“Mr. Derbyshire—I have been pushing (among my peers) the following
constitutional amendment.
“‘Each state must choose its congressional districts to have the following
properties: 1) Each congressional district has the same population, and 2)
The points lying on straight line between any two points in the district
must, if in the state, also be in that district.’
“The upshot is that congressional districts must either be convex sets, or
if not convex, then the non-convexity is due to the non-convexity of the
state itself. It is easy to prove that there always exists a way to do
this if things are sufficiently smooth.
“Let F be a measure mapping subsets of the state to R. (By smooth, I mean
assume that sets with zero area have zero F-measure.) Next, take a
north-south line, and starting from the western border, move it eastward
until the F-measure of the area west of the line is P/N, where P is the
population of the state and N is the number of districts. Then, starting
from here, do this N-2 more times.
“But this will never get adopted. In whose interest is it to push this?”
Well, it seems to me it is in the national interest, Sir. But then, so is
the flat tax, nuclear power, immigration enforcement,…