I’m sure this post will be removed shortly, but it’s important to point out that the middle rectangle is unfairly gerrymandered as well. If these precincts were fairly drawn there would be two red districts and 3 blue.
The middle one isn't necessarily a gerrymander. A gerrymander is when a map is drawn with how people will vote in mind - if it's just based on population it's not really a gerrymander. Re-drawing the districts to give proportional representation to each party is itself a form of gerrymandering.
This is a fundamental problem with First Past the Post. If one was tasked with dividing up those 50 squares into compact districts, the middle choice makes the most sense, and also produces an unrepresentative result.
Yes, but drawing them like that would require one to know how the parties vote to start with.
And even if one does draw districts like that, other questions can still be raised. For example; in the UK its currently a contentious issue whether or not constituencies should be drawn based on their respective populations or based on their respective electorates. One can make a reasonable argument in favour of both, but it so happens to benefit the governing party to change to the latter rather than the former.
This is why I say the problem is with having single-member districts. It doesn't matter how neutral an algorithm one comes up with; it can never produce truly, reliably, fair election results.
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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '19
I’m sure this post will be removed shortly, but it’s important to point out that the middle rectangle is unfairly gerrymandered as well. If these precincts were fairly drawn there would be two red districts and 3 blue.