Poll re 2020 Ohio CD Map

[traininthedistance]

I'm not a huge fan of the northeastern corner you have for all three maps.  Districts 10 and 11 seem reasonable, but 12, 14, and 15 strike me as a very poor representation of how that region naturally divides.  In particular, I would lobby for an Akron-Canton district, instead of your District 14, which just screams gerrymander.

I think what I'd do is:

* Pull 15 out of Summit, and let it drop down closer to Youngstown and Cleveland (pushing 11 west, oh well)
* Have 14 withdraw from Akron and go south instead, possibly even eating into the northern portion of 13, which seems to me a better cultural fit.
* 12 becomes Summit, Stark, and whatver leftovers are necessary
* 10 can go south to Wayne, then, or further west pushing on 9.

I'd also consider a Dayton-Springfield district in the southwest.

[traininthedistance]

I see what you're saying about CD-15, Torie, but

Plus Akron and Youngstown/Warren have a lot in common, more so than with Canton

is just totally, completely, in every way wrong.  Akron and Canton have a lot more in common with each other.  Take a look at the urbanization patterns, just for starters: Cleveland-Akron-Canton is basically one continuous conurbation, whereas there is a definite gap between them and Youngstown.  The Census even recognizes Cleveland-Akron as one CSA; they don't add in Canton but maybe they should.

And, sure, my proposal would likely be a tiny bit more pro-Dem, but it wouldn't be universally so: CD-10 would go from marginal to lean Pub as compensation.

[traininthedistance]

By and large, I think the best attempt I've seen of the recent maps is jimrtex's one:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=124180.msg3722805#msg3722805

Breaking the state into regions (Cincy/Dayton, Columbus, Toledo, NE, and the rural bits) and then balancing by population strikes me as the right approach; and both the regions he came up with, as well as the subdivisons of those regions, are pretty good.

I still don't like that Springfield gets stranded from Dayton/the southwest and stuck in with a Columbus outskirts district, but the math is pretty compelling that something in that area has to lose out, so I accept it.

The one modification I'd make to jimrtex's map is in the northeast: not the boundaries of the northeast region itself, but the division within it.  I think that, when you're looking at urban areas, you need to set aside a fetish for county boundaries, and look at urbanization patterns, municipal boundaries, and other such subregions.  And, while this has led me to advocate for an Akron/Canton district, there's actually one part of that map where such an approach is even more urgent: Youngstown/Warren.  So, with that in mind, here's roughly what I'd do in the Northeast:



I did not look at partisan data at all; I did try to make sure the Cleveland district was more overpopulated than the other four as well as less than 50 percent white, but that's it.  Besides that, I went by regions: Mahoning and Ohio Valleys, Akron/Canton, the Cleveland core, the western suburbs.  Ashtabula/eastern and southern suburbs is a bit of a hodgepodge, yes, but there is absolutely no way around that (and, yes, sending that district down to Warren would make it more of a hodgepodge from CoI standards).

[traininthedistance]

I like the fact that you keep Trumbull and Mahoning together. They are a natural CoI like Montgomery/Greene. I disagree that Ashtabula with Trumbull is any worse than with Lake. Lake is clearly part of the Cleveland suburban ring. Ashtabula is a largely rural county and is not in either the Cleveland or Youngstown metro area by census definition (Astabula is its own micropolitan area). I don't see any good reason to make a district erose or to split the county just to keep part of Ashtabula with the Cleveland metro.

I definitely agree that Ashtabula is its own thing that doesn't really fit perfectly anywhere.  It could just as easily be a part of the Trumbull/Mahoning district as with the eastern Cleveland burbs district, depending on how the population math shakes out by 2020.

[traininthedistance]

I like that map a lot and had begun drafting something very similar myself. I agree that Ashtabula County basically goes where you need it. It has little in common with any other county. Draw the map and put Ashtabula wherever you need to based on how the rest of NE Ohio shakes out. Splitting Ashtabula to balance population isn't really a problem, though; southern Ashtabula is very rural and has nothing in common with the areas along the lake, really. It's important to recognize that county lines poorly reflect communities of interest.

It may be true that county lines don't reflect real CoI's but they are a well-established proxy for a CoI. Even the Census uses them as building blocks to define metropolitan areas. Using them as a proxy is important since it provides an objective criterion for judging a map.

Not really. County lines are a crutch, not an objective criterion. They're for people who aren't willing to be intellectually serious enough to actually try to examine the settlement patterns of a given area. Maybe courts are lazy, but we should demand better.

In rural areas, county lines are actually meaningful (since people out there identify more strongly with their county government) and should be given deference when possible.  In metro areas, not so much.  I would love to see the Census try to expand their NECTA areas (or a similar municipality-based metro area measurement) to other parts of the country.  They certainly have the ability to do so in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, at the very least.

[traininthedistance]

A burb surrounded by the city counts as part of the city. That bit is easy. Here is a map with the least erosity of all, in which the Columbus CD is within exclusively the city (except for surrounded burbs). Some of the city is outside the CD, but nothing not city is within other than surrounded burbs. Maybe there are two or three weird county precincts or something, but to just chop the sh*t out of the city because there are a couple of odd precincts is a paradigm of the perfect being the enemy of the good. A precinct that is itself split I just don't count, and ignore the island within the city. The weird precincts create their own exception to all rules really. We are talking about a handful of people.

A lagniappe of the map is that it makes my Ohio-05 exclusively a rural CD, with just two CD's taking in the Columbus metro area basically. That's a beautiful thing. And it gives the Dems a chance in 2022 to take OH-07, as it rapidly trends Dem, creating a swing CD, as a nice little desert (OH-07 had a GOP PVI of 6.7% in 2008).

The more I think about it, the more important reducing erosity is. It's just job one, along with minimizing county chops, which is almost as important, but arguably not quite when it comes to metro unity issues. This map gets rid of the tri-chop of Franklin County.

This is a lot better than your earlier map.  The only thing I really don't like is CD-10; certainly it should be possible to rotate things within 8, 9 and 10 to keep Elyria and Lorain together (and, as a bonus, Ashland/Mansfield in without introducing any more county chops or really upping the erosity at all.

I do like the ring around Columbus on CoI grounds, but one should make sure to keep road contiguity, and I'd definitely regard it as more of a luxury than a necessity.

[traininthedistance]

That rotation will make OH-08 too erose. As OH-09 sucks up more of Wood County, and then some, OH-08 has nowhere to go to pick up its lost population, without getting substantially more erose, and wandering. As you can see, OH-04 is kind of boxed in between OH-08 and the Dayton and Columbus and Cinci metro areas, so it can't be pushed at all, without substantial map degradation.) Both OH-04 and OH-08, but particularly OH-08, were hell to draw. Again, I think erosity reduction along with chop minimization (with the possible exception as to chops of keeping metro areas together, to which I also give a high priority), is job one. I think it is what the public expects, and should have a right to expect.

Anyway, I did the best I could to get OH-09 out of Lorain County, and got about half of its population out, before running into a wall, as described above.

Yes, the map is much better than earlier drafts of mine. Thanks.

Well, I take that back in part. Ashland County is potentially playable. Below is another option, which makes OH-09 less erose, but OH-10, and OH-08 in particular (and OH-08 looks kind of nasty now with that choke point it has by virtue of being kicked out of Wood County), more erose. Close call. There should be some sort of overall erosity point system which dictates which version of the map is deemed superior.

You could always push the Toledo district further west: Fulton County is part of the Toledo metro.  I think further rotation is possible and arguably desirable, up to and including putting Sandusky in CD-10.  I would not necessarily be opposed to having Sandusky in any of those three districts, actually; like Ashtabula it is its own thing according to the Census Bureau and you put it where you need extra population.

Obviously I'd like to see Lorain County made whole, and would also consider Holmes (and to a lesser extent Wayne) to be a better cultural fit in 8.  But even just giving CD-9 Fulton in exchange for that portion of Seneca and maybe some of Wood ought to be an improvement on the erosity front.

[traininthedistance]

Not satisfied yet, and going for more eh?  Greedy!

Anyway, you are not playing the anti-erosity game, so we are playing different games. Muon2 and I are trying to come up with tight rules, so that the communities of interest game is relegated to the dust bin of history. In that game, you hire shills to claim who is in love with whom, and where, and just who is beyond the pale, when in reality few in the public square give a darn - just the political gamesmen care (with the PVI data right on their little laptops).

So the idea is to have tight rules, along with procedural safeguards, and end up with something that looks easy on the eyes, such that it at least seems facially fair to Joe Six Pack, with which team that wins and which loses just a roll of the black box "formulaic" dice.

As to procedural safeguards, maybe with the point system, ala something akin to the Iowa system, present the map with the highest point number first, and either party can object, in which event  a second map with the second highest number of points is offered, as to which the other party (but not the first objecting party), could object, and then if both parties don't agree to the third map, you have a coin toss or something between the three maps, or a court picks one of the three. If the point counts are close enough between a set of maps, to make the game less itself "gameable," one map from the set of maps within the point range (maybe starting with the second map, so the highest point numbered map always gets considered), could be selected by a coin toss, so that neither party knows exactly which map will be offered as the second, and if need be, third, choices.

One needs to put some risk into going for the gold, so the players are more willing to take the bronze right off the bat if need be, rather then run the risk of ending up on the ropes and then crashing to the floor in a partisan knockout.

Well, yes, I consider metro area contiguity to be more important than erosity, though I do certainly put erosity quite high on my ideal "balancing test"- really, just behind VRA concerns, metro contiguity, and keeping municipalities whole (sub for counties, but only in truly rural areas).

As I mentioned upthread, I wish the Census Bureau put out NECTA-style determinations for the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, where there isn't really any area for which the county is the lowest level of government.  If they did that, then it would be possible to develop a truly objective and nuanced standard for metro contiguity, and we could work from there.  In the South and West, okay, you'd still need to stick to counties, though hopefully there would be enough good sense and discretion for people to be willing to do things like split off the really empty parts of Riverside and San Bernardino.

I do not think that an entirely automated redistricting process is desirable.  Very stringent "fair" requirements, yes.  But tying everything to one particular number, absolutely not.

[traininthedistance]

I should add that yes, I am aware that "communities of interest" is rather gameable, and as such we should be looking for objective proxies which are less gameable.  The things I am talking about- municipal/township boundaries, metro area lines, and urbanized areas, are all things which are in fact objective (for the latter two, we go with whatever the Census says). 

When a county needs to be split we can look at minimizing splits of internal structures like townships and munis. Ideally one would take the same approach with large cities that need to be split. In many cases cities have well defined planning areas and I would make those the units that should not be split without strong cause.

Yes, this is a good point.  I'd take it one further and posit that, within urbanized areas, keeping townships/municipalities/(wards or planning areas within large cities) together should even take priority over keeping counties together.