How do you ban gerrymandering?


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Posted by blindness on May 08, 2026 at 22:36:34

In Reply to: Question about gerrymandering posted by DSCBruin on May 08, 2026 at 21:37:18

Since gerrymandering is about the shape of the districts, I can imagine you might be able to impose some shape requirement. You either do it strictly (create squares or hexagons or whatever), which would be a nightmare in practice and totally unworkable, or you have to impose some compactness requirements, which may be a nightmare to define explicitly. (Even then you can still create questionable districts).

You can force states to push the districting decisions to a non partisan body but then it's just a matter of time before that body gets politicized and becomes a part of the game.

So beyond that you're left with pornography. You can't define a gerrymandered district but you can recognize when you see it. The problem is there will rarely be any consensus on what's gettymandering what's not.


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