I've seen a study that a simple grid-based subdivision design that allocates proportionally equal parcels to each electoral division would be unfair... to Republicans. They would lose most elections horribly, so proposed legislation banning Gerrymandering gets shot down every time by them, on the grounds of unfairness.

Just a wierd thought - what if the grid system was done such that one party chooses a square, then the other, alternating? First choice is by coin toss. Maybe the area is required to be contiguous. Maybe not.

How would a party choose a square? They’re just trying to draw the squares to include favorable proportions of voters. If the squares are fixed, there is no choice?

I was thinking that there would be an overlay of squares, each identical, like graph paper. As long as the squares contain a relatively small population as compared to the rest of the state, then the two parties are forced to make real choices. And that's the real goal - for both partoes to make real choiced, and not to simply game the system via gerrymandering.

It's kind of a half-assed idea at this point. But I was thinking that, by forcing identically drawn boundaries, then it would force both parties to choose.

Now that I think about it more, it probably wouldn't work. Both parties would just grab squares that guaranteed their victory. It would end up ultra-gerrymandered.

Oh I think I see. A kind of adversarial map-drawing process. You are given a fine-grained grid ahead of time and then let the parties fight over how the squares will be merged together into districts. Each side tries to draw the map to favor themselves but is countered by the adversary. Neat idea.

What do you mean by "unfair" here? That more Republicans would lose?

I think the simplest definition of "fair" that most people would agree with (at least before being told who would benefit and the tribalism kicks in) would result in a distribution of representatives that roughly matches the distribution of the population at large.

That is, if the whole population of a state votes 60% for one party and 40% for the other, and there are a total of 10 representatives from that state, the fairest distribution would result in 6 representatives for one party and 4 for the other.

If by you saying it's "unfair" to Republicans by just having a final representative distribution that more closely matches the distribution of votes, then I'd argue that is indeed fairer and the current system is the one that's unfair.

I’d say that politicians — who really only truly represent the richest 1% of citizens — losing is perfectly fair. If they want to play to win, they should adopt policies with a broad enough appeal to win the hearts and minds of more voters.

I find it odd that rangevoting.org colors their maps with 5 colors.