Can you be more specific on how CommonCensus can help fight against gerrymandering?
Once the maps for local areas start to become available (see previous question), we will be able to see the ‘natural’ shapes that people segment themselves into, at something more-or-less analogous to a county level. The shapes of current Congressional districts will be overlaid onto these maps, so that the two sets of shapes can be compared. Maps of Congressional districts are already available, with some really bizarre shapes for some of them, but unfortunately there is often no common-sense alternative to compare them to visually, in terms of areas and shapes. I believe that having Congressional districts laid over the natural population shapes will be a powerful image. For more information on gerrymandering and examples of particularly egregious shapes, see the excellent Wikipedia article on gerrymandering.
