And here's what I'll use for the political basemap. I tried it with fully-shaded districts, but this wound up looking better to me, with the 'inner glow' coloring.

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That's fifteen districts -- the three southwest yellow-border bits are all one district, just discontinuous -- the nearby yellow islands too, for that matter.

Now I have a couple of decisions to make. A benefit of the .gif / pixel-crisp style is ai can use really tiny fonts and nevertheless have them legible. But having read the label placement treatise Ravells posted, I want to try following some of those rules. Think, think, think. Pixel fonts go all blurry when tilted or curved.... anti-aliased if you want it, blurred if you don't ;-). If I'm going to permit any antialiasing at all I might as well go .jpg or .png, because the in-between colors will eat .gif's 256 palette Really Quickly.

Maybe I'll try both ways, and others as well ;-). There's no decision like No Decision.