Saturday, February 14, 2009

The Wandering Wilmot District


In a recent post, I included a map identifying David Wilmot's congressional district as covering the three counties in white above. I did so based on Jonathan H. Earle's description of the district as "including all of Bradford, Tioga and Susquehanna counties in the northeast corner of the state."

Fifty pages later, however, Professor Earle appears to contradict himself:
The Free Soil votes in the Wilmot district's counties of Bradford, Potter and Tioga came overwhelmingly from Democrats but made little difference in the statewide race (see map 5).

Map 5 in fact identifies the "Wilmot District" as consisting of Bradford, Potter and Tioga counties, like this:



Now I'm guessing that the Wilmot District may have covered all four counties. But such imprecision is annoying and frustrating.

As an addendum, I was horrified to discover that Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District is now a gerrymandered monstrosity in the southwest portion of the state, and is currently represented by the loathsome Jack Murtha.

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