Want a solution to Gerrymandering that opens the process up to everyone?
Why not Crowd-source the drawing the maps?
Instead of having mucky-mucks or anointed faceless committees decide which maps are the best, why not post maps onto a State website for everyone to see then run an election for the maps we want?
Then we pay the authors of the best maps a prize for doing a good job?
This is the essence of “The Cartographer Plan”.
Crowd-sourcing is the process of opening up a problem to everyone for a great solution. Check out https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/winningSolvers for real world examples of harnessing the latent power of people to fix stuff. Someone has a problem they need solved, they post the problem on the website. It becomes a competition to find the solution. The person who submitted the problem is the one deciding what the best solution is and then pays the author. The beauty is that anyone can submit an idea to solve a problem and if it works, you get money for being creative!
In 2011, Amanda Holt, a piano teacher from Allentown, PA, came up with better maps to solve Gerrymandering than the State Legislature. Her maps went to the Supreme Court before being knocked down. It is plain the PA State Legislature has no mechanism to allow regular people to engage this process.
While Representatives are elected to perform the map drawing process every 10 years, there is an inherent conflict of interest having the exact people who draw the maps be the ones benefitting the maps.
Legislators are right to claim philosophically they are elected to do the people’s business. State Row Officers such as Auditor General, Treasurer, and Attorney General are also elected to perform specific duties that need to be independent from both a Legislature and a Governor’s Office. It is time to create a similar office to handle the creation of the maps – The Cartographer?
Bottom line is you need someone who has stood for election for the needed authority from the people to do the job of Cartographer. It is too important of a task to be left to committees appointed directly or indirectly by the political parties.
The Office of Cartographer is decided the same way as the website example. “We The People” have put a problem out there for solution - give us some maps we can live with. Put up a $150,000 prize per map (Congressional, Senatorial, Legislative) and see what maps are submitted. An election decides it.
Some specifics: To submit a map, the author of the map becomes the candidate. Like any other office, the candidate must get a number of signatures to qualify for a primary ballot. As long as the maps meet the requirements up front from the US Census, US Supreme Court, and regular electoral challenges, they may be voted upon in a primary election. This prevents a map from being challenged after the fact.
The Primary Election winnows 4 maps to go through on each level to the General Election.
The General election decides on the winner.
The winner gets bragging rights and $150,000. If you can convince an entire state that your map is the best you are, by definition, a professional cartographer and need to be compensated as such.
An example of how this would look as an Amendment to the State Constitution: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/an-amendment-for-a-cartographer_us_5887da20e4b05a82fd5b2ff9