Personal Statement
The prime emphasis of this redistricting proposal was establishing decent compactness levels for each of the districts. One of the parameters I went by was maintaining a minimal compactness score of 20 percent, as population equivalence and party distributions are taken into account and must be balanced with a neat compactness.
It was ensured that there be roughly equal amounts of districts that held a majority for each of the two major parties, with the remaining districts evenly divided for the sake of high competitiveness with each election, thus creating a more accountable political environment within the swing districts.
Judging that county boundaries are not self contained cultural entities for a lot of the time, they should not be seen to determine the voting patterns of the districts unless they are within large rural regions. Because of this, proximity among municipalities was seen as a better indicator of voting preferences, and this was largely followed throughout the more urbanized and populated areas of the state. This district map overall has the express goal of fairly representing all demographics in the state of Pennsylvania.
