Dave’s Redistricting

One of my internet hobbies has been using the Dave’s Redistricting site. It allows you to draw up hypothetical legislative districts and see their demographics. I’m currently using it to make hypothetical seats for a vastly expanded US House of Representatives. It’s both fun and illuminating to see how you have to balance various challenges.

It’s very illustrative of showing how it’s actually harder to make “fair” districts than you might think. You can get a nice sensitive block of counties-that are safe seats. Or you can take half of those counties, balance it with half of a large city, and then you can make an evenly bipartisan district-but how “representative” really is an obvious artificial creation like that?

If you like politics in any form, you have to check this out. It’s simple, easy, and is great for both counterfactuals and actual debate.