2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Kansas

[Nyvin]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/83c6da12-826e-4175-8865-c66248c7e933
this is what a fair map would look like. Davids gets a seat that is basically flipped in PVI, Likely D essentially. Meanwhile no counties are split outside of Johnson County. The new 2nd isn't as purely CoI as the map I posted earlier - including Topeka in the 3rd makes that impossible - but it does look compact and do the best possible job given the circumstances.

I seriously doubt Kansas City and Topeka end up in the same district, especially when Douglas + Wyandotte + most of Johnson makes for such a convenient district for Davids. 

If Republicans don't care about Douglas being in KS-2 they might even push for just a Wyandotte + Johnson district.   The KS Dems will want Douglas in with KS-3 though.

Topeka hasn't been in the same district with KC for at least five decades.   

[Nyvin]

Here's what I consider a fair reasonably compact map for Kansas. The only split county is Johnson. Stats based on the 2020 Prez election.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/89a2dd0b-93d5-436d-8028-72266d31e91a

I'd think the KS GOP would hate this.

[Nyvin]

My humble opinion of it is that they won't crack KS-3, mostly because it can't be done with just two districts, KS-1 is needed since Wichita anchors the 4th district where it is.  I don't think the rural legislators are going to be keen on giving their district a bunch of suburbia.

Even then if the northeast is perfectly divided between the three seats it ends up being something like three Biden 42-43% districts, which given the horrific trends in the KC metro for Republicans isn't something that seems very appealing to them.

On top of that there's Kelly's veto to overcome, the liberal state supreme court, and Kansas doesn't have any reputation for nasty gerrymanders.   

I think they'll take Harvey County out of KS-4 though for safety measures.

[Nyvin]

My humble opinion of it is that they won't crack KS-3, mostly because it can't be done with just two districts, KS-1 is needed since Wichita anchors the 4th district where it is.  I don't think the rural legislators are going to be keen on giving their district a bunch of suburbia.

Even then if the northeast is perfectly divided between the three seats it ends up being something like three Biden 42-43% districts, which given the horrific trends in the KC metro for Republicans isn't something that seems very appealing to them.

On top of that there's Kelly's veto to overcome, the liberal state supreme court, and Kansas doesn't have any reputation for nasty gerrymanders.  

I think they'll take Harvey County out of KS-4 though for safety measures.

 I mean the obvious choice from a partisan perspective while still keeping other concerns is not a full crack but just draw a whole county map with Johnson County streching down south to a Biden +1 . seat. The 1st district can take Wyandotte and probably Riley County. That still keeps it at a Safe R Trump +27 with little trends.


The 2nd district was Romney +17 and Trump +16 in 2020 so no trends there either.
The Wichita district had a small Dem trend to Trump +20 from Romney +24 but nothing you can do there. The 3rd district went from a massive Romney +20 to Biden +1 though entirely powered by JoCo. The remaining 20% of the district actually swung 13 points right.

Obviously the KC GOP would need the 2/3 veto and they can't get that along with the court concerns

Overall even a full gerrymander wouldn't crack the Wichita district. Its only like 4 points right of the state.

But even then, what does this accomplish?   Johnson moved 11 points left from 2016 to 2020 and shows no signs of slowing down, also it's actually growing quite a bit unlike those southern rurals that are shrinking. 

They would really disrupt all those established areas just for a quite small chance of flipping the seat?   Sharice Davics is super popular and won't be easy to take down.

[Nyvin]

Third map looks like a Dem plan.

[Nyvin]

On the second map looks like KS-3 is about Biden+4.5 or so, hard to tell the lines in Wyandotte.

Did they really split Lawrence on the first map?  Wtf, why?

[Nyvin]

I'd think a court drawn Least Change map would be just about the last thing the KS GOP would want.   Even making a KC-Lawrence D vote sink out of KS-3 would be better for them.

[Nyvin]

Surprised they cleared the hurdle.

Yeah at first it seemed confusing to have the 1st take in Lawrence but it really makes sense on second go. Taking in Wyandotte means you have to take in 250k non rural areas if you include Leavenworth county. Lawrence is a much smaller 90k. Taking in 250k non rural areas means you to persuade like 11 or 12 state reps in Western Kansas. Taking in Lawrence just means 3 or 4 have to be done. Well crafted gerrymander considering the various parochial interests of Kansas representatives. Likely all for naught in the end.

What would be the grounds for the court to toss the Pubmander?

Similar to North Carolina, Kansas has provisions establishing equal protection, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, etc. which if you strech you could see how that would justify striking down a partisan gerrymander.

Thanks. And why does one assume the KS high court is as activist and partisan as the NC high court?

I just googled it and it seems that NYS also has an equal protection clause. How interesting.

https://law.justia.com/constitution/new-york/article-i/section-11/

The takeaway from this is that state high courts are going hard partisan (or making it more obvious) and damaging their reputations. And that is a more worrisome development than the most outrageous of gerrymanders. When courts go down the drain, we don't have much left.

Or maybe it's becoming an established judicial precedent nationally that elections should not be manipulated by legislator's map drawing and people deserve elections that are free from such taint.

[Nyvin]

lol we all know if these maps were drawn by Democrats, liberal state courts wouldn't strike them down.(I do believe liberals on SCOTUS are consistent just like conservatives and would strike them down)

PA's opinion even cited computer simulations as the key proof of the 2010 map being a gerrymander but under the same simulations their final map in 2018 was nearly just an extreme of a gerrymander albeit in the opposite direction. So what exactly is their standard of a gerrymander?

They put a higher priority on proportionality,  which IMO is the best way to give a map legitimacy.

Proportionality is the only real way to prove that voters can translate their votes into seats at the correct amounts.

[Nyvin]

Is a proportionate map legitimate if it ends up favoring one party as time passes?

Yes, because the map wasn't drawn maliciously to give those biases, or at the very least the party has to be doing good with the public over time to produce those biases.

[Nyvin]

Yes, I understand some courts and plaintiffs like to legislate using state equal protection under the law clauses, although KS doesn't really even have that, just equal rights:  "Equal rights. All men are possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." All states should move immediately to get that kind of crap out of their Constitutions ASAP, because all it does is encourage judicial abuse. And then the plaintiffs babble on disingenuously about chops, and how a few thousand rurals that make almost no partisan difference in Douglas County are being separated from Lawrence. Oh, the horror, the horror of it all. With my chopless wonder above  they would just be left with bitching that Johnson is not mated with either Douglas or Wyandotte because equal rights ("natural" rights no less) means that if you are a Dem, you deserve your proportionate share of Dem districts. If you are a Pub you don't, because to give people of color the influence they deserve, they need Dem districts, e.g. the Native Americans on the Res in AZ need to be in a Dem CD to have equal rights. What amazes me is that this crap is published without the slightest bit of embarrassment, but then the media is largely clueless itself, or itself part of the jig in some instances.

I don't find this part true - Commissions in CO and MI achieved proportionality (or at least something very close to it) while having minority seats on the maps.   VA more or less did as well.   

If anything the maps drawn with proportionality seem to have a small GOP bias if anything, the minority seats really don't produce this massive Dem advantage you're pushing here.

[Nyvin]

I guess what they did with the Lawrence/Topeka area on the Senate map is a bit fishy, but other than that the legislative maps look pretty plain to me.   I don't really know what they'd sue over.