My Attempt to Make Fair Districts

[MarkD]

Can I segue into a related topic? It's related because it's about the subject of population "deviations" among the districts within a state.
First of all, I greatly admire Justice Hugo Black, but Wesberry v. Sanders was one of his worst opinions. It was embarrassing to see him struggle so unpersuasively at explaining how our Founding Fathers intended for these Article 1, Section 2 phrases: representatives shall be chosen "by the People of the several States" and shall be "apportioned among the several States...according to their respective Numbers," meant that (as Black put it) "as nearly as practicable one man's vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another's."
Second, I especially loathe Karcher v. Daggett.
"Adopting any standard other than population equality, using the best census data available,  would subtly erode the Constitution's ideal of equal representation. If state legislators knew that a certain de minimis level of population differences was acceptable, they would doubtless strive to achieve that level, rather than equality. Furthermore, choosing a different standard would import a high degree of arbitrariness into the process of reviewing apportionment plans. In this case, appellants argue that a maximum deviation of approximately 0.7% should be considered de minimis. If we accept that argument, how are we to regard deviations of 0.8%, 0.95%, 1%, or 1.1%?"
The Court was condescendingly treating state legislators as if they are petulant little children who will try to "get away with" as much as they can when the rules that the Court has handed down have any ambiguity in them. The rule about "do not wiggle in your seats" must be strict, narrow, and precise so that the little children will not wiggle in their seats as much as they can. More importantly, there would be nothing "arbitrary" about choosing 3% as the figure at which population differences are statistically insignificant (de minimis). The reason that 3% population differences among the congressional districts within a state would be statistically insignificant is because that is the average amount of population differences among all 435 congressional districts nationwide!
You heard me; among all of the congressional districts across the whole nation, there is, on average, about 3% population disparity. That has held true for the last fifty years, at least. I've done the calculations. So if there is that much disparity among all of the districts in the country, why should any particular state have to draw their respective districts, internally, with far less population disparity?
I think a constitutional amendment ought to be adopted which tells the states that 3% population disparity among all of the congressional districts within each state is completely acceptable under the Constitution. In fact, I've included this idea in another amendment that I have drafted which also deals with - prevents - gerrymandering.
Done with rant.

[muon2]

The rant is appreciated, and I would hope that the per curiam opinion in Tennant v Jefferson County Commission would provide some comfort. SCOTUS took some pains there to relax some of the stricter interpretations of Karcher and Wesberry.

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Variance here is what I called the range, that is the difference between the maximum and minimum district.

I also appreciate your observation about the 3% difference posed by the average difference from state to state, but I've never seen that used successfully in court. It seems that the court looks at worst case more readily (hence range not average deviation). They can do nothing about the differences between states due to constitutional requirements, so those differences seems not to be a factor.

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Muon, what are your current predictions for reapportionment in 2020?

[muon2]

Muon, what are your current predictions for reapportionment in 2020?

It's in the thread I stickied on this board.