In redistricting, why is keeping counties whole considered important?

[I’m not Stu]

I’ve always wondered this, especially after looking at Iowa’s House map. Why are county splits commonly frowned upon?

[SevenEleven]

Objectivity. Counties are largely a meaningless consideration, as are states themselves, but logistically it's expedient to treat counties as intact communities, even when they aren't or when a community transcends county borderlines.

[Oryxslayer]

Objectivity. Counties are largely a meaningless consideration, as are states themselves, but logistically it's expedient to treat counties as intact communities, even when they aren't or when a community transcends county borderlines.

Counties, or other significant administrative lines like NE towns, to this end are a good 'default' COI outside of the west where counties become ginormous. If there are more important COI, be they multi-county groupings, lower level pairings, cultural groupings, or whatever, those take precedence over the county in all but the most obtuse situation. However, in the absence of a clear COI, the county is an effective fall-back.

[Brittain33]

If there is strong county government in the state, it makes for a good pairing of local and federal officials without too much confusion.

[MarkD]

I would think it would be a simple matter as keeping things administratively simple for the county clerks. If counties are divided by congressional district lines, then the county clerks have to keep track of where that boundary line is, which voters in the county fall on which side of the boundary, making sure that the voters on this side of the line get a different ballot than the voters on that side of the line, and so on. When counties are whole, the county clerk's job is much easier, because every voter in the county gets the same ballot.

[I’m not Stu]

In California, Orange County residents in CA-47 filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to order a redrawn map because they didn’t want to share a district with Los Angeles County. Why is that?

[muon2]

One tool of gerrymandering is the ability of the map maker to define communities of interest after the map is drawn to meet political considerations. The best defense against this is to identify geographic units that the public recognizes as entities they belong to. Then holding the mapper to a standard that minimizes splitting those previously identified units restricts the ability to gerrymander.

There aren't that many geographic units that are widely recognized by their residents: counties, cites, towns, school districts and zip codes. Ideally the entire state should be partitioned into neutrally defined areas recognized by the public. That would generally exclude cities as a primary subdivision, since not every area in a state is in a city. The partitions should also be fairly data rich to insure the result of redistricting is fair and that doesn't usually apply to zip codes. Most the public knows their county of residence and there is plenty of data collected at the county level. That makes them the best unit in most states. In New England towns are more widely used than counties by the public and are the best natural geographic unit.