Local vs regional road connections

[Torie]

I don't think I disagree with anything stated above. In part, that is because it is generalized. The devil is in the details. I was asking for where we disagree on the details. I laid out my point of view on these matters. Of course skew does not rule, nor does anything else. Everything is a balancing test. I came up with the one bite rule working with Phoenix. That is consistent with good maps (given the erosity constraint). It is probably what a judge would do. I would certainly do it as a judge. And I would not like a population accident to foreclose what should be done. I see I think on your map those little white bits there that were on my map, now colored in. Does that mean they can go in either adjacent CD? Is that the Stark County issue, where you have township subunits divided by a city, and I suggested a preference rule?  If so, how do our maps differ, other than that you appropriately added the towns?

As I said, what I am looking for now is a specific list of disagreements on the details. It seems when it comes to what the subunits are (as opposed for the units as to how to manipulate them into CD's), at least in King County, that maybe we don't have any disagreements, anymore. You take territory that is not in a city or town subunit, and put in another kind of subunit that is workable. School districts for such unassigned territory seems to be workable in King. School districts do not erase the lines of other subunits, even if they overlap them. So they are fragments of school districts in essence, in many cases at least.

I don't want to agree to anything anymore, until I fully understand it, and its implications. I don't want the estoppel thing to come up, ever again, if possible. I have been beaten up enough on that one already.

One detailed difference is with areas like the one between Bothell and Kirkland. I have it split between two school districts. The few precincts just south of Bothell are like the SE corner of Plain in Stark. They are adjacent to a larger unincorporated township, but they are kept separate as a fragment of Plain. I do the same in King. There a number of similar places where you have merged small unincorporated areas that are in separate school districts.

That's fine. I didn't intend to ignore school district lines outside city or town entities. Any other differences beyond this concept? I see that you kept separate on your map bits of land surrounded by a city that is not itself a city or town, such is in Bellevue and Kent? Why did you do that, rather than just merge it?

A second potential difference is how those fragments are handled. Yes, a whole fragment can be shifted to a different district with no chop penalty - that's the Stark equivalence. However, it's still a chop and that means the shifted fragment could contribute to erosity, just like a chop anywhere else. I say could, because it could work either way or have no effect, again that's just like what happens with how we've applied erosity to chops in other states. To make it clear I show all fragments in the same school district with the same color.

Typically it would not matter with a CD border fragment right, unless doing it the other way, avoided any pavement cut right? I don't think I have a problem with that, although I did mention a preference regime. Yes, I know, you don't like preferences. More on that below.

I think my resistance to the one bite rule stems from how well our maps have performed without such a rule. Your MI offering is an excellent example that worked without the one-bite. I am resistant to disrupting that kind of success. I'd like to see that a particular goal is impossible without one-bite.

Yes, one bite happened to not be necessary, but then there were not subunit chops anywhere, and Detroit did not matter. The one bite rule will rarely be necessary to avoid an unfortunate skew result. It would happen in Phoenix if we had a population accident as I demonstrated. So I know it can happen, when it should not. The one bite issue really potentially matters in subunits for large townships and cities. For artificial subunits outside such large subunits, it probably will never matter. If might make for an uglier map, but it is unlikely to have much of a partisan difference. And with enough subunits, such as we now have in King, it is unlikely to result in an ugly map to boot. So I am focused I think about subunits within large townships and cites. That is where I think leeway is needed provided that the map does not get erose.

I'm also resistant to an endless preference list that isn't part of the score. I think one of the successes of the UCC model is that we made into a scoring modifier, not a mere preference. There may well be other items that should function like the UCCs and that means working out a scoring rubric for them. My example along this line is the MCC to handle the rural minority counties of the South. We should look at each preference and see how to create a balanced score for it.

Yes, the preference list does seem endless, doesn't it. It may grow yet longer!  The thing is, is it is a good tool for getting the balancing test right. I think it is right for bridge chops as defined by me, and certainly for Indian reservations (although reservations have less national importance). If reservations are treated like counties, than one gets no credit for keeping a county whole. In fact one is punished. Not good. And surely you don't want to treat the same a map that chops both Apache County and the Navajo Indian Reservation as opposed to a map that chops but one of them do you? And wouldn't a chop that divides an Indian Reservation, but unites a county, but better than another county chop elsewhere? If you have another way to get the balancing test right, not using the preference mechanic, it certainly should be considered. But it does need to get to the same place in my view. The fragment preference is more minor. To me it seems like good policy to keep a subunit together that is divided all things being equal, but it's not really that important. I think it is just good policy, and I think a judge would agree. Judges would like the preference concept I think. That is something they would understand.

The thing is with all of this, is that the rules should facilitate what a fair minded person would do when drawing maps in good faith, and not frustrate it. Another example is cities divided by county lines. The first thing I would do, all things being equal, when chopping into a county, is to unite a divided municipality. Wouldn't you? That is just common sense to me.

So I hope you will be open minded on this sort of stuff, even at the cost of elegance. I am trying to be helpful, rather than obstructive. I am trying to keep this metric system from getting into trouble, and having a situation where a map drawer, says, well this rule is really silly, and forces one to do that one with common sense would not do, or is just bad policy.

Anyway, subject to the above about those surrounded non town or city fragments surrounded by cities (this is an instance, where the guy who does not like lines erased, thinks that they really should be erased), I think I sign off on your map. Nice job. Thanks for your hard work on this. I appreciate it.

[Torie]

"So, I'm willing to entertain a look at any of these preferences. I hope you're prepared to view them as scoring modifiers as well. I think that is in the spirit of a Pareto choice using numeric variables and recognizing that it actually worked last year with the UCCs."

Whatever works, honey. I'm practical. If I get what I want as to substance, I don't mind the details of the sartorial veneer, to satisfy the masses, or the elegance freaks, or anybody else. I'm a happy camper.

Thanks for your patience with me. I know that I am annoying sometimes.

[Torie]

Not that is matters, but how did you decide to put the Lake Washington water between Mercer Island and Renton into Renton? Who would these new subunits have some systematic impact on erosity of a Dem pack district? Would not it just be an accident of the array of the lines as they happen to lie in King? Of course, a Dem pack CD cannot happen in this instance with my proposed bridge chop definition and rule, but I digress.  And that will tend to be a systematic impact because it will make it more difficult to unite rural areas in two adjacent counties, if both are not appended to a third county.

Anyway, here is your Dem pack CD. The subunits created in King don't really have an impact. But they do in Snohomish, were a school district subunit needs to be chopped to keep road connections. If the one bite rule applied outside of subunits within cities and townships, then it would work just fine. So the grand adventure could not be done at all with my bridge chop regime, but it can without it, at least with the one bite rule being applied outside the interior of cities and townships for artificial subunits. The ying and the yang. Of course, that does not mean that it might not all work in 2022. These things as I keep saying tend to be population accidents. The one bite rule and my bridge chop rule tend to mitigate population accidents.

[Torie]

I'm prepared to not give a preference to joining fragments, as I mused about. It is not that important. It is good as you have now formulated to have something other than a flat ban on chopping subunits for non macro-chops. That was never going to work. I am prepared to treat these artificial subunits outside a city or large township as the same as other subunits, even though subject to having them to limit erosity, that is a good place, with good maps, to get skew down, that would not be considered gerrymandering. The theory here is that puts all states on a level playing field, since states like Michigan have all of their real estate accounted for by non artificial subunits.

What I am not prepared to do is give up my one bite rule without a population limitation for chops of subunits in cities and and townships.  I have explained why. That still keeps all states on a level playing field. It will allow some modest and benign and non erose "gerrymandering" to keep skew down. It will allow the kind of "gerrymandering" a judge or fair minded person would do. Otherwise, we are subject to the population accident regime. This population accident regime has become more acute precisely because population variances are allowed between CD's, which typically have not been allowed, except to keep counties whole in Iowa and West Virginia. I want to allow more flexibility within big cities and townships subject to keeping erosity down. One needs subunits with cities and townships to keep erosity down in an objective manner. But they should not give rise to the tyranny of the population accident within, screwing skew.

So there we are. Hopefully, you will think seriously about the points that I am making. I know it degrades elegance, but in this case the benefit is worth it. When it comes to subunits in general, the population accident issue  is the most controversial part of the whole scheme, given the allowance for CD population variances. It is new and novel, and accidental, the roll of the dice. But at least with recognized subunits, it has a clear public policy benefit of keeping as much whole as can be kept whole. No such benefit exists for these planning districts or whatever. There the purpose is to constrain erosity, and nothing more other other than having something totally objective to use for the roll of the dice. That is the place to switch out what is objective to focus on skew, polarization, etc.

It might affect maybe 5 seats across the nation as a guess perhaps, if that many.  But in states where it does, we have a real problem.

This and bridge chops I think are our most important points of disagreement. Heck, with your definition of bridge chops, one could have a CD that runs across 6 counties taking in fragments of each, each of which has a nested CD for the balance of the county. Talk about gerrymanders. To  me, everything that is other than a CD comprised of of more than two county fragments that are not adjacent to a county wholly within the CD, is a bridge chop, which should be disfavored, in favor of another CD taking in the fragment in the next county. I don't think I am going to give up on that one either, absent some argument I have not yet heard that is persuasive, probably attended by an example.

[Torie]

Well, you tossed a lot on the table there.

1. Before, you had a flat ban on chops of subunits not involving a macro-chop, and otherwise such ordinary chops had no penalty other than an erosity issue potentially. Now the flat ban is gone (good), and we have no incentive to avoid a chop, other than erosity considerations. Does that make any sense? I think we are back to a preference issue (outside of subunits of subunits, where I do want an unbridled one bite rule).

2. Your problem here is that the macro-chop penalty for the chop of a subunit was offset by a pack penalty (the latter of which you don't like much anyway). So to weaken the pack penalty, you want an additional incentive to not macro-chop. Absent the pack penalty, this issue you have illustrated would not be in play. So you grab onto the one bite rule, in a context about which I am not particularly concerned, to effect your preferences, as opposed to where I am concerned. Very clever! I guess I would need to see how much you have let the genie out of the bottle with your weakening of the pack penalty, and for that matter, the cover penalty. I do agree that outside of a chop of a subunit of a subunit, that a macro-chop is worse than an ordinary chop in theory. It certainly should be a preference item. Whether it should go beyond that, and weaken the pack and cover penalty regime, is another matter.

3.Did the 7th circuit case involve CD's? Most states require absolute equality of population with CD's. If equality suddenly became important, we would suddenly be getting more chops over a few people. Not good.

Have I misunderstood anything here, or mischaracterized? It's tough for me to get a handle on all of this with so many wheels moving at once, particularly this early in the morning.

[Torie]

1) Draw 49 legislative districts as now. The current regime just elects two representatives at large with a senate district?
(2) Draw 49 senate districts, then divide each into two representative districts.
(2a) Make an object decision on whether to actually split a senate district into the representative districts. Some senate districts would have at large elections for representatives, and others not, based on some "objective" criteria? Oh my.
(3) Draw 98 representative districts, then pair into senate districts. Isn't this the same as (2)? How does the order matter?
(3a) Make an objective decision on whether to dissolve the pair of representative districts into a single district. This seems to be the same as 2a.

In general, it seems pointless to me to have two representatives per district. I guess if the term lengths are different, there is some rationale for that. I can see that if you want universal nesting, you really need to draw the representative districts first, because it is easier to then just combine the two districts into Senate districts, where if you draw the senate districts first, their bifurcation might create a map mess, since there is no way to sensibly bifurcate, that does not make a mess.

[Torie]

When I applied my technique to IL legislative districts, it worked better to build the senate districts then make the division into house districts. I would have thought the opposite. When creating districts, I like grouping whole counties in a whole number of districts just like we did with FL. If I use the house districts, I'm tempted to use an odd number of house districts in a region, and that leads to more chops for the senate. You want more chops?

Maybe what is driving you, is that you want an even number of seats in the Senate, and an odd number in the House. More likely, I am just in a state of confusion.

[Torie]

Well, on the inequality thing, by manipulating the point count, you may have a proxy for a preference rule. But generating more chops of counties or subdivisions to minimize inequality is just silly in my view. Thus the preference needs to be a the bottom of the heap.

[Torie]

Well, on the inequality thing, by manipulating the point count, you may have a proxy for a preference rule. But generating more chops of counties or subdivisions to minimize inequality is just silly in my view. Thus the preference needs to be a the bottom of the heap.

On this I think you are in the minority. All of the other mappers on this site have given weight to inequality. jimrtex had a model to judge regions based on minimizing population shifts between them. I used a point score based on data regression. train wanted stronger rules to protect equality than we eventually used. Lewis was quite adept at seeking and finding combinations to minimize inequality. I don't see the case to put it at the bottom of the heap.

That's OK. In the end, the public square will decide these issues, rather than an electorate comprised of three people. I wonder if Train would still want extra chops to reduce inequality. Would he really want to place it above SKEW for example? I wonder if Jimrtex wants extra chops to reduce inequality. Has he voted yet on this one?

How far up the preference tree do you want to place inequality? Just curious.

[Torie]

I am not clear at all why you are jettisoning what you are jettisoning for Washington, other than it must doesn't matter in practice - maybe. And now you have a free chop regime, with no preference to avoid such, in order to weaken the pack and cover rules, but will also entail collateral damage. One can just do a gratuitous chop because one can. So this negotiation is not going very well, alas. But I bet I can get Train's vote on this inequality thing, given how things have evolved. Whatever. I am not sure what you are getting at with "local priorities." The more one has different rules for different states, the more one worries about unilateral disarmament concerns.

[Torie]

I am not clear at all why you are jettisoning what you are jettisoning for Washington, other than it must doesn't matter in practice - maybe. And now you have a free chop regime, with no preference to avoid such, in order to weaken the pack and cover rules, but will also entail collateral damage. One can just do a gratuitous chop because one can. So this negotiation is not going very well, alas. But I bet I can get Train's vote on this inequality thing, given how things have evolved. Whatever. I am not sure what you are getting at with "local priorities." The more one has different rules for different states, the more one worries about unilateral disarmament concerns.

What am I jettisoning? I propose doing exactly what we did in MI. We define the rules for chops and erosity by way of subunits. We score a bunch of plans based on those two values alone, and at the same time show the scores for the other rubric variables. If the plans in the Pareto set are lacking in some way we should see it and perhaps correlate it to one of the other variables. After that we can make appropriate adjustments to the variables. The final step has always been to hand a set of qualified maps to a decision making body along with the metrics that both were used for the selection as well as those that were not used. Where is there a difference today?

Is this a process comment, or a substance comment? By that I mean, is this a protocol, en route to fashioning the same rules for all states, and suggesting the order of the steps to get there, or a suggestion that states might end up with different rules in the end, as to what maps make the cut for consideration?

I think if at all possible the rules should be the same, which is one reason why I decided that creating artificial subunits to take in all real estate is appropriate, because some states have such subunits for all real estate, and some do not. And no states have such subunits by definition within townships and cities, and have never drawn maps based on that, which is why I think different rules are required there, for the reasons I elucidated.

[Torie]

OK, process oriented, and it seems sensible. The devil is in the details, and so far, on some of the details, we differ, and the differences are not trivial. And I am more sensitive than I used to be about population accidents. Maybe everything will be OK just be accident as maps are drawn. I like to ponder what ifs.

When I use the word "arbitrary," I admit that it is a loaded word. What I mean by that, is that nobody has cared about them before in drawing lines. I admit that something is needed for erosity patrol, for unclaimed real estate, and that applies to all real estate. So we are past that. It's just that when something is novel, there had better be a darn good reason for it, that does not lead to bad results in some instances. Thus as I think matters through, and do the balancing test, I come out where I come out, thinking about policy and politics and judges. And that includes the preference concept, be it camouflaged in some formula or not. Some of this is about common sense as I see it. As I say, the coup here would be for a judge to embrace these sorts of metrics. Then they will get attention in a way they otherwise might not. The rules had better not get in the way of common sense.

[Torie]

When I applied my technique to IL legislative districts, it worked better to build the senate districts then make the division into house districts. I would have thought the opposite. When creating districts, I like grouping whole counties in a whole number of districts just like we did with FL. If I use the house districts, I'm tempted to use an odd number of house districts in a region, and that leads to more chops for the senate. You want more chops?

Maybe what is driving you, is that you want an even number of seats in the Senate, and an odd number in the House. More likely, I am just in a state of confusion.

As a matter of fact, the system of fusion used in New York is a con. See the ballot for Hudson Ward 4 alderman as an example. It's not just you, there are millions more living in the same situation.

I think nesting is a bad idea. It seems like one approach - splitting, or joining should work. But the reality is that population concerns require some pretty ugly splits. If a house district has an ugly split, then joining it with another house district means that the senate district will also have the ugly split. If the reverse is done, an ugly senate split, will mean at least one of the house districts has an ugly split.

California has a modest requirement for nesting. I think it was expected that sometimes you might want to use a city boundary for a senate district, but that might not work so well for assembly districts. But what really caused the deviation was VRA requirements. For example, you can probably imagine where a minority-opportunity senate district, would divide nicely into a packed-assembly district, with the other assembly district being much whiter.

I don't get the 4th ward reference in this context. Yes, obviously nesting has its costs. Nesting does not come for free, but is a constraint that can lead to ugly or undesirable, or VRA illegal, bifurcations. All things being equal, it is good, but obviously, things are not equal here.

[Torie]

More likely, I am just in a state of confusion.

As a matter of fact, the system of fusion used in New York is a con. See the ballot for Hudson Ward 4 alderman as an example. It's not just you, there are millions more living in the same situation.

I don't get the 4th ward reference in this context.

You said that you lived in a state of confusion. You live in a state that uses fusion voting, and it is a con.

The 4th ward ballot had three candidates and you could vote for two. One candidate was in her own column, but you could vote for her on the Democratic, Republican, or Independence line. The other two candidates were in the other column, running as the candidates of other parties.

If the two candidates had both been Democratic nominees, then they would have been in different columns.

Confusion, no?

Yes. Fortunately, the machine you stick you ballot into, will reject it, if you vote twice for the same candidate in different columns.

[Torie]

Putting on my "artist" hat, what is beyond per adventure is that Jimrtex's maps are a heck of lot prettier than Muon2's hideous washed out affairs. The one above is an object d'art, suitable for framing. I particular like that little horizontal red triangle, with the vertical dodger blue rectangle below, on the lime green background. The light brown shape in the east is also superb.

[Torie]

That light green thing near the top has an unfortunate shape. Is that due to geographic barriers?

[Torie]

I don't get the connectivity issue.

The reservation should be treated like a hybrid county, just like I suggest in AZ. That addresses the first two points.

"There is a large rural and small town Hispanic population in some of the subunits, so should these subunits be treated like the rural black counties of the South and maps be penalized that chop the cluster?"

God no. We have the VRA. Leave it at that. What you are suggesting is moving the VRA towards the Florida law with minority opportunity districts.

[Torie]

I don't get the connectivity issue.

The reservation should be treated like a hybrid county, just like I suggest in AZ. That addresses the first two points.

"There is a large rural and small town Hispanic population in some of the subunits, so should these subunits be treated like the rural black counties of the South and maps be penalized that chop the cluster?"

God no. We have the VRA. Leave it at that. What you are suggesting is moving the VRA towards the Florida law with minority opportunity districts.

We did spend some time when we looked at AL and we respected contiguous minority counties in the Black Belt the same way we did UCCs. The idea was that rural minority interests were on a par with urban interests. We also wanted to avoid hops over white areas just to link Black areas. One exception was that the AL Black Belt had a mandatory chop to deal with the fact that it extended all the way across the state, but otherwise we avoided chops to the Belt. We applied the same reasoning when we looked at LA.

Is that a bad idea to your mind now?

Alabama was about counties that were contiguous and deemed to be a UCC of some sort. I am not even sure it is a good idea, but it seemed benign enough. In  CA, almost every county will be in an Hispanic UCC come to think of it before long. The maybe we should have white counties become a UCC that get above 40% WVAP. It might be a genie out of the bottle situation. To go internally into counties, and start having more metrics dealing with minority subunits, artificially created or not, is really having this go off the rails.

I did suggest a mechanic when sorting through maps by the decision maker to go farther, with bipartisan consent I might note. That is the right balancing test here.

[Torie]

I don't get the connectivity issue.

The reservation should be treated like a hybrid county, just like I suggest in AZ. That addresses the first two points.

"There is a large rural and small town Hispanic population in some of the subunits, so should these subunits be treated like the rural black counties of the South and maps be penalized that chop the cluster?"

God no. We have the VRA. Leave it at that. What you are suggesting is moving the VRA towards the Florida law with minority opportunity districts.

I think there will have to be an objective way to draw minority opportunity districts. If you just try to "comply with federal law" or "comply with the VRA" you are guaranteed to end up in court.

My inclination is to start with counties that are 40%+ CVAP of the target minority, but exclude level 2 units that are less than 20%+ minority. Then repeat for 2nd level units, etc.

Conditionally, add areas that improve connectivity while maintaining an overall 40%+ CVAP. Determine the number of districts that will fit in the area (truncate down). Remove the surplus over that needed to create the whole number of districts. Divide the area into the number of districts.

To add to jimrtex's comment, in IL before the 2010 election there was concern that there would be a Pub gov. In anticipation there was legislation to specifically encourage coalition and crossover districts. The minority groups were and remain concerned going forward. If there is a question of selling the idea, minority interests will want to see protection of areas that don't rise to the level of the VRA but could significantly influence election outcomes.

Let a state decide that, with whatever overlay they want over a model code metric. It is not appropriate for a uniform model code. I think it will make matters a mess. Every map we have ever done might be affected. This is a new and novel idea really, beyond counties, and I pointed out the Pandora's box that may have been opened there. You might suddenly have nodes of counties that are UCC's everywhere, hashing things up as Hispanic population expands. This should not be about the VRA expansion act. Personally, I would like to see the VRA rolled back, not expanded, but that is just me. If a compact 50% MVAP map can be drawn, then the minority will be protected, using metrics which are frankly more workable than this concept (although some of the details are still being hashed out ala Virginia, but hopefully more of those details will become known). I think I know where SCOTUS is going on this.

[Torie]

Personally, I would like to see the VRA rolled back, not expanded

Eeeek. Explain yourself. What do you want to see rolled back? Even the loss of pre-clearance has led to exactly what people thought would happen: GOP-controlled states doing whatever is in their power to make voting more difficult/annoying for people who don't vote Republican.

Glad you asked, and welcome to the most weedy and esoteric thread on Atlas, as the lawyer and the scientist fence away. Scientific and legal minds just work differently, I have found.

Anyway, the VRA has been the Pubs' best friend in most places, and in recent times, Section 5 an even better friend. The latter gave an excuse for the Pubs to black pack CD's, in order to bleach adjacent areas, and make them more friendly for a white Pub as opposed to a white Dem. That was because Section 5 was more than procedural. It had this retrogression metric, that if the existing CD was X percentage of a minority, the new CD could not be lower. So when an existing CD was say 54% BVAP, the new one needed to be black packed to have a no lower percentage, even if say 42% would effectively elect a black. SCOTUS put an end to all of that, and basically if a gerrymander, ruled that such a 54% CD was illegal black packing.

As a practical matter, almost no where now, except maybe for a couple of Hispanic CD's in CA, and maybe one or two in Texas, and maybe on Hispanic Brooklyn-Queens CD, the VRA does not really elect more minorities to Congress than are elected now. The Pubs in almost all instances want minority CD's, and the Democrats are not able as a political matter to deprive minorities of CD's. Thus, for example,  a black friendly district will always be drawn in the Cleveland area (even though no VRA CD exists there anymore), despite the fact that the result is to create either a lean Pub, or at least a tossup CD in the NE corner of Ohio, that otherwise would be safe for a white Dem.

That's my take anyway. The VRA has now mostly lost what was good and useful about it, and is now to a substantial extent a Pub tool.

[Torie]

I don't get the connectivity issue.

The reservation should be treated like a hybrid county, just like I suggest in AZ. That addresses the first two points.

"There is a large rural and small town Hispanic population in some of the subunits, so should these subunits be treated like the rural black counties of the South and maps be penalized that chop the cluster?"

God no. We have the VRA. Leave it at that. What you are suggesting is moving the VRA towards the Florida law with minority opportunity districts.

I think there will have to be an objective way to draw minority opportunity districts. If you just try to "comply with federal law" or "comply with the VRA" you are guaranteed to end up in court.

My inclination is to start with counties that are 40%+ CVAP of the target minority, but exclude level 2 units that are less than 20%+ minority. Then repeat for 2nd level units, etc.

Conditionally, add areas that improve connectivity while maintaining an overall 40%+ CVAP. Determine the number of districts that will fit in the area (truncate down). Remove the surplus over that needed to create the whole number of districts. Divide the area into the number of districts.

To add to jimrtex's comment, in IL before the 2010 election there was concern that there would be a Pub gov. In anticipation there was legislation to specifically encourage coalition and crossover districts. The minority groups were and remain concerned going forward. If there is a question of selling the idea, minority interests will want to see protection of areas that don't rise to the level of the VRA but could significantly influence election outcomes.

At least when it comes to Congress, what you are doing is not gong to elect more minorities. And nobody has been pushing for what you are doing either. It's novel. The way to do it was what I suggested. In most places, getting more minorities elected, gets more Pubs elected too, unless you do something grotesque like that CD in Arizona going from Phoenix to Tucson to Yuma. And the minority politicians don't really care about districts unless they are actually performing. Absent that, and they are useless. Just ask Corrine Brown if you don't believe me.

[Torie]

Ah, using Reservations as the nose in the tent. You're thinking like a lawyer now. I like it! But no, Reservations have separate governance mechanisms, and really are hybrid counties. And their impact is limited vis a vis giving them special consideration given their special status. Given those twin considerations, my hybrid mechanism is perfect Goldilocks. It gets the balancing test right, with no collateral damage. Thanks for your nose visiting the tent.

CA is going to need special consideration the way you are going, for whites, or it will be reverse discrimination. That is where this will end up in the end with all of this, and we don't need or want to end up there.

Not that it matters, or will change my mind, but where have "minority interests" weighed in, when it did not involve a "performing district" being on the line vis a vis the decision made?

[Torie]

Ah the drawing of lines within big cities. Perhaps some more flexibility is needed there. Just a thought. We are going back down the road to communities of interest. If the ethnic neighborhoods are compact, and the lines not erose, or within subunits, then there will not be gratuitous chop ups. And we seem to be talking more and more about legislative districts, where these things will tend to be more in play, anyway. Anyway, again I suggest that if  a state wants to add metrics for more racial gerrymandering, they can do so. In general, I think it is opening a Pandora's Box. The whole system will tend to fall apart. In your hypo, the Chinese will not be helped all that much, if they happen to be divided between different subunits.

[Torie]

Here's Yakima with the Yakama reservation kept whole, and then cities and towns as separate subunits elsewhere.



Naches town (brown) 795
Naches SD (peach) 7,287

Tieton city (dark blue) 1,191; 57.6% HVAP
Highland SD (slate blue) 4,410; 29.6% HVAP

Selah city (violet) 7,126
Selah SD (lilac) 12,460

Yakima city (dark green) 91,067; 33.4% HVAP
Moxee city (dark aqua) 3,308; 34.0% HVAP
West Valley SD (lime) 11,890
Yakima SD (green) 451
East Valley SD (aqua) 11,352

Union Gap city (tan) 6,047; 38.1% HVAP
Union Gap SD (yellow) 104

Zillah city (olive) 2,964; 35.0% HVAP
Zillah SD (khaki) 2,194; 25.0% HVAP

Sunnyside city (orange-red) 15,854; 75.9% HVAP
Sunnyside SD (salmon) 8,883; 56.4% HVAP

Grandview city (teal) 10,862; 73.6% HVAP
Grandview SD (turquoise) 3,390; 47.6% HVAP

Mabton city (deep pink) 2,286; 89.4% HVAP
Mabton SD (pink) 1,224; 63.6% HVAP

Bickelton SD (coral) 66; 27.3% HVAP

Wapato SD (dark salmon) 976; 35.2% HVAP

Toppenish SD (light blue) 1,982; 52.5% HVAP

Granger city (green) 3,246; 83.6% HVAP
Granger SD (light green) 1,813; 50.8% HVAP

Yakama Indian Reservation (orchid) 29,978; 21.8% NVAP; 54.8% HVAP

Given where the highways are, that map works just fine. In fact, even without seeing the new subunits, a map drawer would do about the same thing anyway, in deciding where to chop. At least that is what I did, and you did, since our chops were about the same. And with other map iterations involving a chop of the county, they still pretty much hewed to the subunit lines.

[Torie]

Here's a detailed application for a Snohomish CD. The county is big enough to require a macrochop, so here's the subunit map using school districts except for those areas in incorporated munis which take precedence.



Because there is a macrochop there are three links to Skagit from separate Snohomish subunits, 1 link to Island by ferry, 1 link to Kitsap by ferry, and 6 links between Snohomish and King subunits.

One rule is that all units, or subunits when macrochopped, must be connected. In order to connect to the Skyhomish school district subunit in King, CD 8 has to include the Index and Sultan school districts in Snohomish. It can then use the Monroe school district to connect back to the rest of King. Here's an illustration with the school district boundaries shown with black lines, except for beige lines when they pass through an incorporated muni like Monroe or the part of Everett that is for its water reservoir.



I've used red and pink lines to show links between subunits across the county line, with red for those on the border between the two districts and pink for an internal link. I've used yellow lines for local links between the districts within Snohomish. Note that the Monroe SD was chopped, but the chop line along the river has no bridge so there is no link between those two pieces of Monroe SD.

To get the erosity for the dark blue CD 1 which is entirely within Snohomish, I add the 5 links to Skagit, Island and Kitsap, the 4 links between the Snohomish CD and King (two links to Shoreline are not on the detailed map), and the 6 yellow links cut within Snohomish. The total erosity is 15.

There are some open questions here. I used a brute force approach that created a link to an unincorporated SD if there was a connection to population in the SD. That ignored the idea of the node for the SD. I did that here to illustrate that this division of the subunits, typically put the SD node inside a muni subunit. The Monroe SD offices are in the city of Monroe, so any path to the SD node forces one through the city technically invalidating the path. That doesn't make much sense so I've looked at links to the largest population VTDs within those unincorporated subunits.

That brings up a second issue. The Woods Creek part of the Monroe SD is contiguous but disconnected from the rest of the SD, but only because the city is a separate subunit. In this illustration I allowed connections to it independent of the rest of the SD. It gets more complicated since the Maltby area is contiguous but disconnected as well, even keeping the city of Monroe in the SD for connection purposes. I show a link from the Northshore SD to the west of Maltby, but maybe it shouldn't exist since one can't get from Northshore SD to the Monroe SD offices without going through part of the Snohomish SD.

Your King County erosity count works well, showing the need for artificial subunits, which is kind of obvious really.

I am totally lost on your brute force stuff. Do you do that sort of thing often to your poor students?  Are you talking about road connections here? Is your problem that you demand state highway connections throughout a CD? I oppose such a requirement myself, and only look for pavement between subunits. Absent pavement, you are just going to have to chop to create a pavement connection. I remember when playing with this area, that Monroe was indeed a problem child, and that was with my map where I was applying my bridge chop rule, which nixed the map that you are playing with, with I think should not be on the pareto optimal frontier.

Anyway, I need help with your issues here. My IQ is in a lower bracket than yours, but then you already knew that.