Which Illinois map is better?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

1.


2.

[Bidenworth2020]

2.

[Sol]

These all seem like racial gerrymanders to me.

[muon2]

I don't see a district in either plan that would be likely to be won by the Latino candidate of choice. You can make a 59.2% HVAP district without resorting to the current earmuff plan (If you had census blocks and didn't care about the shape you could make two). I use 59.2% since that's the percentage from the 1991 plan and the courts have said that since it elected a Latino consistently (Gutierrez) the percentage is high enough for the VRA.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I don't see a district in either plan that would be likely to be won by the Latino candidate of choice. You can make a 59.2% HVAP district without resorting to the current earmuff plan (If you had census blocks and didn't care about the shape you could make two). I use 59.2% since that's the percentage from the 1991 plan and the courts have said that since it elected a Latino consistently (Gutierrez) the percentage is high enough for the VRA.

My general assumption is that 59.2% will have to come down if as the rumors are true IL gets two Hispanic seats after 2020. 59.2% has always struck me as too high a threshold anyway - though it helps if the non-Latinos in the seat are divided fairly evenly between black or white.
After all, where does one get the Latinos likely needed for two seats with 59.2% Hispanic VAP? An arm into Elgin and Schaumburg? Melrose-to-McHenry? A district criss-crossing DuPage and gobbling West Chicago on route to Aurora? I don't like the thought of such a tearing up of townships and counties.

[muon2]

I don't see a district in either plan that would be likely to be won by the Latino candidate of choice. You can make a 59.2% HVAP district without resorting to the current earmuff plan (If you had census blocks and didn't care about the shape you could make two). I use 59.2% since that's the percentage from the 1991 plan and the courts have said that since it elected a Latino consistently (Gutierrez) the percentage is high enough for the VRA.

My general assumption is that 59.2% will have to come down if as the rumors are true IL gets two Hispanic seats after 2020. 59.2% has always struck me as too high a threshold anyway - though it helps if the non-Latinos in the seat are divided fairly evenly between black or white.
After all, where does one get the Latinos likely needed for two seats with 59.2% Hispanic VAP? An arm into Elgin and Schaumburg? Melrose-to-McHenry? A district criss-crossing DuPage and gobbling West Chicago on route to Aurora? I don't like the thought of such a tearing up of townships and counties.

The important consideration is that there is at least one on the SW side of Chicago and Cook. It's pretty easy to draw one there that is compact. I don't think the 59.2% VAP figure will be relevant for 2020 if CVAP data is collected by the Census, at which point 50% CVAP will be the benchmark for the Gingles test. If 50% CVAP is possible a district under 50% could be compliant with the VRA if it can be shown that the minority would likely elect their candidate of choice.

In 2010 it was possible to make a CD that linked NW Chicago, the O'Hare area, and a strip along I-90 to the Elgin-Aurora corridor.  Because IL is losing a seat in 2020, it is unlikely that a second Latino seat will come into play, though an influence district might. Similarly the loss of a seat makes in likely that there will only be two black-majority seats, with a coalition/crossover district replacing IL-7.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

There is one important difference between the two plans that especially deserves mention. In the first one, in regards to Cook County, you generally have townships paired with parts of Chicago; one CD out of seven lies wholely within it.

But in the second one, I made an effort to divide the state into three informal zones (Chicago, suburban Cook+Kane, and the rest of the state) and thus of the six CDs within Chicago (five if you discount the O'Hare voting district), three of them are wholly within Chicago*. I would have created one all-South Side CD but realized that would be packing blacks, hence the two seats, which have been drawn in such a way to have the black VAP plurality over whites be roughly equal in both of them.

*=discounting that enclave of Norwood Park township.

On a sidenote, Cook+Kane is perfect for 8 districts, and I used that pairing to reduce the overall number of county chops. Both plans fulfill the requirement Michigan has, that no two congressional districts split two or more counties in common.

[muon2]

On a sidenote, Cook+Kane is perfect for 8 districts, and I used that pairing to reduce the overall number of county chops. Both plans fulfill the requirement Michigan has, that no two congressional districts split two or more counties in common.

With such large population deviations you shouldn't have to chop any counties outside of Chicagoland. It takes 12 CDs to cover Chicagoland and it's easy to make 6 whole county CDs downstate with a 0.5% maximum deviation.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

On a sidenote, Cook+Kane is perfect for 8 districts, and I used that pairing to reduce the overall number of county chops. Both plans fulfill the requirement Michigan has, that no two congressional districts split two or more counties in common.

With such large population deviations you shouldn't have to chop any counties outside of Chicagoland. It takes 12 CDs to cover Chicagoland and it's easy to make 6 whole county CDs downstate with a 0.5% maximum deviation.

That's true.
I was trying to see what a CD unifying all of Central Illinois' college towns would look like. I might have actually had a whole-county plan throughout all of downstate IL if I had removed one of them - that is an interesting idea to experiment with...
Guiding my thinking in the second map was the following.
Kane+Cook is 8 seats, and I need an all-Lake district. I add Burton and Richmond townships to get to quota. Now I have to deal with how to deal with DeKalb, the rest of McHenry, and Rockford. In the end it was impossible to keep them all together. So I decided to jettison DeKalb and draw a McHenry+Rockford CD. I, after much experimentation, decided the best way to do that was a single CD running all the way to Iowa. But this CD was over quota, so I needed another county split. I eventually decided to take Riley and Coral townships out of the CD.

This left me with considerable difficulties in deciding what to do with Peoria, the Quad-Cities, and DeKalb. In the end, I felt that since I had one CD running from the exurbs to IA, I had to have another. I also felt that the CD would have to gobble Peoria because if it didn't, it would have to run too far south along the MO border for it to look good on the map; in any case, I took care to include the full length of a state highway running from north to south in far eastern Henry County.

I was dead-set on my Central Illinois college towns seat and I wanted to do it in a way that minimized chops, so I decided to use it as a conduit of sorts to prevent any county from being split by both the 11th and the 18th. The map you see here was after quite a tinkering.

I also figured that it Madison+St.Clair was a must. Ultimately, I found all the counties along the Mississippi river south from St.Clair, plus Perry County to make the CD a bit more compact. In the end I got two whole-county CDs in Little Egypt.

The lines in DuPage County was a bit painful for me since I wanted an all-Will County seat. But IL does not have touch-point contiguity, and even if it did, I wouldn't have used it. I don't think it would be possible to split no townships and have reasonable lines at the same time, so I had to make due with a split of Lisle township and New Lenox township.

In the end Cook+Kane guarantees at least one chop, probably two, chops of McHenry. It also guarantees a chop of Will. This a drawback; perhaps that's why I don't see you constantly using it?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Huh, funny that I say that! Sangamon+Macon+Champaign+DeWitt+McLean+Piatt is 712,176 (-637). 712,813 is the quota.
That would have more or less fulfilled exactly what I needed on the second map. It might have led to a chop elsewhere...
If that were the case, we'd be getting rid of two chops and getting one in return.

[muon2]

You may or may not know that the current IL-13 was a gerrymander designed to link the central IL college towns in a way that would tilt as Dem as possible. They failed to win it with the favorable turnout for Obama in 2012 and haven't been close since.

I still think you need to address a Latino CD in Cook.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

You may or may not know that the current IL-13 was a gerrymander designed to link the central IL college towns in a way that would tilt as Dem as possible. They failed to win it with the favorable turnout for Obama in 2012 and haven't been close since.

I still think you need to address a Latino CD in Cook.

While the earmuffs are understandable, in that they are designed to ensure for certain that a Latino is elected, it's still unmerited packing of Latinos. There are enough Latinos in Chicagoland that I think it's better if there's 2 seats with them clearly being the top group as opposed to one seat in which they are overwhelmingly dominant by far. Not to mention I feel the earmuffs do look more ugly than I'd prefer on a map.

As for the Democratic gerrymandering of IL-13, I am well aware of it. In any case, I think that the Central Illinois cities are natural put together. I think that if they had drawn IL-13 to connect those cities together and it was purely a Central Illinois seat, it would be defendable as something besides a partisan creation. But it doesn't have just some of those cities. It has parts of Madison County (which has been cut in 3). Madison County should be whole in the 12th. The IL-13 they drew also cuts out some of the more R areas of Sangamon, Champaign, and McLean Counties, and they even took a little bit out of Shelby County, inexplicably. Too many chops.

[cinyc]

Here's an 18-district Illinois map that keeps all of Metro East (St. Louis) in one district, and gives districts to Springfield-Champaign, Peoria-Bloomington, Rockford and the Quad Cities-Quincy, along with a downstate district:



In the Chicago area, I've given the city of Chicago exactly the number of seats it deserves: outside of the sliver of the city that's in DuPage due to the airport where nobody lives but isn't in its own VTD for some reason, almost all of 4 - no more districts, no less districts. The VRA is largely satisfied, with a 62% total/58% VAP Hispanic district and two 50%+ African-American districts. IL-01 is 48% African-American VAP, but that should be enough to elect their candidate of choice. I'm sure I could get it up to above 50% with some rearrangement of the other Chicago districts if I tried, without pushing another district into the city. I've also connected McHenry County to the Chicago CSA instead of Rockford.



Thoughts?

[Sol]

Cinyc your map is quite nice looking, but I don't think having just two black districts would fly. And it seems a little questionable to leave Cicero out of a Latinx district.

[cinyc]

Cinyc your map is quite nice looking, but I don't think having just two black districts would fly. And it seems a little questionable to leave Cicero out of a Latinx district.

The first is an issue - I thought Illinois only had 2 African-American majority districts instead of 3.

Keeping Chicago together and Cicero out of the Hispanic-majority district is not an issue. I like to keep cities together, and Cicero isn't in Chicago. As long as there's a Hispanic-majority district, who is kept out is irrelevant. I'm not required to pack it. Having enough CVAP is the only issue - I think it probably does if it's 58% VAP, but DRA doesn't tell us for sure.

[muon2]

Cinyc your map is quite nice looking, but I don't think having just two black districts would fly. And it seems a little questionable to leave Cicero out of a Latinx district.

The first is an issue - I thought Illinois only had 2 African-American majority districts instead of 3.

Keeping Chicago together and Cicero out of the Hispanic-majority district is not an issue. I like to keep cities together, and Cicero isn't in Chicago. As long as there's a Hispanic-majority district, who is kept out is irrelevant. I'm not required to pack it. Having enough CVAP is the only issue - I think it probably does if it's 58% VAP, but DRA doesn't tell us for sure.

IL has three black-majority CDs but it is likely that they weren't required to have that many in 2010. IL was not a section 5 state, and section 2 does not require drawing the maximum possible number of minority districts as long as the plan has a number of likely seats roughly proportional to the share of population. OTOH eliminating a black CD in 2010 would have been politically impossible, regardless of the VRA.

The 7th Circuit ruled that 59.2% HVAP was sufficient for a Chicago-based Latino seat if CVAP is not known. It is possible to make a Latino CD entirely on the sw side of Chicago going into adjacent areas of Cook. That leaves room for 3 black-majority seats.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

A cross-city seat is inevitable because it has 3.78 CDs in its allotment. Assuming 3 CDs cover Chicago, the question is where to get the roughly 150,000 people to get the last Chicago seat to quota.

[cinyc]

A cross-city seat is inevitable because it has 3.78 CDs in its allotment. Assuming 3 CDs cover Chicago, the question is where to get the roughly 150,000 people to get the last Chicago seat to quota.

Unfortunately, racial Gerrymandering arguably required by the Voting Rights Act inevitably leads to 5 Chicago districts instead of the roughly 4 they deserve. That gives far too much influence to the city itself at the expense of its suburbs.

There is no way to draw 3 African-American and 1 Hispanic majority district without drawing baconstrip Chicago AA districts.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

A cross-city seat is inevitable because it has 3.78 CDs in its allotment. Assuming 3 CDs cover Chicago, the question is where to get the roughly 150,000 people to get the last Chicago seat to quota.

Unfortunately, racial Gerrymandering arguably required by the Voting Rights Act inevitably leads to 5 Chicago districts instead of the roughly 4 they deserve. That gives far too much influence to the city itself at the expense of its suburbs.

There is no way to draw 3 African-American and 1 Hispanic majority district without drawing baconstrip Chicago AA districts.

What is the highest black VAP one could possibly get while generally 1) keeping townships whole and 2) completely avoiding Chicago?

[cinyc]

A cross-city seat is inevitable because it has 3.78 CDs in its allotment. Assuming 3 CDs cover Chicago, the question is where to get the roughly 150,000 people to get the last Chicago seat to quota.

Unfortunately, racial Gerrymandering arguably required by the Voting Rights Act inevitably leads to 5 Chicago districts instead of the roughly 4 they deserve. That gives far too much influence to the city itself at the expense of its suburbs.

There is no way to draw 3 African-American and 1 Hispanic majority district without drawing baconstrip Chicago AA districts.

What is the highest black VAP one could possibly get while generally 1) keeping townships whole and 2) completely avoiding Chicago?

I can draw a 45.9% AA/43.9% AA VAP district in the suburbs by linking the heavily African-American south suburbs with some majority-AA west suburbs, like Maywood and Bellwood. I'm not sure if I am keeping townships whole, though. The Hispanic district spills out into the SW suburbs. The white Chicago district takes in the Norwood/Harwood Heights exclave, which is unavoidable under any map:





The two parts of the Hispanic Chicago district in Chicago are connected by Chicago precincts along the Oak Park/Chicago border. I originally linked them via Oak Park, but that ate up too much suburban population so that another district would have had to enter Chicago.

The three AA-plurality districts are 45.9%/52.0%/55.9% AA (43.9%/48.3%/53.2% AA VAP). The Hispanic-majority district is 72.7% Hispanic (67.6% VAP).

[muon2]

Here's a preview of my division of Chicago/Cook that I will use when cvparty gets to IL. 10 CDs fit into Cook+Dupage+Lake+McHenry, and all CDs are within 0.5% of the quota. The idea is that south and west Cook are used to build minority districts and then the remaining area is treated as if the townships are unchoppable units.



CD 1 is BVAP 53.9% and is 79% outside of Chicago and follows township lines in Cook.
CD 2 is BVAP 52.3% and is over 60% in Chicago.
CD 3 is HVAP 59.6% and is over 70% in Chicago.
CD 4 is minority-majority with BVAP 42.5% and is about half in Chicago.
CD 5 is HVAP 36.8% and is over 60% in Chicago.
CD 6 is entirely within Chicago.
CD 7-10 follow township lines for boundaries.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Here's a preview of my division of Chicago/Cook that I will use when cvparty gets to IL. 10 CDs fit into Cook+Dupage+Lake+McHenry, and all CDs are within 0.5% of the quota. The idea is that south and west Cook are used to build minority districts and then the remaining area is treated as if the townships are unchoppable units.



CD 1 is BVAP 53.9% and is 79% outside of Chicago and follows township lines in Cook.
CD 2 is BVAP 52.3% and is over 60% in Chicago.
CD 3 is HVAP 59.6% and is over 70% in Chicago.
CD 4 is minority-majority with BVAP 42.5% and is about half in Chicago.
CD 5 is HVAP 36.8% and is over 60% in Chicago.
CD 6 is entirely within Chicago.
CD 7-10 follow township lines for boundaries.

When we get to Illinois I'll rejig my plan to fit the Township plans. That's going to be a fun day, with all the crashes, restarts, crashes, restarts et cetera.

[muon2]

Here's the rest of my version of IL, with only Cook DuPage, Lake and Will chopped. Obama won 17 of 18 in 2008 and in 15 he exceeded his national percentage. Today the PVI is 9 D, 6 R, 3 even.