Ohio Redistricting Contest

[jimrtex]

Final Cuyahoga Map

The senate districts will be:

16, 6, 7
8, 9, Geauga-Ashtabula
10, 11, 12
13, 14, 15

[jimrtex]

I was able to get two senate districts both over 50% black VAP, but I had to split the 11th district so that there are two pieces instead. That split also helped me resolve the problems maintaining constitutional splits for the rest of NE OH. Did you solve those? I haven't aligned the districts with your ward map, but I don't think it would change my numbers substantially. I'll try to post something.

Overall, I was able to make 4 black-majority senate districts. That is roughly proportional to the 11% statewide black VAP which would result in 3.74 districts. My goal is 11 house districts as well. I also note that making this sort of VRA map hurts competitiveness substantially, as it separates Dem inner cities from suburban areas.

I plan to split Trumbull in three parts, with part placed with Ashtabula.

So that gives:

Cuyahoga(1) 2 + Geauga-Ashtabula
Lake(2) + Ashtabula-Trumbull
Portage(1) + Trumbull(1) + Portage-Trumbull-Stark

But maybe it would be better to use a non-standard split of Portage:

Lake(2) + Astabula(642)-Geauga(375)
Cuyahoga(2) + Geauga(591)-Portage(591)
Portage(1) + Trumbull(788)-Ashtabula(229) + Portage((794)-Stark(223)

I think the 2nd is better since both split a large county between senate districts, but only split it between two house districts.

Columbus has 81 wards (it has a 7 member city council elected at large).  So it should be possible to do whatever split you want to do there.

This should have the correct population

You can use cut and paste to import these into your map.  I would save a copy of your plan before starting this.  When you cut and paste, it renumbers the districts.

If you bring in all the Cleveland wards and lock them, you can then unlock selected ones and deassign all their geometry.  Then zoom out and Select on Cleveland.  That will select all of Cleveland that is not locked.  You can then assign that to a House district.  And then lock that.

[jimrtex]

Final Cuyahoga Map

The senate districts will be:

16, 6, 7
8, 9, Geauga-Ashtabula
10, 11, 12
13, 14, 15

Your second senate district doesn't seem to be majority black.  Did they change the rules so that it's only majority-minority that is required?  

I don't think it is possible, while also complying with the Ohio Constitution.

If you take the Cuyahogo BVAP, and divide by 6/11 of the Cuyahoga total VAP (ie the share of the VAP needed for 6 house districts) you get 52%.  That is, even if you had near perfect racial segregation, with all blacks in 6 house districts, where they comprised more than half the population, and no blacks in the other 5, you could just barely get a majority.  If the other 5 districts were only 2.5% black it would drive the 52% impossible.  And there are places like Lakewood and Solon that are closer to 10%.

You might be able to get 52.5% based on a difference in age structure.  Since blacks are slightly younger, black children can be used to get to the ideal district population, which would mean that there would be fewer adults in those districts, which would permit the black adults to be used for effectively.

But even at 52.5%, you also have to split the population almost perfectly between two senate districts.  Even a 5% difference is too much.  Then you have comply with town and Cleveland ward boundaries in forming the house districts, maintain the two house districts in western Cuyahoga county, and provide a connection to Geauga County for the shared senate district.

If you rank all cities and townships by BVAP%, and take those with the highest percentage equivalent that are equivalent to 6/11 of the population, the collective BVAP% is 50.07%.  So if you were able to form those into 6 house districts, and then two almost perfectly balanced senate districts you could do it.

But it uses Oakwood and Glenwillow, which cuts off the link to Geauga.  

I used Cleveland as a whole, but might do a tiny bit better if I cut about a couple of wards.

Separating out Cleveland by wards gets me to 50.32%, as wards 13 and 19 are excluded.  But this includes Walton Hills, Oakwood, Glenwillow, and Solon in the black senate area, and Mayfield Heights is isolated.

Removing those 4, Cleveland Ward 13 is put back in, and Pepper Pike is added as the link to Maple Heights.  That drops me to 49.80%.

Besides dropping below 50%, I've also isolated Lakewood and Ward 19.
So let's remove Ward 18 from the black area.  Add in Lyndhurst and Brooklyn, and  and I'm down to 49.13%.

If I add in Cuyahoga Heights and Brooklyn Heights, I can create 6 house districts, and 2 senate districts.

Overall BVAP% 48.98%, and the two senate seats at 48.81% and 48.98% (and I also am down to a majority BVAP in 3 house districts.


But compare to what I proposed, which was 48% overall, and 51.5% and 45.7%

Since you can't get to 50% in both senate districts, isn't it better to have a bit of imbalance?

[jimrtex]

Are you guys doing Ohio Senate maps dissolving a northeast district and relocating it to Columbus?

Vaporing SD-13 (Lorain, Elyria City) seems like it should be a top priority, and relocating that to the Columbus suburbs. Columbus Democrats themselves can be racked and packed into 1 district.


The Dayton district could probably be cracked it seems, successfully, if they chose to do it.


Here is my remapping of Cleveland. I also put Akron back into 1 district; SD-27 is a weak Republican district that should be stronger without Akron in it.

All of Lorain has to be one senate district.

Any county with between 1.10 and 3 house seats has to be in one senate seat.

Any county with more than 3 house seats (including part of one) has to have [n_house/3] senate seats in the county, and any remnant in another senate district.

Ohio Constitution legislative redistricting requirements

You've also split off part of Cuyahoga in the east, failed to maintain the two existing house districts in West Cuyahoga that are in the 95% and 105%, split Parma and Brook Park, and probably are not aligned with Cleveland ward boundaries.

Senate districts must be comprised of 3 house districts.

[jimrtex]

I plan to split Trumbull in three parts, with part placed with Ashtabula.

So that gives:

Cuyahoga(1) 2 + Geauga-Ashtabula
Lake(2) + Ashtabula-Trumbull
Portage(1) + Trumbull(1) + Portage-Trumbull-Stark

I don't think you can draw a district that is 80% in Trumbull, 20% in Ashtabula, and yet connects Lake to Trumbull by going along the PA border and the lakeshore.   

Splits wpuld be:

Geauga 801-Ashtabula 216
Ashtabula 655-Trumbull 362
Trumbull 426-Portage 368-Stark 223

These assume that I can get enough from SE Ashtabula, so as to not cut off the population along Lake Erie, nor a corridor down the Pennsylvania line.

And also that I can create the link across Portage, between Stark and Trumbull

But maybe it would be better to use a non-standard split of Portage:

Lake(2) + Astabula(642)-Geauga(375)
Cuyahoga(2) + Geauga(591)-Portage(591)
Trumbull(1) + Trumbull(788)-Ashtabula(229) + Portage((794)-Stark(223)

There's a lot more Portage in this plan than in reality...

That is because you didn't anticipate me editing the whole seat back into Trumbull.  There is no whole seat in Portage under this plan.

[jimrtex]

This is my solution to the problems of NE OH. There must be one county treated in an unconstitutional manner due to the population distribution, so I chose Cuyahoga for that honor. The constitutional defect is that there should be 11 house seats entirely within the county but I have only 10 using the remainder to form two pieces linking to Geauga and Medina. This allows for three senate districts entirely within Cuyahoga, and two of them are majority black using the contest statistics (21 @ 50% and 25 @ 51%). All other counties are treated correctly for the house and senate. The senate image follows.

Have you created 3 house districts in 21, without splitting wards?

I can do 50.33% and 50.25% and 6 house seats that don't split Cleveland wards or other cities.

But it has a house seat with a 49.37% BVAP.

[jimrtex]

This is my solution to the problems of NE OH. There must be one county treated in an unconstitutional manner due to the population distribution, so I chose Cuyahoga for that honor. The constitutional defect is that there should be 11 house seats entirely within the county but I have only 10 using the remainder to form two pieces linking to Geauga and Medina. This allows for three senate districts entirely within Cuyahoga, and two of them are majority black using the contest statistics (21 @ 50% and 25 @ 51%). All other counties are treated correctly for the house and senate. The senate image follows.

Have you created 3 house districts in 21, without splitting wards?

I can do 50.33% and 50.25% and 6 house seats that don't split Cleveland wards or other cities.

But it has a house seat with a 49.37% BVAP.

I have 4 house seats with over 50% BVAP and one in SE Cuyahoga just under 50%. I haven't aligned them to wards yet as I am working on other cities first.

Try this:

S 25: 50.34%

H A: 61.56% Euc, RiH, Brt, W8, W10, W11
H B: 58.52% ECl, ClH, UnH, W6, W9
H C: 30.34% SEu, Bch, ShH, HiH, Woo, Orn, Sol, Glw, Oak, Bed, CuH, BdH, NwH

S 21: 50.24%

H D: 25.66% Lin, W3. W14, W15, W16, W17
H E: 51.21% Brk, W2, W5, W7. W12, W13
H F: 72.28%, GrH, MpH, BdH, WrH, NRn, W1, W4

[jimrtex]

Approach OH like you would MI. Both states have detailed requirements for building districts. The requirements are different and OH only has their requirements apply to the legislature, however.

What were your thoughts on breaking ward boundaries to create majority black districts? I started in Hamilton County, which is much easier than the northeast, and you can create a 4-2-1 delegation there by connecting the white areas of eastern Cincinnati with the white areas of western Cincinnati.

Butler County is of course very easy, and Warren + excess in Butler creates 2 house districts. Linking 2 in Warren + the 7th in Hamilton should be an option to create a Republican Senate district.

My thought is that if it may be the case that a majority-minority district would be required, then it takes precedence over political boundary integrity. So, in Cleveland, where I can follow ward boundaries without sacrificing minority districts I do so. In Hamilton, I can barely create a senate district with over 50%. That forces me to ignore ward boundaries in Cinci.

Under the Ohio Constitution, splitting of wards is only permitted if it is non-feasible to have equal populated districts otherwise, and the only reason you can use whole wards is because it is not feasible to avoid splitting large cities.

Presumably, city wards represent local communities of interest.  Can they be cracked apart and joined with disparate communities simply in the interest of some arbitrary racial target.  Recalled that in LULAC v Perry, the Supreme Court did not count a district as a VRA district, even though it had a majority Hispanic population.

[jimrtex]

I think we have been going at this from the wrong angle.  It is not necessary to draw unconstitutional house districts in NE Ohio.  

It is necessary to group them among senate seats in an unconstitutional manner.  And just because Cuyahoga and Lake counties have a whole number of house districts, doesn't mean that it is their house seats that are not grouped in unconstitutional senate seats.

So starting with Trumbull we draw the House seats:

H1. Trumbull (1017)
H2. Trumbull (788)-Ashtabula(229)
H3. Ashtabula(642)-Geauga(375)
H4. Geauga(426)-Portage(368)-Stark(223)
H5. Portage(1017)

I assume we can get across Portage N-S along the eastern edge without splitting more than one town (42,000 people).  Checked it.  The two eastern tiers of townships is about 31,000.  We can get the portion of Stark from Alliance.

We have 11 districts in Cuyahoga, 2 in Lake, 4 in Summit, 1 in Medina, and one Summit-Medina.

Senate districts:

(A) Split Lake and Trumbull

1-4.  Cuyahoga 11, Lake 1.
5.  Lake 1, H2, H3
6. H1, H4, H5
7-8. Summit 4, Medina 1, Summit-Medina

(B) Split Lake

1-4. Cuyahoga 11, Lake 1
5. Lake 1, H1, H2
6. H3, H4, H5
7-8. Summit 4, Medina 1, Summit-Medina

This requires that H2 cross Ashtabula from Trumbull to Lake, along the Pennsylvania border and then along the shoreline, and only split one town.  I doubt it is possible.  Not even close, even if we skipped the city of Ashtabula.  So (B) is out.

(C) Double split Cuyahoga and Summit

1-4.  Cuyahoga 10, Lake 2.
5. Cuyahoga 1, Medina 1, Medina-Summit
6. Summit 3
7. Summit 1, H4, H5
8. H1, H2, H3

So S7 is Portage, Summit(part), Stark(part), Geauga(part)
And S8 is Trumbull, Ashtabula, Geauga (part)

This has the advantage of respecting the ratio of representation for whole senate districts in Cuyahoga and Summit counties (11.06).

(D) Split Cuyahoga and Lorain

1-4.  Cuyahoga 10, Lake 2.
5. Medina 1, Medina-Summit, Summit 1
6. Summit 3
7. H4, H5, and Jefferson-Carroll-Harrison
8. H1, H2, H3
9. Lorain 2, Cuyahoga 1
10. Lorain-Huron, Ottawa-Erie, Sandusky-Seneca

S7 from Steubenville to near Cleveland is a bit extreme, and we might not be able to get across Stark.  So (D) is out.

I kind of like (C) more than (A).   Cuyahoga and Summit still have whole senate seats, and the other counties are not split (except Geauga).

[jimrtex]

I appreciate the idea of violating the senate rules for counties as opposed to the house rules. It's an interesting approach. I'm not sure that one has precedence over the other.

Does plan (C) still provide two majority BVAP senate districts?

I don't think so.  You need a white district to go with Lake, which means you need to come around the tip of southeast Cleveland.  So you would end up with the same as my current plan, but simply regrouping the western suburbs.

[jimrtex]

Under the Ohio Constitution, splitting of wards is only permitted if it is non-feasible to have equal populated districts otherwise, and the only reason you can use whole wards is because it is not feasible to avoid splitting large cities.

Presumably, city wards represent local communities of interest.  Can they be cracked apart and joined with disparate communities simply in the interest of some arbitrary racial target.  Recalled that in LULAC v Perry, the Supreme Court did not count a district as a VRA district, even though it had a majority Hispanic population.

The key fact in LULAC was the linking of two Latino areas separated by 300 miles and that shared no other recognizable bond other than ethnicity. On top of that, there was evidence that a more tightly knit Latino district could have been created. IL-4 in the 1990 and 2000 remaps is a counter-example where the courts specifically allowed the linking of disparate communities by a thread because no other means could provide for a district where Latinos could elect a candidate of choice.

In any case it would be white-majority areas that would be linked by a ward-splitting strip in Hamilton. OH already does this in Franklin county to link Bexley to Whitehall.

That is an interesting connector.  Columbus wards are relatively small, because they aren't used for electing the city council.  It also looks like wards have been drawn in a way that makes it feasible to link the fragmented townships.  You can include a Columbus ward or two with one of the townships and gather all the township in one district.

Back to the connector.  There is a Columbus ward with 6 precincts between Bexley and Whitehall.  They're in a 2x3 grid, 2 east-west and 3 north-south.  The connector is made up of the northern 2 precincts, and one of the central ones, though it isn't needed for the connector.  The 3 connector precincts are majority BVAP, while those not in the connector are much less (38%, 18%, 12%).  Maybe it wasn't so much to link white areas, but to build up the black population in a 3rd house district.  Whitehall in particular is not a white enclave.

Did you say that you had a majority BVAP in Franklin County?  Or was I confusing that with Hamilton?  Using precincts, if you take those that have the highest BVAP% and represent 3/10 of the total population, the composite BVAP is 50.3%.  So I think you would end a bit short when you start using towns and wards.

Franklin is less segregated than Cuyahoga, with the the threshold percentage around 20%, so I suspect that you can get in the mid to high 40s, without being extremely restricted on which areas you choose.

On the other hand, if you take the precincts representing 2/10 of the population (2 house seats), the BVAP% is 61.1%, which suggests that two majority BVAP districts can be drawn without too much difficulty.

I'm inclined to drop the existing 3 Franklin districts that are in the 95% to 105% range.  They form a peninsula coming from the Delaware line down through central Columbus.  Keeping them would mean that you would have a ring of towns running from Westerville clockwise to Dublin (12:30 to 10:30) that would have to be sliced into 7 districts with no flexibility in where boundaries have to be drawn.  If you remove the peninsula, you have more flexibility to push into Columbus to get to the right population totals.

The census VTDs appear to match the current precincts in Franklin county, sorta.   Back in 1990, the census bureau defined census blocks for the entire country, based on visible roads etc.  When city limits and the like crossed a census block,  the census bureau defined tabulation blocks, which were subdivisions of census blocks, and were used for tabulation city populations etc.  This was kind of messy, since the census blocks were intended to be the atomic area.

For 2000, the census bureau redefined census blocks to be defined by visible features and political boundaries.  So a 1990 census block divided by a city limit, became two 2000 census blocks.  But in Franklin County at least, it looks like the VTDs were not redefined.  The city and town limits follow block boundaries, even though where they are not coincident with visible features like streets.  But the VTDs appear to continue to use the 1990 census blocks.  So the VTDs for a town are not coincident with a town, even though the voting precincts are.

ps If you are in pan mode, and you hold the shift while doing a left-click and drag, you have a marquee zoom.

pps why are the blocks in Cleveland so long?

[jimrtex]

I think I've figured out the layout for Franklin County, a senate district with a 44.0% BVAP, and two house districts with a majority BVAP.  The districts are much more compact than the current districts, and respect towns more.

It probably is not possible to avoid dividing two townships between districts if Columbus is included.

[jimrtex]

I think I've figured out the layout for Franklin County, a senate district with a 44.0% BVAP, and two house districts with a majority BVAP.  The districts are much more compact than the current districts, and respect towns more.

It probably is not possible to avoid dividing two townships between districts if Columbus is included.

That's what I found. I created a black-majority SD within Franklin. However, some pairs of the 10 HDs in Franklin had to share townships in addition to sharing Columbus city. I found that the split townships included no splits of contiguous portions of townships. Even so, I assume this is a violation of the constitution, but it is perhaps justified to further the needs of the VRA. Someone would have to show that dividing an already disconnected township is more important than the VRA to invalidate that sort of split.

In Hamilton, it's not hard to get two majority-black HDs without splits of anything except Cincinnati. However, I had to split a fully connected township to get a black-majority SD in the county. A black-majority HD in Summit also requires splits of connected municipalities beyond Akron.

This is my Franklin plan.  The discontinuities have been fixed.

https://districtbuilder.drawthelineohio.org/districtmapping/plan/827/view/

I'm rather pleased.  The statistics weren't being updated, and District 26 was the last remnant.  I started out assigning Franklin to one district, and the donut around Franklin in another.  I then started drawing each district.  So when I was drawing 25, what was left was 26.  Suddenly 25 went from blue to white, but 26 went from brown to blue.

I had to log off and log back on again to get statistics.  26 is minus 2.7%.

No Columbus wards are split.

There are three intentional township splits, and two of them are based on city boundaries.

Miflin: Gahanna is separated from the remainder.

Jefferson: Reynoldsburg is separated from the remainder, but unified with the main portion of the city in Truro.

Clinton: The fragment west of OSU is in one district while the part in the north central is in another.  They must be in opposite corners of the original township.

Other incidental fragments have just a few hundred persons total.

I don't think the compactness is working.  20 gets a brown tint if you specify compactness as the district theme.  That might be possible if they are using a perimeter measurement, since it uses the city limit of Upper Arlington and the main N/S throughfare.

But if you look at the compactness scores it doesn't do so good.  They may be using an Iowa scort (EW to NS ratio).  How else to understand the high score for 17?

The senate district is 45.7% BVAP.

[jimrtex]

A plan with 11 house districts and 4 senate districts each over 50% BVAP is posted for sharing.

I think they are using two different compactness measurements.  If you set the district theme as compactness, you have 3 very non-compact districts, which indicates that a perimeter based measure is being used, because they are districts with tentacles.

The scores may be using the correct measures for the contest.  Notice that the Dayton district scores relatively high.   And Wayne gets pretty close to the 2/π for a square with circle circumscribed.

I think the Akron seat is dubious.  Just because you have to follow the tentacles of the city limits doesn't mean that you can stick a claw into the center of the city to grab some white voters.

Also you appear to have a systematic underpopulation bias.  8 of your 11 majority BVAP districts have a blue tint.  3 of the 28 other districts in those 6 counties are blue, and 3 are tan.  To the extent that you did not respect political boundaries and city wards in violation of the Ohio Constitution your map violates OMOV.

The contest rules should include a population equality measure, such as RMS deviation.

I am going to borrow your District 97.  My districts in the southern part of the state were the same as yours, but I had split the counties in the east a little bit differently, and had ended up splitting Holmes to add a bit to Ashland-Knox which had really bugged me.

I don't think you reduce the number of county cuts in the west by not keeping the existing districts.

I would switch a couple of townships to better balance the population in 78-82 and 92-93.  Once you've decided to split the county (Hardin and Washington) you might as well go for better equality rather than preserving a sense of COI with the county seats.

Have you been able to run the reports?  I have not been able to do so.

And how did you create your senate map?

I'll borrow the Butler-Warren-Hamilton senate seat.  I had blindly stuck the Clermont-Brown districts with Hamilton since 7+2 = 9, and perhaps because Montgomery-Greene was an easy 6, I was stacking the senate groups.

[jimrtex]

Hamilton County preliminary version.

I started out trying to create an area in the central part of the county that was as high BVAP% as possible, and made up of whole townships and Cincinnati wards, equivalent to 3 house districts, with two districts to the west, and two to the east.  Getting rid of enclaves and balancing the two western and eastern parts gives a distribution about like I've drawn.

I then realized that the two western house districts couldn't form a senate district.  I played a little trying to cut across along the river, but that didn't seem to work out using whole wards.  So I decided to just try to create 3 BVAP plurality districts, with perhaps a majority in one.

The combination of Green and Coleraine avoids a split of townships, but it is rather odd that two townships each with 1/2 the population of a district can be combined.  That is why the further west district wraps around into southwestern Cincinnati.

Getting the populations to stay in range, in particular with the countywide shortage of 1.3% took some doing.  Other than Cincinnati, the only split townships are due to fragments.  Three enclaves of Springfield township in northern Cincinnati are split from the main part of the township and other fragments.  And a fragment of Columbia township on the eastern boundary with Clermont is also split off.

After looking at the map (the one I shared) I made some tweaks to HD 31, which brings it up to 54% BVAP, which would give me 7 majority BVAP districts (4 in Cuyahoga, 2 in Franklin, and 1 in Hamilton).  

If I could use the 3 central house districts to form a senate district, I am at 46%, but combining 30, 31, and 32 gives me 33%.   If I use 27, 29, and 31 I can do 35%, and an ugly district that stretches from the NW corner of the county to the east boundary.

I think it may be possible to cut across the northern edge of the county.  Taking Forest Park was not an obvious solution.  And it may be possible to cut across along the river after all.  I think those will end up in the low 40s.  I will try those.

[jimrtex]

I think it may be possible to cut across the northern edge of the county.  Taking Forest Park was not an obvious solution.  And it may be possible to cut across along the river after all.  I think those will end up in the low 40s.  I will try those.

Springfield township poses a problem, too. Though you could split the disconnected parts.

In any case your map shares my difficulty in that it becomes very uncompetitive when enhancing minority voting. OTOH, if you drop the SDs to 25-30% BVAP and have only one HD with over 40% BVAP, you can get 3 highly competitive HDs and two competitive SDs in Hamilton Co.

North linked senate district.

It worked!.

The central senate district is 45.1% BVAP.

Deviation from the ideal population for Hamilton County:

1.3%, 1.3%, 0.9%, -0.5%, -0.5%, -0.5%, and -1.5%, overall 2.8%.

Other than the splits in Cincinnati, Springfield township is split, with a fragment north of Forest Park and a tiny fragment between Forest Park and Coleraine township in HD 27.  The main part of the township, and 4 smaller fragments are in HD 29.  Since HD 27 does not include any of Cincinnati, only one township is split between the districts.

Columbia township is split between HD-32 and HD-33.  Columbia widely dispersed fragments.  It is possible to include all within HD-33, but that would require including Mariemont in HD-33, which would in turn cut of Fairfax from HD-32.  Since HD-33 does not include any of Cincinnati, only Columbia is split between HD-32 and HD-33.

HD-30 is point contiguous based on census maps, but not if the Hamilton GIS web site is consulted.  The tip of Ward 19 is a couple of census blocks that are over a mile long running alongside Mill Creek and a railyard.  Because there are no streets across this area, the census blocks go further north than the ward actually does.  The whole tip could be cut off at its base on 8th Street and only shift about 200 voters.   Or one could remove an entire precinct and be back at the river (and remember Ohio precincts are tiny).

Alternatively, Ward 19, which includes the area along the river to the west could be swapped for Cheviot.  This would push HD-30 to around 3.0% negative deviation, but would reduce the split of Cincinnati to 4 districts.

Or one could instead notice that HD-31 looks like a moose; or that HD-29 has a 41.1% BVAP, and a 55.83% compactness score.

[jimrtex]

And how did you create your senate map?

The tips tab at the competition website has the script for building a senate plan from a house plan. It includes my suggestions, but I will say the process is slow.

I got an e-mail on how to renumber the CSV file.

I had looked at the CSV file in a spreadsheet, but it was only for Cuyahoga and the 5-single county districts, and had 45,000 blocks.  I don't know if my spreadsheet can handle 500,000 rows and not mess up the formatting of a text file.

[jimrtex]

My senate and house plans

https://districtbuilder.drawthelineohio.org/districtmapping/plan/999/view/

https://districtbuilder.drawthelineohio.org/districtmapping/plan/1000/view/

[jimrtex]

I had an idea.   99 House seats/16 congressional seats is 6.1875

So if you apportioned 96 house districts among 16 congressional districts you could then distribute the population of the remaining 3 house districts.

If you divided the state into 3 groups of 31 districts, and one groups of 6 districts, then each of the larger groups would have 5 congressional districts, with only a 0.2% error plus any residual variation because of differences among house districts.

(31/6) / (99/16) = 1.002

31 house districts in NE Ohio covers out through Lorain, Medina, Stark, and Mahoning.

31 house districts in western Ohio, mainly in the Cincinnati to Springfield area but extending north to the Michigan line.

6 house districts in the Toledo ara.

31 in the rest of the state with about 1/2 in the Columbus metro area.

So the extra house district in each region could come from Summit, Franklin, Warren as being somewhat central in the region.

[jimrtex]

I had an idea.   99 House seats/16 congressional seats is 6.1875

So if you apportioned 96 house districts among 16 congressional districts you could then distribute the population of the remaining 3 house districts.

If you divided the state into 3 groups of 31 districts, and one groups of 6 districts, then each of the larger groups would have 5 congressional districts, with only a 0.2% error plus any residual variation because of differences among house districts.

(31/6) / (99/16) = 1.002

31 house districts in NE Ohio covers out through Lorain, Medina, Stark, and Mahoning.

31 house districts in western Ohio, mainly in the Cincinnati to Springfield area but extending north to the Michigan line.

6 house districts in the Toledo ara.

31 in the rest of the state with about 1/2 in the Columbus metro area.

So the extra house district in each region could come from Summit, Franklin, Warren as being somewhat central in the region.

I was thinking a similar idea with senate districts. There are almost two whole districts in each CD.

BTW, my posted minority plan was scored at 149.0. It should have been 149.8 due to the special rule on city integrity preservation. How did yours turn out?

How did you find out a score?  Is the city integrity score for cities crossing county boundaries?  Does that apply for legislative districts?

Using the 99 house districts has the advantage of distributing the error, instead of having one senate district.  After splitting the state up into groups of 31 house districts which is not too hard to do, since it fits real well in the NE, and in the SE it is obvious that Cincinnati to Springfield is not enough and you don't want to intrude on Columbus, is to create 5 groups of 6 house districts and one with 7.  I then eliminated county cuts before starting to balance populations.  It did a pretty good job of distributing the districts.  Not very good on competitiveness.  I've done a lot of refining but mainly to move some seats into the barely competitive.

I have 3 county fragments in Cuyahoga County, and 1 each in Franklin and Hamilton (or zero depending on how you are counting).  Cleveland and Cincinnati are each in a single district, with the VRA district at 48.5% BVAP.

Using cities to cross county boundaries is really pretty sleazy.  The cities that are kept together are pretty much chosen arbitrarily, and it is as likely to be a toe over the line that is used to grab the whole body.  If city councils could say in advance whether they wanted to be kept together and with which county, I could see that it really serves some policy objective.  In Ohio, I don't think it does anything for elections, since they are county-administered.

If they would simply open the deviation limit for whole counties to +/- 1% it would be more useful.  In a real application, I'd bet on them having to use exact equal population which means that they're going to have be splitting counties anyhow.  And if they try to make that part of the rules, they're going to have people concentrating the splits in a single county.

They could simply break the contest into multiple parts, where the first would divide the population among groups of counties, with the plans that required the least additional adjustment to be considered the best plan.

BTW, did you know the district contiguity theme catches touch point contiguity?

[jimrtex]

BTW, my posted minority plan was scored at 149.0. It should have been 149.8 due to the special rule on city integrity preservation. How did yours turn out?

Total Score:         142.85               

                Splits (50 max):                                           35.75     (17.75H + 18S)                   

                Compactness (100 max):                            36.0        (ave of 36.06H & 36.03S)                               

                Competitiveness (49.5 max):                     13.7       [(77H/3 + 29 = 54.7)/4 = 13.7]                     

                Representational Fairness (100 max):       57.4       (26.8H + 30.6S)

 
For the house plans it wasn't worth worrying about anything other than splits,  Arguably to do so at the suffering of population equality in unconstitutional.

For the congressional plans it could be interesting whether it worth minimizing splits, if one considers the relative weighting of the scores.

[jimrtex]

I was explaining why you can't create two majority BVAP senate districts, and I thought of trying something.  And this was the best I could do: 49.70% overall, and 49.79 and 49.62% for the two districts.

Cuyahoga 2 VRA Senate Attempt (House districts)

Cuyahoga 2 VRA Senate Attempt (Senate districts)

The two districts include 6.0007 / 11 of the county population.

[jimrtex]

I was explaining why you can't create two majority BVAP senate districts, and I thought of trying something.  And this was the best I could do: 49.70% overall, and 49.79 and 49.62% for the two districts.

Cuyahoga 2 VRA Senate Attempt (House districts)

Cuyahoga 2 VRA Senate Attempt (Senate districts)

The two districts include 6.0007 / 11 of the county population.

I concur, and that's why I believe that an unconstitutional grouping of districts in Cuyahoga makes the most sense. At least one county in NE Ohio must violate the section on senate districts, so why not choose the one that gets out of the problem of the VRA at the same time? Cuyahoga has 3.66 senate districts and if the remaining 0.66 is split between two different senate districts one can use Oakwood and Glenwillow in the VRA districts.

If you include the areas with the highest percentage of BVAP that is equivalent to 6/11 of the county, you can get 50.22%

But that leaves Mayfield Heights isolated.  If you add Pepper Pike for connectivity (it is preferred to Lyndhurst because it is smaller), and drop Walton Hills and Orange you are at 50.17%.

If you abandon Mayfield Heights, and replace it with Cleveland Ward 13, and drop Walton Heights and Newburgh Heights for population equality, you get 50.18%.

And you still have to divide these into 6 house districts, that can be formed into 2 senate districts with almost identical BVAP%

When you create a house district in west Cleveland, you are going to end up around 20% BVAP, so you have to pair it with a couple of districts that overwhelm it with BVAP in the mid 60s.

I figured out a grouping that would give me 49.8%, but I can't get the senate districts to balance, one of the house districts is outside of population range, and I only have 3 majority-minority house seats.

[jimrtex]

As I look at your ward map overlaid on mine, it looks like it would be easily possible to adjust the boundaries so there was not more than one ward split between any two HDs and still have approximately the same BVAPs.

Easier said than done.

Senate Plan

House Plan

I conformed your plan to the Cleveland ward boundaries.  This resulted in the west Cleveland district having too much population.  So I swapped Ward 18 out by the airport with Ward 13 in south Cleveland.  This is an improvement in BVAP (17% vs 7%) but also dropped about 2000 people.

It also meant I had to redo the remainder of western house district.  The Cleveland ward is too big to go with Parma.   And I didn't want a Cleveland ward in the house district that goes into Medina County.  It still ends up in the senate district.

That was the easy part.

The eastern area ended up underpopulated.  You were depending on getting enough population by taking a bit off the edges of the wards.

It violates the constitution to split city wards unless it is not-feasible to draw equal population districts otherwise.  It is demonstrably feasible to create house districts without splitting any wards.

So I added in Pepper Pike and Brooklyn.  To get 6/11 of the population from units that have the highest BVAP%, you should include Mayfield Heights, Solon, and Walton Hills, and leave out Wards 7, 13, and Brooklyn.  So I ended up with Brooklyn and Pepper Pike in place of Mayfield Heights.  This actually improves the maximum percentage from 50.22% to 50.28% because you are short 2000 people.   If you drop Walton Hills it goes to 50.44%.

If you have barely enough 95% for a senate district, the house districts have to be almost perfectly split.  So I had to keep swapping Cleveland wards between the east and the west.  There is enough variation in size that you can pick up a couple of 1000 here and there.  But they weren't in the right place for the eastern house districts, so you would have to adjust those as well.  And it gets messy because the suburban cities are either larger or smaller than the wards.  I eventually got enough population the the east, but the house districts were close enough in balance that I only had one majority BVAP.

I eventually got the eastern districts too work out, but the senate district was up to 51.6%, so I had to swap some Cleveland wards and got the west back up to 49.6%.  I realized if I dropped Newburgh Heights and Cuyahoga Heights I might get close.  So I did, and calculated that it would be 50.01%.  But then I actually put the district together and it was 49.93%.  I had transcribed a number wrong.

That is why Bratenahl is now in the eastern senate district.

[jimrtex]

As I look at your ward map overlaid on mine, it looks like it would be easily possible to adjust the boundaries so there was not more than one ward split between any two HDs and still have approximately the same BVAPs.

Have you tried to enter your map on SOS web site?

Their application has ward boundaries.  The boundaries in Toledo appear to have changed some from what I had, but those in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, and Akron are the same.