Seriously, enough with the talk about bipartisan commissions and independent panels. Let's just assign a computer the task of redrawing Wisconsin's legislative and Congressional districts. The city and county should do the same.
I'm no computer whiz, but I bet a simple algorithm would do a better job of giving us fair representation than legislators. Here's the general idea. First, you enshrine a number of historic boundaries in the constitution, so that, as much as possible, towns and cities do not get split up. Then, starting at one corner of the state, the computer program starts drawing districts. The first district starts, say, in the southwest corner of the state, and expands outward in a rectangular formation until it attains the necessary population.
Maybe this is harder than I assume it to be, but the fact is that the current system is unacceptable. We shouldn't have to put up with radical changes in our districts every 10 years. As Craig Gilbert points out, the congressional redistricting the GOP is putting forth is not only clearly designed to protect Republicans, but it is a much more drastic redrawing of districts than necessary. In fact, the changes could have been made by only slightly altering the districts.
Or is this a lot harder than I assume it is?
Update: Ald. Scott Resnick, who runs a software firm, responds on Twitter: "Interesting idea. Once you establish the City Council wards, I think you could do it."
Lukas Diaz, from Forward Lookout, who also works in software, also responds: "It would need to be transparent open source software Anything closed would make it different but not better."
Nice!
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