The only thing I can't get behind is their mechanism for competitiveness. While it sounds like a feature that is desirable, I suspect that in reality, it serves to provide the minority candidates with disproportionately high influence.
I feel like it introduces the same problem that the electorial college does, where a swing of 10,000 votes in one region can be used to negate 100,000 votes in another.
I think a better target would be to optimize for for minimal difference in demographic between neighboring districts. That way districts act as kind of a gradient, where neighboring districts influence each other slightly, keeping each district closer to the overall political affiliation of the region.
The only thing I can't get behind is their mechanism for competitiveness. While it sounds like a feature that is desirable, I suspect that in reality, it serves to provide the minority candidates with disproportionately high influence.
I feel like it introduces the same problem that the electorial college does, where a swing of 10,000 votes in one region can be used to negate 100,000 votes in another.
I think a better target would be to optimize for for minimal difference in demographic between neighboring districts. That way districts act as kind of a gradient, where neighboring districts influence each other slightly, keeping each district closer to the overall political affiliation of the region.