Personal Statement
I focused mostly on how the population would affect each district and its compactness. It was a lot of trial and error at first to have each district reach a steady population. Once each district reached around 748,000 for their population size, I played around with how I could reach a good overall compactness percentage. I think it’s important each district is spread out and not crowded. This again took a bit of trial and error, especially with the extremely small parts of the district that were easily bringing up the population rate higher and higher. The last thing I tried to keep in mind while creating the map was the minority groups. I really wanted the minority groups to be spread out around the state evenly. It’s important to me every district has a variety of cultures. As a minority myself, I loved going to my school and finding people of all different cultures. I remember some of my friends from other districts were really only friends with Indian people because it was a mainly Asian populated district. Not to say anything is wrong with that, but I believe the more exposed you are to other cultures the better. This was more difficult to ensure on the map, but I tried my best. Overall, creating this map was a very interesting experience that I never really thought I would encounter. I was able to learn about how districts really are built and how they can affect the voting population.
