Ok, here are my ideas about guidelines. I think that we should keep them relatively "open":
Population equality
District population must not deviate from the state average by more than 1,000. For districts that consist of only whole counties a deviation of 4,000 is allowed. For districts in New England that consist of only whole towns a deviation of 2,000 is allowed.
Too high. I'd shoot for 100 w/ splits/500 without.
Integrity of administrative divisions
Counties and cities shall not be unnecessarily split. As a rule of thumb there shall not be more county splits than districts. (For counties that have more than one district quota, you get one free split for every full quota. A three-way split counts as two splits, a four-way split counts as three splits, etc.)
Too inflexible. Counties are bad indicators of COI a lot of the time and extra county splits may be necessary in places for VRA compliance (eg North Carolina).
