Using urban county clusters in MI

[Torie]

Moderator's note: This thread originated in a larger thread about partisan/nonpartisan gerrymandering. For that reason some of the references point to posts outside of the thread. Much of the work on this thread evolved into the discussion about urban county clusters, so it has been consolidated into its own thread.


I know everyone was desperately awaiting my "fair" non-partisan Michigan map for the 2012-2020 cycle hewing to the Torie redistricting algorithms. Given who is in office, the Pubs picked up one seat for their gerrymandering efforts (MI-07 - the Pub gerrymander was all about containing Ann Arbor as it turned out). Well, MI-11 might have fallen, given the antics in that seat in 2012 (or Peters would have chosen to run in that seat and won it), but that seat would be a tough hold for the Dems if that happened (with Peters then running for the Senate in 2014). Have a nice day everyone.

cc: sbane

[muon2]

I know everyone was desperately awaiting my "fair" non-partisan Michigan map for the 2012-2020 cycle hewing to the Torie redistricting algorithms. Given who is in office, the Pubs picked up one seat for their gerrymandering efforts (MI-07 - the Pub gerrymander was all about containing Ann Arbor as it turned out). Well, MI-11 might have fallen, given the antics in that seat in 2012, but that seat would be a tough hold for the Dems if that happened. Have a nice day everyone.

cc: sbane

This plan does not seem to hew to your usual standards for fine maps. The slice through Kent stands out as particularly messy, and ideally the Bay City-Saginaw separation should be avoided. It get hard for me to craft an erosity measure for your plans as you seem to move further away from the use of microchops with each map. That moves the chop-erosity balance point away from a natural equilibrium.

[Torie]

Muon2, geography and population numbers drove me to the Kent County chop. It is a pretty clean chop actually, with most of the Grand Rapids metro area kept whole (yes, there is that one burb jut, but see if you can do better with the Kent County chop avoiding locality chops given the balance of my map (I suspect not)). The Bay City-Saginaw comment sounds more like a communities of interest issue, which I thought we had both jettisoned (unless perhaps it is an absolutely obvious one, and all other things are close to equal).

I seek out micro-chops, and there is one in this map (at the cost of a bit more erosity for MI-06), but not at the cost of substantially more erosity. I tried every county combo reasonably possible bearing in mind erosity issues seeking a mirco-chop for MI-01, but no dice. Once you are beyond a micro-chop, I still bear in mind the degree of the chop, but again, not at the cost of much more erosity. In the Detroit metro area, the counties are of such high population, that smaller chops are just not possible, and while maybe the chop could have been smaller if say, MI-05 picked up Huron County, and lost most of the Lepeer chop, or had a small chop into Genesee of Huron has more than MI-05's share of Lapeer), the extra erosity was just not worth it.

And yes, MI-12 is hideous, but the VRA made me do it, plus avoiding MI-11 chopping into Wayne County.

If you think there is a better map that I would like more (yes, me, not you, given my order of priorities, I'm all eyes).  I am not claiming that there is not a better map out there; I just couldn't "find" it if there is.

Below is an alternative chop for Kent, but as you can see from the population discrepancy, it will be at the cost of a locality chop, which I avoided.

[traininthedistance]

What's the maximum population tolerance you're using, Torie?  I tend to try and keep each district under 1K away from the ideal, but I'm wondering if you're going for something more stringent here.

Also, Bay City-Saginaw should be covered under paying attention to metro areas, as they are a CSA together.

[traininthedistance]

Here's another potential Michigan, using my usual +-1K population tolerance, and splitting no municipalities except for Detroit:



Notable features: the UP/North (1) and Lansing ( districts are whole-county; 2 and 3 together take in the whole of the Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland CSA and look damn good doing so, the Saginaw-Bay City CSA is made whole; both black-majority districts are at least 54% AA by total pop and 52.5% by VAP.

Flint with the Thumb rather than Saginaw may seem weird to some... but Flint is in the Detroit CSA along with Lapeer and St. Clair Counties, so it actually makes better sense than the status quo w/r/t metro contiguity.  The only actually dodgy part of this map is that both VRA districts leave Wayne County... but 13 obviously has to, to get Southfield/Oak Park, and 12 is justified since there's a higher percentage of blacks in Eastpointe than Dearborn or other points south.

[muon2]

Muon2, geography and population numbers drove me to the Kent County chop. It is a pretty clean chop actually, with most of the Grand Rapids metro area kept whole (yes, there is that one burb jut, but see if you can do better with the Kent County chop avoiding locality chops given the balance of my map (I suspect not)). The Bay City-Saginaw comment sounds more like a communities of interest issue, which I thought we had both jettisoned (unless perhaps it is an absolutely obvious one, and all other things are close to equal).

I seek out micro-chops, and there is one in this map (at the cost of a bit more erosity for MI-06), but not at the cost of substantially more erosity. I tried every county combo reasonably possible bearing in mind erosity issues seeking a mirco-chop for MI-01, but no dice. Once you are beyond a micro-chop, I still bear in mind the degree of the chop, but again, not at the cost of much more erosity. In the Detroit metro area, the counties are of such high population, that smaller chops are just not possible, and while maybe the chop could have been smaller if say, MI-05 picked up Huron County, and lost most of the Lepeer chop, or had a small chop into Genesee of Huron has more than MI-05's share of Lapeer), the extra erosity was just not worth it.

And yes, MI-12 is hideous, but the VRA made me do it, plus avoiding MI-11 chopping into Wayne County.

If you think there is a better map that I would like more (yes, me, not you, given my order of priorities, I'm all eyes).  I am not claiming that there is not a better map out there; I just couldn't "find" it if there is.

Below is an alternative chop for Kent, but as you can see from the population discrepancy, it will be at the cost of a locality chop, which I avoided.

I'll concede the Saginaw question. I thought Midland-Bay City-Saginaw was in the same metro area which you still used as a parameter. I checked the Census and they classify them as three separate MSAs.

What population tolerance are you using? The plan above is within the 1% range, which I thought was OK. Certainly a smaller range would be scored better, but that's a trade off with the chops and erosity.

If I use the 1% range I would put forward something like this, and I can microchop it down from there. It has only one county chop outside metro Detroit, and two muni chops in the metro, though perhaps I can improve that given more time for analysis. The two VRA CDs are both about 55% BVAP since I use the Pontiac-Romulus connection for CD-12. The partisan split is 3D, 4d, 2e, 4r, 1R where +1.5% is the tossup cutoff and +5.5% is the lean (lower case) upper bound.

[Torie]

Putting aside your Pontiac action for MI-12 (not acceptable), I think your map might have potential. I first went the Monroe route for MI-14 myself, but decided to go the more compact route (the Dems would howl that MI-14 was pushed close to the competitive zone, when it could have obtained its extra population by going into Washtenaw, making everything more compact rather than less. But maybe that led to the Kent chop; I don't know. And would you please put up the map again removing the coloration for the empty water "precincts?" It is hard to read your "ugly" map without all that colored water! Why don't you use the more updated version of Dave's utility, which makes for much more attractive maps? Thanks.

Or you could send me the data file, and I could generate the map doing it my way.

"The partisan split is 3D, 4d, 2e, 4r, 1R where +1.5% is the tossup cutoff and +5.5% is the lean (lower case) upper bound."  Was this just an FYI comment, or meant to be a factor in how you drew the map?

Oh, I found a way to clean up the Wayne County situation, and get rid of that nasty chop of Livonia.
MI-11 moves 20 basis points more to the Dems in this iteration (by reducing Royal Oak to a micro-chop).

[Torie]

Here's another potential Michigan, using my usual +-1K population tolerance, and splitting no municipalities except for Detroit:



Notable features: the UP/North (1) and Lansing ( districts are whole-county; 2 and 3 together take in the whole of the Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland CSA and look damn good doing so, the Saginaw-Bay City CSA is made whole; both black-majority districts are at least 54% AA by total pop and 52.5% by VAP.

Flint with the Thumb rather than Saginaw may seem weird to some... but Flint is in the Detroit CSA along with Lapeer and St. Clair Counties, so it actually makes better sense than the status quo w/r/t metro contiguity.  The only actually dodgy part of this map is that both VRA districts leave Wayne County... but 13 obviously has to, to get Southfield/Oak Park, and 12 is justified since there's a higher percentage of blacks in Eastpointe than Dearborn or other points south.

Your red CD (my MI-04) is too erose for me. The magenta CD has a traveling chop of Oakland going to Macomb, which is illegal. The magenta CD also looks too erose to me.  Did you minimize the county chops? Pretty map though. Would you please persuade Muon2 to draw his maps that way? 

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Here's another potential Michigan, using my usual +-1K population tolerance, and splitting no municipalities except for Detroit:



Notable features: the UP/North (1) and Lansing ( districts are whole-county; 2 and 3 together take in the whole of the Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland CSA and look damn good doing so, the Saginaw-Bay City CSA is made whole; both black-majority districts are at least 54% AA by total pop and 52.5% by VAP.

Flint with the Thumb rather than Saginaw may seem weird to some... but Flint is in the Detroit CSA along with Lapeer and St. Clair Counties, so it actually makes better sense than the status quo w/r/t metro contiguity.  The only actually dodgy part of this map is that both VRA districts leave Wayne County... but 13 obviously has to, to get Southfield/Oak Park, and 12 is justified since there's a higher percentage of blacks in Eastpointe than Dearborn or other points south.

Your red CD (my MI-04) is too erose for me. The magenta CD has a traveling chop of Oakland going to Macomb, which is illegal. The magenta CD also looks too erose to me.  Did you minimize the county chops? Pretty map though. Would you please persuade Muon2 to draw his maps that way? 

If your powers of persuasion are insufficient, I doubt anyone's will be effective.

[muon2]

Putting aside your Pontiac action for MI-12 (not acceptable), I think your map might have potential. I first went the Monroe route for MI-14 myself, but decided to go the more compact route (the Dems would howl that MI-14 was pushed close to the competitive zone, when it could have obtained its extra population by going into Washtenaw, making everything more compact rather than less. But maybe that led to the Kent chop; I don't know. And would you please put up the map again removing the coloration for the empty water "precincts?" It is hard to read your "ugly" map without all that colored water! Why don't you use the more updated version of Dave's utility, which makes for much more attractive maps? Thanks.

Or you could send me the data file, and I could generate the map doing it my way.

"The partisan split is 3D, 4d, 2e, 4r, 1R where +1.5% is the tossup cutoff and +5.5% is the lean (lower case) upper bound."  Was this just an FYI comment, or meant to be a factor in how you drew the map?

I'm not sure what your beef is with my CD-12. When I did a comparison to your version with a bounding-rectangle-type erosity test, like you favor, it comes out pretty much the same. Note that both of our CDs there have about the same length-width aspect ratio. Certainly they are not so different that it would generate a significant scoring difference? Or is it CoI that prevents you from making the leap?

I have a bookmark directly into the DRA app so I never noticed that he had a new link. In any case I loaded it from his page, and found that it is the same as my bookmark. The water comes from my search to fill in unassigned precincts and to make sure my whole county CDs don't have leftover pieces from another CD. The water around MI has to be assigned to make that work and it DRA leaves a few hundred souls in those water precincts. I suppose I could go back and unassign them all to make a pretty map after I've checked the numbers, but that will be a task when I've got more time on my hands. Numbers come first.

The political data was not a factor in drawing the map and was provided for a comparison to the data that you displayed. However, I suspect that any sound process should test whether some contending map has a significant bias in either the political polarization or skew. Polarization measures the extent that too many districts have become non-competitive (ala incumbent protection maps) and skew measures the bias from the expected political division. My observation is that all the Midwestern efforts for reform these last few years have insisted that there be some investigation after drawing to insure that a political party has not been unduly favored by the map.

edit: On a tangential question, does MI law permit the division of a political unit between two CDs to result in discontiguous pieces of a CD within a unit? For example, can a chop into a county from a CD grab two different townships on the county border that don't directly border on each other? I know we have discussed this in more general circumstances and viewed it as OK if it avoids muni chops, but I don't recall if that violates specific rules in MI.

[Torie]

Muon2, we can leave the issue of partisan impacts versus lower scoring maps to another day. My map accounts for all but one person, by getting rid of the water precincts.  Send me please your data file, and I will put up your map. I just can't read yours very well - at all. My beef with your MI-12 is that its elongation into Pontiac is unnecessary, and thus constitutes gratuitous erosity. I am quite sure your map could be made less erose by not going to Pontiac. Do you like my new Wayne map better?

By the way, what is the provenance of your screen name?  Just curious. I mean, it's kind of odd (well I guess mine given it's a female name is too, inasmuch as I am not cross gendered).  

"On a tangential question, does MI law permit the division of a political unit between two CDs to result in discontiguous pieces of a CD within a unit? For example, can a chop into a county from a CD grab two different townships on the county border that don't directly border on each other?"

Yes, I believe Michigan law permits that, but I try to avoid doing that unless it generates other good redistricting principles aspects. My new map of Wayne does that (MI-12 going back down into Redford), because it makes for cleaner lines (and avoids having long tails running west in Detroit even though the CD has more territory in Oakland to the north of the tail).

Oh, I managed to get rid of the Redford jut, and still keep MI-13 over 50% BVAP - barely. Whew!

[traininthedistance]

By the way, what is the provenance of your screen name?

I assume it refers to the subatomic particle.

Your red CD (my MI-04) is too erose for me. The magenta CD has a traveling chop of Oakland going to Macomb, which is illegal. The magenta CD also looks too erose to me.  Did you minimize the county chops? Pretty map though. Would you please persuade Muon2 to draw his maps that way?  

The red CD is forced by being surrounded by whole-county districts (or groupings of two districts, as in the GR area) on almost all directions, which I would consider to be sufficient justification for the (small, really, for a district that goes along the water) amount of erosity it entails.  The magenta CD might be fixable to your standards, I'll see.  To be frank, I just don't see any real erosity there, but your point about the traveling chop is a good one.

The only county chop that I would be able to get rid of would be CD-12's venture into Macomb.  I would think, being a VRA district, it gets a little more leeway, but I'd probably be able to get rid of that particular chop.  Besides that, they are strictly minimized- and once I get rid of it, there will be less chops than in your map.

EDIT: I don't know that I want to get rid of it, because it saved me from having to chop a municipality in Macomb (or go over the 1K tolerance).  Within urbanized areas, keeping munis whole should be more important than keeping counties whole, frankly.  I can get it to a deviation of +1,176, though, which I'm sure falls under Muon's accepted tolerance.  So let's roll with that, for the sake of argument.

[muon2]

My map accounts for all but one person, by getting rid of the water precincts.  Send me please your data file, and I will put up your map. I just can't read yours very well - at all.

I see that you simply grab the water areas when DRA puts a significant number of people there. Here's the list of "water people" in DRA 2.2 using 2010 voting districts:

LP:
Charlevoix - 657 (Beaver Island was placed in the not defined water area and you shade this on your map.)
UP:
Chippewa - 1 (This is the one you didn't shade. Why not treat it the same as Charlevoix?)
Luce juts out in a strange way, the coders didn't follow the shore, but part of the water is separate.

The larger issue for me is tracking down missing precincts since DRA doesn't have a whole county tool like mos redistricting packages. I use a spreadsheet to set up my apportionment regions which is the key to eliminating chops. When I have time I'll clean up the maps, but I'd prefer consistency, so I would be prone to uncolor Charlevoix (and Chippewa) after I've recorded the numbers.

[traininthedistance]

Also, I just realized, Torie, that your map has a traveling chop in MI-10 (the portion of MI-10 in Oakland is only connected to other chopped counties), and is therefore unacceptable by your standards.

And, may I ask, what standard exactly are you using to call my MI-4 "too erose"?  I would think, you being a fan of balancing tests and all, that being able to get surrounding MI-1 and MI-8 in whole counties would be a factor that your map-making heuristics would smile upon.  

[muon2]

Oh, I found a way to clean up the Wayne County situation, and get rid of that nasty chop of Livonia.
MI-11 moves 20 basis points more to the Dems in this iteration (by reducing Royal Oak to a micro-chop).

This is a reasonable way to deal with CD-12, but it also highlights some of the problems with most erosity or compactness measures. Let's compare it to my version that meets with your disfavor.



Your desired erosity has generally turned on the degree of "rectangularness" with squares being better than mere rectangles. To measure the rectangularness of a CD one generally draws some shape around it and then compares the areas. If the shape is a rectangle or other minimal convex polygon then my CD wins easily since your offering has that large expanse of Detroit sitting within the bounding area but not adding to the are of your district. My guess is that the areas of our districts is comparable, so the large the bounding area the worse the situation. You could come out better by using a bounding circle which is known to punish long thin districts compared to C-shaped ones, but that would hurt your first offering for CD-12 which also seemed like a reasonable shape. A perimeter test doesn't help your shape either since mine uses lots of straight lines and would score well.

"On a tangential question, does MI law permit the division of a political unit between two CDs to result in discontiguous pieces of a CD within a unit? For example, can a chop into a county from a CD grab two different townships on the county border that don't directly border on each other?"

Yes, I believe Michigan law permits that, but I try to avoid doing that unless it generates other good redistricting principles aspects. My new map of Wayne does that (MI-12 going back down into Redford), because it makes for cleaner lines (and avoids having long tails running west in Detroit even though the CD has more territory in Oakland to the north of the tail).

Oh, I managed to get rid of the Redford jut, and still keep MI-13 over 50% BVAP - barely. Whew!

A look at you last revision shows some improvement. The C-shape is less pronounced so the surrounded area of Detroit would be reduced as well. However, my eyeball guess is that the fairly direct shape of my CD-12 would still win a measure test like those I described above. Mine is really not a bad shape for a VRA district and if you divorced it from the map and embedded it in some other state it probably wouldn't bother you so much. You've spent a long time looking at situations in MI and that shows.

OTOH your arcing CD-12s make a good case for my use of local connectivity as a measure of erosity. In the simple case you can just count which jurisdictions in the chopped counties border on other jurisdictions. Now that big chunk of Detroit in CD-13 just counts as one unit with relatively few connections to units in your Wayne part of CD-12. It becomes competitive with my CD-12, as it should be, since I think it represents a reasonable alternative that a commission could consider.

[Torie]

Yes, the shape of MI-12 is erose, but on the plus side, it makes MI-13 more compact, in both shape and size. Size is an issue, too. In urban areas, nice compact CD's are preferable, so it is preferable for MI-14 in my mind to go to Washtenaw, rather than suck up Monroe.

Perhaps in the Detroit metro area, your map is as compact as mine (I am still struggling with the erosity test, but I like straight lines, and compactness, and squares and rectangles). The point however, is that by losing your Pontiac reach, your map could be made less erose, so I don't think you have put up "your" best map to compete with mine. That was my point.

Oh, and I finally found the micro-chops up north, and the map below reflects that. I also revised Kent County, to get rid of the jut - at the cost of a muni split. Which is better is open to discussion.



"In the simple case you can just count which jurisdictions in the chopped counties border on other jurisdictions."

So I get points if Hamtramck does not border on MI-13, by having along the border line MI-12 moving one precinct into Detroit?  That makes no sense to me. I prefer precisely the opposite actually.   It's nice to have borders that are next to something real, like boundary lines of muni's or freeways, or a major highway, or whatever. It also facilitates straighter lines. Did I ever mention that I like straight lines? 

[traininthedistance]

This is a reasonable way to deal with CD-12, but it also highlights some of the problems with most erosity or compactness measures. Let's compare it to my version that meets with your disfavor.

The biggest problem with this map is that there are two districts that span Oakland and Macomb (9 and 11), as well as two that span Oakland and Wayne (9 and 12)- isn't that a no-no in Michigan?

I also prefer my map because it has no muni chops besides Detroit.

Yes, the shape of MI-12 is erose, but on the plus side, it makes MI-13 more compact, in both shape and size. Size is an issue, too. In urban areas, nice compact CD's are preferable, so it is preferable for MI-14 in my mind to go to Washtenaw, rather than suck up Monroe.

Perhaps in the Detroit metro area, your map is as compact as mine (I am still struggling with the erosity test, but I like straight lines, and compactness, and squares and rectangles). The point however, is that by losing your Pontiac reach, your map could be made less erose, so I don't think you have put up "your" best map to compete with mine. That was my point.

Oh, and I finally found the micro-chops up north, and the map below reflects that. I also revised Kent County, to get rid of the jut - at the cost of a muni split. Which is better is open to discussion.

What maximum deviations are you using here?  District 6 looks like it's nearly 4K off.  And Saginaw/Bay City is still one CSA.  (And you still have that traveling chop in CD-10, of course. )

[traininthedistance]

Here is a revised Detroit area that resolves the issue of the traveling chop in MI-10:



I've come to the conclusion that the portion of MI-12 in Macomb is in fact worth it on the grounds that anything that retreats from there would force MI-9 to either take on a muni chop or go above my usual population tolerance (or, I didn't actually test this, go into the Grosse Pointes, which is no better on county chop grounds), and these districts are IMO more compact than the other alternatives being proffered as it is.  So it stays.

I have changed nothing outstate; the whole-county 1 and 8, and the almost perfectly equal whole-county group of 2 and 3, are I think obviously superior to the other options I've seen in this thread.  Though in general I would take Muon's non-Detroit areas over Torie's, as they do a better job of keeping MSAs and CSAs in sensible groupings.  (Even if they probably have deviations higher than I would draw myself).

[Torie]

Interesting point traininthedistance about the traveling chop of MI-10. I am not sure that it applies, given the Macomb portion is just a fill in of a county with a whole CD in it. If it is illegal (it should not be in this instance), it can be fixed by MI-10 taking all of Lapeer, and losing Huron and a bit of Sanilac, making MI-05 more erose of course.

Yes, I followed the 0.5% rule for the micro-chops.



Nice try on getting rid of the traveling CD, but unfortunately you have an extra chop into Macomb, so your map is still illegal. I also see that you have a chop of MI-05 into Oakland (in order to Dem up MI-04 so that it takes in Saginaw). Anyway, under Michigan law, beyond good redistricting principles, you must minimize chops. But yes, if my fill in traveling chop through Macomb is illegal (if it is not, Lapeer can remain chopped, because you then get access to Oakland trough Macomb County), the way to get rid of the issue is having MI-10 take all of Lapeer, as you did.

You also made MI-10 more erose in Oakland to Dem up MI-11. Naughty!    That dog just isn't going to hunt.

Muon2 said Bay City and Saginaw are separate CSA's.

[traininthedistance]

Interesting point traininthedistance about the traveling chop of MI-10. I am not sure that it applies, given the Macomb portion is just a fill in of a county with a whole CD in it. If it is illegal (it should not be in this instance), it can be fixed by MI-10 taking all of Lapeer, and losing Huron and a bit of Sanilac, making MI-05 more erose of course.

Yes, I followed the 0.5% rule for the micro-chops.



Nice try on getting rid of the traveling CD, but unfortunately you have an extra chop into Macomb, so your map is still illegal. I also see that you have a chop of MI-05 into Oakland. (Under Michigan law, beyond good redistricting principles, you must minimize chops.) But yes, if my fill in traveling chop through Macomb is illegal (if it is not, Lapeer can remain chopped, because you then get access to Oakland trough Macomb County), the way to get rid of the issue is having MI-10 take all of Lapeer, as you did.

You also made MI-10 more erose in Oakland to Dem up MI-11. Naughty! Ditto in tandem with that as to MI-11.   That dog just isn't going to hunt.

You have a lot of nerve calling other people "naughty" when you continue to keep the blatant gerry move of sending the Lansing district into Livingston County, I gotta say.

Anyway, if I used your more lenient population tolerance, I could cut out a chop or two, but with the population tolerance I have been working with, what I have is simply the minimum number of total chops (both county and muni).  Perhaps I will try switching to 0.5%, and seeing what happens, for the sake of argument.

[Torie]

And you sent the Flint CD into Livingston to neutralize it. My MI-08 is nice and compact the way I drew it. Anyway, if your map is less erose than mine, and you have the minimum number of chops, using the micro-chop tool to get bonus points (better though to have a design of a CD with just one micro-chop if you can (like my MI-06 and MI-01), rather than two micro-chops  (my MI-04 has two micro-chops, one at each end), then yours is the superior map. But even if that is the case, given your overall map design, you must make it the least erose possible. Otherwise, your map can be revised, with the revision trumping your map (and making mine third best as it were). How many chops do you have?

[traininthedistance]

Torie- It looks to me like your revised CD-1 has a deviation of +5,578 (outside the tolerance), rather than the 3,324 your screenshot says.  Perhaps you have some precincts off?

And, clearly, putting Livingston in with Flint was not my first choice (I'm hoping that increased tolerances will let me rectify that).  By all rights it obviously ought to be in a district with outer Oakland and outer Macomb.

[Torie]

Right you are. A non-contiguous precinct was buried in there.

So now we are left with this - more of a Muon2 style map where there is more tolerance of erosity to seek out that micro-chop. Close case here, as to whether or not it is worth it. Very close to me - right on the cusp. The map below also shows the fix to moot the traveling chop issue. MI-05 becomes more erose, but the silver lining is that MI-10 is made less. I prefer my Lapeer chop, but if it is illegal, below is the alternative given my map design.

[muon2]

This is a reasonable way to deal with CD-12, but it also highlights some of the problems with most erosity or compactness measures. Let's compare it to my version that meets with your disfavor.

The biggest problem with this map is that there are two districts that span Oakland and Macomb (9 and 11), as well as two that span Oakland and Wayne (9 and 12)- isn't that a no-no in Michigan?

I also prefer my map because it has no muni chops besides Detroit.

I forget some of the unique MI rules since they aren't part of the generic model. I've edited my map to get rid of the county spans. It reduces the chop count, too. And I edited out the water.



edit: CD-12 is 53.0% BVAP, CD-13 is 54.3% BVAP. No real struggle to reach 50% since Pontiac helps significantly.

[traininthedistance]

Muon2 said Bay City and Saginaw are separate CSA's.

They are separate MSAs, but they are indeed a CSA together.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Combined_statistical_areas_of_the_United_States_and_Puerto_Rico.gif