How gerrymandered is your district?

[muon2]

I'd give it a 5, maybe a 6.



Not too bad, but very nicely cuts out the bad areas of the county and replaces them with a random part of Rockland.

It's not really gerrymandered in itself (the district actually became more Republican after the last redistricting, despite the fact that there's no chance a Republican will win here until Nita Lowey dies...by which point the district will be very solidly Democrat).  The look is really more the effect of the ridiculous gerrymander of NY-17:

Many areas that don't seem too gerrymandered have exactly the problem you note. They are the compact remains of a neighboring district's gerrymander. In that case I would say they are still reasonably gerrymandered.

In NY 18, the electoral power of Lowey made it easy to make the district more Republican. That's still a kind of gerrymander, knowing that a strong candidate can hold a seat even with more potential votes from the other party moved into the district.

[muon2]

This is the worst. It's also why I find little sympathy for Democrats complaining about the GA redistricting effort this year.

[muon2]

This is the worst. It's also why I find little sympathy for Democrats complaining about the GA redistricting effort this year.

The Texas redistricting created several interesting ones. Maybe each of them by themselves looks more sane than GA-13, but overall, it's pretty bad.

On one point I have to salute the TX map. They did a remarkable job of keeping counties intact. Most anti-gerrymandering rules focus on keeping counties and other political subdivisions whole. TX actually followed those rules reasonable well, even while they favored the Republicans in their map.

[muon2]

On one point I have to salute the TX map. They did a remarkable job of keeping counties intact. Most anti-gerrymandering rules focus on keeping counties and other political subdivisions whole. TX actually followed those rules reasonable well, even while they favored the Republicans in their map.

Texas has 250+ counties.

You'd probably love the NYS Senate districts. They're gerrymandered, but follow county lines a lot. At least one district exactly follows county boundaries, which isn't hard to do, since the districts are allowed to vary in population by around 10%, which makes for easier gerrymandering.

I agree with you. The first step is to distinguish maps from states like GA and IL, that had no restrictions on avioding gerrymandering, from states like TX that have minimal rules regarding intact counties. I'd like to see further rules on compactness, but it is difficult to come up with a definition that works. In the meantime I'll start with rules that minimize breaking natural political boundaries.

[muon2]

One.  I don't think it is gerrymandered at all.  Complete counties all in it.

They don't seem to have the same population. Most states have exactly the same (to within a person) population in each district. Arkansas clearly doesn't.

They are not required to be exact to the person if there are other state interests involved. Maintaining county integrity can be such a factor, if the population dispersion has been minimized, and is less than a percent.

[muon2]

I'll give it a 3.  The city of Boise is split in half for some reason.  I think if somehow a district was gerrymandered to include all of Boise, the moderate Northern panhandle, and liberal Sun Valley, it would be slightly competative.

Doesn't ID use a commission to draw its maps?

[muon2]

In Texas, precincts can not span districts.  In the1990's Frostrocity hundreds of precincts were sliced by district boundaries, roughly doubling the number in Harris County, resulting in $millions in extra election expenses.

They split precincts? Bad, bad, Texas Democrats...

One of the challenges to the state senate plan was that the combination of district lines had created numerous precincts with a handful of voters, such that you could figure out how individuals had voted.

In one case, a small town that had been a single election district, was split into 10 precincts as the CD boundaries criss-crossed the area.  The reason for doing so was to include an apartment complex in one of the CDs which had been torn down between the time of the census and the election.

In a Democrat primary held under the new lines, in one CD several precincts were left out (they voted with other CDs) and others were erroneously included.  The election was extremely close and ended up in court where voters were required to reveal who they had voted for (one 80-year-old voter said, "I'm going to stay right here till they lock me up.  I've worked all my life, and I don't have many days left.").

That is atrocious! I don't think Texas Dems have much ground to criticize the Reps' redistricting due to stuff like this...not that I'm happy with what DeLay did either, but still...

It goes back to the fundamental statistical problem with compact districts and a party that is highly concentrated in urban areas. To achieve an effective use of political gerrymandering, Democrats have to create more contorted districts splitting communities of interest. Its not that they are desirous of more atrocious districts, it's just the geographic arrangement of their likely voters.