The Political Block

"Funny Districts"

Every decade the United States conducts a census, as prescribed for in the Constitution. Today, this process is used to allocate federal funding and find out numerous statistics about the nation. However, the Founder's purpose of this process was to equally divide representation among the various states. Pennsylvania, and every other state/commonwealth, use statistics to re-apportion their Senate and Legislative districts. The process in Pennsylvania is nearing its conclusion, with a final vote set for December 12th. Here is a link to the proposed maps (scroll down to the interactive maps): http://www.redistricting.state.pa.us/Legislative-Redistricting.cfm

Each State Legislator will be representing approximately 62,000 people while Senators will represent around 250,000. Due to population shifts two legislative districts and one senate district will be "moved" to the Southeast. Inevitably, people will complain/question about three things:

1. Why does the southeast gain while we lose?
2. Why are the districts not just big squares?
3. Why do some municipalities/school districts have multiple Representatives/Senators?

The answer to the first should be obvious: districts are determined by population and the southeast presently has greater population growth. (I believe this has great opportunity to change in 2020 with the expansion of the gas industry.)

The second and third are valid questions. But have you ever thought how difficult it is to draw 62,000 into an area without dividing communities and counties? I'm assuming not so you can try for yourself here: http://playthisthing.com/redistricting-game

Pennsylvania's communities and counties are anything but perfect squares so if you merely combined Township A with Township B and City X this might get you to the 62,000 but it would not be a perfect square.

Conversely, Township A might have a population of 62,000 so make that its own district right? But, Town Q with a population of 10,000 is right in the center of the township, now what do you do? Remember districts have to be contiguous so you'll have to divide Township A into two districts and try to reach 62,000 another way.

No doubt there are many cases of gerrymandering but everyone needs to stop and think about all of these considerations before complaining about districts "looking funny".