Forum Redistricting Commission

[Torie]

Muon2, are you going to use the state highway chop count as a proxy to measure erosity? Do highway chops within chopped counties count for this category?  Is there going to be some pareto optimality metric?

[Torie]

Muon2, are you going to use the state highway chop count as a proxy to measure erosity? Do highway chops within chopped counties count for this category?  Is there going to be some pareto optimality metric?

Thank you. I look forward to your thoughts on intra county chops. Pity I got deflected from our project. In my semi retirement there are just not enough hours in the day, and now I have Hudson on my mind.

[Torie]

"A competitive district has a PVI of 2 through 5 (-0.054 to -0.015 and +0.015 to 0.054) and statistically such districts have an 3 out of 4 chance of being held by the favored party."

That seems like a very wide range to me, with 1.5 to 2.5 quite competitive, and 4-5 not much, although I suppose an examination of results in the past would be instructive. In my brain, once you hit 4, a seat is pretty safe absent unusual developments, or a significant trend going on. Is there an advantage in bifurcating this category, and adjusting the point count some?

[Torie]

Muon2, you should put all your items in one place, preferably perhaps at the start of the thread, so it can be easily found. I can't find your list at all anymore. I am wondering if it was accidentally deleted. A map of all the state highways that measure erosity might also be helpful, along with the map of the UC's  as defined by the agreed metric.  By the way, here is a map of the border of the Hudson "urban cluster." Talk about erosity!  

[Torie]

Muon2, you should put all your items in one place, preferably perhaps at the start of the thread, so it can be easily found. I can't find your list at all anymore. I am wondering if it was accidentally deleted. A map of all the state highways that measure erosity might also be helpful, along with the map of the UC's  as defined by the agreed metric.  By the way, here is a map of the border of the Hudson "urban cluster." Talk about erosity!  

I set up a separate thread to hold the approved items a while ago. I placed a link to that thread in the OP a couple of days ago since the items had moved to page 2 of the board. The unapproved items (8,9,10) aren't there yet. The difficulty seems to be that dealing with independent cities gets very technical, yet one can't construct a set of rules for VA without deciding if they are counties, subunits of counties, or either depending on the population.

As your image shows, erosity is not a constraint for the Census Bureau. That's why we look at whole political units as a cluster.

Perhaps you should sticky it Muon 2, along with helpful maps of urban clusters, and ideally, state highways. I have no idea where it is.

[Torie]

OK, thanks, I see. You planning on fleshing out your definition of "erosity" to get in your state highway proxy concept? I don't see the arithmetic difference between a competitive and highly competitive CD. Should not a competitive CD have a .75 score plus or minus, as opposed to 1.0? 

[Torie]

OK, thanks, I see. You planning on fleshing out your definition of "erosity" to get in your state highway proxy concept? I don't see the arithmetic difference between a competitive and highly competitive CD. Should not a competitive CD have a .75 score plus or minus, as opposed to 1.0? 

I didn't want to overload the commission with erosity measures until the IC/chop issues were dealt with. So, yes we'll get to my connectivity-based measure for erosity.

Highly competitive districts (those of PVI 0 or 1) don't add to either political measure. Uncompetitive districts add twice as much to polarization, but they don't double penalize a plan on skew. In part that would be double counting. I also wanted to make all the scores based on simple integers for clear comparisons.

I didn't notice that highly uncompetitive districts get a 2 rather than a 1 for the merely "competitive," as opposed to the "highly" uncompetitive. I will have to reread your text. I do approve that competitiveness just acts as a tie breaker. Ugly gerrymanders to effect competitiveness offends my "artistic" side when it comes to maps. Art rules!