Local vs regional road connections

[muon2]

I agree with the use of the "internal villages" of Phoenix for subunits. I used them myself in my post on Torie's AZ thread back in March.

Anyway here's a version of AZ that only keeps one HVAP-majority CD (56.8%). There is only one extra cover in the Phoenix UCC and no pack penalties. I had a choice between an extra chop into Pinal or a chop into one of the large suburbs, so I went with the Pinal chop. It turns out that Phoenix has 15 recognized "villages" within the city limits. My CD 7 chops none of those to the extent that precincts allow, and only one of the 15 is chopped between CD 8 and 9. I could have avoided that chop but the erosity would suffer.

[jimrtex]

Car rides are good for thinking, but less so for drawing, so this took a while. Here is a rule based way to create subunits, applied to King. These are the rules I used:

0. Municipalities and school districts are cut at county lines.

1. Each incorporated municipality is in its own subunit.

Consideration might be given to eliminating microcities, as well as treating city segments as separate.

2. Contiguous unincorporated areas in the same school district are in a single subunit. Precincts that overlap multiple districts are assigned to the district with the most voters in that precinct.

I don't understand the purpose of the assignment rule for splitting precincts. This appears to have been applied to the area between Auburn and Kent that is attached to the Lakeland portion of the Federal Way USD.

3. Incorporated municipalities entirely within an unincorporated subunit are merged.

What if they are substantially enclosed, or dominate the unincorporated area. For example why not merge the two unincorporated areas east of Federal Way, which are within Federal Way SD in a single Federal Way subunit.

Other possibilities are Milton + Fife SD, Auburn + eastern Auburn SD, Kent + northeastern Kent SD, Covington + southeastern Kent SD, Black Diamond + Enumclaw SD, Maple Valley + Tahoma SD, Renton SD, excluding areas in cities other than Renton, Issaquah SD, excluding areas in cities other than Issaquah, Redmond + eastern Lake Washington SD. Kirkland + northwestern Lake Washington SD.

4. Unincorporated subunits entirely within an incorporated municipality are merged.

5. Unincorporated subunits smaller than 0.5% of the quota are merged with an adjoining municipality in the same school district.

I ended up with 51 subunits shown below as a whole county and with detail on the western side. Colors are grouped by school district with darker shade for munis and lighter shades for unincorporated subunits. If this seems workable I can produce the connection map to use for erosity. I also have the populations of each of the subunits if they are of interest.

It may be useful to exclude large bodies of water from any subareas, and then fill them in after the map is drawn. There is inconsistent annexation of Puget Sound and Lake Washington.

0. Cut cities and school districts at county lines. Exclude large bodies of water (eg Puget Sound and Lake Washington). Areas will continue to be connected by bridges and ferries. The water area can be added back after the district is assembled.

1. Associate cities with school districts. A city is associated with a school district if 80% or more of the city's population is in the school district. Adjust the school district boundaries to include all of any associated cities. If a city is not associated with a school district (eg Sammamish?), treat it as if it were its own school district.

2. Treat small cities as if they are unincorporated for purposes of forming subunits. A small city has less population than the lesser of (5,000 or 5% of the county population). For King County,

Algona, Beaux Arts Village, Black Diamond, Carnation, Clyde Hill, Hunts Point, Medina, Milton, Skykomish, and Yarrow Point are small cities.

Rule 1 is applied before Rule 2. While a small city may not form a subunit, it will be entirely within a subunit.

3. Treat each adjusted school district as a subunit.

[muon2]

Those are some useful suggestions, jimrtex.

The one I'd quibble most with is associating non-small cities with school districts. One issue is it would lead to fewer and substantially larger subunits. The second issue is that many of the incorporated cities did so to have a clear identity apart from the school district. An example of this is Lake Forest Park which incorporated in 1961 from unincorporated Shoreline. Shoreline only incorporated the western part of the school district in 1995.

The small city merger raises a parallel question to one we faced in the Detroit metro. In Oakland county there were a number of small communities around Royal Oak. This allowed a plan to avoid muni chops but at the expense of erosity. If states like WA merged them away, they lose the type of trade off available in MI.

[Torie]

Why is there a need to define a precinct node?

If I understand the intent of the language (some of it is confusing, and it needs to be made clearer in places), state highways are needed to chop a county from an adjacent county (with the issue of the highway used nicking another county on the discussion list). A chop does not cause  other CD's in a chopped county to become illegal because their connections are severed by the chop. Macrochops require state highways in as the location of the chop, other chops do not. Within a chop, one only needs public all season pavement as the connections within. Except with respect to highway cuts involving crossing a county boundary, highway cuts between subunits in a macro chopped county look at the cut of any public pavement. There is but one cut counted between subunits. With respect to highway cuts crossing the county line, one only counts state highway cuts, again one per subunit adjacent to the county line.

If I have the above right, we have a couple of issues. One is this business of counting state highway cuts. Normally we count just one cut between counties that are in separate CD's. That is still the case for chopped counties that are not macro chopped. But with respect to macro chopped counties, we start counting state highway cuts for subunits on the county line adjacent to another CD across the county line. But I think we are doing that only for subunits within the chop area, while not doing it for the other CD or CD's in the county. I suppose if the other CD's are all nested in the county, that might be workable. But if not, how do we distinguish between which CD is deemed to chop in? I don't think we suddenly want to count every state highway cut that goes across county lines for macro chopped counties, albeit it being only one cut per subunit.

I remember in Marion County we just counted state highway cuts for the subunits with respect to the CD that chopped in. We did not start counting cuts for the other nested CD. Would we have done so if the other CD was not nested, but itself took in an adjacent county? Should we only count such cuts for none nested  CD's in a chopped county that are other than the CD with the highest population within the county? Thus only one CD would be counted for a bi-chopped county even if neither CD is nested, and just for the smallest two CD's in a trip-chopped county, where none of the CD's are nested.

My second issue is requiring that macrochops go in on a state highway for counties that are otherwise deemed regionally connected per a state highway somewhere. I am not sure that I agree with that as other than a preference (with the ranking where I placed it on my list), just as with the case for ordinary chops. I think that reduces flexibility too much. It might force a chop in a place that is inconvenient. Granted, with the one bite rule, one can get away with the state highway in requirement for a chop where the location limitation causes a subunit chop, but the purpose of the one bite rule is to reduce skew, and it should not be "wasted" by accommodating that state highway in constraint. Also, absent skew considerations, the idea is to minimize chops, and having this state highway in requirement for the chop seems to be another tail wagging the dog situation.

And we still need to decide when a municipality should be chopped up into subunits. 

[Torie]

I agree with the use of the "internal villages" of Phoenix for subunits. I used them myself in my post on Torie's AZ thread back in March.

Anyway here's a version of AZ that only keeps one HVAP-majority CD (56.8%). There is only one extra cover in the Phoenix UCC and no pack penalties. I had a choice between an extra chop into Pinal or a chop into one of the large suburbs, so I went with the Pinal chop. It turns out that Phoenix has 15 recognized "villages" within the city limits. My CD 7 chops none of those to the extent that precincts allow, and only one of the 15 is chopped between CD 8 and 9. I could have avoided that chop but the erosity would suffer.

Yes, and you made AZ-09 a Pub CD by having AZ-08 chop into Phoenix where it did, presumably because choosing to chop in and absorb the Deer Valley neighborhood avoided a neighborhood chop. Congratulations.   Wait a minute, you chopped Deer Valley it seems. Which raises the question of why AZ-08 did not chop in to take in the northern neighborhoods, so that AZ-09 could take in North Mountain? Did it involve an extra highway cut, or was that before the sensitivity to SKEW arose?

[muon2]

Erosity is based on network theory. The map is reduced to a network of nodes and links. Cut links measure erosity.

Sometimes a node needs to be split in the network. In the simplest case the node becomes two nodes and each link to the original is assigned to one of the two new nodes, and a link is placed between the two new nodes. That's a simple chop. This only involves state highways if state highways were used to define the original links before the split, as they would in the case of counties. A chop of a subunit only involves local connections.

Certain splits are significant enough that the original node is replaced by a whole new network. That new network has nodes that we call the subunits. There are links both between the new nodes and from the new nodes to other nodes that were originally connected to the original node. The connection rules are applied based on whether the nodes are in the same county or in different counties. The result is a new network that can be analyzed for cuts. I used this approach for Marion and a good example is the Mecklenburg map I posted earlier in the thread (pink links are non-connections and yellow lines are local connections that wouldn't count across county lines).



It gets more complicated when macrochopped counties are next to each other. To illustrate let me use the Detroit UCC map that was the basis for our erosity scoring back in Feb/Mar 2015. Each of the three counties was replaced by all of their subunits. Subunits in a county were connected if they were locally connected (blue lines). Subunits across county lines were connected if they were regionally connected (red lines). The process remains that once a macrochop occurs the subunits are analyzed for connections with no knowledge of the connections defined between the original counties.



Anytime a unit or subunit has a large enough chop it becomes a macrochop. At that point the original node is replaced by a new network of nodes. That would apply to Phoenix as it did to Detroit earlier this year. In Detroit we used the 10 city-defined planning regions as subunits, and they are drawn in the multicounty map above based on the detail from the following map.



The precincts don't nest in the planning regions so they have to be assigned based on the region most of the population resides. There isn't a city hall associated with the planning regions, so the node for each was based on the largest population precinct in each. That's why I mention precinct nodes.

[Torie]

Yes, I think having a size requirement for municipalities is a bad idea, except for when it comes down to having subunits within a municipality. My one bite rule might help here. The downside of small entities, is that the roll of the population dice becomes more salient perhaps in drawing the lines, and might make for more erose maps. The upside of small units is that it will help to avoid chops. The one bite rule helps hopefully to come up with a reasonable balance, and reduce the import of the dice roll factor. By the way, Michigan law embraces a one bite rule. It's just that in Michigan, the idea was to maximize SKEW, and it was unconstrained by highway cut counts. Thus that magnificent bridge chop to Pontiac.   Oh dear, do we have a bridge chop issue now for subunits? Probably the same preference rule should be in play - perhaps. The Pontiac syndrome will never work anyway, given highway cut counts, even if SKEW weren't a factor. It is grand that Section 5 is dead. Some of the mess created by the VRA is now gone, with retrogression in the dumpster, and the test with what is performing now the law of the land.

I assume that the reason for assigning precincts is where they are non nested, which hopefully would become a moot point. I know that I assign precincts based on where most of the population is, based on zooming down, and trying to discern where the bulk of the residential units are. Sometimes it is hard to tell, particularly if it is a matter of deciding whether buildings are apartment units or commercial buildings. Maybe defining precinct nodes is done to deal with non nested precincts. Non nested precincts are a bane. They should be made illegal.

[muon2]

Yes, I think having a size requirement for municipalities is a bad idea, except for when it comes down to having subunits within a municipality. My one bite rule might help here. The downside of small entities, is that the roll of the population dice becomes more salient perhaps in drawing the lines, and might make for more erose maps. The upside of small units is that it will help to avoid chops. The one bite rule helps hopefully to come up with a reasonable balance, and reduce the import of the dice roll factor. By the way, Michigan law embraces a one bite rule. It's just that in Michigan, the idea was to maximize SKEW, and it was unconstrained by highway cut counts. Thus that magnificent bridge chop to Pontiac.  Oh dear, do we have a bridge chop issue now for subunits? Probably the same preference rule should be in play - perhaps. The Pontiac syndrome will never work anyway, given highway cut counts, even if SKEW weren't a factor. It is grand that Section 5 is dead. Some of the mess created by the VRA is now gone, with retrogression in the dumpster, and the test with what is performing now the law of the land.

I assume that the reason for assigning precincts is where they are non nested, which hopefully would become a moot point. I know that I assign precincts based on where most of the population is, based on zooming down, and trying to discern where the bulk of the residential units are. Sometimes it is hard to tell, particularly if it is a matter of deciding whether buildings are apartment units or commercial buildings. Maybe defining precinct nodes is done to deal with non nested precincts. Non nested precincts are a bane. They should be made illegal.

Actually the history of the the one bite rule in MI was to provide for exact population equality when used initially by a neutral master (Apol). It became a tool for achieving political outcomes once it was handed to legislative mappers. If MI had a chop count rule and allowed population deviation without the one bite rule their ability to gerrymander would have been seriously hampered.

Did my long exposition on macrochop connection make sense, and are there any points of dispute there?

[muon2]

I agree with the use of the "internal villages" of Phoenix for subunits. I used them myself in my post on Torie's AZ thread back in March.

Anyway here's a version of AZ that only keeps one HVAP-majority CD (56.8%). There is only one extra cover in the Phoenix UCC and no pack penalties. I had a choice between an extra chop into Pinal or a chop into one of the large suburbs, so I went with the Pinal chop. It turns out that Phoenix has 15 recognized "villages" within the city limits. My CD 7 chops none of those to the extent that precincts allow, and only one of the 15 is chopped between CD 8 and 9. I could have avoided that chop but the erosity would suffer.

Yes, and you made AZ-09 a Pub CD by having AZ-08 chop into Phoenix where it did, presumably because choosing to chop in and absorb the Deer Valley neighborhood avoided a neighborhood chop. Congratulations.  Wait a minute, you chopped Deer Valley it seems. Which raises the question of why AZ-08 did not chop in to take in the northern neighborhoods, so that AZ-09 could take in North Mountain? Did it involve an extra highway cut, or was that before the sensitivity to SKEW arose?

As I wrote at the time there is one neighborhood chop between 8 and 9 that could have been avoided at the cost of erosity. The erosity is based on local connections only since these are intra-county. The plan only seeks to get to the Pareto frontier, so no political data was considered in drawing the lines.

[Torie]

OK, but could a plan that did not Pub up AZ-09 be drawn that reached the pareto optimal frontier is the question. The issue is whether by playing with the lines within Phoenix, in a way that does not look too ugly, we could get a 6-3 map, rather than a 7-2 map. It's a darn important question. This is where the rubber meets the road as to whether this whole scheme will ever fly, when all of its implications are understood, by the Democrats in particular. And it's darn important to try to get the party on the short end of the SKEW stick more seats in such states, consistent with good maps, particularly where the SKEW is very high, and a 7-2 map has a really high SKEW, just like a 9-0 map in Massachusetts has a really high SKEW. That is simply good government. We don't want a Pub party totally dominated by the South, and a Dem party totally dominated by areas outside fly over country. That's an increasingly serious problem that we have. So we need, to the extent that we can, consistent with good maps, to try to get there. The Pubs will still have the SKEW advantage overall. It's a pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered, situation.

If it is not possible to draw an AZ-09 that affects SKEW in a downward direction, without the map getting too choppy or erose, then so be it. Then it becomes defensible. We don't "gerrymander" to get SKEW down. We just need to be careful in how we define what is a gerrymander. Very careful.

[muon2]

OK, but could a plan that did not Pub up AZ-09 be drawn that reached the pareto optimal frontier is the question. The issue is whether by playing with the lines within Phoenix, in a way that does not look too ugly, we could get a 6-3 map, rather than a 7-2 map. It's a darn important question. This is where the rubber meets the road as to whether this whole scheme will ever fly, when all of its implications are understood, by the Democrats in particular. And it's darn important to try to get the party on the short end of the SKEW stick more seats in such states, consistent with good maps, particularly where the SKEW is very high, and a 7-2 map has a really high SKEW, just like a 9-0 map in Massachusetts has a really high SKEW. That is simply good government. We don't want a Pub party totally dominated by the South, and a Dem party totally dominated by areas outside fly over country. That's an increasingly serious problem that we have. So we need, to the extent that we can, consistent with good maps, to try to get there. The Pubs will still have the SKEW advantage overall. It's a pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered, situation.

If it is not possible to draw an AZ-09 that affects SKEW in a downward direction, without the map getting too choppy or erose, then so be it. Then it becomes defensible. We don't "gerrymander" to get SKEW down. We just need to be careful in how we define what is a gerrymander. Very careful.

That's why I'd like to separate the erosity question for now. Let's pin that down to define the score on that axis. Then we can pin down the chop score axis. Then we can take individual states and see what plans make the Pareto cut, and whether plans that should be considered politically were excluded. If we then see that some good plans are excluded, we can revisit the scoring that knocked them out.

For example the natural place to start would be to go through a thread like MI, where we had agreement on the measures. We can look at the political values of the plans on the frontier and see if the results are defensible. If we want to start with AZ or WA we first have to define how the axes are scored in those states as we did in MI.

[Torie]

Well at the moment we are working on AZ and WA. What more do we need to work out?  I am proposing we work out my one bite rule, and try to get this road cut thing nailed down. I accept dumping everything into subdistricts, and that the nesting tail should not be wagging the dog. So we are making progress! And we now have a nice little list of the open issues, which seem actually to be growing. Perhaps one day over the rainbow they might start shrinking again. Miracles happen.

And we need to see about drawing a second Dem district in Phoenix per the 2010 census, and whether these rules knock out a nice looking map that would have such a district, as opposed to something that deserves to die because it's butt ugly, and/or chop chubby (the latter being more about not letting some unpleasant genie out of the bottle, that might wreck havoc elsewhere). Could we help Mathis out here in a more defensible way in Phoenix?

[muon2]

Well at the moment we are working on AZ and WA. What more do we need to work out?  I am proposing we work out my one bite rule, and try to get this road cut thing nailed down. I accept dumping everything into subdistricts, and that the nesting tail should not be wagging the dog. So we are making progress! And we now have a nice little list of the open issues, which seem actually to be growing. Perhaps one day over the rainbow they might start shrinking again. Miracles happen.

And we need to see about drawing a second Dem district in Phoenix per the 2010 census, and whether these rules knock out a nice looking map that would have such a district, as opposed to something that deserves to die because it's butt ugly, and/or chop chubby (the latter being more about not letting some unpleasant genie out of the bottle, that might wreck havoc elsewhere). Could we help Mathis out here in a more defensible way in Phoenix?

I didn't think the one bite rule affects the erosity. Isn't the one bite just a subunit chop that doesn't add to the chop score?

Working out subunit rules for these western states isn't easy, and each state may be somewhat different. Applying them is time consuming. Precincts in WA and AZ got adjusted to muni lines after the remap (Maricopa last did it in early 2012), so in 2010 some amount of the non-nesting is due to accumulated annexations before 2010. Let's just pick one western state to see how it works, then take up the other.

[Torie]

Mirror, mirror on the wall, should the one bite rule apply to highway cuts at all?

 I think the answer is probably no. Using my AZ map using the 2010 census, here is the only map that makes AZ-09 a true tossup CD (49.9% McCain). The key is downtown Phoenix. That is where the white Democrats are in highest concentration, in the Encanto neighborhood. That is the neighborhood that needs to be in the second Dem CD in Phoenix. But to do that, you are doing a couple of more highway, cuts, and guess what? The map gets kind of ugly. Really too ugly.  

 

Here is a map that is justifiable, at 51.5% McCain, just out of the tossup category, although close at a 1.7% Pub PVI if you do a 4 point, rather than a 3 point McCain adjustment.



Adding a chop is not going to help much here.  It is more about reaching into downtown, and except directly to the north, downtown is surrounded by Hispanics needed for the VRA CD.  It’s more about erosity. In 2020, the population increase will probably allow the VRA CD to reach down and take the Ahwatukee Foothills, and retreat south so that it does not wrap around Encanto. Then that neighborhood can be liberated to be put in the second more Dem friendly CD.

So yes, I think the one bite rule needs to be about chops, and mostly the rationale is to avoid a population accident, where a map happens to avoid a chop due to that, and screw the skew, even thought the map that gets the skew down and would be competitive absent a population accident is not a Dorian Grey affair at all. Such a population accident skew screw based on neighborhood lines that nobody knows about except some weirdos and appear on next to no maps that anybody sees, is not going to be tolerated in this context by the partisan victim, but in particular the Dems, who will need to be sold that this scheme is not some Machiavellian plot to screw them out of what is rightfully theirs.

Make sense?

Do whatever you think best Muon2 as to what state to pick to work out these details, in the order that you want to work them out. All I ask is that they all be worked out, even if in the end we part ways on something.  After going through this hell with me, you will be ready for anybody! ☺

[muon2]

I would move forward with WA, since I have the advantage of King completed (maybe), and we have a number of watchers from WA who might weight in. That of course assumes the rules I laid out for subunits are good to go, with the addition of jimrtex rule 0.

jimrtex suggested some other mergers as well - smallish cities and other unincorporated areas beyond the 0.5% limit I used. Maybe the 0.5% should be cutoff for incorporated cities?

Population requires King, Pierce and Snohomish be given subunits. Yakima and Kitsap are macrochopped in my map, so they need to be done as well. Any others?

That will allow connection plans to be assembled. Perhaps the corner cut provisions will move towards resolution in this as well.

[Torie]

I had some questions I laid out about the subunit rules that I set out, mostly out of confusion. I don't know what the Jimrtex zero rule is. Where to put bodies of water? Who cares? We don't want to generate a chop over areas with no population anyway. I am skeptical about erasing small cities. There had better be a good reason for that. Otherwise, they might feel picked upon. And it does give more guidance as to where precise lines should be drawn. I grant that it does not involve skew issues.

Any county really that is subject to a macrochop in end should be mapped out, not what our maps happen to chop up. Granted, Spokane is not subject to chop, and never will be, at least for CD maps. Clarke county might be subject to macrochop. I still want to know when city neighborhoods need to be mapped out. When they are subject to macrochop?

[muon2]

I had some questions I laid out about the subunit rules that I set out, mostly out of confusion. I don't know what the Jimrtex zero rule is. Where to put bodies of water? Who cares? We don't want to generate a chop over areas with no population anyway. I am skeptical about erasing small cities. There had better be a good reason for that. Otherwise, they might feel picked upon. And it does give more guidance as to where precise lines should be drawn. I grant that it does not involve skew issues.

Any county really that is subject to a macrochop in end should be mapped out, not what our maps happen to chop up. Granted, Spokane is not subject to chop, and never will be, at least for CD maps. Clarke county might be subject to macrochop. I still want to know when city neighborhoods need to be mapped out. When they are subject to macrochop?

The jimrtex rule 0 was that municipalities and school districts are cut at the county line. I thought it went without saying since this was about county subunits, but since everyone want more clarity, I can include it.

Any county with a population over 10% of the quota could get macrochopped. In WA that includes Benton, Chelan, Clallam, Clark, Cowlitz, Franklin, Grant, Grays Harbor, Island, King, Kitsap, Lewis, Pierce, Skagit, Snohomish, Spokane, Thurston, Whatcom, Yakima. I'll set up a thread for all WA related tests of the rules. The subunits will go there as needed.

Any city that gets macrochopped gets subunits. There are 13 cities big enough to macrochop.

As I understand the one bite rule, it exempts one chop of a subunit cut between two districts from scoring as a chop. The chopped subunit still creates connections as appropriate that can contribute to erosity.

[jimrtex]

Those are some useful suggestions, jimrtex.

The one I'd quibble most with is associating non-small cities with school districts. One issue is it would lead to fewer and substantially larger subunits. The second issue is that many of the incorporated cities did so to have a clear identity apart from the school district. An example of this is Lake Forest Park which incorporated in 1961 from unincorporated Shoreline. Shoreline only incorporated the western part of the school district in 1995.

The small city merger raises a parallel question to one we faced in the Detroit metro. In Oakland county there were a number of small communities around Royal Oak. This allowed a plan to avoid muni chops but at the expense of erosity. If states like WA merged them away, they lose the type of trade off available in MI.

In King County, at least, there is a strong relationship between cities and school districts. This may reflect the pattern of school district consolidation. The original districts had to be within walking or riding distance of the school, and may have only offered 6 or 8 grades of school. School districts might have been based in part on the public school survey system since there was the school section in each survey township. In Washington, this would have been adjusted based on terrain, but it probably was used in places like Lincoln and Adams counties.

There might only be high schools in towns. A promising student from a rural area might board to attend high school. During consolidation, you would want enough students to support a high school, and within busing distance. So consolidated districts would be based around a town, and the surrounding less populated hinterland.

School districts can be considered the equivalent of an organic township formation.

And considering that Seattle is a subunit, it does not make to have subunits that are less than1% that size.

The utility of the Royal Oaks area, should be considered a happenstance, and not necessarily something to be recreated. If you go further out from Detroit, the cities tend to take in the entire township.

The cities of Shoreline and Lake Forest could be tertiary subunits of the adjusted shoreline district.

[jimrtex]

I had some questions I laid out about the subunit rules that I set out, mostly out of confusion. I don't know what the Jimrtex zero rule is. Where to put bodies of water? Who cares? We don't want to generate a chop over areas with no population anyway. I am skeptical about erasing small cities. There had better be a good reason for that. Otherwise, they might feel picked upon. And it does give more guidance as to where precise lines should be drawn. I grant that it does not involve skew issues.

Any county really that is subject to a macrochop in end should be mapped out, not what our maps happen to chop up. Granted, Spokane is not subject to chop, and never will be, at least for CD maps. Clarke county might be subject to macrochop. I still want to know when city neighborhoods need to be mapped out. When they are subject to macrochop?

You probably did not notice, but school districts and cities can cross county lines in Washington, and they do in King County. Since subunits must nest, there are three ways to handle this:

(1) Chop cities and towns at county boundaries.

Pro: Simple.
Con: May produce micro-units if a city merely laps across the boundary.

(2) Adjust county boundaries, to match city boundaries that cross county lines.

Pro: Better reflects COI based on cities.
Con: Makes county boundaries irregular. May divide county-based COI, and might disrupt county-based election administration.

(3) Permit cities that cross-county boundaries to be considered as being in both (or more) counties, or in the individual counties.

Pro: Gives more discretion to the mapdrawer.
Con: Can be gamed, since it effectively creates two micro-counties where a city crosses a county boundary.

On Muon's map, there were subunits in Puget Sound, offshore Federal Way and Des Moines, but not offshore Normandy Park and Berien, because those two cities have annexed the area in the water. The same thing happens along Lake Washington.

Including these areas creates contiguity, and may foster an impression of connected, for example in this case, with Vashon Island, which should only connect based on the ferry (and the ferry landing).

In Florida, the area within the 3-mile limit is included in their maps, and within their compactness scores. It is gamed, along with the Everglades.

[Torie]

I had some questions I laid out about the subunit rules that I set out, mostly out of confusion. I don't know what the Jimrtex zero rule is. Where to put bodies of water? Who cares? We don't want to generate a chop over areas with no population anyway. I am skeptical about erasing small cities. There had better be a good reason for that. Otherwise, they might feel picked upon. And it does give more guidance as to where precise lines should be drawn. I grant that it does not involve skew issues.

Any county really that is subject to a macrochop in end should be mapped out, not what our maps happen to chop up. Granted, Spokane is not subject to chop, and never will be, at least for CD maps. Clarke county might be subject to macrochop. I still want to know when city neighborhoods need to be mapped out. When they are subject to macrochop?

The jimrtex rule 0 was that municipalities and school districts are cut at the county line. I thought it went without saying since this was about county subunits, but since everyone want more clarity, I can include it.

Any county with a population over 10% of the quota could get macrochopped. In WA that includes Benton, Chelan, Clallam, Clark, Cowlitz, Franklin, Grant, Grays Harbor, Island, King, Kitsap, Lewis, Pierce, Skagit, Snohomish, Spokane, Thurston, Whatcom, Yakima. I'll set up a thread for all WA related tests of the rules. The subunits will go there as needed.

Any city that gets macrochopped gets subunits. There are 13 cities big enough to macrochop.

As I understand the one bite rule, it exempts one chop of a subunit cut between two districts from scoring as a chop. The chopped subunit still creates connections as appropriate that can contribute to erosity.

A chopped subunit may or may not create another highway chop. It depends on where the adjacent subunits and CD's lie. Map beauty is more a function of these highway cuts, particularly since we don't have this state highway limitation except with respect to cuts attending county lines. My focus is on avoiding a map that is deemed a beast when it comes to these subunit chops, but is nevertheless beautiful. Hopefully this one bite rule will avoid that, and allow the lower skew map to hit the pareto optimal frontier. That assumes of course that the subunits are not themselves unduly erose. When it comes to these "artificial" subunits, picking a set of subunits with unduly erose lines should be avoided. That is not an issue in Phoenix. The subunits we both latched onto work just fine. Anyway, the unduly erose aspect should be kept in mind. If some universal rule about the default being school districts where nothing else seems available, in an instance has unduly erose lines, then we have a problem. Obviously if mountains or rivers or the like is the reason for the erosity, that is OK.

[Torie]

I had some questions I laid out about the subunit rules that I set out, mostly out of confusion. I don't know what the Jimrtex zero rule is. Where to put bodies of water? Who cares? We don't want to generate a chop over areas with no population anyway. I am skeptical about erasing small cities. There had better be a good reason for that. Otherwise, they might feel picked upon. And it does give more guidance as to where precise lines should be drawn. I grant that it does not involve skew issues.

Any county really that is subject to a macrochop in end should be mapped out, not what our maps happen to chop up. Granted, Spokane is not subject to chop, and never will be, at least for CD maps. Clarke county might be subject to macrochop. I still want to know when city neighborhoods need to be mapped out. When they are subject to macrochop?

You probably did not notice, but school districts and cities can cross county lines in Washington, and they do in King County. Since subunits must nest, there are three ways to handle this:

(1) Chop cities and towns at county boundaries.

Pro: Simple.
Con: May produce micro-units if a city merely laps across the boundary.

I don't see yet the con for having micro-units, so at the moment such subunits should be chopped.

(2) Adjust county boundaries, to match city boundaries that cross county lines.

Pro: Better reflects COI based on cities.
Con: Makes county boundaries irregular. May divide county-based COI, and might disrupt county-based election administration.

I can see the merit perhaps in adding a county chop that keeps a subunit whole as being added to the preference list that I formed. I am not sure just where on the list it should best be placed. Beyond that, no. County lines rule. That is the standard out there now on the Fruited Plain, and there had better be a darn good reason to depart from that. I see no such reason.


  (3) Permit cities that cross-county boundaries to be considered as being in both (or more) counties, or in the individual counties.

Pro: Gives more discretion to the mapdrawer.
Con: Can be gamed, since it effectively creates two micro-counties where a city crosses a county boundary.

On Muon's map, there were subunits in Puget Sound, offshore Federal Way and Des Moines, but not offshore Normandy Park and Berien, because those two cities have annexed the area in the water. The same thing happens along Lake Washington.

Including these areas creates contiguity, and may foster an impression of connected, for example in this case, with Vashon Island, which should only connect based on the ferry (and the ferry landing).

In Florida, the area within the 3-mile limit is included in their maps, and within their compactness scores. It is gamed, along with the Everglades.

This one confuses me some. We don't do compactness. We require bridge or ferry connections. If we have an instance where municipal water surrounds an area not within the municipality, and that area not within the municipality has adequate connections to another CD, I am leery of using the water to merge that water surrounded area to the municipality, but on this one my views are more tentative.

[muon2]

I had some questions I laid out about the subunit rules that I set out, mostly out of confusion. I don't know what the Jimrtex zero rule is. Where to put bodies of water? Who cares? We don't want to generate a chop over areas with no population anyway. I am skeptical about erasing small cities. There had better be a good reason for that. Otherwise, they might feel picked upon. And it does give more guidance as to where precise lines should be drawn. I grant that it does not involve skew issues.

Any county really that is subject to a macrochop in end should be mapped out, not what our maps happen to chop up. Granted, Spokane is not subject to chop, and never will be, at least for CD maps. Clarke county might be subject to macrochop. I still want to know when city neighborhoods need to be mapped out. When they are subject to macrochop?

The jimrtex rule 0 was that municipalities and school districts are cut at the county line. I thought it went without saying since this was about county subunits, but since everyone want more clarity, I can include it.

Any county with a population over 10% of the quota could get macrochopped. In WA that includes Benton, Chelan, Clallam, Clark, Cowlitz, Franklin, Grant, Grays Harbor, Island, King, Kitsap, Lewis, Pierce, Skagit, Snohomish, Spokane, Thurston, Whatcom, Yakima. I'll set up a thread for all WA related tests of the rules. The subunits will go there as needed.

Any city that gets macrochopped gets subunits. There are 13 cities big enough to macrochop.

As I understand the one bite rule, it exempts one chop of a subunit cut between two districts from scoring as a chop. The chopped subunit still creates connections as appropriate that can contribute to erosity.

I don't think I got the response I was looking for. My query was not about road cuts, but about chop count and road connections.

If there is a chop into a county and then a chop of a subunit in the county, does it count as only one chop under the one bit rule?

If there is a chop into a county, but no subunit chop, does it still count as only one chop under the one bite rule?

If there is a chop into a county and then a chop of a subunit in the county, does it create a local connection between the pieces of the subunit under the one bite rule?

If the above questions are answered yes, then I would be substantially more comfortable about this as long as there was some size limit to the rule. Personally, I would cap the rule at bites that do not exceed 0.5% of the quota. For me that allows one to deal with small excursions from the geographic measures to accommodate the other measures, but keeps the focus on those primary measures. I don't like the idea that the rule can be used to separate a city like Glendale AZ into a Dem part and a Pub part without penalty. That's the essence of political gerrymandering.

[Torie]

Interesting questions. I was focused more about chops that are created by these "artificial" subunits, which are less salable out there. That is a very substantial concern of mine. So there is the issue of whether to create distinctions between real towns and cities, and these constructs, particularly cities I guess. I am not sure what to do about that. It is more an empirical issue. In all events, a 0.5% limitation is way too small. That is only 3.500 people or so and trivial. That is not going to do much good at all. I would think a limitation of 5%, or 35,000 people, is more appropriate. Tentatively, I would tend to think that the one bite rule will not apply to cities, but would to everything else, with the 5% limitation. That way, we do not get disparate results between those states that have little towns here, there and everywhere (NY has them taking in all real estate, as does Michigan), as opposed to states that do not.

[muon2]

Interesting questions. I was focused more about chops that are created by these "artificial" subunits, which are less salable out there. That is a very substantial concern of mine. So there is the issue of whether to create distinctions between real towns and cities, and these constructs, particularly cities I guess. I am not sure what to do about that. It is more an empirical issue. In all events, a 0.5% limitation is way too small. That is only 3.500 people or so and trivial. That is not going to do much good at all. I would think a limitation of 5%, or 35,000 people, is more appropriate. Tentatively, I would tend to think that the one bite rule will not apply to cities, but would to everything else, with the 5% limitation. That way, we do not get disparate results between those states that have little towns here, there and everywhere (NY has them taking in all real estate, as does Michigan), as opposed to states that do not.

At 5% it becomes a macrochop of the subunit, so you are suggesting (I think) that any simple chop of an unincorporated subunit, or neighborhood of a macrochopped city is subject to the one bite rule. Presumably that means townships in the Midwest, too. If so, there would seem to be no incentive to keep them intact.

[Torie]

Interesting questions. I was focused more about chops that are created by these "artificial" subunits, which are less salable out there. That is a very substantial concern of mine. So there is the issue of whether to create distinctions between real towns and cities, and these constructs, particularly cities I guess. I am not sure what to do about that. It is more an empirical issue. In all events, a 0.5% limitation is way too small. That is only 3.500 people or so and trivial. That is not going to do much good at all. I would think a limitation of 5%, or 35,000 people, is more appropriate. Tentatively, I would tend to think that the one bite rule will not apply to cities, but would to everything else, with the 5% limitation. That way, we do not get disparate results between those states that have little towns here, there and everywhere (NY has them taking in all real estate, as does Michigan), as opposed to states that do not.

At 5% it becomes a macrochop of the subunit, so you are suggesting (I think) that any simple chop of an unincorporated subunit, or neighborhood of a macrochopped city is subject to the one bite rule. Presumably that means townships in the Midwest, too. If so, there would seem to be no incentive to keep them intact.

No incentive vis a vis having the one little benign bite only. This is but a one course meal. The incentive then becomes, subject to erosity issues, to get the skew down. That is the point, although the main thing is the population accident issue, that could force a shift of 150,000 people or something, as whole hoods are moved from one CD to another. That is where the big game lies, and it may well end up stalking Phoenix for the next census cycle.

By the way, here is the neighborhood map for Milwaukee. Its hoods are so small, that it renders the hood concept next to useless. Now what? School districts? Well, there is this, which has hoods of a size that absent the one bite rule, will force a bridge chop, unless bridge chops are banned or penalized (which I oppose other than being not preferred). When does on decide the hoods are too small? The issue of a CD getting from Waukesha to Ozaukee or not raises the bridge chop rule again. Hoods will matter in Milwaukee for sure unless one bridge chops through Washington County. Granted with the one bite rule, then no matter what, and with bridge chops disfavored, there will not be a bridge chop done. Chopped Milwaukee will append to Ozaukee.