Per SCOTUS, initiative created redistricting commissions may be l'histoire

[traininthedistance]

Excellent work, sbane. I've started to fiddle around but won't have a full map for awhile (pretty busy with other things at the moment).

In any case, we need to see more of these hardcore California Dem gerrymanders; having them out in the wild should serve– if nothing else– as a good proof-of-concept/counterexample that the citizen's commission wasn't actually this stealth gerrymander that many Pubs claim it to be.  Not when you can see what it left on the table.

[traininthedistance]

In other news, while Train and Bane fantasize about maps on the Cali terrain that will never, ever be drawn (I doubt the Dems will go even go so far as to do what I did, and suspect they will do absolutely nothing actually but enact the existing map (inter alia, Governor Brown not wanting to unduly embarrass himself) for reasons adduced by moi above), here is a "de-gerrymandered" good government map of AZ that the Commission should have drawn, but didn't, due to the Mathis mole machinations. Cheers.

Oh, in an attempt to be as solicitous and helpful to our Dem friends as possible, and resolve all doubts in their favor without deterioration in map quality, the third map below is an alternative for Phoenix that creates 2% to 3% Pub PVI CD's per 2008 figures (subtracting 5.5 points from the inflated favorite son McCain totals to correct for that distortion in the partisan baseline (5.5 points is my guess; the trend in 2008 was 7.31%, and the trend back to the Dems in 2012 was 1.72%, so it could be anywhere from 7.31% to 1.72, and the average of the two trends would be 4.52%), and the averagewhat AZ trended from 2004 to 2008 in the Pub direction). They get this alternative map in exchange for the CA Dems leaving the existing map alone (other than perhaps strengthening Dem incumbents which they really don't need to do anymore (other than perhaps the Costa CD), but I digress).

LOL @ the idea that a tri-chop of Tempe is in any way "de-gerrymandered".  Just sayin'.

[traininthedistance]

Well, one unfortunate thing that your map does, Torie, is to chop the rez just south of Phoenix: not that it's something that can't be fixed easy-peasy without changing the basic thrust of your other lines, but it probably is something that folks would want to keep whole even at the expense of incurring extra county chops.

This is a very quick and dirty AZ that strikes me as eminently fair.  Could obviously be refined some:





The thing with that bit of southern Phoenix in 9 is that it's on the other side of a mountain range from downtown and really is more connected to Tempe/Chandler.

Presumably this map is 3-6 most years, with one safe Dem, two lean Dem (both Tucson districts), two lean Rep (Kirkpatrick and Sinema get weakened a few points each– the commission map was a touch generous to them on the margins, but the broad shape of their districts were reasonable), and four safe Rep.  That feels about right for AZ.

[traininthedistance]

I find your map quite hideous, Train. It may be "fair" in a skew sense, but not in any other sense. JMO. (I did the cross the mountain thing there for AZ-07 on its south end to make the map work elsewhere better, but whatever.)

Care to elaborate on what, exactly, is "hideous" about it?  Honestly curious.

[traininthedistance]

Except for the east San Gabriel Valley, where one might go a tad lower, anything less than a 59% HVAP district (that translates into about 50%+ CHVAP), that can be drawn hitting the 59% figure with adjacent Hispanic communities, is questionable.

CA currently has a number of Hispanic districts in other places with percentages lower than that– a quick look seems to indicate that the current 31 and 41, in the Inland Empire, should fit the bill.  Arguably 36 as well.

Really it's only in the Central Valley where you need those gaudy numbers.

[traininthedistance]

In other news, while Train and Bane fantasize about maps on the Cali terrain that will never, ever be drawn (I doubt the Dems will go even go so far as to do what I did, and suspect they will do absolutely nothing actually but enact the existing map (inter alia, Governor Brown not wanting to unduly embarrass himself) for reasons adduced by moi above), here is a "de-gerrymandered" good government map of AZ that the Commission should have drawn, but didn't, due to the Mathis mole machinations. Cheers.

Oh, in an attempt to be as solicitous and helpful to our Dem friends as possible, and resolve all doubts in their favor without deterioration in map quality, the third map below is an alternative for Phoenix that creates 2% to 3% Pub PVI CD's per 2008 figures (subtracting 5.5 points from the inflated favorite son McCain totals to correct for that distortion in the partisan baseline (5.5 points is my guess; the trend in 2008 was 7.31%, and the trend back to the Dems in 2012 was 1.72%, so it could be anywhere from 7.31% to 1.72, and the average of the two trends would be 4.52%), and the averagewhat AZ trended from 2004 to 2008 in the Pub direction). They get this alternative map in exchange for the CA Dems leaving the existing map alone (other than perhaps strengthening Dem incumbents which they really don't need to do anymore (other than perhaps the Costa CD), but I digress).

That map is a nasty gerrymander of Tucscon. And what you did with Tempe was cute too. Do you genuinely believe this is not a Republican gerrymander you have drawn?

Oh, did you ever draw a map that had a whole CD in Pima County? You keep talking about chopping Pima, but all the maps chop. The think is, is that if you keep Pima whole, sure it's Dem, but doesn't that make AZ-01 safely Pub in turn?

Well, "have a whole district in Pima" is exactly what my map did.  And yes I'm aware that helps the Pubs in AZ-1; it's a fair tradeoff.  (And it's not like it's even safe Dem or anything, anyway.)

[traininthedistance]

I find your map quite hideous, Train. It may be "fair" in a skew sense, but not in any other sense. JMO. (I did the cross the mountain thing there for AZ-07 on its south end to make the map work elsewhere better, but whatever.)

Care to elaborate on what, exactly, is "hideous" about it?  Honestly curious.

Still curious for an answer to this question.

[traininthedistance]

Well, “hideous” is too strong a word for Train’s modest Dem gerrymander. My objections to his map (he requested elaboration, and I apologize in being tardy in providing it) are mostly aesthetic.  I note them on his map below

That little hook between 6 and 9 is unfortunate; I'd like to fix it.  I don't think there's anything wrong with my District 1, though: it's more of an east-west line (modulo drawing around reservations and such) and Cochise doesn't really fit any better with Tucson IMO.  I'd argue it's nicer-looking and better-connected than your District 2, as well.

Your way of dealing with reservations is of course correct, I think we can be unanimous on that point.

And, yes, everything depends on whether Grijalva's district is protected/encouraged/mandated or not. I suspect that we are better off keeping it.

[traininthedistance]

For the record, I agree with Muon that districts should be required to have year-round internal connectivity (don't cross the Cascades with only seasonal trails), with perhaps exceptions for stuff like the Alaskan Bush and Hawaii.  This does not have to be via roads: ferry service and passenger rail are also acceptable, though there are few places where that actually makes a difference (Puget Sound and NYC are the only two that immediately come to mind).

[traininthedistance]

You  have a double chop of Paradise. One precinct from your NV-4 is entirely within Paradise, and two or three more have most of their population in Paradise. I could have done a double chop of Paradise too, but decided it better to do the second chop in another jurisdiction (not sure of the name of the place directly east of Las Vegas).

Thanks for the catch. I thought I had all overlapping precincts. If I place that one in CD 1 the population is still OK. If I place the overlapping precincts (or some fraction of them) in CD 1 then CD 4 needs to pick up the shore of Lake Mead and Moapa Valley to rebalance the population with some loss of erosity (but not that much since it's largely open desert). That gets the Clark muni chop back to 1.

Well, another difficulty in NV (and, really, in much of the South and West) is that precincts don't line up with town lines.  Like, okay, you have to split Paradise because of all the precincts it shares with Enterprise and Winchester. 

I would think that there could, instead, be some sort of effort to fudge a standardized boundary that counts as non-chopped, and which is as close to actual as you can get.  (And, perhaps, that effort might want to make sure to distinguish between what are actual incorporated towns, and what are just CDPs.)

Cutting the voting districts to conform to town boundaries would be a good thing to do in reality... but we can't do so here in DRA.  You need to dig into the weeds of GIS to get it done.

...

As for those NV counties where the center of population and county seat are disconnected... possibly we could cut them and make fictitious counties which are internally contiguous, and draw based on that?

[traininthedistance]

For the VA maps I was making a best approximation to the actual lines using precincts, and I used the same method for the Detroit hoods. The mapping exercise shouldn't be dependent on the chance that certain jurisdictions add up exactly, so as long as there is agreement about the precinct-level boundaries in advance then the task is a fair representation of what would happen with actual boundaries at a commission.

To calculate erosity it is necessary to fully assign every precinct to a county subdivision. Clark county only has 5 recognized cities: Boulder City, Henderson, Las Vegas, Mesquite, and North Las Vegas. All the other communities on DRA are unincorporated Census-designated places (CDPs). That's part of why the precincts overlap those boundaries. Presumably areas not in a city or CDP have to be assigned to a CDP.

My view of the internally disconnected counties is to treat them as whole counties, but allow state highway connections to the county through the disconnected parts as shown by the yellow lines. Cutting yellow lines doesn't add to erosity, nor does a chop that separates the disconnected parts. A chop is still a chop however.

Even Paradise is merely a CDP?  Huh, guess it is.  Forgot that detail.

Yeah, guess you just have to assign precincts to town-equivalents (which will overlap with CDPs when they can).

Your solution for the internally disconnected counties makes some sense.  But I'd still like to see districts that are internally contiguous, and I suspect that might be better protected by pseudo-counties, e.g. in the case of Stevens Pass in King, WA.

[traininthedistance]

Anyway, if the lines were drawn per Muon2's little rules, I suspect the below would be the top scoring plan (at least from the chop standpoint), if one slavishly follows Muon2's tyrannical edict that there must be highway connections between land masses (which has the most unfortunate consequences for the Pubs here given the North Las Vegas blockage). Thus, it's a plan that the Pubs most definitely would not like, and not be drawing themselves. Sometimes the rules work well for the Pubs, as in AZ for example, and sometimes they suck, and for them the other side of the River Styx is a river named the Colorado.

The lines outside of Clark are unfortunate... but that's gonna be true of any four-district map– Nevada just doesn't work very well with that number.  And it would probably be 2-2 in an even year (yes, the Henderson district went Obama, but those numbers aren't a trustworthy baseline I don't think). I might shift a couple of those unpopulated precincts north of North Las Vegas from 3 to 1 to make it look prettier, but it makes no actual difference.

This map is not that bad for the Pubs.