Oh... or are you pointing out that the PA map is not small-urban/large rural, because they are merging urban/rural areas in the gerrymandering process? There might be some of that. That's certainly what they've done in Utah, where the Salt Lake Urban area is split between 3 large districts each covering about a quarter of the state. Fortunately, the D managed to pull off an upset victory anyway.
So, yes, compactness might be an improvement over the current gerrymandering, but I'm not convinced that a purely rational, compact map would actually lead to a fair final outcome. Though part of the problem here is the two-party system - if it was a jungle-election, you'd get a large number of moderate Republicans in the 60/40 states, and some very liberal Democrats in the 90/10 states, and summed together that might appropriately represent the state. But instead, what you seem to often get is a system where in order to win the primaries, you can't have real moderates, and by the time they get to the general election, the only thing that matters is the letter next to their name so a moderate D can only occasionally pick off an extreme R even in a 60/40 district...
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2012-11-10 06:56 pm (UTC)So, yes, compactness might be an improvement over the current gerrymandering, but I'm not convinced that a purely rational, compact map would actually lead to a fair final outcome. Though part of the problem here is the two-party system - if it was a jungle-election, you'd get a large number of moderate Republicans in the 60/40 states, and some very liberal Democrats in the 90/10 states, and summed together that might appropriately represent the state. But instead, what you seem to often get is a system where in order to win the primaries, you can't have real moderates, and by the time they get to the general election, the only thing that matters is the letter next to their name so a moderate D can only occasionally pick off an extreme R even in a 60/40 district...