The 2011 NC maps really got in people's heads that gerrymandering = ugly non-compact districts.
But guess what? When the Congressional maps were redrawn to be much more compact in 2016 they had exactly the same partisan result.
But guess what? When the Congressional maps were redrawn to be much more compact in 2016 they had exactly the same partisan result.
https://twitter.com/BrennanCenter/status/1438625502604955648
I'm seeing a lot of people at hearings ask for compact districts and equate this with fair districts. What I suspect they want is districts that don't split the cities, neighborhoods, and precincts they know.
But making a map compact could very well mean creating more splits.
But making a map compact could very well mean creating more splits.
Cities, which are probably the most relevant political division for most people, are by nature not compact - especially here in North Carolina where we do fun things like let them have discontiguous parts.
I was just in Rocky Mount yesterday - the shape of the city is clearly not that compact - look at that long tail going up 301- but I presume that most people there would prefer a district that kept Rocky Mount whole to one that split the city while being more compact 
I think we advocates really made a mistake when we focused so much on the shape of districts over their content - preserving communities should be much more important to us and to our map drawers than making pretty districts.
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