Nick requested to see CA districting under the shortest splitline algorithm.
From http://www.rangevoting.org/GerryExamples.html:
In 2004, not one of CA’s 173 state legislative and federal congressional seats changed party-hands. In 2002, every incumbent won re-election, on average with 69% of the vote. California may be the new gerrymandering champion, perhaps even worse than Illinois and Texas, but unlike them its gerrymandering is “bipartisan” that is, arranged by agreement among the Democrats and Republicans to “design their own districts” to make every office holder “safe.”
CA districts under the shortest splitline algorithm:
Some images of the current CA districts:
All About Voting 
Hmmm, interesting layout. Even though there are alot of areas in california that aren’t developed, what would happen if each district was exactly the same size???
Districted approaches can be used in several ways.
One dimension:
A. a single rep is choosen for each district
B. a population-dependant number of reps are choosen in each district (using a multi-winner election method)
Another dimension:
1. each rep has equal power
2. each rep’s power depends on the number of people they represent
Most important political bodies in the US use reps of type ‘A1’.
Some other countries use ‘B1′ in which there is one or more districts from which multiple winners are selected in a way that attempts to be proportional to the populations’ views.
One could imagine choosing reps from equal sized (but with varying population) districts by using strategies B1, B2, or A2.
The result of an optimizing solver trying to make districts with compact populations:
http://bolson.org/dist/CA/