I agree. Matthew Yglesias wrote a great article about this:
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"...redistricting is a particularly hard problem to solve because there are a number of different goals that are mostly incompatible:
* It seems like a system should offer partisan fairness such that control of a legislature is typically in line with the population’s overall preference.
* Districts should align communities of interest and correspond in some sense to real places that we can characterize, like “the South Side of Chicago,” rather than just be arbitrary zones, like “some of the suburbs of San Antonio and some of the suburbs of Austin plus a big disconnected patch of rural Texas.”
* Racial minority groups should get fair representation. A state like Georgia that’s 30 percent black shouldn’t have an all-white congressional delegation.
* There should be fair-fight districts with real electoral competition, not just everyone segregated into safe seats that protect incumbents.
* Districts should be compact and look like a nice checkerboard of squares and triangles, rather than a bunch of crazy squiggles.
Sometimes you can make this all work together, but oftentimes you can’t."
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We can't have an "optimal" algorithm when we're trying to optimize for several different things, some of which don't even have a formal definition.
The San Antonio/I35/Austin district you refer to is Lloyd Dogget's; it's a minority-majority district created by MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense). It is a prime example of the use of gerrymandering for positive reasons.
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"...redistricting is a particularly hard problem to solve because there are a number of different goals that are mostly incompatible:
* It seems like a system should offer partisan fairness such that control of a legislature is typically in line with the population’s overall preference.
* Districts should align communities of interest and correspond in some sense to real places that we can characterize, like “the South Side of Chicago,” rather than just be arbitrary zones, like “some of the suburbs of San Antonio and some of the suburbs of Austin plus a big disconnected patch of rural Texas.”
* Racial minority groups should get fair representation. A state like Georgia that’s 30 percent black shouldn’t have an all-white congressional delegation.
* There should be fair-fight districts with real electoral competition, not just everyone segregated into safe seats that protect incumbents.
* Districts should be compact and look like a nice checkerboard of squares and triangles, rather than a bunch of crazy squiggles.
Sometimes you can make this all work together, but oftentimes you can’t."
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We can't have an "optimal" algorithm when we're trying to optimize for several different things, some of which don't even have a formal definition.
[0]: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/11/16453512/...