How Democrats Fooled California’s Redistricting Commission

[Torie]

Well, it's close to 50%HCVAP. It doesn't matter if it's going to elect an Hispanic, but whether a candidate of their choice is elected. The commission did draw this map, and you would have to do the same to avoid a legal challenge. What the ultimate result of that legal challenge would be I cannot say. But it is clear that there is racially polarized voting in the Central Valley, most especially in the Bakersfield area, so if a district can be drawn that is 50%HCVAP or close to it, I would go ahead and do it.

Is there any evidence that Hispanics vote at a lower rate in the Central Valley, as opposed to just being more illegal or recent immigrants than the California average? It takes a 70% Hispanic district to get to 50%HCVAP here, whereas in most of Socal all you need is about 65-66%, and in the SGV just 62% suffices. That might be why you think Hispanics don't vote here. But if a 50%HCVAP district can be drawn, and being relatively compact like the one I have drawn, I see no reason not to draw it.

It deserves study.  I doubt your Kern based Hispanic CD is anyway near 50% HCVAP, and yes, the turnout levels are lower I strongly suspect. Or is your Kern CD the one that is 65% Hispanic VAP?  Maybe Muon2 has an opinion of the degree of legal risk. If he makes a reasonable case on that that the legal risk is more than remote, then you have your Pub vote anyway, and I guess "our" commission will end up drawing something (although hopefully not as ugly as your map). 

[Torie]

Well, it's close to 50%HCVAP. It doesn't matter if it's going to elect an Hispanic, but whether a candidate of their choice is elected. The commission did draw this map, and you would have to do the same to avoid a legal challenge. What the ultimate result of that legal challenge would be I cannot say. But it is clear that there is racially polarized voting in the Central Valley, most especially in the Bakersfield area, so if a district can be drawn that is 50%HCVAP or close to it, I would go ahead and do it.

Is there any evidence that Hispanics vote at a lower rate in the Central Valley, as opposed to just being more illegal or recent immigrants than the California average? It takes a 70% Hispanic district to get to 50%HCVAP here, whereas in most of Socal all you need is about 65-66%, and in the SGV just 62% suffices. That might be why you think Hispanics don't vote here. But if a 50%HCVAP district can be drawn, and being relatively compact like the one I have drawn, I see no reason not to draw it.

It deserves study.  I doubt your Kern based Hispanic CD is anyway near 50% HCVAP, and yes, the turnout levels are lower I strongly suspect. Or is your Kern CD the one that is 65% Hispanic VAP?  Maybe Muon2 has an opinion of the degree of legal risk. If he makes a reasonable case on that that the legal risk is more than remote, then you have your Pub vote anyway, and I guess "our" commission will end up drawing something (although hopefully not as ugly as your map). 

Yes, the Kern CD is 65%HVAP and probably about 48% HCVAP. The commission map is 66%HVAP and 49%HCVAP. They contain roughly the same sort of areas, Bakersfield and rural areas but not Fresno proper. BTW, didn't Muon already draw something that is roughly similar to what I drew?

Yes, but that does not necessarily mean that he thinks it is legally necessary, or that he would draw it as a Pub on the Commission. Muon2 just gets his rocks off drawing these erose little racial gerrys.  Some of them have been just awe inspiring.

You cheated by looking at what the Commission did by the way. I have avoided doing that outside the LA ring, way back when.

[Torie]

Nah I drew it then I looked. And of course I look to see just how Hispanic a district needs to be made to get it up to 50%HCVAP. Again I really don't see why this is more erose than that U shaped monstrosity you drew in LA County. If my district was going all the way into Salinas, then you could say it is erose. A Hispanic district based in the southern Central Valley is not what I would consider to be erose. Considering the level of racially polarized voting in the area, I don't see how you can justify not drawing two Hispanic districts here.

Inside a city, erosity bothers me less, and that particular CD's erosity (CA-33) was driven by the black pack CD in any event. CA-33 I think is mandated in fact by the VRA, even if the black pack CD might not. I could play with Carson, to make it look prettier (that is the key to the erosity), but that would hurt both the ethnic packs for both CD's if I did so. I tried to play with it, due to the matter to which you refer, and was forced to abandon the exercise. Plus we know that the black pack CD would continue to wane, while the Hispanic pack CD will continue to wax over the coming decade.

[Torie]

This isn't going very well for me is it?    And then the issue is given the HVAP CD's can be drawn, are they legally mandated? What are the legal risks? Can this excrescence be described an hewing together "compact" communities of interest? And suppose given my map design (I am not saying this is the case), we can't reach the 50% HVAP percentage? Do we then redraw the whole state to create one extra 50% HVAP CD? Even that percentage may well not be enough to actually elect an Hispanic. It may still elect an Anglo Pubbie. 

[Torie]

OK, I will draw the district. I have been beaten up enough! 

[Torie]

Well, the dirty deed is done, and like Lady Macbeth, I have nightmares even while awake that I many never be able to cleanse the noisome stain from my sanguinary deed off of my hands. I really hated to do this. The map of Kern and Tulare is truly disgusting. CA-21 is 66.2% HVAP, and I got CA-20 up to 60.0% HVAP by nipping it into Merced County (to grab Dos Palos), while CA-21 in turn nips into Fresno County to pick up a few rather Anglo precincts (in lieu of Coalinga).  

Is everyone "happy" with the map now? Any more comments? If not, we shall commence to prepare the matrix grid charts.

[Torie]

Why in this context is 61.5% HVAP "safe?" You are deleting from the Fresno Hispanic CD a bunch of Hispanic precincts, and then going to Merced County to make them up. Under Section 5 (which may not be long for this world, having read the transcript of the Perez oral arguments, but I digress), Merced Hispanics need to be represented by Hispanics, even at the cost of Fresno Hispanics being represented by an Anglo, and no additional Hispanic CD is created?  For what it is worth, the old Merced based CD per the Almanac of American Politics was 46.7% Hispanic population, so not remotely in an Hispanic CD.

In looking at the Commission numbers, where in their map Merced is appended to Fresno Hispanics like you did, I see that their Fresno Hispanic based CD, it is 58.01% Hispanic population, while my Fresno based Hispanic CD, which goes south rather than north, is 64.6% Hispanic population. (The numbers in the southern valley Hispanic CD are almost the same as mine (my CA-21), 70.6% Hispanic population, versus 71.3% Hispanic population for mine.) So are we supposed to substantially dilute an Hispanic CD so that it takes in Merced per Section 5, or chop Merced along with everything else (which the Commission didn't really do), shoving some Fresno Hispanics into an Anglo CD?

Addendum:  I "see" that there are but a handful of "trapped" Hispanic precincts in Merced in any event. It is just not all that Hispanic really.

[Torie]

Thank you for your comments, Mike. They were quite helpful.

Does this map make you happier Mike?  CA-20 is now 63.2% HVAP, with the Hispanic Merced folks now "liberated."  I strongly doubt that in exchange for eschewing  an extra 3 Hispanic points, that keeping Merced whole and not shoving a bunch of Fresno Hispanics into an Anglo CD in Fresno, and making a further hash of the map (including slashing municipalities here, there and everywhere), is required under Section 5 (or that the DOJ would demand it), but I understand, it is not the Commission's job to take a legal risk that is more than remote. I am also reasonably confident that SCOTUS will rule that at the end of the day, Section 5 does not trump Section 2, and whether the map is ultimately found legal, will turn on Section 2, with the role of the DOJ considerably more truncated procedurally. The conservative 5 seem to be going in that direction. But that remains to be seen.

[Torie]

You are going to draw an entirely new map of CA Mike?  Man, that will be a project, but I salute you!

Please use screen shots, with municipal lines, and voting districts not hidden, so I can read and evaluate your maps more easily. I sometimes have trouble with that.

One other thing. In CA, geography/topography/water matters as much as county lines, and I suspect that if you follow your algorithm religiously, that your map will be flawed, and not really hew to communities of interest. Subjectivity cannot be entirely exorcised from this exercise. So a computer will not be able to draw your map after your input your constraints as it were. I would also keep Imperial appended to Hispanic San Diego, so we can get a better comparison with the Commission's map. Where it made a major decision, affecting the whole map, that is reasonable, I think it should be followed.

And yes, the south Central Valley part of my map sucks (it is not as if I spent hours refining it - I was just trying to "fulfill" your "demands" for purposes of discussion. ). The Commission's version is probably better, although you don't like the lower Hispanic percentage in the Fresno Hispanic CD.

As to Fresno Hispanic percentage thing, has the DOJ signed off on the Commission's map, and is there any litigation pending? If with hindsight, it did not generate litigation, I think the lower percentage all other things being equal or actually in favor of doing so, should be accepted. The Commission's assessment of the legal risks proved correct in this instance.

[Torie]

Are you using the block group DRA data base or the voting district data base? If the former, our maps will not "match."  What per your criteria prevents the north coastal CD from zipping into the Central Valley, which if you do, will just not fly no matter what other constraints you are using. That is an example of my skepticism that such an approach will prove workable. And sometimes doing an extra chop or two serves the greater good (beyond feeding the VRA monster).

Presumably the requirement that the map get votes from both parties constrains play partisan games, assuming the members are not flying under false partisan flags, and are reasonably competent (the charge here being that the Pub members were not).

Oh, and don't forget the class warfare angle, ala what evolved in my map in Silicon Valley, and how I drew the lines of the OC Gold Coast and LA westside CD's. Money is indeed a community of interest in California.

Are you also going to trash all my LA County CD's?  

[Torie]

How did you manage to get the CA DRA software to start working for you?  I was never able to load the block group data myself.  Hey, there is one Hispanic voting district in San Jose with 70,000 people.

[Torie]

I don't think you are going to get any vote but yours for a plan that sets up that cut into the north central valley from the coast. You might rethink that. As I said, your constraints are just too tight.

The other regional map seems to allow Inyo and Mono to be appended to some central valley CD. That isn't going to happen either. They could be appended to the Anglo portion of a Kern based CD, but only in a pinch, and there had better be a damn good reason. That resort area is tied to the hip to Socal, not the Bakersfield dump, via that twisty road over the Tehachapis. Granted, we are only talking about 17,000 folks. Alpine's population is mostly centered on the west slope of of the mountains, but then it has almost no people. You could chop that county however, since no roads unite it, assuming it has more than one precinct.

As to your idea to remain flexible about crossing the Golden Gate, you will have an uphill battle convincing anyone to chop SF in half or something like that. It isn't going to happen. Now if SF were smaller than one CD, then going either north or south to pick up population would be OK.

Are all scientists as stubborn as you?  

In any event, the idea is to evaluate whether the Commission's choices were reasonable, and in particular whether the Pubs on it were really silly buggered by the Dems' gamesmanship, not if it met some Mike test about minimizing chops. The Commission is not a court subject to implementing some kind of Michigan law.

Good luck!  I have this vision, that if we were both Pubs on the Commission, we would be doing most of the talking, and fighting all the time, while the rest just sat back and enjoyed it all.

[Torie]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

As to this bit, I have no quarrel at all. It is entirely appropriate. As I said, I drew that part of the map on the fly, without refining it.

[Torie]

One other thing occurs to me. LA gets the bulk of its water from the Owens Valley. To append Owens to water competing Kern, is just totally unacceptable for that reason alone.

I don't think the Commission map impinged on the north central valley from the coast. In any event, the Commission eschewing that seems entirely reasonable to me, and to criticize them for not crossing the mountains to an area with which the north coast has nothing in common, seems entirely reasonable to me. The Central Valley has its own unique little issues and problems. So giving them demerits for taking that approach is just strange.

And chopping SF in half is just a cardinal sin. A chop in one place, just isn't the same as another. Frisco is a state of mind. They have a right to elect their own zany congressperson, without dilution from more prosaic types. Ditto Oakland and Berkeley. Just don't mess with them. Nobody in Sonoma
 will really mind if they are chopped (at least the way I did it), just because that is the way the map flowed. They don't give a damn. Really.

As to the matter, that we use these rigid tests to protect ourselves from a just go wild AZ type Commission, which while OK maybe for Iowa, certainly are not for CA, the answer to that, is that the law requires that any map be approved by at least one vote from each party. That is the check. Please respect it. I might add, from what I have seen, that with two or three potential exceptions, the Commission did in fact do a reasonable job, and that any partisan games were rather minor (and that due to the Pub establishment, I think (rather than a Pub Commission member flying under false colors), because they are dysfunctional and useless in general, and in this case just not being interested in what the Commission was doing until it was too late, maybe). That however is a tentative impression.

[Torie]

No, the Central Valley that is otherwise whole slipping into the mountains (heck I did that in a minor way), is entirely different than a coastal based CD poaching into the Central Valley. The mountains themselves can go either way really. But the way I drew the map, the north coast CD was desperate for population, so it took all of the mountains (plus the Napa Valley), except those in the NE corner of the state.

[Torie]

If there is more than one reasonable choice as to how the draw the map, where it is a reasonably close decision, and particularly if it does not affect whether a CD is in real partisan play or not, then if the Commission made one choice, and I made another, the Commission (and the Pubs on it in particular), cannot really be criticized. That is the purpose of this exercise for me. If Mike wants to draw a map following his own metrics, and see what happens, fine, but that is a different exercise, and I am not quite sure what its relevance is, other than to see what a law incorporating his metrics would cause a map to look like.

If you don't chop SF, and you follow the class warfare theme (which I actually think is kind of appropriate), then you draw the Contra Costa CD the way I drew it, appending the NW corner to Solano. Solano is a transitional county between SF and the Central Valley. If the Contra Costa CD goes all the way to the Bay to take the downmarket precincts there, then the San Joaquin CD will cut more deeply into Contra Costa (not desirable), or you do the silly chop of Martinez (white middle class with no bridge, that the Commission did I see). And then the Solano CD needed more population,  and the only way to get it was to go into Yolo, with which Solano has a lot of common, and no mountains are crossed (with only Woodland really being agricultural, and Davis of course an academic node). So that is where the "poach" should be I think, to the extent it is a poach.

Finally, Napa has a lot in common with Sonoma, although it could be appended to Marin or Solano as well, but then you are back to a poach crossing the mountains into the Central Valley, and CA-01 gets ever larger, or you get a nasty chop of Santa Rosa, and that dog won't hunt. I tried hard, very hard, to avoid nasty chops of significant municipalities.

So as a Pub I would insist on this approach, if alternative approaches that I consider less desirable, hurt my party's chances. That is my job on the Commission, and should have been the job of the Pubs on it. Did the Pubs do their job on the Commission or not?  And where they didn't, we should find out why. Was it due to shill testimony, or incompetence, or did they have a rationale that seems reasonable, that we shall know better, when we compare the two maps and the data, or even better yet, their explanation.

And whatever happened to the concept of competitive districts?  Isn't that supposed to be desirable too, all other things being reasonable equal, particularly if it will make some members of both parties have to work a bit harder?

I will clean up the south central valley, now that I "know" the percentage HVAP benchmark percentages, as to which I take Mike's word are accurate. Not taking on Section 5, and the glacially slow DOJ (what the F is it doing?), is reasonable, and I accept that. Then I will put up my matrix chart, and Mike if he wants can use it as well for his map. The only sensitive CD's I suspect in Norcal, are CA-11, and maybe CA-03, using my CD numbers. We shall see. In Socal, we have in  potential play, CA-24, CA-23, CA-43, maybe CA-42, and CA-50.  And oh yes, the red Asian tiger CD, CA-32, which is barely in reach of the Pubs someday, maybe, if Chu retires, but certainly isn't in the Commission's map.

Make sense?

[Torie]

Here are my cleanups of CA-20 and CA-21, minimizing muni chops (for CA-21 only Tulare and Bakersfield, and CA-20, only Fresno and Merced, which I consider quite an achievement), and where possible - erosity. CA-21 is 64.9% HVAP, and CA-20 is 61.6% HVAP. It took a fair amount of trial and error to get there.

[Torie]

Well, as I said, we just have different mapping philosophies, assuming you think following your metrics should actually be done in real life by the Commission. In this case, I would put West Sacramento with Sacramento even though it crosses a county line, and get rid of that erosity to boot.

Anyway, here are the trend percentages for the old CD's (where I pretend that the Fiorina-Boxer Senate race was another Presidential election), and my map does try to match the new CD numbers with the old ones. It turns out that the McCain percentages are a pretty good baseline (in other words, 46.3%). There are exceptions, but except for the CD's that I have yellowed, which appear to require adjustment, they are either heavily Dem Hispanic CD's where the McCain percentage overstates GOP strength (more Hispanics are voting probably), and some of the Bay area, maybe, but maybe not (Boxer's home turf, and maybe Oakland and SF just had a particular hatred of Bush), but again, these CD's are not in play.

CD's that do require some special attention have been highlighted in yellow, which is mostly snapback country, although in a couple of instances, again maybe McCain's numbers overstate current GOP strength, and the CD's at least are potentially in play, maybe, someday.

[Torie]

So if I have Pres 2008 and Gov 2010 from DRA, how should I convert it to PVI?

I would just use the 2008 race, with the PVI based on the 46.3% McCain baseline, except that I would  with the yellow highlighted CD's potentially adjust it, particularly if the CD is in potential play. Please don't use the governor's race.  Gubernatorial races are idiosyncratic (and Brown and Whitman were themselves idiosyncratic), and the Fiorina-Boxer race was a much better measure I think of real partisan strength. Boxer and Fiorina were a pretty good generic match - both rather weak candidates. So I used the Senate race as a check on whether CA had so much Obama love, that he overstated Dem strength beyond the generic swing. It turned out, not really, in general, with some exceptions (hey I contributed with my voting pattern to that little trend snapback in CA-48 ). The Senate race is particularly good, because the swing from Obama to Fiorina of about 7 points, almost precisely matched the national swing from Obama to the share of the House vote the Pubs got nationally in 2010.  

[Torie]

That district is an eyesore.

So, can we get this discussion back on track? A California map that the Commission might have drawn, if we were the Commissioners. I'm not signing off on Torie's map until my concerns regarding CA-33/37 and San Diego are adressed, or it's been proven to me they cannot be. If the map is fine with muon and sbane, I consider myself outvoted. I have no further objections to anywhere else, and am ready to help outvote anybody who raises objections anywhere else.

I explained CA-33 to you Lewis (it's a 61.5% Hispanic VAP CD), and you seemed satisfied when you realized that CA-35 was a black pack CD. I don't recall what your issue was with CA-37, or with San Diego - some chatter about making CA-53 more of an erose pencil, and moving out of San Diego City to take Escondido or something? What was it? CA-37 is safely Dem anyway (more-so than in the Commission's map), so perhaps there is no reason for you to fret too much.

[Torie]

Hey, my Riverside CD is over 50% HVAP - now - too, materially increasing the odds the it will elect an Anglo Dem in lieu of an Anglo Pub.  It won't be electing an Hispanic. God bless the VRA!  If Maldef wants more, they will have to go to court. When they lose, hopefully this sort of thing won't "have" to be done in the future.

[Torie]

I don't particularly like how Torie has drawn the 33rd either. I don't know if it's necessary to make the district so Latino or whether you can create a more compact district that would still have a high Hispanic population with a black influence. If the 33rd doesn't legally need to be drawn like that, it should not. I am fine with the SD map though, since a 50%+ hcvap district can be drawn, though it does lead to some city splits. I don't know if Torie has imperial beach in that Hispanic district. If he does he could try switching it out and putting in the rest of Chula Vista. But I don't think it's such a big deal.

Imperial Beach is in the Hispanic CD, just like it is in the Commission's map. If you switch it out, for the rest of Chula Vista, the Hispanic % goes down.

If a 50% HVAP CD in Riverside needs to be drawn, than a 61.9% HVAP CA-33 needs to be drawn. If you play with Carson, the Hispanic percentage goes down, as well as the black percentage in CA-35. So no, that makes no sense. You could chop Carson, but the map will still be ugly, and still dilute, with CA-33 also getting more Anglos. Oh, the horror, the horror! We could substantially play with the map, and get a more contiguous Hispanic CD, with a materially lower percentage, but that would shove the Beach Cities CD into a more competitive status. Do you want to go there?  

You mess with me anymore, and I will sic Maldef on you!

Are we done now?

[Torie]

Yes, if I were not such a "responsible" Commission member, we would be litigating a lot of things with Maldef. I want to go to court. I want CA to be before SCOTUS. Bring it on!

My CA-42 is 50.3% HVAP by the way, 20 basis points "better."  Given that, plus my masterwork with CA-33, I'm Maldef's best friend come to think of it - at least until such time as I gut them in court.

[Torie]

You are going to cut an "Hispanic" CD down from 61.9% HVAP (close to if not at 50.0% HCVAP) to 54% HVAP? And cut the black CD to 38.9% BVAP down from 44.6% BVAP (percentages destined as to the blacks to continue to decline over time)? I don't think so. And get a bodyguard sbane, because Maxine Waters will be looking for you.

But hey, I can preserve the black CD at my percentages, and draw a more contiguous CD off to the west with a materially higher HVAP than your anemic number, while making the Beach CD materially more Pubbie. Interested? Pity that the legal risk seems rather high.

[Torie]

Yes, it is unreadable Lewis, and no, I did not look at partisan percentages, or have them in mind at all, as I drew the map. In fact, it broke my heart when I realized that the CA-33 thing put the Beach Cities CD out of reach for the Pubs (I already knew almost by heart the partisan lay of the land there). The obsession with Imperial Beach is just strange - really.  Anyway, I did what the commission did. I was looking at their map when I drew that the SD Hispanic CD. It seemed reasonable to me.

The Commission only gave the blacks one CD too, and given how fast the black percentages are eroding, I really doubt they want to dilute themselves down like that. If they do, they're foolish.

Why are we arguing over this black v brown thing again?  It doesn't mean a damn from a partisan standpoint.