There isn't really yet an operational definition of gerrymandering. Such that, if x conditions exist, it's gerrymandering, and if they don't, it's not. You can'

There isn't really yet an operational definition of gerrymandering. Such that, if x conditions exist, it's gerrymandering, and if they don't, it's not. You can't do it without pointing at results and going, "Well that's clearly unfair." I believe there is a recent legal case that is still in the courts where they are trying to arrive at a legal standard. Something about the percentage of unrepresented voters in a state's average district. So there might be progress on that point. But even politicians that complain against gerrymandering are inconsistent. Some politicians complain about "safe" districts not being competitive enough, and also complain that house elections don't mirror the popular vote breakdown enough. Those are actually on opposite sides of the loose tradeoff. As you move towards your house results mirroring the popular vote (like if today's House were 48.2% Democratic and 46.1% Republican), then you move towards less competitive districts (except for primaries), like the "perfect representation" example in the article. Because, in order to guarantee that your state's district breakdown will mirror your state's vote breakdown, you basically would want all Republican-voting people in their districts, and all Democratic-voting people in their own. So, what do you want? Do you want a House that is overall representative of the national popular vote? Do you want districts where the maximum number of citizens are represented? Do you want competitive districts? Do you want compact, contiguous districts? Do you want districts that respect traditional neighborhood boundaries, district history, and geography? Because they all imply different districting strategies. And saying "let's just let a computer split-line it!" means explicitly rejecting some of these principles - you can't get past making choices about tradeoffs, because it is inherently messy.