How should County chops be counted?

[Tintrlvr]

I noticed that too. Just my prejudice, but I don't like lashing out at one county that way myself. It strikes me as unfair, absent pretty compelling circumstances.

Personally, I think it's better. If you take seriously that counties are communities of interest (not something I generally subscribe to, but a lot of other people do, so for the sake of argument), you should prefer to split up one community of interest while preserving others rather than splitting up four different communities of interest since in the aggregate it harms fewer people. (This is why in my view it is generally better to split smaller communities than larger ones also.)

[Tintrlvr]

I noticed that too. Just my prejudice, but I don't like lashing out at one county that way myself. It strikes me as unfair, absent pretty compelling circumstances.

Personally, I think it's better. If you take seriously that counties are communities of interest (not something I generally subscribe to, but a lot of other people do, so for the sake of argument), you should prefer to split up one community of interest while preserving others rather than splitting up four different communities of interest since in the aggregate it harms fewer people. (This is why in my view it is generally better to split smaller communities than larger ones also.)

I think the public interest is to have the smallest number of people separated from the rest of their county or other CoI (UCC/metro, geographic region) compatriots. That could be by putting multiple chops in one county, but not usually. The idea of separating as few as possible shows up in lots of redistricting contexts from testimony that I personally heard in 2011 to the WV case of Tennant v Jefferson county. It also matches your view that splitting a smaller community can be better than splitting a larger community, since the chop is likely to be larger in larger community.

The thing is, again, if you take seriously the idea that the county is a community somehow distinct from all other surrounding counties, it shouldn't matter how many times you split the county. Once you've split it once, you've sundered the community, and splitting the county again doesn't do any additional harm to the same group of people because they're already split from some of their county compatriots and have already experienced the harm of dividing the community.