Brent Dees - Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering
What the heck is up with gerrymandering? I'm looking at these districts created by these crazy politicians, and I'm thinking, "These districts look like the way Apple Maps directs me home."
The Top Ten List of Gerrymandered Districts
I mean look at this! This is one gerrymandered district from Illinois. That's right, one. You see that little strip of land to the far left? Yes, Highway 294 is what connects these ink spills from a broken printer. Well at least its not the worst thing to come out of Illinois (says Fox News).
On a more serious note, gerrymandering is pretty devious and perfectly legal. Gerrymandering is the process by which states draw the lines for reassigning the districts for the House of Representatives and for the Electoral College, at least, redistricting is reassigning. Gerrymandering is using the redistricting tool given by the federal government in order to favor the party in control of the state government.

Current Problems
Now obviously, this can lead to a hierarchy in state government. Normally, gerrymandering keeps those that are in power staying in power due to the way that states draw lines. Incumbents will face little opposition from the opposing party, stalling other members of parties from obtaining power, and keeping the same people in office. The system works well. It typically is very difficult for incumbents to be defeated, due to gerrymandering and the perks elected officials have. The politicians do this by:
1) Stacking people likely to vote for one party in one district to ensure success. This essentially wastes the votes of the minority party. This method can either be used for the party in power's success or can be used to place the bulk of the enemy power into one district to dilute the remainder across the board, so to speak.
2) Dividing up a large section of people likely to vote for the opponent's party in several districts to minimize influence. Again, minimizing influence and wasting votes.
The main problem is that the party in control of the state can alter the way that elections are decided by preventing some people from having a say in the government.

Fixing the Puzzle
In this problem which is controlled by the states, it is easy to say, just let the federal government make the maps. However, the federal government is controlled by the same class of people who run state governments. Whichever party is in control at the time would gerrymander the whole country, creating a bit of a tyranny of one party. Also, let's face it. I would not trust a politician to walk my dog. Let's not add another important issue to their plate. So, how about just having a computer draw the maps. This runs across a few problems, such as population. The populations of the districts have to be about equal. With that in mind, maybe the computers could run through the population sizes and come out with equal sized districts.

This solution still is not fixed, as the random districts could still have these biases toward one party, and still dilute the votes from one party creating a still unfair situation. So, how about trying to equalize the two parties  in each district? This seems like the best option, as every vote counts, however, designating certain people as party affiliates contradicts the above ideas of computer randomness. Furthermore, this may be impossible in certain states due to party control and absolutely destroys third parties. After so many failed attempts at computer randomization, it seems like time to throw it out.

An idea proposed by several innovators in government is the requirement of "compactness." This term requires that the district lines cannot be as seemingly random as some of these things are, prevents "spikes" and ambiguous shapes from passing, and dilutes the power of gerrymandering. This seems to weaken, if not destroy, gerrymandering as it prevents those funny puzzle pieces from forming and makes the shapes reasonably understandable. This does not prevent gerrymandering, but does calm it down, and weakens the power the politicians utilize. Unfortunately, these definitions are loosely defined, and can be reinterpreted. Similarly to everything else in government. Nothing is perfect, I guess.
Compactness

The final issue is that in order for this to be passed, it would have to go through the government, who would not be to keen on weakening their power. So, there you go. Nothing changes. Like always. Because of those Republicans in Congress (due to the Illinois joke I made earlier, I decided to even it out to avoid bias).

The answer to Gerrymandering... Maybe there is not a definite one yet. The compact idea set really works the best, combined with the other court cases against Gerrymandering. The random computer generator faces many problems and really takes out the human in politics, and probably faces the same opposition as does instant replay in baseball. Kudos to those who get this. However, whoever can figure out how to fix this...

...deserves an award. (And I don't mean Florida... That would take a miracle)