Font made of gerrymandered congressional districts.
August 1, 2019 11:11 AM   Subscribe

 
Oh, it's terrible and wonderful; I was just thinking about whether or not to post it. Direct link to uglygerry.com, for the source and a little higher detail view of the letterforms.
posted by cortex at 11:25 AM on August 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


I see they didn't use NC4 or NC12, as there is no letter "Diseased Snake" in modern English.
posted by Rock Steady at 11:36 AM on August 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


I see they didn't use NC4 or NC12, as there is no letter "Diseased Snake" in modern English.

NC's districts are much less ludicrously shaped now (while still being obvious partisan gerrymanders, but, y'know).
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:19 PM on August 1, 2019


Yes, computer algorithms can now easily form districts that conform to seemingly fair, un-dragon-like shapes and still be very effectively gerrymandered. Science!
posted by sjswitzer at 12:36 PM on August 1, 2019 [4 favorites]


FWIW, the online OCR sites do not do well with this font.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 1:02 PM on August 1, 2019 [1 favorite]


Some of those are two districts which is kind of cheating.

I mean look at the A. That looks horrible. But CA 3rd district which makes up half of that A is actually pretty reasonable if you know the area, and it comes from a post 2011 non partisan redistricting ballot initiative.
posted by aspo at 1:45 PM on August 1, 2019


> NC's districts are much less ludicrously shaped now (while still being obvious partisan gerrymanders, but, y'know).

NC12 is now no longer over a hundred miles long and less than a mile wide, but NC1 and NC4 are still horrible messes. In a nearby neighborhood the district border runs down the middle of their street. At a previous house I lived in, I had to vote at a polling station several miles away because the one less than 100 yards away belonged to a different district.

Ironically, the only North Carolina district in the font, NC6, has not been the subject of this decade's ongoing gerrymandering disputes.
posted by ardgedee at 1:47 PM on August 1, 2019 [1 favorite]


I read that as "fort," and then was sad that I don't get to see a fort made of gerrymandered districts.
posted by feckless at 2:29 PM on August 1, 2019


Almost all district borders run down the middle of streets because districts are built up from Census tabulation blocks whose boundaries are streets. This font is cool, but weird shapes is the least of our worries with gerrymandering. Check out IL04, “the earmuffs,” (covered in the very good John Oliver segment two years ago) for an example of why.
posted by migurski at 7:37 PM on August 1, 2019


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