Forum Redistricting Commission

[traininthedistance]

I suppose I'm the sort of person who ought to be involved in this, and it sounds like a great idea, but I might be a bit too busy to commit to anything ATM.  Um... put me down for a firm "probably".

[traininthedistance]

Think I'll have to beg out of the commission itself; I won't be able to guarantee I can be around and putting in the sort of time this project wants.

I'll probably still submit some maps from the peanut gallery.

[traininthedistance]

I have two substantially similar submissions.  The first one minimizes county cuts and polarization; the second one is more compact (and possibly reduces skew?).  In both cases, Tidewater and the west are the same; the difference is merely how to split Loudon/Prince William/Albemarle etc.

In both cases, District 4 (black portions of Richmond/Tidewater connected via Southside) is the VRA district, at 50.9% Black VAP. Districts 6 and 9 are the same as in Miles' plan; I don't really think it's possible to improve on them given the extent to which they are compact, no-split, low-deviation, and substantially strong CoIs.

All districts are under 1K deviation in both plans (max deviation just under that line); road connectivity is kept in all cases. Additionally, distinct regions such as Shenandoah Valley and the Northern Neck are kept substantially whole, and I was glad to keep the Tidewater metro within three districts. Splitting the white Richmond suburbs between 1 and 5 is unfortunate; I may yet look for a map that doesn't do that while still maintaining all the other advantages found here.

Plan 1 minimizes county cuts: the only splits are a) Fairfax, which must be split twice for population purposes*, and b) those associated with the VRA district- Henrico, Richmond, Portsmouth, and Norfolk.  Plan 2 additionally splits Loudon.

*I tried to split within Fairfax so as to minimize town lines; most of those towns are merely CDPs and do not line up with voting districts, so some CDP split is unavoidable.  For both maps, I also kept all of the associated independent cities together in one of the Fairfax districts, so 11 is literally all-Fairfax. Henrico, of course, has a similar issue.

Without further ado:

SUBMISSION 1:



Tidewater/Richmond:



NoVA:



And the stats.

1: 43.4% O / 55.7% M, 40.7% Dem. 75.4% White / 16.1% Black VAP.
2: 49.5% O / 49.7% M, 46.2% Dem. 65.8% White / 22.1% Black VAP.
3: 58.7% O / 40.5% M, 53.7% Dem. 57.8% White / 31.2% Black VAP.
4: 69.1% O / 30.2% M, 63.7% Dem. 42.2% White / 50.9% Black VAP.
5: 43.1% O / 56.1% M, 40.6% Dem. 70.7% White / 22.6% Black VAP.
6: 42.1% O / 56.8% M, 40.4% Dem.  Supermajority white.
7: 53.1% O / 46.1% M, 47.1% Dem. 60.2% White / 17.0% Black / 14.8% Hispanic VAP.
8: 65.9% O / 33.3% M, 62.0% Dem.  63.3% White / 12.3% Hispanic / 12.8% Asian VAP.
9: 40.0% O / 58.6% M, 43.3% Dem. Supermajority white.
10: 52.9% O / 46.7% M, 48.7% Dem. 72.6% White / 11.4% Black VAP.
11: 60.3% O / 38.9% M, 55.2% Dem. 53.4% White / 10.0% Black / 16.6% Hispanic / 17.6% Asian VAP.

[traininthedistance]

And Submission 2.  Despite the additional county cut, I would consider this to be a better map.



Tidewater/Richmond:



NoVA:



Stats:

1: 43.4% O / 55.7% M, 40.7% Dem. 75.4% White / 16.1% Black VAP.
2: 49.5% O / 49.7% M, 46.2% Dem. 65.8% White / 22.1% Black VAP.
3: 58.7% O / 40.5% M, 53.7% Dem. 57.8% White / 31.2% Black VAP.
4: 69.1% O / 30.2% M, 63.7% Dem. 42.2% White / 50.9% Black VAP.
5: 43.1% O / 56.1% M, 40.6% Dem. 70.7% White / 22.6% Black VAP.
6: 42.1% O / 56.8% M, 40.4% Dem.  Supermajority white.
7: 49.9% O / 49.1% M, 46.7% Dem. 77.3% White / 13.7% Black VAP.
8: 65.9% O / 33.3% M, 61.9% Dem.  63.1% White / 12.3% Hispanic / 13.0% Asian VAP.
9: 40.0% O / 58.6% M, 43.3% Dem. Supermajority white.
10: 56.6% O / 42.7% M, 49.5% Dem. 54.9% White / 14.6% Black / 17.0% Hispanic / 11.0% Asian VAP.
11: 60.4% O / 38.9% M, 55.3% Dem. 53.6% White / 10.1% Black / 16.6% Hispanic / 17.3% Asian VAP.

[traininthedistance]

One can think of each county chop as having one less whole county CD in a state, which is equivalent to having one less chop of the state as a whole. So, the table is another way of saying when two plans have statistically equivalent ranges that would be expected for that number of whole county CDs or whole county groups of CDs. For example train-B (submission 2) has 3 whole county CDs (5, 6, 9) and two whole county groups of CDs (NoVa, Richmond/Hampton Roads) for a total of 4 state chops. train didn't list the deviations for his CDs, but I calculate the range to be 2211 which is a score of 6, so it is statistically above the theoretical best.

FWIW, my range is actually 1780; from +988 (District 11) to -792 (District 5).  Knowing that these are the ranges you're choosing, I suppose just splitting Fairfax differently might get me down to a score of 5, and I'll try that at some point. I believe districts 6 and 9 together are just over 900 (they're around plus-minus 470), so pushing inequality further than that won't really work.  (Though I would argue strenuously against any efforts to allow inequality more than 1 percent; and would never myself even make a map that availed itself of half that wiggle room.)