The 4th Congressional District in Illinois is called “earmuffs.” When you see what it looks like, you understand the reason why.
This is an example of “gerrymandering” -- the use of strategically-driven map-drawing to achieve electoral and political gains. “Good government” people usually decry the practice.
Statistical techniques can be used to measure how “gerrymandered” a district is. Here’s an article from Governing magazine a couple years ago describing several of these indexes, which are used to rank states from top to bottom on how gerrymandered they are.
We’ve computed the average ranking for all states on each of these indexes.
In turn, putting the states in three buckets – least gerrymandered, middle states, and most gerrymandered – states with more gerrymandering tend to have higher Taxpayer Burdens, as calculated by Truth in Accounting.
