"This Computer Genius Just Fixed Our Democracy"

This Computer Genius Just Fixed Our Democracy

by Josh Dieker at Blue Nation Review

http://bluenationreview.com/hi-tech-just-fixed-democracy/

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Over the years, the Supreme Court has heard numerous cases on redistricting and a few principals have been put in place to guide the process. Districts should be “compact.” That means the geographic shape of the district shouldn’t have long tendrils, nor should it snake about the map, picking up some neighborhoods, while cutting others out. The districts must also be contiguous, meaning that they can’t have islands spread out all over the place.

Ideally local political subdivisions, such as cities or counties will be kept together, and “communities of interest” should be maintained. It’s this requirement, laid out in a 1995 case called Miller v. Johnson, that has given state legislatures carte blanche to draw lines essentially however they like. Though the court’s intent was to create a guideline to reduce political gerrymandering, they instead created a principle so vague that it can cover a variety of sins. It’s unclear what a community of interest is, and so legislators use it as an excuse to ignore compactness and local political subdivisions, and draw crazy, spindly districts that only make sense if you look at them from the perspective of protecting the majority party’s position.

To combat the political manipulation of the districts, a few states have gone to non-partisan redistricting committees, but this solution has a limited impact. The committee members are appointed politically and so the question of political manipulation remains. Software engineer Brian Olson has proposed another solution.

Olson wrote a program to draw districts that are both compact, and equal in population. It follows neighborhood boundaries by using census blocks to avoid drawing arbitrary lines through properties, and it takes politics totally out of the equation. This kind of solution would require some changes to the legal rules about redistricting that have been put in place by Congress and by the Supreme Court over the years, but it might just put both parties back on an equal footing going into each election, rather than protecting whichever party happened to be in power during the redistricting year.

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