How about this solution to gerrymandering?

It's pretty simple: counties borders must remain intact whenever possible. So if a county has a major city in it with approx. 1.8 million people, it gets 3 districts within the county. 3 counties with approx. 200k apiece get one district. Obviously some states will require breaking up some borders at times, but at least it can stop long paths heading through districts and all the wierd loops we see in gerrymandered ones. Also look at Iowa, they managed to pull it off without breaking up a single county.

especially combined with MY idea (which I presented in an earlier thread and got flamed for, don't know why):

districts must have a limited number of straight sides (even at 20-25 sides many districts would be better off)

got to make exceptions for legal boundaries, rivers, etc. that define the limits of a particular jurisdiction.

With computers to even out the populations, it shouldn't be too hard to accomplish.

I've urged this thought for quite a few years now.

That's the only way to determine where people actually are. And computers are only as good as the data that is put into them.

when it comes to redistricting in many places. The problem is that there are a lot of other criteria that have to be taken into consideration as well.

There are a lot of criterian taken into consideration. I mean county lines won't help that much when a county can hold 2.5 districts for example. My county is larger in size than several states. Also there are cities around here that are in more than one county (Bothell is in King and Snohomish counties). Also some counties are too small, so there isn't a natural grouping. In Eastern Washington there are 2 Congressional districts and a few dozen counties, so there could be several ways to group them that just based on the county aren't inherantly superior or inferior. So while counties are weighted, they can't be the only criterian.

if you have county 1 that doesn't have enough population for a full district. So you add county 2 to that district. Together county 1 + county 2 don't have enough population either, so you MUST add ALL of county 2, not just a chunk and then a chunk of another county. The entire county must be included if possible. The result should be only one county at maximum broken, unless it's big enough to hold more than one district, in which case the district borders must be kept within the county.

Before Texas and Colorado, we were the last state to have redistricting in the middle of a census period. It was so disastrous that we created a bi-partisan commission to deal with it (that's not an accurate timeline, but it's my understanding that it got the ball rolling). So now the state legislature picks 4 commissioners (1 selected by Senate Dems, one by Senate Republicans, one by House Dems, one by House Republicans) for state and national districting. They eventually present a plan to the state legislature. The leg can make some changes but they have to be minor (it's my recollection that it has to be 97% similar but I could be wrong about the exact number). While there is still gerrymandering, it isn't as bad because both sides have an equal say in the outcome.

That's the 1 paragraph explination. here is the commission's now horribly out of date web page.