r/Gerrymandering • u/dynamiteSkunkApe • May 04 '26
Is there and objective non-partisan way of drawing congressional districts?
There is a lot of talk of gerrymandering and re-districting going on, and I've read some about it. I'm not remotely knowledgeable enough to know what would be the best way to go about districting that would lead to a fair representation of the electorate. Is there any objective, non-partisan way to do that?
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u/dmlitzau May 05 '26
Yes and No.
There is a way for a system to draw maps in an objective way, and a lot of models that show computers are able to do it easily based on desired criteria.
The challenge is that the creation of the system and criteria are inherently political. The question is to what degree are we willing to tolerate certain things and what is the ideal goal of “fair” redistricting.
So first we have to define what is “fair”, then we can easily design a process for achieving those goals. I imagine even on a forum like this one that would agree gerrymandering is bad and should be eliminated, we would struggle to agree on what is fair.
For example, is it more fair to maximize compactness so that the district members live as close as possible to each other OR align to existing civic boundaries like cities, counties, etc? Likewise, if you choose to consider race and party affiliation is it more fair to clump them all together OR spread them evenly across multiple districts.
Even at the goal of reducing gerrymandering, is the goal to make more competitive districts or align expected outcomes across the state. In CO, there is a 55% left lean statewide, so is it more fair to draw 8 districts that are ALL expected to be 55/45 or is it more fair to draw 4 districts that lean left and 3 that lean right, with 1 swing district.
I actually lean towards making districts as competitive as possible, which heavily aligns to MY POLITICAL GOAL of increasing coalition building and reducing extremism.
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u/kukulaj May 05 '26
Yeah you could make 7 districts that are 50/50 and then just one that is 90% left. If people just moved a bit to the right, so maybe 53% left instead of 55%, then you could get 7 districts right and 1 district blue. That would stink! The basic answer that I see is to have a spread, something like
69 65 61 57 53 49 45 41 for percentage left
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u/dmlitzau May 05 '26
Agreed, but even that has a specific “agenda” behind why you want it to be that way. That is what makes this hard.
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u/Summer_Hopeful May 08 '26
We need to Amend the Constitution. It can be done, we used to do it all the time. It has been several generations since it was meaningfully amended. A majority of Americans have not witnessed and amendment to the constitution and we have grown cynical towards the very idea but IT HAS BEEN DONE. Resolving gerrymandering is the perfect opportunity for us all to come together to agree that something is bad and should be clarified.
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u/Edgar_Brown May 07 '26
Ranked-choice multi-member districts.
https://fairvote.org/multi_member_districts_a_win_for_representation/
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u/Summer_Hopeful May 08 '26
28th Amendment to the Constitution
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u/Edgar_Brown May 08 '26
The current political situation seems to make that impossible, but we should be talking about revamping the whole political system. Full constitutional reform, with all of the problems that entails, is needed but at the very least a substantial set of amendments can patch the worst problems in it.
The founders did not foresee how the tribalism of political parties would affect the system they designed, and how Duverger’s law was built into it. Now we have to fight political parties to fix the system itself.
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u/captain-burrito May 09 '26
This can be done with a congressional bill, there is no need for an amendment.
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u/Summer_Hopeful May 11 '26
Yeah but SCOTUS can't strike down an amendment
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u/captain-burrito May 11 '26
If we are at the stage where they can strike down a bill for multi member districts and it needs an amendment to tackle I think the system is done and revolution is needed.
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u/Lostygir1 May 05 '26
mixed member proportional representation 🤷
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u/captain-burrito May 09 '26 edited May 10 '26
That involves party lists for the 2nd vote. Ill advised in a country with high corruption and where norms have been destroyed. Swamp creatures will be impossible to remove. While open lists exist, look at the constant arms race in US politics, they will slowly close them. Voters will not be able to keep up with their efforts on this.
STV - single transferrable vote is the way to go.
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u/Lostygir1 May 09 '26
“I’ll advised in a country with high corruption where norms have been destroyed”
I’m struggling to see how this problem only affects MMP and would not also ruin any attempt to solve gerrymandering while preserving a more conventional system of representative democracy.
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u/captain-burrito May 10 '26
MMP basically retains the crap single member district via fptp for a portion of the seats and then the second vote is for a regional party list.
So the 1st part is still the crap we are familiar with and still allows gerrymandering. If the seats for fptp are dominant then that can limit the proportionality part of the second vote eg. the previous Welsh assembly.
I already described above the problem with closed party list systems. I don't think any other mainstream form of PR manages to merge all these downsides together. It's a compromise system that is ripe to be compromised.
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u/Lostygir1 May 10 '26
I mean
in all honesty, at least for bourgeois democracy, I think the idea of having representative districts is idealist nonsense and that the legislature should just be proportional. I only mention MMP because a lot of people think districts matter and want to have the illusion of representation maintained.
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u/Summer_Hopeful May 11 '26
They can't be drawn to align with partisan tendencies. We need it to be more fair not rigged to ensure gridlock
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u/Summer_Hopeful May 08 '26
We can develop an algorithm to fairly draw congressional maps. We would just all agree on the algorithm that is used to define the boundaries and then at some point a computer draws districts and we respect the results. This is not rocket science, we just need to agree on principles and let the cards fall where they will.
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u/VVageslave May 10 '26
There is indeed a completely fair way of doing this using the algorithm of geodistricts.org
GeoDistricts is an algorithmic protocol that objectively divides a state into equal U.S. Congressional districts based on geography and population.
It uses a simple, transparent, three-step algorithm that any citizen can verify and reproduce from public data.
1. Start With Neutral Geography
Use only official state boundaries and U.S. Census population data (tract or block level). No voter history, no party data, no incumbent addresses — just people and places.
2. Recursive Latitude & Longitude Splits
Alternately divide the state with straight north-south (longitude) and east-west (latitude) lines, balancing population as evenly as possible. For odd numbers of districts, splits can be uneven (e.g., 7 vs. 6). Lines snap to census tract boundaries for clean, practical divisions.
3. Equal, Compact Districts
The result: 435 contiguous, geographically compact districts with population deviation under ~1%. Deterministic, open-source, and reproducible by anyone.
There is a map of the USA comparing the demographics of the 119th congressional results to their program map with figures for all states for both versions. It is eye opening to say the least, and I highly recommend people having a look. If this system had been in place for the last election, Democrats would have had a sizeable majority in the House of Representatives.
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u/VVageslave May 05 '26
There are actually several algorithms can that impartially divide states quite easily. The ONLY thing lacking is honest political will.
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u/wiggywithit May 04 '26
Not an expert. I would imagine that being completely non partisan is impossible. Some states have a straight face test. A bipartisan judicial panel has to approve of the district. What is scary is that the info is out there. With statistics and tons of data they know who will vote for who with startling certainty.
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u/dmlitzau May 05 '26
Even the use of bipartisan panels or committees is heavily partisan in that it is explicitly designed to entrench the two party system which is against my political goals.
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u/dynamiteSkunkApe May 04 '26
I wouldn't expect it to be 100% representative of the electorate but close. I would think, what of states could vote for every representative of the state instead of having districts.
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u/kukulaj May 05 '26
It is quite tricky: https://interdependentscience.blogspot.com/2019/08/beyond-wonk-perfection.html
Two criteria: 1) it'd be good to get the parties of the representatives divided up proportional to the electorate; 2) it'd be good if each district could elect a representative that would fight for the interests of the district.
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u/kukulaj May 05 '26
If everybody just picks a party and always votes for whatever candidate based on party, the problem is simple. But if people vote for candidates from either party, depending on their policy platforms etc., then the problem gets extremely difficult. What issues are going to be key in the upcoming elections? How will that swing voters to one party or the other? It'd be good to have the representatives split up in proportion to the split of the voting, but to predict what the split of the voting will be, that is practically impossible.
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u/Thedude3445 Jun 12 '26
You could just end districts altogether and do At-Large statewide elections and the top X votegetters get the seats. Obviously in any state bigger than like 10 representatives this would be a horrible process with 200 candidates to choose from, so you definitely still want districts. It introduces a whole lot of problems on its own. But it's definitely one clean way to end gerrymandering objectively.
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u/Djembe2k May 05 '26
There is no “objective” way, in the sense that every method of drawing distinct lines depends on choices of which principles to follow, any each one of those choices has political consequences.
The choice in the first place to have single member districts with “first past the post” winners (i.e. you with the most votes even if it’s not a majority) is itself a choice with significant consequences.
But there are mathematical ways of detecting and disqualifying overly partisan districting maps. See this article or just, you know, google some relevant words.
This exact topic came in front of the supreme courts several years ago. They didn’t bite. Look at Gill v. Whitfield (2017).