Does anyone have a blank map of the 1976 congressional districts?

[jimrtex]

The narrative I recall from my schooling in the late 80s was the Burton brothers (John and Phil) in California were the cutting edge of such data driven redistricting in California in the 80s.  However, a quick check of the internet doesn't provide me a quick narrative to link to.

How Redistricting Became a Technological Arms Race


CALIFORNIA G.O.P. SEEKS TO VOID REDISTRICTING

This one mentions that Thomas Hofeller who was then at Claremont had devised a computer program that would produce a fairer map.

Phil Burton supposedly drew the maps at a Chinese restaurant using a mechanical calculator and a road map. He drew a map for brother John that ran from Daly City to Vallejo, and said that it was "gorgeous". John Burton did not run for re-election in 1982, and was succeeded by Bobby Boxer who likely claimed that she "earned it". Phil Burton died in 1983, was succeeded by his widow Sala Burton, and then Nancy Pelosi.

The voters of California overturned the Burton maps in a June 1982 referendum. When a referendum is lodged, the law is suspended. This meant that California was still using the 1970 maps.

A divided California Supreme Court in a divided 4-3 opinion by Justice Liberal Rose Bird ruled that the 1970 maps violated OMOV (and the congressional map would have had too few districts), and ordered that the maps being challenged be used for the 1982 elections.

After the election the California legislature which was elected using the map that the voters rejected, passed modified maps that were signed into law by a much younger Jerry Brown before he left office for the first time (the California legislature takes office in December, governor-elect George Deukmejian took office in January 1983). The bill passed with a 2/3 vote, which allowed attachment of an urgency clause that prevented a new referendum.

[jimrtex]

This map looks more reasonable and less gerrymandered.

Many of those districts are gerrymandered, just not to the extreme shapes we see today. The reason is computers.

Computers and their databases were just moving into the corporate world; one of my college classmates interned with a company to help interpret customer usage data, since no one on staff understood it. Government officials were even less familiar with computers except as tools for the defense and space industries. GIS was in its infancy and was primarily an academic endeavor.

As computers and GIS became more powerful and more accessible to political staffs, the ability to line up political results and demographic groups became easier. That allowed partisan interest to sculpt districts with more precision to get specific results. Those districts are more obviously gerrymandered to look at then these from the 1970s.

Could you give some examples of gerrymanders on that map?

The neighboring, heavily Republican cities of Midland (Midland County) and Odessa (Ector County) are split into different districts to help prevent any of the West Texas districts from being winnable for Republicans.

The 19th district was held by George Mahon from 1934-1978 its only representative ever since it was created in 1934. His last 14 years were as chair of the House Appropriations Committee.

He only had a Republican opponent 3 times, the last in 1976 when he won 55-45.

His Democratic successor was Ken Hance, who in 1978 portrayed his young opponent (32 at the time) as a Connecticut Yankee outsider.  16 years later that opponent would become governor, and 6 years after that president.

Hance was a very conservative Democrat, who would carry Reagan's tax cuts. In 1984, he narrowly lost the Democratic nomination for US Senator. In 1986 and 1990 he lost the Republican nomination for governor, though he was elected as a Republican to the Railroad commission.

In the 1984 election to replace Hance, the Democrat got 42% of the vote, one of only two Democrats since then to clear 40% (in 2018, the Democrat got 25%).

It is not clear that the 1970 districts were not drawn simply to balance population. A court decision made the boundaries look a lot worse. In any event, 35K of 91K of Ector County was in TX-19. Generally, the eastern side of Odessa is wealthier than the west side, some of which is not actually in the city (see Saturday Night Lights, the book). Odessa has refinery and was closer to oil production and more working class, while Midland is more management. Until recently, there was not that much production from Midland County, though that has changed somewhat with fracking.

At one time TX-16 reached almost to Fort Worth and has gradually been retracting. Before the 1970 redistricting both