I’ve been writing at Medium.com for the past year. Read this full original post there.
On February 13 we launched PlanScore.org into the whirlwind of Pennsylvania’s disputed congressional plan. Our mission is to help citizens evaluate new redistricting plans for partisan skew and to elevate the conversation on partisan gerrymandering with new historical data for state and U.S. congressional district plans. It’s been an exciting couple of weeks. What did we learn, and how are we doing at reaching our goals?
Every district plan is designed to do a job: apportioning voters into Congressional districts so they can elect members to the U.S. House, typically following traditional redistricting criteria like compactness, contiguity, and preservation of communities and incumbents. Since 2010, we’ve seen the emergence of detailed computer models that allow for the creation of unfair, skewed maps that still conform to traditional criteria.
