Cracking I can understand why it is bad, because you are splitting up communities and it isn't fair for their voices to be diluted. However with packing, you are literally taking voters of a certain party and guaranteeing them the representative of their choice. Is it because packing leads to less competitiveness than cracking?
There isn't a problem with a "natural pack", like of a city, so long as it means that surrounding communities don't have to be cracked.
However, a pack doesn't necessarily mean the district is compact or makes any sense from a COI standpoint. TX-35 and IL-15 are classic examples of this this cycle.
Districts should represent communities. Sometimes partisanship can mirror communities, but using it as the exclusive guiding factor is disgusting.
A city is not a natural pack. This is one of the biggest redistricting myths which perpetuates gerrymandering. It’s time to end this gaslighting campaign. A random rural town in Archuleta CO has more in common with a rural in Sedgewick than two ends of Denver proper.
