Shaping Up

The U.S. House of Representatives, if it is supposed to represent the voters of this great nation, is bent out of shape. The majority of voters in the recent elections voted for Democrat candidates for the House but somehow the majority of the new House are Republicans. The "somehow" is called gerrymandering. 

If you look at a map of the House districts in many of our states you will see some really strange and wondrous shapes. I would hate to be a Representative of one of these districts. I would probably get lost trying to get from one end to the other. In fact, in the district drawn for my current Representative it would be impossible without going outside the district. The roads don't run that way. I hope my Rep doesn't go broke buying gas for the trips to visit his constituents. Or that we constituents don't go broke trying to get to him. It might be simpler to catch him in Washington.

As a move toward saving gasoline, not to mention fairer representation, I recommend that we use a little geometry in drawing the district maps. In geometry the most compact two-dimensional space is a circle. The least compact space would look something like the drawing of a snake or, in other words, something like the congressional districts you see on some state maps. Certainly our districts can't all be circles but any competent mathematician could tell you how to regulate the compactness of the districts on a map. Better yet, you could easily program a computer to draw a certain number of optimally compact districts on a map. I know that such a procedure is not specified in the Constitution, state or federal, but we were a little short of computer knowledge back then.

What I am suggesting is that in the interests of better and more democratic representation we pass a law requiring that congressional districts, both federal and state, be drawn with at least a mathematically-specified minimum degree of compactness. Congress can appoint a committee of mathematicians and computer geeks to write the bill. Or such a group can write a model bill, a la the Simpson-Bowles Plan. It would be utterly simple to administer the law. Any decent computer could do it. In fact, I expect to see an app for it any day now.