Mrs. X read an article a few days ago talking about how gerrymandering is driving a push to political extremes rather than fostering debate and agreement. There is a group petitioning to redraw the Ohio congressional districts when it comes around again in 2021 with an emphasis on geography and population balance. One things mentioned was to try and base the districts on the various counties and not create arbitrary lines running in every direction.
Naturally, I was intrigued by this idea and decided to see if I could create a congressional map based on existing counties with a minimum of division. Ohio has a current population of a little more than 11.5 million and we are allotted 16 congressional districts. If you were to balance this out, each congressional district would have about 725,000 people.
Now, this rule cannot be held precisely. Franklin and Cuyahoga counties are each over a million people (1.16 and 1.28 million respectively). If you cut the counties in two and give each half one congressional district, you fall somewhat short of the 725,000 per district. This also has a cascade effect of pushing up the population requirements in other districts. Still, it's not unreasonable. Franklin county gets the lowest population density with 582,000 people in each district. On the other end, Hamilton county has the highest population density. It takes the whole district and ends up with 802,000 people in it.
But on the whole it comes out to a reasonable balance:
District 2 - 778,000
District 3 - 739,000
District 4 - 731,000
Districts 5 & 6 - 582,000
District 7 - 742,000
District 8 - 750,000District 9 - 728,000
District 10 - 747,000
District 11 - 766,00
Districts 12 & 13 - 640,000District 14 - 797,000
District 15 - 781,000
District 16 - 733,000
At the very least, it would give some level of competetiveness and cohesiveness. It might actually also introduce leaders willing to look for solutions with each other rather than those who run further to the Right or Left since the primary is the only battle of ideas. It also looks a lot better than this:
