Redistricting Washington with ten districts

[ottermax]

Excellent maps. I guess coming from a Washingtonian perspective it is easier to understand a lot of the districting. Muon did a very good job, but the districts were very objectively created, and districts need to be someone subjectively made if they are to work.

[ottermax]

Wow, a lot of work has been put into this. Awesome. I think it is necessary to split counties in Washington. The only reasonable cross-Cascades region is in the south/Columbia River area. We only have 39 counties, and it is extremely hard to have balanced, reasonable districts without county splitting. If the Olympia-Chelan district actually happened, I think there would be a lot of people screaming, "yikes!" Olympia and Wenatchee just don't go together well at all.
However I really like your idea of the transportation connections, but there must be a better way of creating districts than connecting far flung, polarized locations.

[ottermax]

Here's a version that follows your connectivity, maintains the 0.5% deviation, only splits the three big counties, and generally addresses the negatives.



Tacoma is now in a Pierce-only district so only the remainder of Pierce only makes up 20% of the Olympia district. The Everett district is 63% Snohomish and 37% Kitsap. The remainder of Snohomish is only 37% of the Bellingham district. So, King dominates 3 districts, and Pierce and Snohomish each dominates one district.

I like this map, because it maintains the connections and makes sense. The part of King County in the green district is mostly Enumclaw which goes well with the district. Eastern cities are kept together such as Wenatchee-E. Wenatchee and the Tri-Cities. Probably one of the best maps so far, and Island county should stay in the yellow.