THE CARTOGRAPHER IN ME SALUTES THE CARTOGRAPHER IN ALL OF US

The problem of gerrymandering between Texas and California has reached the point of lagerheads despite that they don’t share a land border. Withheld statehood from the District of Columbia, or the proposed revision of that status as the Douglass Commonwealth, requires a democratic rather than exclusionary solution. Puerto Rico’s statehood aims are also more organic in nature than the systematic exclusion and disenfranchisement of voters, specifically those of ethnic minorities, under the status quo.

A line in the sand that can be considered zero-sum are a source of dispute where more equitable means are available – if we can, in fact, agree that war and genocide are a bad thing. Preparing for future conflict and more equitable relations toward peaceful ends that bend toward justice.

The idea that nations and states share commonalities in vertical and horizontal borders is apparent when a selected history of border disputes between states has led to conflict should be considered. Naturally conflicts usually start with scarce resources. Queries unearthed but arguably ill-researched:

1.        The establishment of the Florida panhandle in the 1783 Treaty of Paris.

2.        The Connecticut Western Reserve.

3.        The externality of Toledo c. 1835-1836.

4.        The existence of the Oklahoma panhandle, No Man’s Land and the 1850 Compromise.

5.        Missouri-Kansas Border Dispute ended when the Union finally accepted Kansas as a free state in 1861.

6.        Water Boundary Dispute of New Jersey and Delaware in the 20th century.

7.        The State Line Water War between Georgia and Tennessee.

As a point of opposition, there are favorable non-violent exceptions where state lines are unambiguous. One innocuous example lies in the 4-corners of Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico and the shared border from Minnesota to the end of Louisiana. These represent geographic and cartographic commonalities as a positive externality. The corresponding perpendicular line along Minnesota across Washington State along the Canadian border shows that, in theory any way, drawing lines on a map can be beneficial to the commonwealths, provinces, republics, states, countries and nations.

The fact that these shared latitudinal and longitudinal commonalities exist should give us optimism. They form a veritable compass star that can be implemented to define standards versus what passes for judiciousness in instance of extreme gerrymandering of today. Congressional Districts within states should default to these norms rather than their more-contested Frankenstein-shaped districts meant to exclude and disenfranchise minority voters in the States specifically.

- AE 08/24/2025