Atlas Redistricting Commission

[jimrtex]

District Builder is holding contests:

https://medium.com/districtbuilder/map-across-america-a-national-redistricting-competition-6ad02d18826c

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They claim that you have to draw the map in District Builder, but I doubt that they can actually distinguish assuming there is an import.

[jimrtex]

My submission.
I sought to keep municipalities and counties together, while still respecting other CoI and having compact districts. I was able to achieve a map that split zero municipalities in the entire state.
The urban seats are 4 and 5, the suburban seats are 2 and 3, and rural seats are 1, 7, and 8. 6 is a mix of suburban and rural.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/29e87896-0a99-45d6-8f48-a63aae1875e7

You might want to keep the current boundary in the north, which is designed to place different reservations in different districts along with associated off-reservation populations, apparently at the desire of the tribal authorities.

[jimrtex]

My submission.
I sought to keep municipalities and counties together, while still respecting other CoI and having compact districts. I was able to achieve a map that split zero municipalities in the entire state.
The urban seats are 4 and 5, the suburban seats are 2 and 3, and rural seats are 1, 7, and 8. 6 is a mix of suburban and rural.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/29e87896-0a99-45d6-8f48-a63aae1875e7

You might want to keep the current boundary in the north, which is designed to place different reservations in different districts along with associated off-reservation populations, apparently at the desire of the tribal authorities.

Thoughts on the most recent changes in the DRA link?

I'd want to avoid the split of St.Cloud. The Twin Cities metro didn't have 5/8 of the state population, but had much more than 4/8. So St.Cloud was added in 2001 when they switched to the 5:3 configuration (thank Jesse Ventura for recognizing that). There really isn't enough population for a whole NE district so it was encroaching into Chisago and Isanti. St.Cloud didn't really belong with the Twin Cities and that is why Stearns was split.

Now the Twin Cities metro (11 counties) is closer to 4/8 so doesn't need St. Cloud, but now St. Cloud is needed to get the NE district up to enough population. St.Cloud is in Stearns, Benton, and Sherburne counties. You've got Benton, so I would include Haven Twp., and the portion of St.Cloud in Sherburne. You might include a couple more townships, but go much further and you're beginning to get into the more Twin Cities-oriented portion of the county. The interstate makes it too easy to commute. Much of the growth in Wright is spillover from Sherburne, rather than due west from Hennepin.

Target is releasing zillions of space in downtown Minneapolis. They found that most of the workers can easily work remotely, but with a hybrid plan where they might come into the office a couple of days per week. They are moving out to Brooklyn Park. If you only need to come into the office two days a week, you start looking to living further out, where new housing is cheaper, it is safer, and the schools are better.

For population I'd put Wadena back in the western district. The concerns I had were further north. Wadena is only about 2% AIAN. Compare with Cass and Beltrami.

I'm not sure about Hubbard. It might have to be split if it includes part of the Leech Lake Reservation, so I'd probably leave it alone. A real commission would get feedback at the hearings in Bemidji and Brainerd.

[jimrtex]

I don't know the rules of the game here, but does MN state law require that CD's have exactly populations, and if so, does that matter? The exactly equal population metric tanks the ability to zero out muni chops, which is the justification I presume for Tim's map to have that extra county chop into Anoka.

The Muon2 game was fueled by allowing population deviations up to the federal 1% cap, which allowed and drove working within that 1% to lose chops as an important metric.

Minnesota would have a hard time justifying any deviation. The best they could come up is that block populations are not accurate (were deliberately obscured by the Census Bureau).

You don't want to give a federal judge any pretext to rule against your plan.