{"id":9619,"date":"2018-01-26T10:00:40","date_gmt":"2018-01-26T16:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=9619"},"modified":"2018-01-26T00:29:37","modified_gmt":"2018-01-26T06:29:37","slug":"answering-538s-gerrymandering-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2018\/01\/answering-538s-gerrymandering-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Answering 538’s gerrymandering question"},"content":{"rendered":"

Political\/statistical analysis website 538 says fixing gerrymandering is hard<\/a>. At one point it resorts to a computer algorithm that completely ignores all jurisdictional boundaries in a quest to make “competitive” districts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What if gerrymandering is a problem better solved by mathematicians and computer scientists than politicians and political scientists? What if we could move to a system that didn\u2019t consider race or partisanship at all \u2014 one that had no pre-assigned winners and losers, costly litigation or drag-out fights in state capitals?<\/em><\/p>\n

Yes, what if?<\/a> What IF?<\/a>\u00a0If only<\/em> we could find some place ordering<\/p>\n

districts be convenient and contiguous<\/a>, preserve the integrity of political subdivisions like counties and cities, and to the extent consistent with other requirements, reasonably compact.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/em>
\n Iowa’s 1980s congressional districts, the first drawn under a nonpartisan process. Complete series of maps here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

At this point, asking “how do we avoid gerrymandering” without saying “IOWA DOES IT” is journalistic malpractice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Political\/statistical analysis website 538 says fixing gerrymandering is hard. At one point it resorts to a computer algorithm that completely ignores all jurisdictional boundaries in a quest to make “competitive” districts. What if gerrymandering is a problem better solved by … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iowa-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9619"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9623,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9619\/revisions\/9623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}