Endorsements: 13
Personal statement
As with my previous map last fall, my goals are still compactness and contiguity. With that, I was able to ensure that all 17 districts were connected, and not just by a road or small landmark.
Districts are clearly unfair if a district is not whole or broken up into pieces. This is the reason that both compactness and contiguity are important factors that lead to a fair map.
Compactness relies on contiguity because there will be a greater perimeter for the same area if a district is broken up. The Polsby-Popper score includes perimeter as a factor in the equation of four pi times district area divided by the squared perimeter. With this equation, I was attempting to have the highest possible score of one or 100 percent.
I took a mathematical approach when creating my map. I feel that today's maps are being subjectively created to favor one party either by grouping certain types of people or splitting them between districts. Mathematics allows for a fair and objective way to measure a map's ability to serve the people. All my districts are above 30 percent compact, which was my goal, with my highest being 58.6% in District 2.
When creating my districts, I was able to make them as compact as possible by attempting to follow the county lines and make a smooth perimeter.
Gerrymandering is such a large problem in today's elections which ends up negatively impacting the voters by preventing democracy from working how it should. I feel that my map will provide a fair representation for voters because of the high compactness score. Relying on the compactness metric is an objective way to create the districts of Pennsylvania.
I am a rising sophomore at Gettysburg College, and for my first-year seminar, The Mathematics of Voting, we submitted maps to the competition. We previously learned about all the goals and calculations that go into the examination of a map and were introduced to the DistrictBuilder software.
In the end, creating fair districts allows the democratic process to be fulfilled and prevents gerrymandering. I feel that I successfully designed a map that would be fair for both voters and politicians alike.
