Chris Wilson at Slate.com had an article today on a gerrymandering discussion at a recent joint meeting of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America.  The meeting was a discussion of various algorithmic approaches to redistricting that would minimize gerrymandering.   As a citizen of one of the most gerrymandered cities in the U.S. it’s a topic near and dear to my heart.

There were some really interesting approaches that we hadn’t considered in Azavea’s original gerrymandering white paper, but perhaps the most interesting to me was a proposal by Sam Hirsch, an attorney at Jenner and Block, for a open competitive process.  I’ve always thought that a game-like piece of software that would enable the public to develop and submit plans for scoring based on an objective set of metrics would be a way to both engage the public and have the added educational value of teaching people about geography of politics.   Hirsch has actually written up an open, competitive process (sans game-like software) into a model constitutional amendment for states.  Hirsch’s plan calls for a basic set of metrics that must be met before a plan can be submitted and then a set of additional measurements (county integry, partisan fairness and competitiveness) by which each plan would be measured.  Any submitted plan would have to score higher on these metrics than the previous best plan to be accepted.  At the end of the process, the highest scoring plan would be the winner.  An approach like this would create the kind of transparent but competitive atmosphere that would probably result in strong public engagement as well as lively debate.