What are the seven different criteria/goals that they outline as possible ways to draw district lines? (I’ll give you a hint, one is “Republican Gerrymandering” and another is “Compactness”). Explain what each of the seven mean.

Introduction
In these critical reflection assignments I am going to ask you to read an article, watch a video, or play a simulation, and then answer a few questions about it. In this second one, you’re going to read a Five Thirty Eight piece about gerrymandering, as well as spending a bit of time playing around with their Atlas of Redistricting.
After you’ve read that article and tried some of the options in the Atlas, I’d like you to write a 300-500 word reflection that covers the following:
1) What are the seven different criteria/goals that they outline as possible ways to draw district lines? (I’ll give you a hint, one is “Republican Gerrymandering” and another is “Compactness”). Explain what each of the seven mean.
2) How do the resulting national redistricting maps look different depending on which criteria they pick? Who or what group does each different map seem to favor?
3) Which of these eight maps seem the most “fair” to you and why? If you were responsible for drawing the district lines, which two of these criteria or goals would you choose? Why did you pick those and not others?
Rubric
For each of the questions above, you can receive up to 9 points as below:
9 points: Fully answers the question and offers supporting evidence.
8 points: Either misses a small part of a question, lacks some evidence, or has some small factual inaccuracies.
7 points: Does not answer a part of a question or lacks evidence or has moderate factual inaccuracies.
6 or fewer points: Has substantial factual inaccuracies or fails to address the question.
You can also receive up to 3 points for the quality and clarity of the writing.
Paper Structure/Citations
You can set up your paper however you would like. If you would like to answer each question one at a time, that is fine (in other words you do not have to write this as a formal essay with a thesis statement or anything like that). If you are using information from the book or the included article you do not need to cite it, unless you directly quote it, in which case you should put it in direct quotes and say something like: According to FiveThirtyEight, “XYZ”. If you use any outside sources other than the book or the article, you should absolutely cite it. You may use any citation system you would like – MLA, APA, Chicago, etc. – so long as you are consistent.

Last Completed Projects