Dashed Line Patterns: If you decide to put your political boundaries in a dashed‑line format, be sure to convert them to line format prior to symbolizing. If you try to use a dashed‑line format on a polygon outline, the dashes will be shown at varying intervals along the overlapping polygon outlines. So if you were using a dot‑dash‑dot‑dash pattern on a polygon, you could wind up with a dash‑dash‑dot‑dash pattern or something else entirely due to the overlapping effect.