Monday, February 23, 2009

Irony

Mark Sanford: "We've all seen the spaghetti string style districts that don't really represent people; they are designed solely about the process of politics." Yes we have. I think this one's my favorite; Mike McCaul (R-TX) represents a district stretching from Austin to suburban Houston. If you tilt your head it looks a bit like farfalle.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

My personal favorite is the NY-20, just vacated by the newly appointed Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. (See it here: http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/image/Image:Ny20_109.gif).
This District will be contested in a Special Election to be held on March 31.

drip said...

I don't know if anyone can make sense of MD 2 and MD 3 anymore. MD 4 is a long, wasp-waisted sort of thing, but 2 and 3 are sort of a marble cake interrupted by the Chesapeake Bay, each with parts in 4 counties, but not the dominant seat in any of them.

Stentor said...

I'm a fan of AZ-01 and AZ-02 -- perfectly reasonable looking districts, but then they plucked this hole out of the center of 01 and connected it with a preposterous-looking umbilical cord to 02. (There's a perfectly reasonable explanation -- they're putting the Hopis and Navajos in different districts -- but it's still wild looking.)

Rashad said...

It's all about CA-20. Zoom in on the bottom right corner near bakersfield for some fun.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd?state=CA&district=20

Neil Sinhababu said...

In North Carolina, we once had a district that ran along down a highway median so that it could connect two areas without bringing anybody from the surrounding territory.

Antid Oto said...

I'm fond of Nydia Velazquez's NY-12, which has four separate lobes connected to very thin strips of land on both sides of the East River. (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd?state=NY&district=12)

nimh said...

Those are some wildly boundaried districts. Slartibartfast would have been proud.

The Maryland ones take the case, though.