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by defrost 45 days ago
To optimally crack a district to bias in one parties favour it is often required to literally run a boundary down a street to separate one side (close to a university, say) from the other.

Once you've table voter preferences to actual street addresses you are no longer in the realm of "broad area cumulative averages and medians".

1 comments

My favorite gerrymandering story was when I learned an ~800 student local college had been split down the middle, so students were in different congressional districts depending on their dorm building.
There is a stretch of US183 in Austin, Texas, which allows you to drive through seven congressional districts in a matter of minutes.

Also see: Nashville, Tennessee

Like your dormroom example, ATX is very progressive.

I live in Austin and, in 2018, I could go west and pass through 4 districts in a few miles. My own one you would exit and re-enter and exit again!

I actually made jigsaw puzzles to advocate against gerrymandering. They were difficult to solve! michaeldnahas.com/doc/jigsaw_puzzle/index.html

My Texian childhood was in three congressional districts (small town feeding into one high school).

It's much worse, now.

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The fact that there are non-contiguous US Congressional districts (e.g. TN's 2nd/3rd have inholdings within each other) makes the entire process even sillier.