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Back in January I wrote about a Tufts math professor’s push to use mathematics to more objectively define voting districts and thus push back against gerrymandering. It was a story about House Bill 320 would would have established a commission to give the state’s every-10-year redistricting powers to an algorithm.   (You can read that column here.)

“It suddenly came to me: Redistricting is an optimization problem,” said Jerry Knirk, a retired physician in his first term as legislator who is the prime sponsor.

Since then, the work of Moon Duchin about the geometry of redistricting has drawn plenty of attention, including a seminar in Boston this week, as WBUR reports. The idea is getting a lot of attention.

Whether it will accomplish anything to de-p0olarize our politics is another matter. The New Hampshire bill was killed by our House of Representatives, so I’m not terribly hopeful  But you never know.

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