A couple of days ago I made a post about a badly gerrymandered state house district in Mississippi. Continuing my project at work, I had to do the same kind of state house district to county mapping for Virginia. I needed to find out which districts represent Norfolk, VA* and found the following map:

I couldn't see a district for the dark pink district, which was part of Norfolk. After a second, I realized that the Eastern Shore of Virginia was the same color, but thought there was no way that it was the same district. After all, there is like 15 miles of water separating the two pieces of land. Surely that can't be a legal state house district.

After some research, it turned out that the two pieces of land were in fact the same district. I couldn't believe that it was legal to make districts span across water unless an island were involved. I suppose that technically, it is contiguous, since the Chesapeake bay is part of Virginia. But seriously, how can legislators draw that district in good faith?

*ODU MUN trip, anybody?