Using Urban County Clusters To Guide Redistricting

[Torie]

Yes, I wonder how well this definition will work in other states, and where the data is.  And what and where do you look to know if more than 25% of the county is in "urbanized areas?"

[Torie]

The CBSA concept appears to have a lot of potential. It would be nice to have a map of only those CBSA's that take in two or more counties, since single county CBSA's don't matter for our purposes.

[Torie]

I believe my final Ohio plan did preserve all the urban clusters no? I am a bit confused about what you guys are talking about, about Wood. I get confused a lot on these matters.

[Torie]

Wood is chopped anyway, so just because its rural portion was in another CD, should not add another chop should it? I thought this urban cluster thing, was to count as chops un-chopped counties which excise a portion of an urban cluster.

[Torie]

Wood is chopped anyway, so just because its rural portion was in another CD, should not add another chop should it? I thought this urban cluster thing, was to count as chops un-chopped counties which excise a portion of an urban cluster.

There's a difference between discouraging unneeded chops into metros and allowing chops of counties that avoid the urban parts. Part of the exercise is to make the process easy to use. Forcing the mapmakers to first group counties before chopping strongly limits gerrymanders, and allowing one chop for each district as in MI can create significant openings for gerrymanders. The trick is to prefer plans that force microchops or less since their small size provides superior resistance to gerrys.

And therefore ... ?

[Torie]

How does my map not preserve urban clusters again (I mean, I made a deliberate effort to keep them together)? And would you mind posting the map that reduces the chops?  I mean, if it is erosity city, then depending on how we calculate the erosity score (a task still almost totally undone in my opinion), maybe whatever additional chops I have would be more than counterbalanced by the respective erosity scores.

[Torie]

I am not at all persuaded that using regions, not as a device for convenience to get from A to B in order to minimize chops, or find micro-chops while drawing maps, but rather as Maginot walls,  is a wise idea at all. I have never understood that concept. Via whatever means one drew a map, you just score its chops, including urban cluster chops involving whole counties if we are going there, and the map's erosity, and come up with a score.

[Torie]

Now you seem to be abandoning the concept of erosity totally (is it just too hard to objectively measure, in which case maybe we are seeking perfection when it is the enemy of the merely good), except via the regions device perhaps (is that why you like regions so much, as the one and sole place to address the erosity issue?). Sure, maybe a computer can't do it all. So what? Do it by hand, and the most clever hand gets the highest score. I would like to see a poll about chops versus erosity. I doubt one has ever been taken. To me, if matters are erose that in the minds of the public means gerrymander, chopped counties or not.

Presumably a computer could come up with the maps with the fewest chops in order, and then with that array of 20-50 maps or whatever, one could start picking out the maps with the lowest erosity, balancing that against the chop count.  I see no need for preset and rather artificial walls, based on what is close to a whole CD integer in population, or whatever.

Is there any agreement that one counts macro chops (with spitting off a whole urban cluster county also a chop), and microchops, to get a chop score. Or have we agreed on essentially nothing so far, about how regions are used if at all, chop counts, erosity, you name it?  Is one of us part of the progressive caucus, and the other a tea party member as it were?  What we have not done, ever, is actually list, systematically, on just what points there is agreement, and where not, and why. The discussion is disorganized, and seems not to progress.

[Torie]

I accept Iowa, because of its county structure, its rather uniform politics, and it is easy and simple. But yes, I would prefer more compact CD's.  I still don't understand how my Ohio map chops urban clusters. And I still don't get why regions should be used. Let the computer do its maps. It doesn't need regional walls to do it. I am with you on natural boundaries, but some of that is dealt with by counting as a chop counties appended with no state highway linking them (that is nice objective rule). If a highway links, I don't care if a CD in that instance goes across a natural barrier. God invented bridges and roads over mountain passes for a reason. Where a county is itself erose, due to following natural boundaries, well every map has to contend with that, so it is a level playing field.

In the meantime, we are shadow boxing, because neither of us has a clear measure of erosity. So I need to number those damn boxes, and chat with you about that. Somehow I smell a rat in there, but we shall see.

[Torie]

Well that map is more erose than mine, and you have a zillion urban cluster chops in Columbus, one one for Dayton, but I guess have one less for Cincy by virtue of your chop also chopping a county, which needed to be chopped anyway per your map design. I guess that gives an incentive to do your chops where an urban whole county chop would otherwise exist. I am not sure I love that incentive, but have a somewhat open mind on that one. I don't have much tolerance at all for excessive erosity tolerance, and maps that go there need to be punished, and better get their chops way, way down to next to nothing.

[Torie]

I just followed Jimtex's map, and I see now that Union and Madison are not included in the Columbus urban cluster, so I withdraw the comment. I have marked the areas of the map that I would simply not do, and if OH-08 on your map jutted much more to the south, while having that jut to the north, that would be a fail for me, but the jut to the south is not that much, so it's OK. OH-05 does have two juts, although the one to the east is totally understandable, but the one to the west on top of it is a bridge too far - it becomes a two jut CD. If you are going to take the county to the east, you need to take the one below first, rather than go west.  I assume Canton and Akron are not in the same urban cluster, because you  split them. If they are, such a total bifurcation, as opposed to a nip,  bothers me. The worst aspect is OH-04 doing that extra rectangle to the east.




If I get up the energy, I might take your map, and make it less erose, while adding a couple of chops presumably, to see what happens, for purposes of comparison. The issue is not so much intolerably erose, but that a chop or two more is worth it, if it makes the map discernibly less erose. I would not characterize your map as "intolerably erose," but rather "uncomfortably erose."  I guess what I do is go for the least erosity, and then where possible add a bit or erosity to try to eliminate chops. I guess I must plead guilty to putting erosity first.

And I oppose the 5% variation, as opposed to the 0.5% variation. Did SCOTUS really sign off on the 5% variation in some recent case? If not, where did that come from?  Heck if it's 5%, some of my macro-chops probably go away.  The 5% will never sell anyway in most places. It's DOA.

[Torie]

"An urban county cluster within a region cannot be represented by more districts than the nearest whole number of districts in excess of the number that would be apportioned to the cluster alone."

At first blush, the above seems like a good rule.

What city did my OH-12 grab?  Your OH-05 (Toledo) isn't bad, just a tad elongated. The second prong as you say is mitigated by symmetry. What I dislike about your OH-04 and OH-06 are those choke points. I don't do choke points if at all avoidable. I would prefer doing a chop first. Oh, my OH-07 even though not as rectangular as yours, is as good as yours or a tad better, because the bulge up is symmetrical and subtle and akin to a circular shape. There is nothing wrong with that. There are no juts - it's all nicely smooth and flowing. Your version however is certainly acceptable.

Overall, I think your revisions to my map are superior (congratulations, and btw, if you want to revise one of my maps, just ask for the data file so you don't have to start from scratch). I particularly like the square/rectangular shapes in the NE that are more perfected than mine. I am not sure about the OH-02 vis a vis OH-03 dance. That corner of Warren in OH-03 per my plan makes it more compact, and OH-06 more square (with my design, not yours), and the fact of the matter is that that portion of Warren is really in the Dayton metro area, not Cincy (which is why I felt comfortable drawing it). I take it that despite the density metric dictating that it is in the Dayton metro area, it is deemed to be in the Cincy urban cluster. Is it worth making an exception for this type of situation?

Thank you for the "artist eye" comment. I guess I fit at least gay stereotype after all.

[Torie]

Some CD had to take the balance of Stark after the Akron CD going down to take the city of Canton and stuff in between had its fill of population. The idea was to keep Akron and Canton together, with a nice compact result as well. But all of that assumed that Akron/Canton was a metro area of some sort, and who knew Summit and Portage were?  Summit grabbed the wrong county! So of course, with the new urban cluster definition, in that respect my map is blown out in NE Ohio. You change the rules, and you play the game differently. Akron goes to Kent State, and not to Canton. Who knew?

As to Dayton, what you are just saying is that there can be but one chop into the Cincy cluster, so take your best shot. Fine. I understand that. If you chop Clermont, you can't chop Warren too. The problem however is that the Cincy and Dayton clusters are just wrong. That is because of the whole county, rather than split county syndrome. If one cluster takes part of a county, and another cluster the part on the other end, then the county should be chopped for purposes of defining the perimeters of an urban cluster, rather than just awarding the whole county to the cluster that has a higher percentage of the county population within it, or whatever the rule is. So the issue is whether to made an exception for this one rifle shot issue - correcting for perimeter drift effected for the winner of the split county which has how most population therein game.

I am trying to think of another county in the US that has this issue. I am sure that there are; I just can't put my finger on any at the moment. It's rare to have two separate substantial cities merge towards one another in a neutral county in-between them. It would apply to Dallas and Ft Worth perhaps, except that there is no neutral county between them.

[Torie]

No, those chops are fine, and the Youngstown CD is more of a rectangle to boot. Did I ever tell you that I liked rectangles?

I appended my post above to chat about Dayton ad nauseum. You might peruse that.

[Torie]

Yes, good example. The case is rare enough, that I suppose for those two examples, one could choose to have a unique pre-agreed upon exception, or not. The loser of the neutral county competition might prefer such an exception potentially.

I am not sure what you meant, or whether you meant a distinction, between take the rule or have a scoring penalty? If you take the rule, you just cannot have an extra chop at all?

[Torie]

Man you have bought into this urban cluster thing lock, stock and barrel haven't you? A veritable epiphany, with Jimtex your mentor. I can't say that I disagree with the hard rule however, but can't really sign off until enough examples are explored. Did I ever tell you that I loved the common law? It is all those examples, that allow lesser minds like myself to really get it around an idea, and have adequate perspicacity to fathom all of its significant consequences. I in short need mental crutches.  So be patient with those of us relatively mentally handicapped "challenged." As I say in so many economic contexts, time horizons matter!

[Torie]

Plan B is considerably superior, and I oppose going for more erosity to get the size of the micro-chops down (I assume that when you talk about the population of regions (which I still think of as a convenience tool as opposed to anything substantive riding on it, other than finding the micr0-chops) that you talking about the size of the micro-chops.

[Torie]

The urban cluster definition has changed exactly how?  And the overlay is designed to solve exactly what problem? Jimtex's musings are just incomprehensible to the layperson.

[Torie]

Is the above definition different from the urban cluster definition provided by the census?  I thought the lighter shade counties were as defined by the census for non core counties or whatever the terminology was.

[Torie]

OK thanks then Jimtex. No change. We are still talking about, for redistricting purposes, multi county "urban areas" as defined by the Census Bureau, and nothing more. This is a Goldilocks issue - too many multi county urban areas, and it could spit out a map mess, too few and too many urban chops, and too much gerrymandering potential. But you have come up with something where coincidentally or not, it sails between the Scylla and Charybdis, and comes out just about right - statistics and intuition for at least one time harmoniously coincide. Now if we could just get to the same place with erosity, life would be beautiful.

[Torie]

And we ignore outlying counties (the lighter shade of pale counties) in an urban cluster, right, for the proposed rule set under discussion?

[Torie]

"By restricting transfers of population between regions they restrict certain forms of gerrymandering along the same philosophy as the MI rules."

I don't think that you have made the case above. Heck once you get down to the minimum number of chops you think will work while containing erosity, you can reverse engineer the regions. Please give me an example where when limiting erosity and chops (with micro-chops favored as compared to Micro chops, either having no penalty or half a penalty or whatever),  one can still play gerrymandering games, while by doing the regional strait jacket right out of the box, those games are shut down.

In Michigan, erosity was not a negative, and there was no micro-chop factor (the former being far most important, particularly intra-county, where one cheery picked localities, particularly in Oakland County, and to a lessor extent in Macomb, Ingham, Saginaw, and Washtenaw). Erosity measures shut down intra county chop games because even if not that visible on a statewide map, it is always possible to improve the erosity score along the edges of a CD by doing the chop based on geography, not politics.

And this all assumes of course, that there is no mechanism for either party to veto some of the high scoring maps (which surely would kill off most of the gerrymandering games that favor one party right out of the box in any event). Moreover, the computer will spit out the high scoring maps one presumes, just as one presumes that computers are non-partisan.

[Torie]

You have explained well Mike how regions may be a useful tool for finding the best map, but I still find nothing as to why it needs to be some kind of rule once regions are defined by someone. That is the point.

[Torie]

Still not persuasive, and you did not address the reverse engineering bit. You have not made the case that these further restraints are necessary to avoid Gerrymandering games either. And it's too complicated. I might note that the AZ commission, after approving the grid map, essentially threw it in the dumpster. I would never agree to any regional map myself unless and until I saw what actual maps it allowed. It would be nutter to do otherwise.

Given that the overall conclusion you make is so amorphous, the only way to persuade is with real world examples, as to how using regions as a rule rather than a tool avoids mischief not otherwise constrained by chop and erosity scores. I suspect the odds are better than even, that you can't produce such an example. But I have an open mind to reconsider if such examples are out there. Your Michigan example just didn't cut it - that was apples to oranges. Think about this all as writing a legal brief, trying to persuade a judge, and making it comprehensible to a judge. That might prove more efficacious.

Just a suggestion of course. Another option is to put me on "ignore," as I kvetch from the bleachers.

[Torie]

I really don't know why this is so difficult. You again make a good case that regions are a useful tool in coming up with the best maps, but not that it needs to be a rule. And you can be suspicious of a student's motives all you want, but if it is clear that there is no cheating, and he gets the highest score on the test, what is the problem?  In the end, you evaluate the work product, not how it was fabricated, for scoring purposes.

Anyway it is clear to me that maybe slapping county populations on an excel spreadsheet, organized by contiguity, and moving those numbers from column to column to find where the micro-chops might be, then draw your CD's, and then reverse engineer what the regions are that you hewed to, is the only way to make you happy while basically ignoring your regional rule at the same time. I guess that is a deal - you have your rule, and I have a way to finesse the rule, and make it but a tool, so that we are both happy.

I am confused about the contretemps about VRA districts. If you think a community of interest is there that requires a minority majority CD per judicial precedent, you draw the least erose with the fewest chops generating CD that is possible to contain the "damage" as it were. I think what you might be fussing about is that going about that exercise might make a hash of your ex ante regions. Is that it?