of compactness, contiguity, and preservation of counties; and it appears that it does.

 

One might quibble over which counties on the district borders should go with which districts, especially between districts 1 and 4.  Maybe they had to draw that ragged line just to make sure each district had the same number of voters.  Maybe not.  But overall, this map might be in alignment with the guidelines.

 

So how about a look at Texas.

 

All districts are contiguous, that’s cool, but it’s obvious that the map leaves something to be desired in terms of compactness and preservation of county lines.  I’m looking particularly at where we live in Way South Texas.  It could easily be covered by one square or rectangular district.  Instead, it’s divided into three.  There is absolutely no pretense of drawing districts in a way that follows the guidelines of the National Conference of State Legislatures.  District 15, the one we live in, goes 250 miles north, all the way past San Antonio and is only a few miles wide, transecting multiple counties without encompassing them.  It is anything but compact.