A Dubious Distinction

Maryland may be the most gerrymandered state in the union. According to this story by Len Lazerick in Maryland Reporter, the Free State has “the least compact and most gerrymandered congressional districts in the nation.”

This was the finding by Azavea, a geograhic information systyems company that has ben studying the compactness of congressional districts nationwide using the Polsby-Popper ratio, which “measures the area of the district to the area of the circle whose circumference is equal to the perimeter of the district.”

The study singled out our 3^rd Congressional District as especially egregious.

“The least compact congressional district is Maryland’s 3rd, represented by John Sarbanes, singled out by a federal three-judge panel in an opinion last week. It scored a lowly .0333.”

None of this comes as a surprise to those of us who live here.