Poll re 2020 Ohio CD Map

[jimrtex]

I'm not too familiar here with the geography but is Warren here serving as a bridge or is that cut helping make a suburban concentric circle around Cincinnati? Does the Warren/Montgomery border also delineate a difference in mentalities between Dayton and Cincy?

The 4-county area of Hamilton, Butler, Warren, and Clermont has slightly more than enough population for 2 districts (2.096).  In recent times the area has had 3 districts, but the two suburban districts have had to extend way out into rural areas to pick up enough population.  And it so happens that Montgomery+Greene is just short enough of one district by the amount of excess in the 4-counties.

So it makes sense to give the excess from the 4-counties to the Dayton district as opposed to rural-districts along the Ohio River or extending up towards Toledo.

The next question is how to create the two Cincinnati districts.  Hamilton County is barely more than one district, so basing the division on counties is logical.  The other possibility is to do an east/west split, splitting both Hamilton and Butler counties.  But that may mean splitting the city of Cincinnati, or including all of Cincinnati plus taking areas in western Butler County, and that is a pretty arbitrary cut, with the primary purpose to keep two districts based in a county with the population for one district.

Warren County is one of the fastest growing counties in Ohio (or in more precise terms, one of the few counties in Ohio that is growing at all).   And the growth is spillover from Cincinnati with the city of Mason in the SW corner having become significantly larger than Lebanon.   Warren is somewhat like Butler County, which has small cities like Hamilton and Middleton that has become absorbed in the greater Cincinnati area.

I-75 goes south from Dayton through the northwestern corner of Warren.   The leafier area of Dayton is to the south, and so the part of Warren that goes in the Dayton district is definitely suburban fringe of Dayton, though there must be people who also commute southward as well.

[jimrtex]

This map includes refined county splits based on actual population of county subdivisions.  I changed the northeast a bit to keep Warren and Youngstown together and to avoid a split between Canton and Massillon.



Population methodology.  County populations are based on July 2012 Census Bureau estimates, and the April 2010 census, projected to 2020 assuming a constant percentage rate of growth.  County subdivisions are based on the  July 2011 Census Bureau estimates pro-rated to the 2020 county projection.  This underestimates population in higher growth areas, and overestimates it in low growth or declining areas.   But since only the intracounty distribution is affected and growth rates so low (or negative) it doesn't matter much to the overall distribution of the districts.

In the southwest, the split in Warren County is north of Lebanon, and clearly more under influence of Dayton than Cincinnati.  The most serious objection is that it splits Middleton which crosses the Butler-Warren county line.

The split of Franklin County has everything from Norwich around to Truro in the Springfield-South Metro district.

The Columbus district includes the fractured townships of Clinton and Franklin, the enclaves of Bexley and Whitehall, and the Upper Arlington-Marble Cliff-Grandview Heights peninsula.  About 2/9 of Columbus is in the North Metro district, along with the Dublin, Westerville, Gahanna, and the northern townships (or what is left of them): Washington, Perry, Sharon, Blendon, Plain, Miflin, and Jefferson.

The larger share of the population of Seneca County, including Fostoria and Tiffin is included with Toledo.  In a real map, a different configuration or even a different county might be split.  Likewise, most of Guernsey is included with the southern district, but Cambridge is included in the Northeast Central small cities district.

The Cleveland-East District includes Cleveland and everything east of the Cuyahoga river, plus the Brooklyn and Cuyahoga Heights peninsulas.  If Cleveland continues to decline, it might work out to include Lakewood and shift some of the southern areas out.

About 4/7 of the red district is in Cuyahoga County, with most of the the rest is in Lorain.  The portion from Medina is the most remote part from Cleveland, but that is partly because it is only 30,000 persons.  If you included part of Brunswick for example, it would have to be split.

The Summit-centered district is a combination of Akron COI, including Wadsworth and Kent, and far southern Cleveland suburbs like Brunswick, Richfield, Twinsburg, and Aurora.

The division of Mahoning around Youngstown is fairly tight.  It could be relaxed if the yellow district were brought northward into Geauga County, but I don't like the idea of splitting another county.  There is no claim of a single COI for the purple district, it is more of an aggregate of smaller COI that are grouped together based on geographical proximity.

Looking long-term the arrangement of districts in the northeast should be reasonably stable.  The orange district can expand westward, picking off older suburbs like Lakewood and Parma, while the red district sweeps eastward across Medina, and the slate district extends into Portage and Geauga counties.  The purple district the shifts southward fairly quickly.

If Ohio loses another district in 2030 it would probably be the lavender district, which doesn't have an anchor (either a large city or the edge of the state).  The Columbus districts won't need more more population, but will be shoved eastward by the western and southwestern districts.  The 5 northeastern districts will need about 300,000 more people, either from internal growth which is close to non-existent, or expanding westward from Canton.

[jimrtex]

A burb surrounded by the city counts as part of the city. That bit is easy.

I don't see it as easy at all. From the point of view of representation either the CD is entirely within a city or not. The aggrieved parties are those in the non-city parts. Whitehall is about 18K and surrounded and is comparable in size to Evergreen Park, IL at 20K which is almost, but not quite surrounded by Chicago. I can say with certainty that the folks of Evergreen Park would rather be in a CD that includes a bunch of other suburbs, even if Chicago still makes up a majority, rather than in a CD which is only Chicago and EP. I would guess that the folks of Whitehall would feel likewise. Why should Grandview Heights be in better political shape than Bexley since it is surrounded as well when taken with Arlington Heights. In fact I could argue that a more compact shape would chop the eastern parts of your CD-6 in favor of GH and AH and Columbus to the north. I think the logic is clear, a CD that is not entirely within a city is what it is, regardless of whether the other parts are surrounded by a city or not.

I think in the case of Bexley and Whitehall you could also be getting into VRA problems by not including them in a Columbus district.  They are much whiter than the surrounding areas of Columbus.  It would not be surprising to find that is part of their existing in the first place.   So end up either with discontiguous white spots, or corridors through black areas to link them to the outer suburbs.

The current Columbus (in Franklin) population is very close to the ideal size for a 2020 CD.  Were Columbus not growing, I could see making the CD coterminous with the city.  But it is growing at about the same rate as the rest of the county - Columbus annexes develop-able land in exchange for utilities, so it is still increasing housing units.

That would the only case that I would consider places like Whitehall and Bexley to be contiguous with all the other non-Columbus areas of the county.

But since Columbus must be split, I don't think it is logical to use all the split parts to connect to all the islands, and went with a more conventional split of Columbus.  Splitting the northern part of Columbus to place with the North Metro district fits well with my concept of making the South Metro district also extend to Springfield and Newark, and the fact that strongest growth in the Columbus area is to the north.

I included Franklin and Clinton townships within Columbus.  Clinton has very little population and the two archipelagos are fairly isolated.  Franklin and southwest Columbus are a real hodgepodge.   If all the Franklin fragments were connected, you would be including a lot of Columbus.

I can see including the Upper Arlington peninsula in the suburban area.  Upper Arlington was originally part of Perry Township, which was not a square Jefferson township, but a knife-shaped area from the Delaware County line southward.  Upper Arlington was the tip.  But if Upper Arlington is included with the suburbs, you would probably need to include the portion of Columbus immediately to its north in the city district, and cut off most of the connectivity.

If Upper Arlington were included, I would have no problem including Marble Cliff and Grandview Heights as well.

[jimrtex]

I think in the case of Bexley and Whitehall you could also be getting into VRA problems by not including them in a Columbus district.  They are much whiter than the surrounding areas of Columbus.  It would not be surprising to find that is part of their existing in the first place.   So end up either with discontiguous white spots, or corridors through black areas to link them to the outer suburbs.

I note that Torie mentioned keeping east Columbus together for black neighborhood integrity, but by that token Reynoldsburg should be in the CD as well. Since there is no VRA district possible in that area, I would shy away from that justification, unless it is applied consistently to the areas both in and adjacent to the city.

Would it be possible to make a case under Section based on reducing minority influence?  If you were trying to create a district that was as Black as possible, it might include Whitehall, where there has been some breakdown of the white island status.

An interesting problem in Ohio is how to hand the cities which don't have township status, such as Gahanna, Reynoldsburg, or Grove City.   I treated them as essentially unincorporated, but that is in part due to lack of estimate data.

[jimrtex]

Michigan has "villages," as they in contradistinction to incorporated cities, under Michigan law can be chopped to bits. They clearly should be subject to chopping if the alternative is to chop incorporated municipalities or if it reduces erosity to a substantial extent (unlikely as to the latter since in most instances unincorporated villages or post office addresses, or whatever they are, tend in most instances  to  be small in geographic area).

Ohio distinguishes municipalities as either cities or villages based on their census population (5000 is the threshold for a city).  After the Secretary of State gets the census report it tells each municipality whether it is a city or village for the next decade.

In creating House districts, municipalities are actually the area to have strongest resistance to chopping.  This is not always apparent since the process of creating districts is presented in the opposite order: (a) Don't chop counties; but if not feasible (b) don't chop townships; but if not feasible (c) don't chop municipalities; but if not feasible (d) don't chop wards.

Ohio is messy because municipalities can cross township and county lines, so that a line follows a county or township boundary chops municipalities.  Municipalities can also have township status, but it is also possible that not all of a municipality has township status. In particular parts that cross county lines, can't since townships never cross county lines.

For redistricting purposes, Ohio should normalize its geography.  Municipalities should always be considered part of a single township and county (the one with the most population).  This would have the effect of extending Franklin County outward to include the tentacles of Columbus, Dublin, and other cities.  Reynoldsburg be within one township.  This would result in proper nesting of counties, townships, and municipalities.

Entities should also be considered self-contiguous, and the definition of a contiguous district changed from an area surrounded by a continuous line, to an aggregate of contiguous areas.

[jimrtex]

This is what I drew, and it is based off the map Jimrtex drew in the other thread. The 1st district which is composed of rural and small towns is the key. This allows you to draw compact districts around metro areas. Communities of interest can be manipulated for partisan interests, but keeping metro areas together is just common sense and I don't see how it is controversial. In my map you have a district that takes in the western suburbs of Cleveland, and another district that takes in the eastern suburbs and the southern suburbs (or northern suburbs of Akron, I bet many commute to both cities in those areas). Then you have a Akron and Canton based district. The Youngstown district takes in a couple of Appalachian counties along the Ohio river, which isn't ideal, but close enough to that area that I think it works. And lastly, it ends up in a very nice and tidy district taking in Toledo and other industrial type small cities along lake Erie. I think this is the best possible map for northern Ohio.

I would have a rule against double spanning, where two or more districts span a county line.  This tends to make the district boundaries at least somewhat parallel to county lines, rather than stringing extended areas together.

So I would reject two districts crossing the Summit-Portage line.  The Akron district would go a bit further north, and the salmon district a bit more of Portage County.  I can't tell sure whether the yellow district extends into Lake County, but I would not permit that either.

A possible consideration is that Ohio shale oil area is centered in Carroll County, but since it has little population, oil field service companies are setting up in places like Canton.

[jimrtex]

In the meantime, here is a screen shot of the population variances. And here is a link to the county population projections for the counties in 2020. Just select Ohio from the list of states drop down to get the county numbers for Ohio. Remember if you switch out population growth counties, for population losing ones, you will need to make adjustments. Good luck.

On another issue, I see that our data sets are quite different and that can also make it hard to reconcile our maps. jimrtex and I use the census estimate data and project it forward assuming a constant growth rate equal to the rate so far this decade. Your link is using some substantially higher rates, so for example I project the state will be at 11.586 M in 2020, but the linked site projects 11.682 M which is almost 100K larger. They also don't say how they make their projections since I presume that is their proprietary info. The extra growth in their model is not distributed uniformly, either. Here's a list with both numbers for 2020 side by side in thousands.

They (Proximity One) appear to have much larger suburban ring growth.  For example, I have about 6K growth for Medina (3.5% for the decade), while they have 22K, about 13%.

[jimrtex]

This is my fix for Canton. Instead of trying to park Medina somewhere whole, I let it be the subject of a chop. In Cuyahoga I'm going with my chop described above, until someone can convince me that my earlier version isn't a GOP-favoring racial gerrymander. There are only three county chops beyond what's needed and I think the districts would pass the shape test of any public panel.



Edit: Here are the erosity scores by CD:
1: 8
2: 4
3: 10
4: 22
5: 9
6: 22
7: 17
8: 2
9: 25
10: 16
11: 18
12: 8
13: 10
14: 6
15: 3
Total: 180/2 = 90
This is an improvement on the first plan I put up, so the discussion drove a better result without creating more county chops.

Which links wouldn't you count on my map?  Just quickly glancing, I'd score yours at 192/2.



Not related:

The following Urban Areas have 50% or more of the population of multiple counties:

Cincinnati: Hamilton 96%, Clermont 74%, Butler 68%, Warren 54%
(Cincinnati UA includes Hamilton city, but not Middleton)

Cleveland: Cuyahoga 99%, Lake 93%, Medina 51%.
Lorain/Elyria is a separate UA, as is Akron.  I suspect that the growth of northeastern Portage is just enough to peel Portage from Akron, Portage is 46% in Akron UA, 18% in Cleveland UA.

Columbus: Franklin 98%, Delaware 81%.  Spillover is fairly small, and Newark and Lancaster are fairly significant towns.

Dayton: Montgomery 94%, Greene 78%.

Youngstown: Mahoning 82%, Trumbull 73%.

[jimrtex]

This is my fix for Canton. Instead of trying to park Medina somewhere whole, I let it be the subject of a chop. In Cuyahoga I'm going with my chop described above, until someone can convince me that my earlier version isn't a GOP-favoring racial gerrymander. There are only three county chops beyond what's needed and I think the districts would pass the shape test of any public panel.



Edit: Here are the erosity scores by CD:
1: 8
2: 4
3: 10
4: 22
5: 9
6: 22
7: 17
8: 2
9: 25
10: 16
11: 18
12: 8
13: 10
14: 6
15: 3
Total: 180/2 = 90
This is an improvement on the first plan I put up, so the discussion drove a better result without creating more county chops.

Which links wouldn't you count on my map?  Just quickly glancing, I'd score yours at 192/2.

Here's my list of contiguous but not connected counties:
Darke-Montgomery
Clinton-Clermont
Madison-Greene
Ross-Hocking
Muskingum-Noble

All of these come into play as boundaries on my map. All but Muskingum-Noble are on boundaries of your map. If I counted correctly there are 97 X's on your map and two should be discarded based on my list above. I can't tell if any should be added from the Columbus district so I'll ignore that. It looks like there are two more cut links in Guernsey. That would put the erosity at 97.

How is the extension of 14 into Ashtabula scored?

I think you are gaming the scoring system by cutting off Hamilton from Butler, and to a lesser extent Cuyahoga from Lake.

The OH-1 part of Hamilton has an extremely long panhandle that does not appear to have any reason other than to reduce the link count.

The non-connection of Darke-Montgomery illustrates the probelm with using highways as links.  The North Dayton-Greenviile Pike is obviously a direct route between the two cities, but because it clips a corner of Miami, it doesn't count.  Muskingum-Noble is perhaps arguable, but the real reason is the shortness of the border.   I wonder if a simplified border length would not be a better measure.

Guernsey doesn't connect with Tuscarawas except along I-77 going north from Cambridge.  What is the Guernsey node for the blue part of the county?  Whatever it is, there isn't a very direct route from Zanesville.

[jimrtex]

Now for my thoughts on methodology.

...

Another observation I would make about assessing systems with multiple criteria is to reduce the scoring to simple integer measures. Chops automatically have this feature. In the OH competition chops, competitiveness, and political fairness all were based on simple integers (sometimes divided so it wasn't obvious), but compactness was a mathematical entity that ha many digits of precision. That allowed one to game the system to some degree by concentrating on eking out hundredths of a point of improvement on that measure without substantially improving the plan. The coarser nature of the other measures meant that one had to make a substantial change to make a real improvement.  A better plan should be substantially better, not incrementally better, to warrant consideration. The use of course measures for chops and erosity also allows one to easily justify population deviations under Tennant. If erosity is a precision measure that can be tweaked by movement of parts of counties and munis, it will be inevitable that population equality will draw mappers into a necessary hierarchy of splits like MI. I would like to keep whole county solutions in the mix, and so if there is an erosity requirement, it must be coarse.

The competitiveness and fairness measures used in Ohio encouraged ratcheting and titration.  If a district was switched from a D-R difference from 5.01% to 4.99% it would score higher though there was marginal improvement of competitiveness.

The effect on fairness of moving a 60-40 precinct is much greater than swapping it with a 55-45 precinct along a district boundary.  This leads to variations in district population intended to produce political results.  Even if "fairness" and "competitiveness" are seen as positive goals it should not be used as justification for population variance.

The problem with non-integer values is when they are converted to rankings, such as to measure best plans.  If they were use to measure relative quality, as is a plan good enough, then there is not the problem of tiny changes giving an exaggerated effect.

I do think that at least one hierarchy is useful. That is the notion of apportionment regions of whole counties championed by jimrtex. A plan can first be assessed at the level of apportionment regions then again at the district level. That gives a commission the ability to see plans at the big picture level first. Your plan has four regions and can be compared to other four region plans, while mine has eight regions of whole counties. For a given number of regions, it's much easier to test for Pareto optimality. For example all four region plans would be assessed based on population and erosity and non-optimal plans would be discarded. After selecting a set of optimal regional plans, the commission can compare the plans at the district level independent of region count. The AZ commission took a two tier approach this cycle, not based on regions and erosity, but on "grid" districts and compactness. It helped them look at the big design before getting into details.

[jimrtex]

I think you are gaming the scoring system by cutting off Hamilton from Butler, and to a lesser extent Cuyahoga from Lake.

The OH-1 part of Hamilton has an extremely long panhandle that does not appear to have any reason other than to reduce the link count.

The factors that I used in the Hamilton and Cuyahoga chops was to maintain wholly connected chops and to reduce internal erosity. Sharonville overlaps the border between Hamilton and Butler, so to keep it together and not double chop I needed to extend along the northern border of Hamilton. I do agree that my counting for chops can lead to gaming the system, noting that your chop of Warren is less erose by my measure than mine is. I think a rule about minimizing erosity within the county, using local roads to determine connections would reduce the possibility of such antics.

The extension of Sharonville is from Hamilton into Butler, and cuts a subdivision, properties, and probably houses.  If integrity of cities is considered important, it would be better to adjust the county boundaries to match the city boundaries for redistricting purposes.  So in this case all of Sharonville would be treated as if it were in Hamilton County.

The non-connection of Darke-Montgomery illustrates the probelm with using highways as links.  The North Dayton-Greenviile Pike is obviously a direct route between the two cities, but because it clips a corner of Miami, it doesn't count.  Muskingum-Noble is perhaps arguable, but the real reason is the shortness of the border.   I wonder if a simplified border length would not be a better measure.

When we looked at WA, I concluded that counting any contiguous county did not effectively change the ranking of plans compared to using highway-defined connections. If highway-defined connections are used for contiguity, then it's simpler to have one map of connections, rather than one for contiguity and one for erosity.

Though it could  change the relative quality of the plans.

Guernsey doesn't connect with Tuscarawas except along I-77 going north from Cambridge.  What is the Guernsey node for the blue part of the county?  Whatever it is, there isn't a very direct route from Zanesville.

I used Byesville for the node. OH 146, 313, 660 and 209 provide a path from Zanesville. I agree that there is no connection from Tuscarawas, as I had mistaken a numbered county road for a state road.

Byesville is part of the Cambridge Urban Cluster, and two miles south of the I-70, I-77 interchange.  Your route is 51 minutes versus 30 minutes on the direct route.