I Voted

[billroper]

Have I mentioned how much I hate gerrymandering?

(By the way, can we take as given that my opinion on the subject is "Bad when done by Republicans, bad when done by Democrats, good if we can all manage to give it up, but unilateral disarmament is probably a bad idea as it benefits the crooks in charge."?)

Comments

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

I'm not sanguine about the "independence" of any particular group. The only solution I can see is to enforce some unambiguous measurable criterion for compactness (e.g. a district must include at least x% of the land area within a circle that encloses the entire district), but good luck getting a loophole-proof formula adopted.

[billroper]

I think that you have to measure both compactness and number of existing "political" entities that are split in determining the goodness of fit. For example, our towns in northwest Cook County are shaped funny due to the railroad lines and the annexation wars as they grabbed land to expand up to each other. Thus, a district that kept all of Des Plaines in a single unit would be politically compact, keeping that group of citizens with a shared interest together.

Gerrymandering

[jdonat.livejournal.com]

At one point not too long ago, the Village of Oak Park was part of 5, yes 5 US Congressional districts. I could walk from Roosevelt road to Van Buren and be in 3 districts in that short time. The far southern end, to Harvard St. was in the 11th, from Harvard to the middle of I-290, the 4th, and the part just north of I-290 was the 7th. Then the northern part of OP was divided between the 7th and two other districts. No clout for us! The little stripe of the 4th was to connect 2 mainly Latino areas (Gutierrez).

It's been fixed, for now. Oak Park is in the Illinois 7th District.

Re: Gerrymandering

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Gutierrez is The Earmuffs, aka my district. This year he's actually got a Democratic rival, PLUS a native-Spanish-speaking Republican opponent. This is my most contested race.

[groblek.livejournal.com]

We've been finding out here that it's a difficult mess to meet all the legally required criteria, and certainly there's still room for gaming the system. Right now I'm not asking for loophole-proof, just for an improvement over having the legislature set their own districts.