The lines generally follow the boundaries of the census blocks. But they do so with discretion - after all, there are 480,000+ blocks & only 19 Congressional districts. So, which blocks get placed into which Congressional districts? That's the heart of the gerrymandering exercise. Gerrymanders use Census data & GIS software to tailor-make districts with certain characteristics - they use data such as previous voting results, party registration lists, even stuff like magazine subscriptions to guess how many Democratic/Republican voters live in each Census block. Then they group together Census blocks to give their party the competitive advantage.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: just for local interest
Date: 2004-06-26 01:11 pm (UTC)