Based on 2012 results only, which state gerrymander flipped the most seats?

[jimrtex]

Here's my take on CO. I reduced some erosity by swapping a pack point for a county chop. I also avoided a questionable link between Gilpin and Clear Lake. The districts are 2D, 1d, 1e, 3R compared to the actual 2D, 1d, 1e, 1r, 2R. Yes the 1e is R+0 in mine compared to D+1, but I don't see a substantial change.

That is a four lane highway built by Central City to provide access from Clear Creek County (I-70 and Denver really).

[jimrtex]

Here's my take on CO. I reduced some erosity by swapping a pack point for a county chop. I also avoided a questionable link between Gilpin and Clear Lake. The districts are 2D, 1d, 1e, 3R compared to the actual 2D, 1d, 1e, 1r, 2R. Yes the 1e is R+0 in mine compared to D+1, but I don't see a substantial change.

That is a four lane highway built by Central City to provide access from Clear Creek County (I-70 and Denver really).

And that's an area where our definitions conflict. The Central City Parkway is neither numbered nor a state highway, though it was built locally to provide a more convenient and direct connection. I can imagine at some future point the state taking over the highway, at which point it would meet both our definitions. I'm willing to miss a few like this in the interest of a simpler definition.

In any case I went for lower erosity for the same chop count.

How would someone drive throughout your proposed district?

[jimrtex]

You avoided both my questions. This is not merely a computer exercise, but one that could be applied as a crowdsourcing activity. It's as a way to engage the public in a constrained fashion that I envisage a set of rules. I'll restate my questions.

Oh, I don't know what "crowd sourcing" means here. It is a computer exercise. Granted maybe the programming of the computer might not be perfect,, and somebody might be able to beat it. But no human judgment is involved, and thus there is no game playing involved.

Why do you think it is a computer exercise?

I envision the public submitting plans that conform to certain constraints. These would be graded, likely by a computer.

The best plans would be voted on by (a sample of) the public.

[jimrtex]

You avoided both my questions. This is not merely a computer exercise, but one that could be applied as a crowdsourcing activity. It's as a way to engage the public in a constrained fashion that I envisage a set of rules. I'll restate my questions.

Oh, I don't know what "crowd sourcing" means here. It is a computer exercise. Granted maybe the programming of the computer might not be perfect,, and somebody might be able to beat it. But no human judgment is involved, and thus there is no game playing involved.

Why do you think it is a computer exercise?

I envision the public submitting plans that conform to certain constraints. These would be graded, likely by a computer.

The best plans would be voted on by (a sample of) the public.

I had not heard of this "vote" by the public before. Anywhere, the system by which a plan is selected after the maps are scored by a computer (and I don't see why a computer cannot just generate the maps itself, since there is no human discretion involved, albeit maybe the programming will not be perfect and the map can be beaten), is another issue. I have my own scheme for that that I have described.

AFAIK, Muon2 and I have always seen this as redistricting by crowd-sourcing.  We were treating you as a model for a publicly-submitted plan. We have not been describing the parameters of a computer program, but rather constraints on publicly submitted maps.

In most instances where there is public input of whole maps it is ignored. It is either in conflict with the ideas of the map drawers, be they the legislature or a commission, or it is too complicated to mesh them together.

A particular reason for emphasizing whole counties is that it is not only good redistricting practice, but it is more amenable to public input.

If we simply let people submit maps, the legislature or commission will thank the public for their effort and public interest in this important issue, then throw the maps into a dumpster.

But if there is some way to measure "better" plans - and I believe that there are - someone must pick the best plan. Small groups are subject to bias.

But we let the public choose the representative for their district, why shouldn't we let them choose their district?

[jimrtex]

Interesting about UCC's. Anyway, there is a policy reason as I described.

I agree that there is a policy reason for respecting UCCs. I've just never been convinced of the policy reason for the pack aspect. The cover rule is an equivalent of the chop rule, it just looks at the whole UCC rather than one county. The pack rule is equivalent to a rule that would penalize plans that don't put as many whole districts as possible into a large county. But we didn't see county packs as a necessary for good policy, and I feel the same way about UCC packs. I was outvoted by train and you so we have them.

For legislative districts where there are likely to be more counties with multiple districts, I think a pack rule usually makes sense.

Consider a county entitled to N.6 districts.   If you have N-1 whole districts, and split the remaining 1.6, 0.8 and 0.8, the large county dominates N+1 districts.  If you have N whole districts, then the remaining 0.6 will likely result in a shared district.

There might be some instances where the 0.6 would have be stretched to cross the larger county to reach two smaller of 0.25 and 0.15 but this is rare.

I was able to pack 11 of 12 largest counties in Florida.  The 12th was Miami-Dade, where the extra district was caused by Monroe, which is a rather special circumstance. Only one such split was particularly ugly, that of Brevard where I had to split Palm Bay. But if I had split Brevard between two districts that crossed into other counties, I would have ended up splitting another county as well.

[jimrtex]

You are always always more skilled at this than I am aren't you? Anyway, to answer your question, the locality definitions to use need to match how the precincts are drawn. If the precincts as drawn do not nest into municipalities, than using that metric is impracticable. If the precincts nest in both historical election districts, and municipalities, and the election districts have no governmental function, other than the bookkeeping conventions of the county boards of election, than use municipalities. It's the same thing for villages in Michigan. If the precincts nested in them, then they should have meaning (even if only to limit the chopping of them to but one per CD chop), but if not, then they need to be ignored.

County subunits will tend to be unique to each state. MI has townships and incorporated cities that clearly delineate where local governments lie. The villages in MI are really adjuncts of the township in terms of their governance. PA has local government associated with their townships and boroughs, too.

MD has incorporated cities, towns and villages with local government. There are also places, colloquially referred to as towns, that are not towns and lack local government. Some of these like Columbia and Germantown are more populous than any incorporated city except Baltimore. The election districts seem to be relatively static (maybe a MD expert can weigh in) so they could be reasonable subunits, but they don't correspond to units of government that residents would recognize. It would mean that divisions with no CoI basis become the standard in MD, unlike in MI or PA.

Yes, but it is practicable. It again is one of those situations where a nickel's worth of perfection costs a pound of headache. The main thing really for these little rules, is to have random effects. As long as it is random, there is no gerrymander. That is the beauty of the system. That is why it is OK to have bridge chops per my metrics. The effects will be random as to what party it favors. The only issue is how much of a partisan variance different maps have that are high scoring. If MD wants the metrics to match communities of interest when it comes to localities, the fix is to fix the precinct boundaries to nest into localities that have some governmental jurisdictional meaning of more import, aka in this context called "communities of interest."  Absent that, I think it appropriate to live with spending the nickel to avoid losing the pound.

Because of the lack of incorporated places in Maryland, census designated places, may be more formally recognized as COI than in other states. One should not assume that CDP are imposed on a top down basis by the federal government. Plumas County California has a large number of CDP's (46 for about 20,000 people) which were recognized to help in the redistricting of supervisor districts. Miami-Dade Florida formally recognizes census designated places as the basis for its community councils, which are elected bodies. 6 of the original 16 have been disbanded as areas have incorporated.

Maryland Department of Planning Census Designated Places

It would be expected that subareas of counties would be delineated prior to the census.

I understand that for the purpose of your immediate study that you might choose some arbitrary COI such as election precincts, but this is contrary to Muon2's methodology.

[jimrtex]

If one can draw a compact 50% BVAP CD, that triggers the VRA. But the CD need not by 50% BVAP. It just needs to be a performing district, and the test for that is whether of not the black voters make up enough of a percentage of voters in the Dem primary to nominate a black, which might be as low as 40% BVAP or even lower, depending on how Hispanic a CD is, and how susceptible whites in a Dem primary are to voting for a black. Only 3 black CD's need be drawn in Georgia. The SW corner does not have enough blacks to draw a compact 50% BVAP CD. So it is a two step process, first the 50% test, and if met, then the performing test.

What is the logic, if any, behind this?

The 50% BVAP test makes sense, since it demonstrates sufficient population to draw a district for a group that will constitute a majority of the district.

But isn't the effect of creating a performing district with less than 50% MVAP to maximize the number of voters who are wasting their time even bothering to vote?