Reflections on current criteria to evaluate redistricting plans

High quality election districting plans provide representation to the broadest array of demographic groups possible. In rapidly diversifying countries such as the United States this goal will become of ever greater importance in the future. The quality and legality of districting plans are typically evaluated on the basis of a long list of criteria including contiguity, compactness, population equality, racial equity, the avoidance of splitting local government subdivisions, and the maintenance of communities of interest, among others. Do these criteria facilitate or inhibit the creation of districting plans facilitating high quality representation? Using the perspective of social justice, this paper evaluates current traditional redistricting evaluative criteria based upon the clarity of their goals and whether there are generally accepted methods for judging a plan's quality. It finds that the goals of some criteria are ill-defined with others having no accepted protocols to judge a plan's fidelity to these goals. It also argues that political geographers can have an important role in further refining the purpose and measurement of the current evaluative criteria used in the redistricting process.

► High quality redistricting plans provide effective representation for a broad number of demographic groups.
► Mapmakers and the judiciary evaluate redistricting plans on the basis of traditional redistricting criteria.
► The quality of traditional redistricting criteria should be evaluated from the perspective of social justice.
► Some traditional redistricting criteria have unclear purposes and methods for their measurement.