Endorsements: 1
Personal statement
For my American Government class at Mercyhurst University, I got assigned to make my own districts for the state of Pennsylvania. Doing this assignment was a very difficult thing because, as someone who didn't know much about district lines in Pennsylvania. I didn't know where to start.
I knew each district had to be within .5 percent percent of 747,199 in population and it had to be contiguous, so this is what I started with. I made 17 district outlines that were all over the place with the population within them and then I went in closer and carefully moved people over into other districts to make it even.
Once I started doing this, I got the hang of getting the population close to the perfect population and then I tried to add another element that would help my districts from becoming gerrymandered.
I started to look at competitiveness to give the districts set-ups that didn't favor one party more than the other. I got a total of 13 out of my 17 districts to be competitive, which I believe is a good number. One thing that I wish I could have gotten more of was a higher percent on compactness of my districts. My districts had an average of 27 percent which I think may be pretty low but still not terrible.
I also wish I had more districts that are majority-minority.
I am happy with my map because I think it has good numbers on average of everything that districts are supposed to have. I think the districts do not favor a party one way or another.
I enjoyed learning about my districts and what they do for everyone. I never knew this information before, and I feel like my knowledge on them now is greater and I can apply the information I have learned and take it into my life later on.
