In setting the boundaries for voting districts, what issues or guidelines should be taken into account besides population?

Geographic considerations where natural boundaries occur. River banks for instance or a forest.

Cities and towns and counties should be left intact as much as possible.

In Texas, the Republicans divided the one real liberal stronghold, Austin, into 5 predominantly GOP districts.

FiveThirtyEight has a nifty interactive map, showing different ways to draw US House boundaries.

I would like it done mathematically, to create compact districts. But, since counties have to administer elections, I like the last one best, “Make districts compact while following county borders”.

—Show current district boundaries

—Gerrymander districts to favor Republicans

—Gerrymander districts to favor Democrats

—Match partisan breakdown of seats to electorate

—Promote highly competitive elections

—Maximize number of majority-minority districts

—Make district shapes compact (using an algorithm)

—Make districts compact while following county borders

My suggestion has been and continues to be to change voting districts to existing counties (except for local elections) as they exist right now. Burroughs in NYC. Let it go at that. But here’s the problem we run into: establishing voting districts is done at the state level, not the federal level. For my idea to hold, all 50 states would have to go along with it.