Yep. Districts should be drawn to enclose the correct number of Citizens so that the length of district boundary line is held to a minimum. Such a map could be computer drawn. The State legislatures could choose from among a set of computer generated maps. This would result in irregular lumpish shapes but gerrymandering would be a thing of the past.
No demographic besides “Citizen” should be tolerated ever. Non-Citizens should not be counted.
A further improvement should be to do away with the present limits on the size of the US House and at least double the size of it in one fell swoop. Thereafter the number of districts could be increased towards some maximum population limit is added stages and the House continue to grow after that as the population of Citizens generally grows.
The resulting smaller districts would be arguably even less irregular in shape. The Swamp would have a devil of a time roping in all the new blood.
“A further improvement should be to do away with the present limits on the size of the US House and at least double the size of it in one fell swoop.”
I think it needs to be quadrupled personally. In fact, that might not be enough :-). It’s the one aspect of FedGov I want to see increase ... more Reps in the House :-).
The main reason that will never happen is control. If you’d expand the House, you’d lose the two party stranglehold (it wouldn’t cost as much to run a campaign), it’d be far more difficult to corrupt (costs a LOT more when you’re facing 1200 people to buy vs 435), and the Reps would be a lot more in tune with their constituents (an added bonus here is if your candidate lost, you probably won’t get the communist whackjob alternative).
I can’t see much of a downside to growing the House significantly ... doubling it would be a start, but I don’t think you’d see an improvement until it’s quadrupled in size or more. I know there are issues with the salaries and pensions, but that can be addressed if the idea would ever gain some momentum.