The Iowa Senate dropped more work on the LSA yesterday by rejecting the first proposed redistricting maps. The above map wouldn’t qualify for what the agency has been ordered to come up with — a total variance of less than 99, since each map must be better than the previous. But it’s very hard to get one district less than 99 off the ideal, let alone four of them.
Whether the first set was rejected for putting Linn and Johnson counties in the same congressional district or for creating too many incumbent-on-incumbent matchups in the Legislature, well, you’ll have to ask the state senators.
(In Mock 24 I could come up with two districts with variances of 60 and -2, but kept busting on the other two, usually around Kossuth County.)