First, the state's demographics are changing fast enough that an overly ambitious partisan gerrymander is likely to come unstuck during its ten-year lifespan.
He accused the Liberal Democrats of "double crossing" Prime Minister David Cameron and making "an attempt to gerrymander our constitution for political reasons".
These replaced a 1981 amendment that had divided Kuwait into 25 constituency districts in a move widely portrayed as a government attempt to gerrymander support in its favour.
Mr McGuinness's Sinn Fein party has accused Mr Poots of holding up agreement by failing to respect the boundary commission's independence and attempting to gerrymander the new boundaries.
Alban Maginness of the SDLP described the use of cross-community vote to appoint the justice minister as "a cynical gerrymander" on the part of the DUP and Sinn Fein.
The DUP said the suggestions in relation to South East Belfast and the new Glenshane seat had the "stench of gerrymander" - an accusation strongly rejected by the commission.
In one controversial case this week, the judges threw out most challenges to a partisan gerrymander favouring Republicans in Texas, but could not begin to agree on clear rules on how electoral districts can be redrawn.
The opposition have accused the Conservatives of seeking to "gerrymander" the electoral map in their favour, but the Tories maintain the review will cut the cost of politics, make boundaries much fairer and help address a longstanding bias in the existing set-up favouring their opponents.