Jun 1st 2012, 4:33:53
Tennessee's US House Districts don't look that bad. The state house and senate districts, however, are thoroughly gerrymandered.
The rule for creating districts is that they must be a continuous area (no matter how tenuously they are continued), There are exceptions to this for islands...or in the case of Kentucky for the little piece that should belong to Tennessee but they refused to give it up despite the fact that to get to Fulton County, Kentucky you have to drive through TN. I grant you, Kentucky was a state and you could get to the area that is Fulton County before an Earth Quake on the New Madrid fault changed the course of the Mississippi River in 1812. (That, for the record, is your geography lesson for the day.)
Edit: It's actually just a small piece of Fulton County, KY that you have to drive through TN to get to. On another note, the documentary "How the States Got Their Shapes" is pretty interesting (at least for some states).
The rule for creating districts is that they must be a continuous area (no matter how tenuously they are continued), There are exceptions to this for islands...or in the case of Kentucky for the little piece that should belong to Tennessee but they refused to give it up despite the fact that to get to Fulton County, Kentucky you have to drive through TN. I grant you, Kentucky was a state and you could get to the area that is Fulton County before an Earth Quake on the New Madrid fault changed the course of the Mississippi River in 1812. (That, for the record, is your geography lesson for the day.)
Edit: It's actually just a small piece of Fulton County, KY that you have to drive through TN to get to. On another note, the documentary "How the States Got Their Shapes" is pretty interesting (at least for some states).
-Angel1