What elections are supposed to look like is voters choose their politicians. but in America, politicians often get to choose their voters."
That was a nice video with Ezra Klein talking about the process along with the animation. How would independent commissions be set up though? I worry that the commissions would be picked by politicians and be too easily swayed, or they would refuse to re-district the current gerrymandered places and just stop future attempts.
Redistricting algorithms can be programmed to conform to the nearest census tract borders, instead of cutting through census tracts. That is not the most often objection raised to removing the human decision-making element from the process though (although I don't think any I've heard are justifiable). Some people cite: wanting to contain local issues or business interests within a district, or "positive" racial gerrymandering, insuring a racial minority a seat through gerrymandering because otherwise the rounding error produced by representative governance would eliminate representation of sufficiently small or dispersed minorities. If not following census tract outlines, there are also some objections to some what-if cases, like when a house lies directly on the algorithmically generated district border, but those largely have very simple solutions (for example: alternate which side of the border to assign the houses to. Or assign them all to one side: it's so statistically unlikely it would rarely make a difference). If you want more complex methods (that have benefits like higher compactness at the expense of computational complexity), see Bdistricting, Voronoi diagram, k-means, etc. redistricting.
By whom do you think the Supreme Court is swayed? Sure, they're chosen by a process that doesn't produce the best justices in the country like it's supposed to, but if anything the primary issue is that the nine stay so true to their built-up ideologies that our court policy is always >20 years behind.
Not swayed, just chosen. Yeah, they're chosen by the current President, and most of them vote pretty strongly along party lines. I'm not sure what a better method would be, considering the vast majority of Americans are likewise polarized. But it bothers me greatly how much the Judicial branch votes along party lines. Judges should be impartial, not partisan. And I worry about any districting committee being likewise partisan. Which is why I think a mathematical algorithm would be better.
Well, they vote conservative/liberal. But basically you're right, I just don't see what about that could change. SCOTUS votes on issues -- how do you become impartial about an issue? You have to have an opinion to vote, and your opinion has to come from somewhere.But it bothers me greatly how much the Judicial branch votes along party lines. Judges should be impartial, not partisan.