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Splitline doesnt honor community or geographic boundaries. I'd suggest a modification that honors zipcode boundaries. The USPS has figured out basic units alrea

Splitline doesnt honor community or geographic boundaries. I'd suggest a modification that honors zipcode boundaries. The USPS has figured out basic units already.

phphphph 11y ago
Wouldn't just counting total votes rather than winning regions be the simplest fix? (Honest question, not USAmerican)
- Steuard 11y ago
  In this context, each region sends one member to the House of Representatives in Washington. So it is a "count total votes" process within the region, but there's no way to aggregate between regions (without fundamentally changing our political system).
chippy 11y ago
The algorithm uses US Census data, so perhaps using county boundaries would be ideal? I'm not american, but I imagine both census and zipline boundaries as honouring geographic and community boundaries.
- saalweachter 11y ago
  County boundaries in much of the US are like state boundaries: people drew a bunch of straight lines through a map, with only the slightest regard for natural barriers, to create areas of pleasing size. It is quite common to have large population centers crossing county boundaries, or have natural barriers in the middle of a county with population centers on either side.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > The algorithm uses US Census data, so perhaps using county boundaries would be ideal? Counties are too big to be atomic units in any algorithm that assigns districts that would be meet the requirements for reasonably equal size districts. > I'm not american, but I imagine both census and zipline boundaries as honouring geographic and community boundaries. ZIP codes don't do either particularly well, and census blocks might approximately do one or the other (not always the same for different boundaries) but they can't consistently do both, since the two can conflict.
saalweachter 11y ago
Fun fact: there is actually no such thing as ZIP code boundaries. ZIP codes are actually based on delivery routes: your ZIP code is the post office your mail carrier leaves from. ZIP codes will not actually respect community boundaries: if a town lies between two post offices, it is frequently more efficient for mail to be delivered by carriers from multiple post offices. Moreover, not every address in the US receives home delivery. If the post office does not have a delivery route going past your home address, you can instead get a post office box from whichever post office you find most convenient. What happens to packages addressed to those street addresses is ... complex. The "ZIP code maps" you have probably seen are actually creations of third-parties. If you ask very nicely, the Post Office will give you a list of which street addresses belong to which ZIP codes. A couple of different third party map-makers will then try to create a map based on these lists. They are not always useful or accurate.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Ok I wondered about this. Our local village has no mail delivery; everybody in town has to have a PO box. I thought Federal mail delivery was a given thing, like a right. How can the town just decide to blow it off?
  - saalweachter 11y ago
    Home delivery was never quite universal. Rural Free Delivery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Free_Delivery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Free_Delivery) wasn't even a thing until the 1890s. Hilariously, with budget cuts, there has been more of a tendency to keep RFD while cutting home delivery in some of the smaller towns and villages, since it is easier for people in the village to get to the post office.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > I thought Federal mail delivery was a given thing, like a right. Its not. Establishing post office and post roads is a Constitutional power of the federal government, but providing postal service to every building (or even just every dwelling, or, for that matter, providing any postal service at all) is not an obligation of the Federal government, and there is no entitlement to postal service.

Splitline doesnt honor community or geographic boundaries. I'd suggest a modification that honors zipcode boundaries. The USPS has figured out basic units already.

phphphph 11y ago

Wouldn't just counting total votes rather than winning regions be the simplest fix? (Honest question, not USAmerican)

Steuard 11y ago
In this context, each region sends one member to the House of Representatives in Washington. So it is a "count total votes" process within the region, but there's no way to aggregate between regions (without fundamentally changing our political system).

chippy 11y ago

The algorithm uses US Census data, so perhaps using county boundaries would be ideal? I'm not american, but I imagine both census and zipline boundaries as honouring geographic and community boundaries.

saalweachter 11y ago
County boundaries in much of the US are like state boundaries: people drew a bunch of straight lines through a map, with only the slightest regard for natural barriers, to create areas of pleasing size. It is quite common to have large population centers crossing county boundaries, or have natural barriers in the middle of a county with population centers on either side.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> The algorithm uses US Census data, so perhaps using county boundaries would be ideal? Counties are too big to be atomic units in any algorithm that assigns districts that would be meet the requirements for reasonably equal size districts. > I'm not american, but I imagine both census and zipline boundaries as honouring geographic and community boundaries. ZIP codes don't do either particularly well, and census blocks might approximately do one or the other (not always the same for different boundaries) but they can't consistently do both, since the two can conflict.

saalweachter 11y ago

Fun fact: there is actually no such thing as ZIP code boundaries. ZIP codes are actually based on delivery routes: your ZIP code is the post office your mail carrier leaves from. ZIP codes will not actually respect community boundaries: if a town lies between two post offices, it is frequently more efficient for mail to be delivered by carriers from multiple post offices. Moreover, not every address in the US receives home delivery. If the post office does not have a delivery route going past your home address, you can instead get a post office box from whichever post office you find most convenient. What happens to packages addressed to those street addresses is ... complex. The "ZIP code maps" you have probably seen are actually creations of third-parties. If you ask very nicely, the Post Office will give you a list of which street addresses belong to which ZIP codes. A couple of different third party map-makers will then try to create a map based on these lists. They are not always useful or accurate.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Ok I wondered about this. Our local village has no mail delivery; everybody in town has to have a PO box. I thought Federal mail delivery was a given thing, like a right. How can the town just decide to blow it off?
- saalweachter 11y ago
  Home delivery was never quite universal. Rural Free Delivery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Free_Delivery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Free_Delivery) wasn't even a thing until the 1890s. Hilariously, with budget cuts, there has been more of a tendency to keep RFD while cutting home delivery in some of the smaller towns and villages, since it is easier for people in the village to get to the post office.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > I thought Federal mail delivery was a given thing, like a right. Its not. Establishing post office and post roads is a Constitutional power of the federal government, but providing postal service to every building (or even just every dwelling, or, for that matter, providing any postal service at all) is not an obligation of the Federal government, and there is no entitlement to postal service.