GERRYMANDERING

                  With the election over and gerrymandering getting such play in the news, I want to share something many of us have not thought about.

                  The foundation of my information comes from a year or so ago when I had the privilege of speaking at the Ron Paul Institute annual gala.  I'm definitely not a political animal, but I spent that day with several hundred political animals. 

                  Attendees were primarily folks who live, eat, and breathe political theater.  Whenever I get around people  with interests and skills outside my own, I try my best to just ask questions and learn what I can.  I don't spend my days rubbing shoulders with political geeks, so this was a real treat.

                  Here is what I learned.  With today's data collection ability, political geeks can literally pull up any street in the U.S. and by tapping into what a household watches on YouTube, what they look at on social media, and what they buy on Amazon or put on their credit card, you can pinpoint 100 percent what their political persuasion is.

                  In other words, from a computer you can go down 35th Street in Anytown, USA, and know whether number 24 votes liberal or conservative.  Ditto house number 25.  Ditto house number 26.  Ditto house number 27.  In other words, you don't need to ask; you can tell with almost perfect certainty.

                  Once you make that determination--and certainly AI will be able to do that if it doesn't already--you can simply overlay a map on voting districts and draw lines from street to street to carve out liberal and conservative districts.  The accuracy is uncanny and relatively simple to do.

                  If you, like I, have wondered why redistricting is today's front line political battle, this is why.  As a society, we've never been able to determine with such precision how a household will vote.  But with Big Data now, a hovering umbrella can see through our minds and houses to predict our voting position.  This makes redrawing voting districts a fairly simple academic exercise. 

                  All this is happening behind the scenes, quietly and without fanfare, and literally destroying our society's capacity to select leaders.   Engineering outcomes is now the frontier of political selection.  As leaders huddle to redraw voting districts, a diabolical level of censorship is the result--regardless of which side does it.

                  What's the answer?  It seems to me like we should "square up" districts.  The new requirement should be that they be as square and tight as possible.  I'm sure you've seen these districts, drawn-out and linear with little tangents off one side or another.  These lines make a mockery of geographical proximity, voting efficiency, and regional authenticity.  These odd-shaped districts accentuate prejudice and lock thousands out of the political process.  It's hard to care to vote when the outcome can be this precisely orchestrated by entrenched powers.  Perhaps this is the ultimate objective:  an apathetic  populace.

                  As frustrated as we may be about gerrymandered districts, it seems to me like the culprit, or enabler, is Big Data coupled with zero stipulations about geographically square districts.

                  Is it possible to reverse the juggernaut of data collection?