US House Redistricting: Iowa

[S019]

You are not allowed to chop counties at all in Iowa

[S019]

https://twitter.com/allymutnick/status/1438520066316832768

[S019]

I am expecting something like this to be drawn.

As said before, one of the conditions of rejection is that you have to ask the mappers to produce a lower pop div than the previous proposal. So the Polk-Iowa City map is never going to get spit out by the algorithm, excluding the fact that the compactness also is a stated criteria. A map like this could only work if the leg rejects the three commission maps, and it is unclear if the court would give extra time for gerrymandering after rejecting 3 hypothetical proposals, or more likely simply say three strikes your out.

Wouldn't the deviations on this map be too high too, I thought you need lesser deviation each time, and that also applies to the legislature-drawn maps, no?

[S019]

I am expecting something like this to be drawn.

As said before, one of the conditions of rejection is that you have to ask the mappers to produce a lower pop div than the previous proposal. So the Polk-Iowa City map is never going to get spit out by the algorithm, excluding the fact that the compactness also is a stated criteria. A map like this could only work if the leg rejects the three commission maps, and it is unclear if the court would give extra time for gerrymandering after rejecting 3 hypothetical proposals, or more likely simply say three strikes your out.

Wouldn't the deviations on this map be too high too, I thought you need lesser deviation each time, and that also applies to the legislature-drawn maps, no?

Yes, you do. The de jure justification for rejection is too high div, of course there are other de facto concerns. This is why Polk-Iowa City become impossible, cause there is not way to get the div lower than proposal 1 for that district, excluding the fact it would get removed from possible consideration by the algorithm on compactness grounds.

As a follow up, I attempted maps based on the Des Moines to Iowa City sink and both of them fell far short of the average deviation of Map 1 (around 68 people), let alone Map 3

https://davesredistricting.org/join/9fd6260a-0866-4bfe-b4d3-b600192eab5e

https://davesredistricting.org/join/9739ab0e-0ecc-4715-a455-d9e4c2abe498

I just don't see these maps happening