  Bizarrely shaped voting districts are frequently lambasted as likely
instances of gerrymandering. In order to systematically identify such
instances, researchers have devised several tests for so-called geographic
compactness (i.e., shape niceness). We demonstrate that under certain
conditions, a party can gerrymander a competitive state into geographically
compact districts to win an average of over 70% of the districts. Our results
suggest that geometric features alone may fail to adequately combat partisan
gerrymandering.
