Local vs regional road connections

[Torie]

Well here are three maps that follow the rules. I must say Washington is the hardest state I have ever done. What a nightmare! It is an example however of the importance of allowing bridge chops, and allowing in chopped counties, for mere pavement to suffice within the chop. Otherwise, the constraints are so tight, that one might be forced to do that which one should not do, in a state like Washington with so many natural physical and UCC cluster population barriers. Stuff will end up being chopped which should not be chopped.

Anyway, the first map goes back to the Muon2 special of incurring a pack penalty. It has a chops score of 7, 6 chopped counties, plus a pack penalty. The erosity penalty for the chop in Kitshap will be unpleasant, and I almost had to chop Bremerton, which would have added a chop. This map turns WA-03 into a tossup CD, WA-01 is now Dem, but WA-10 is tossup, so the Dem SKEW is 2. The closure of that highway in the winter pushed the SKEW up a point.

The second map incurs both a pack and cover penalty, and has 7 chopped counties, for a score of 9. One might think WA-08 is a Pub gerrymander but it is not. The seat is safely Dem. It would have been a tossup if it had taken the inland areas of two counties in the Seattle cluster rather than just one, as is done with the third map (actually that makes WA-08 a slight Pub CD getting the SKEW back down to 1 - hey it looks like the Reichert district! ). Anyway, the second map just has WA-03 as a tossup, and everything else other than WA-04 and WA-05 is Dem. So the Dem SKEW of the second map is 3. The Pubs will be happy this map loses to the first map, and might take action to get that highway open in the winter! Or alternatively they would push for the third map. The winning map of the two would depend on the respective erosity scores coming out of King and Pierce Counties. I suspect the third map will lose because having large localities, or non localities touching a lot of small localities tends to be the losing map  This will be the tensest aspect of applying the Muon2 metrics. If the two maps are tied, the one with the lowest SKEW wins. In any event, the second and third maps lose to the first, so it's moot. The 2 SKEW map beats both the 1 and 3 SKEW maps. Call it the Goldilocks map.

[Torie]

Metrics aside, #3 is definitely the best map.  The chops in Grays Harbor and Lewis look a little fugly, and District 8 makes me uncomfortable, but it's worth it because that's probably the prettiest Puget Sound I've seen in any Atlas redistricting attempt.  

All in all, nice work.

Thank you. The beauty of the system, as I said before, is that it is all automatic. Partisan bias is totally exorcised. And the temptation to like a map that favors one's party is overwhelming. Almost none of us can resist it. I am getting better at resisting it, because I am about in equipoise between the two parties at present. I disdain them both. My agenda is more swing CD's. I want more centrists in Congress. But the system favors nobody's agenda, other than making the job easier for election boards, because there will be far fewer chops of governmental jurisdictions, and ballot preparation will be a heck of a lot easier.

Come to think of it, map 3 involves a bridge chop (Pierce and Kittitas are not road connected by any pavement or vehicular ferry whatsoever so in my scheme not deemed connected for any purpose), so it loses to map 2 as the tie breaker before even reaching erosity scores, unless map 3 avoided a locality chop that map 2 did not, which it does not in this case. In my scheme, as a tie breaker in this sense, while bridge chops are allowed, they are disfavored.

Oh, and one final thought. Given all the barriers in Washington, I suspect this state has one of the highest potential partisan swing effects of one map versus another which are competitive per the metrics. Small changes in population, can move the map around involving moving tons of folks from one district to another. That is because the barriers basically force such changes. One cannot jiggle the lines a bit from county to county, because they are both outside the east, quite large, and have various barriers. So in that sense, a SKEW swing of from 1 to 3 is reassuring, albeit that is a huge swing for such a relatively small state. If the state where three times a big a swing of 6 seats rather than 2, would be rather frightening. But such a large state with such barriers does not exist.

[Torie]

Metrics aside, #3 is definitely the best map.  The chops in Grays Harbor and Lewis look a little fugly, and District 8 makes me uncomfortable, but it's worth it because that's probably the prettiest Puget Sound I've seen in any Atlas redistricting attempt.  

All in all, nice work.

Thank you. The beauty of the system, as I said before, is that it is all automatic. Partisan bias is totally exorcised. And the temptation to like a map that favors one's party is overwhelming. Almost none of us can resist it. I am getting better at resisting it, because I am about in equipoise between the two parties at present. I disdain them both. My agenda is more swing CD's. I want more centrists in Congress. But the system favors nobody's agenda, other than making the job easier for election boards, because there will be far fewer chops of governmental jurisdictions, and ballot preparation will be a heck of a lot easier.

Come to think of it, map 3 involves a bridge chop (Pierce and Kittitas are not road connected by any pavement or vehicular ferry whatsoever so in my scheme not deemed connected for any purpose), so it loses to map 2 as the tie breaker before even reaching erosity scores, unless map 3 avoided a locality chop that map 2 did not, which it does not in this case. In my scheme, as a tie breaker in this sense, while bridge chops are allowed, they are disfavored.

Oh, and one final thought. Given all the barriers in Washington, I suspect this state has one of the highest potential partisan swing effects of one map versus another which are competitive per the metrics. Small changes in population, can move the map around involving moving tons of folks from one district to another. That is because the barriers basically force such changes. One cannot jiggle the lines a bit from county to county, because they are both outside the east, quite large, and have various barriers. So in that sense, a SKEW swing of from 1 to 3 is reassuring, albeit that is a huge swing for such a relatively small state. If the state where three times a big a swing of 6 seats rather than 2, would be rather frightening. But such a large state with such barriers does not exist.

There's no bridge chop in map 3 that I see. A bridge chop links two whole counties. Pierce is chopped so the bridge rule doesn't apply. Pierce already gets a chop penalty so it doesn't need to be impacted by the bridge rule from King. If both King and Pierce shared chops with anther district you'd have a traveling chop, but that doesn't apply either.

WA-08 goes from the whole county of Kittitas to take part of King and then going to Pierce. That's a classic bridge chop to me unless Pierce and Kittitas were themselves adjacent, and without any qualifying pavement connection, they are not. That is how I see it anyhow.

[Torie]

Metrics aside, #3 is definitely the best map.  The chops in Grays Harbor and Lewis look a little fugly, and District 8 makes me uncomfortable, but it's worth it because that's probably the prettiest Puget Sound I've seen in any Atlas redistricting attempt.  

All in all, nice work.

Thank you. The beauty of the system, as I said before, is that it is all automatic. Partisan bias is totally exorcised. And the temptation to like a map that favors one's party is overwhelming. Almost none of us can resist it. I am getting better at resisting it, because I am about in equipoise between the two parties at present. I disdain them both. My agenda is more swing CD's. I want more centrists in Congress. But the system favors nobody's agenda, other than making the job easier for election boards, because there will be far fewer chops of governmental jurisdictions, and ballot preparation will be a heck of a lot easier.

Come to think of it, map 3 involves a bridge chop (Pierce and Kittitas are not road connected by any pavement or vehicular ferry whatsoever so in my scheme not deemed connected for any purpose), so it loses to map 2 as the tie breaker before even reaching erosity scores, unless map 3 avoided a locality chop that map 2 did not, which it does not in this case. In my scheme, as a tie breaker in this sense, while bridge chops are allowed, they are disfavored.

Oh, and one final thought. Given all the barriers in Washington, I suspect this state has one of the highest potential partisan swing effects of one map versus another which are competitive per the metrics. Small changes in population, can move the map around involving moving tons of folks from one district to another. That is because the barriers basically force such changes. One cannot jiggle the lines a bit from county to county, because they are both outside the east, quite large, and have various barriers. So in that sense, a SKEW swing of from 1 to 3 is reassuring, albeit that is a huge swing for such a relatively small state. If the state where three times a big a swing of 6 seats rather than 2, would be rather frightening. But such a large state with such barriers does not exist.

There's no bridge chop in map 3 that I see. A bridge chop links two whole counties. Pierce is chopped so the bridge rule doesn't apply. Pierce already gets a chop penalty so it doesn't need to be impacted by the bridge rule from King. If both King and Pierce shared chops with anther district you'd have a traveling chop, but that doesn't apply either.

WA-08 goes from the whole county of Kittitas to take part of King and then going to Pierce. That's a classic bridge chop to me unless Pierce and Kittitas were themselves adjacent, and without any qualifying pavement connection, they are not. That is how I see it anyhow.

A bridge chop only applies to a chopped county used to connect two whole counties. The rule is to prevent a district from bypassing an urban center in the middle of the district by chopping out the center, but otherwise keeping counties whole. It often creates the worst of the dumbbell shape that you have taken exception to in the past. Connecting a sequence of chopped counties, as long as it isn't a travelling chop is ok.

Pierce isn't whole so there is no bridge chop. Pierce and King share no other district so it isn't a travelling chop.

That is the first time you clearly stated the rule. I asked the question before. I assume that you are aware with this rule that if you do a microchop in a big county, you can evade the stricture. That might have consequences that we don't like. One might even do a gratuitous microchop to so evade, or where there are a choice of such chops, pick the one that evades. Which again emphasizes it should not be a flat ban, but just disfavored. Your horror show would have a terrible erosity score typically. Tentatively I think I prefer my version of the rule. As applied in WA, it just determines which CD chops down into Pierce. And it has the advantage of making easy which CD goes down for the chop without having to do exhaustive erosity tests, as to which the accidental design of the locality lines and populations might flip it either way.

In general, I consider what you did bad practice, and thus it should be disfavored, unless it accomplishes something useful on the chop front, such as avoiding a locality chop, or a trapped area like Stevens Point. And having simpler tie breakers I think is important policy wise. Having erosity scores as the tie breaker in this context is much more cumbersome and harder to understand, and given that there might be a substantial partisan variance, having something more simple will tend to reduce the controversy.

This whole issue I think deserves substantial discussion. The precise bridge chop rule was what drove  the different designs of our two maps. So its important. I can see not having a bridge chop disfavored if it avoids the lack of a road connection which you mention as to Stevens Point (just as would be the case if a bridge chop avoids a locality chop), but I can fix that aspect of my map by just chopping back into King with my WA-09 to take in Stevens Point, so that would not be an excuse in this instance.

My proposal is that a bridge chop arises when you have any whole county then take a portion of another county, and then move on beyond that county to take in a portion or the entirety of another county, and while it does not create a penalty, it loses to a map with the same chop count that does not do that, unless the bridge chop avoids a locality chop, or a trapped area without pavement connections, and then it is not disfavored at all. Have simple tie breakers unless the bridge chop itself does some non erosity related good, and in all events allow them. And there is no distinction between bridging to whole counties or partial counties with respect to the bridge chop rule.

Why do you have a green line from Walla Walls to Columbia County (I wonder how many Columbia counties there are out there on the Fruited Plain)? Those two counties are not even appended. Absent that green line, our respective versions of WA-05 have the same number of road cuts. It appears that my version has more of a population variance. If that variance caused the max variance to increase, than your version would be preferred. If not, it would not be preferred, and our maps might be potentially tied, assuming the bridge chop rule is hashed out. Should in that instance, the version with the lower variance from "perfection" than be preferred as the tie breaker vis a vis the two versions? Per our current rules, it is not given any consideration.

You appear to have chopped Bremerton. Why did you do that? That counts as a chop. Because there is no pavement connection? I disagree with that. It is more important to keep localities together. At some point, the obsession with pavement ends up just being bad policy. This is one of those instances. On this one, I suspect that you have absolutely no hope of changing my mind. None.

What software did you use to construct your "notes," and where do you get your state county outlines from? Thanks.

It's good that all my work on WA is finally forcing a more extensive discussion of bridge chops. It was sorely needed. I have been harping on the matter for some time. Finally, the issue hopefully will be finally and fully joined.

Here based on your comments is my revised map, some of which comments are well taken obviously. (There was another ferry thing for WA-06, which I fixed and which comports with your map.) Suppose that to put Vashon into WA-07 it necessitated chopping another locality, in particular Seattle?  Does one live with the chop? I suppose the answer is yes, because in theory, an island could have a lot of population, rather than just being rounding error. That would obtain say if Mercer Island only had a bridge going to the mainland one way. Pity that.

[Torie]

I generally like your changes to my map. I was drawing it in a hotel room and I'm sure I missed things. I didn't have to chop any munis to put Vashon in 7. I think it was just Vashon, Seattle, Shoreline, and perhaps one next to Shoreline. I can't check from the car, and I could easily have missed something there.

I know you didn't. The purpose of this exercise is to muse about policy issues - even ones that you think we discussed before, not matter how much that might irritate you. In any event, I agree that the bridge or ferry rule should be followed here, even if it does necessitate a chop.

What you did in your map with King and Pierce I believe should have no penalty. We never faulted it during our extensive work on MI, and I don't see why we should now. I think that is where we fleshed out these county chopping rules.

If you are talking about my map with the pack and cover penalty, or your map, I have given a lot of thought to the bridge chop issue, and hope you will seriously consider my recommendations, and comment in detail about it, if you disagree with me. I have laid out my case now. I think it is persuasive. I never knew the exact definition of bridge chops, even though I asked you more than once. Now I know, and thus my comments.

The problem with muni chops in WA is similar to what we encountered in MD, NC, FL and other states that lack subcounty government. Some of the places in WA on DRA are incorporated places, but others are not. I would not want to give particular importance to unincorporated place lines, since they don't have to reflect real boundaries. We could use the Census CCD boundaries in WA counties, much like using the MD election districts. However, in King they are mostly too large on the west side, so they would need to subdivided based on incorporated munis. Defining the subdivisions in King and Pierce are a necessity to look at connections and erosity.

Yes, I agree with all of that, and am inclined at this point, absent something persuasive, to follow the precinct nest rule. But in individual states there might be a good reason not to do that, and the state should just change their precinct lines. But the fact that the precincts are not nested, suggests the states with that syndrome don't care much about the integrity of such localities. The same might obtain for city neighborhoods. It would be a lot to ask for say NYC to have to change its precincts wholesale to accommodate your idea of what and where the neighborhoods are. But if the precinct lines follow the neighborhood lines, great. Bremerton is an incorporated city. You just missed its erosity on the south end. No problem. It's just that you so rarely make mistakes, that I tend to think what you do is deliberate. In this case, I thought it might be a pavement obsession.

The network map I posted was in my Atlas gallery that I found through a search. I created it in 2012 using Visio. It was for a thread about connections and regions in WA that had a lot of back and forth between jimrtex and I. Our differences about connections in NC can be visited in that thread three years ago. We really keep crossing the same ground on these issues, but I tend to resist wholesale thread necromancy so here we are.

Not sure what you are referring to here. Is that about bridge chops or highway connections? On highway connections, you have the matter under advisement about nicks. We seem to disagree about whether chops in need to be along state highways. As with the bridge chop issue, my point of view is that chops in along any pavement are OK, but disfavored as compared to state highway chops in, and should only be used to the extent it avoids a locality chop. I think the overriding policy should be to minimize chops absent something compelling to the contrary. I will look into Visio. Thanks. Is that were you got your county outline map from as well?

I'm pretty sure I found WA 261 crosses the Snake river from Franklin to Columbia back in 2012, if that is your question. The paper atlas in my car shows it that way, in any case.

You are correct I now see. So that is that. However the policy issue remains about which design to use where there is tie, and I have made a suggestion to use the version where there is less of a population variance from equal population between the two choices (subordinated of course to SKEW considerations, but that does not obtain here). This would only obtain where the same two CD's are involved, and it is merely an issue of the border between them. There is no tie breaker in place now.

[Torie]

How do the the school district boundaries interplay with the boundaries of towns and cities? Are towns and cities nested in school districts? If not, using school districts will not work. We don't want to start deliberately chopping cities and towns. If they are nested, then I think Goldilocks needs to be made happy. If you have subunits that are too big in population, or potentially in geographic area if they start cutting off stuff that a CD needs to go through to have pavement connections, or whatever, you start getting chops, which is a scoring disaster, and we already have rules that make one avoid macrochops absent a compelling reason to do so. We don't need any further disincentives there. If they are too small, you then have a zillion road cuts, wrecking the erosity score. Using individual precincts for anything is just silly.

Ideally, one should use towns (townships) and cities and ignore villages (other than to have a rule to limit the number of village chops where one has a choice where the lines go), the way we do in much of the Midwest and Northeast. If there are areas in a county that have neither, and that area is too big in population (if relatively small in population, it really does not make any difference, so draw the lines where one wants, being sensitive to pavement connections ala say our Yakima County macrochop), then for those areas coming up with something else makes sense if available, and it does not interfere with towns and cities. So in King, if there is no nest problem vis  a vis towns and cities (I assume that the precincts are nested in towns), using school districts for the east side of King that does not seem to have any subdivisions (or almost none) would make sense because Washington does not have township boundaries that take in all of its real estate. On the west side, where all the real estate (or almost all of it) is defined by towns and cities where the precincts seem to nest), I would ignore school districts. We don't want a situation where you get one chop penalty for chopping a school district, and a second one for chopping a city or town at the same time within the school district. It's all a balancing test.

I would note that in order to put Vashon in the Seattle CD, we both chopped that school district north of Seattle in our maps by severing off the town or city on its east side. So we want to ignore that school district, and my ramblings above provide a rationale to do so.

Playing around with the mapping tool around Carnation, I would note that the precincts do not nest with the school district line around there. And I really don't think the "approximation" test is practicable. So to make it work, Washington (or King at least) would have to move its precinct lines. And unlike MD, with its voting districts, there seems to be no workable substitute. So absent changing the precinct lines, I think we are just back to avoiding town chops were towns exist (like Carnation), and other than that, one can do what one wants with the stricture of trying to have state highway connections if possible to do so, and if not, then at least pavement connections, where that is possible with a certain line selection that does not precipitate chops. It's hardly a disaster in the sense, that on the east side of King, the population to play with is really not that large, nor the political affiliations from one area to the other all that different.

[Torie]

The areas of potential annexation being appended to the city that might absorb them, or their own locality, or what? Do these potential annexation areas have nested precincts? If not, given the relatively small population involved as compared to what is adjacent, why is this really important? Not that it matters for rule making (and I strongly agree on trying to have a grand unified theory across the Fruited Plain, if only for the "elegance" of it all, itself an object d'art, just like my desire for straight clean lined rectangular CD districts), but given the partisan geography, it will not make any partisan difference in any event in WA. I wonder in how many states, is this conundrum in play, that really matters? By really mattering, I mean real estate in a county without nested precincts in something we can use, if only because it is there, if not really associated with anything else at all that matters much, ala MD, where exactly how the lines are drawn, might really matter? If it does not really matter, we need not worry about gratuitous erosity, I would think.

Oh, one other thing. Assuming the hinterlands of these highly populated counties have no sub-jurisdicitons, that are precinct nested, and where the exact lines are drawn might make a difference, isn't this a good venue to try to get the SKEW down? Just saying ... . I bring this up, because I just did that with Maricopa County based on 2020 census projections. It would be unfortunate, if some neighborhood thing prevented that. Unlikely, because my lines were clean, and whatever neighborhoods in Phoenix are created, would, and should, not make much of a difference. But it might have.

I am amazed you are not busy wrapping presents or something. Have a good Xmas. The best thing about this wonderful site, is that I met you. It's been a pleasure. Best.

[Torie]

My first problem here before we get going further, is that I don't understand your road cut count. Talk about complexity! It would seem to me the cuts generated between counties would tend to be the same for any map, where in the adjacent county another CD exists. So we are left with cuts internal to King County. In playing the game myself to minimize highway cuts, I drew your WA-10 much the way you did. Assuming non municipalities were deemed but one jurisdiction in King, we have a highway cut between Renton and Newcastle, Renton and the unincorporated area,  Maple Valley and the unincorporated area, and then road cuts however counted where the unincorporated area is chopped, which is any pavement correct? That would be a nightmare to count potentially. And you think tie breaking preference rules are complex and hard to apply (which even someone as obtuse as I think are quite simple and straight forward)!

Anyway, the incentive would be to have the CD line follow the Cedar River to minimize such cuts I suppose, and adding a road cut for Black Diamond, per the map below. Although you might say Black Diamond is not connected by a state highway so that is off the table, but I don't agree with that rule either with respect to internal cuts in a county. Any pavement will do. Anyway, it seems the the road cuts internally are quite low.

Of course, with my bridge chop definition and rule, the posited Pub temptation that is alleged to be doable with a winning score would be off the table, but I digress. It appears that we may permanently part ways on the bridge chop issue. Pity.

[Torie]

I understand all of the above, but I don't think it is responsive to my post. Of course, we are only talking only about macro chopped counties. I accept that the precinct nesting issue should not be the tail that wags the dog. It is just an indication of whether or not there are subunits that anybody cares about for election purposes. The issue is where there are no subunits, how necessary is it really to artificially generate them?  You say one reason is that you might end up with wide partisan swings. I reply that maybe that is not so bad, if it gets the SKEW down, provided the maps don't get too erose looking. You offered up a map that looked erose, but much of that is really due to the shape around the Newcastle area, with a highway squeezing by to keep the CD connected. I grant it looks kind of ugly however. I put up a map that was not so ugly, and also did not impact SKEW, that would seem to me to have fewer highway cuts. You assert that there are more. I don't understand how. I am not sure how road cuts are counted between subunits in macro chopped counties. I thought it was any road. Granted if there is one big swath of land in King without subunits it gets to be cumbersome to count every road, where the unincorporated subunit is chopped. The Cedar River however, happens to make it all manageable in this case it would seem, particularly if any pavement connections will do within a county.

Speaking about chops of subunits in macro chopped counties, I am thinking of allowing one chop without penalty of a subunit to get the SKEW down, subject of course to a road cut count, so it does not get too ugly. The same thing within a big city. It if has neighborhoods, allow one chop to get the SKEW down, subject to the erosity rules. You won't like that one either probably. And what do you do with cities that have no neighborhoods, like seemingly Tucson, that are usable? What about Phoenix? Just create some out of whole cloth? What I do is try to have straight lines preferably following highways. Generally, in cities without apparent usable neighborhoods my chops within cities are highly "artistic" and pleasing to the eye. I like it that way. Anyway, the point being, that if there are going to be subunits everywhere in counties subject to macrochops, generated somehow, the one bite hope rule might be a workaround to deal with SKEW issues. That might be the right compromise, the Golden Mean, to resolve this particular food fight. Dogs get one bite with a negligence rap, and maps similarly get one bite in this context.

Getting back to SKEW, and Phoenix, the problem with not allowing one cut of a neighborhood, however constructed, artificially or not, is that it all becomes a population accident as to where the lines are drawn. There is next to no flexibility. It is all an accident. The only flexibility is where it happens that there has to be one chop per the population numbers. Otherwise, you are just screwed. Heck, it might end up with something that looks really erose to avoid a chop. The regime is really intolerable. It does not make a difference that matters when chopping Detroit, but it clearly might in Phoenix. It might matter as to the partisan complexion of the Statin Island based CD in NYC. It might in Tucson. I can't think of any other cities where it might matter, other than perhaps down in Texas, and then of course in some big counties. Some cities where there might otherwise be a partisan difference are driven by the VRA.

[Torie]

By my metric there are either agreed subunits that take in every parcel or not.

A) If there are agreed subunits then the usual erosity rules apply to those subunits within a county and across county lines.

B) If there are no agreed subunits then chops are assesed for munis in the county. The pieces of each district become the subunits and erosity is assessed on those (as we do with simple chops). Since every parcel is in a district the district pieces can serve as subunits for erosity.

My analysis assumed no agreed subunits but agreed munis as in case B.

What does "pieces of each district" mean? I look forward to your comments as to the balance of what I said, assuming you want to keep this discussion going. Maybe you have had enough.

[Torie]

My first problem here before we get going further, is that I don't understand your road cut count. Talk about complexity! It would seem to me the cuts generated between counties would tend to be the same for any map, where in the adjacent county another CD exists. So we are left with cuts internal to King County. In playing the game myself to minimize highway cuts, I drew your WA-10 much the way you did. Assuming non municipalities were deemed but one jurisdiction in King, we have a highway cut between Renton and Newcastle, Renton and the unincorporated area,  Maple Valley and the unincorporated area, and then road cuts however counted where the unincorporated area is chopped, which is any pavement correct? That would be a nightmare to count potentially. And you think tie breaking preference rules are complex and hard to apply (which even someone as obtuse as I think are quite simple and straight forward)!

Anyway, the incentive would be to have the CD line follow the Cedar River to minimize such cuts I suppose, and adding a road cut for Black Diamond, per the map below. Although you might say Black Diamond is not connected by a state highway so that is off the table, but I don't agree with that rule either with respect to internal cuts in a county. Any pavement will do. Anyway, it seems the the road cuts internally are quite low.

Of course, with my bridge chop definition and rule, the posited Pub temptation that is alleged to be doable with a winning score would be off the table, but I digress. It appears that we may permanently part ways on the bridge chop issue. Pity.

Actually I thought this road cut count was as simple as could be. A regional connection exists between counties where there is a numbered state highway. Within a county there is a single connection between each locally connected fragment. In a macrochopped county there is a connection between counties and fragments where a regional connection exists (used for the second number). One then proceeds to count the cuts as I did above (number after the slash).

Is there an instance in my description above where this didn't work?

Regional connections within counties are numbered county highways? In King, some roads without numbers seem like arterials, and given more prominent display on the DRA than others, which look like residential streets. I don't see any numbered county highways actually. Anyway, it seems like my map minimizes such cuts. And within the unincorporated area, assuming no subunits, I assume one counts each place where a highway however defined is cut.

[Torie]

You could create an erosity test by just counting the highway cuts, however defined, within the cut "jurisdiction," in this case being the unincorporated area. That seems quite logical to me. You don't count highway cuts at all in chopped jurisdictions? If you don't, then you can draw the lines anyway you want in the chopped jurisdiction it would seem. What if a school district takes in a city and territory outside it? Is the territory outside the city its own jurisdiction for your purposes?  

I am really not that hostile to creating such artificial jurisdictions, if something can be created that is workable. My fix that I think will work is my one chop rule. It is not only about erosity, and SKEW per se, which I think are very important, but also that map lines in this context will be a function of population accident if there are lines that happen to avoid any chops. That is a horrible result in this context - just horrible.

You raise the estoppel argument often with me. I don't feel estopped at all. If I have new insights, as I gain more experience and knowledge, I am going to change my mind, or finally form an opinion, or an informed opinion. In some cases, I really didn't understand some of the details, and certainly not all of the implications. This for me, will always be a work in progress, always, until I am satisfied that the best approach possible can be fashioned.

Hopefully at the end, where we cannot agree, it will be after thorough discussion, with the issues properly hashed out, and the competing considerations and plusses and minuses, understood. Then at least where we disagree, it is because we weight the competing considerations differently. If you have informed commentary down the line, you are going to face these questions again, and again, and again. You might as well face them now.

And as I said, your big opposition is going to be from Democrats, once they understand the game. Your system, if it remains rigid, will tend to lock in a Pub majority at present. The Dems are better off with commissions that they can game, with pseudo non partisan human tie breakers like Mathis, or the dumb Pubs on the CA commission, some of whom were probably false flag or close to it, and BS COI chat, not something that a computer does, that will screw them on a nationwide basis, after they pick up their ten or so seats net. At least my one bite rule, provides more flexibility to give them hope. Drawing that second Dem CD in Phoenix is really almost mandatory, assuming the lines don't look too erose. It really is. I don't want a neighborhood cut that could be avoided to interfere with that. It's one thing to have which counties go together be a population accident. It's another for which neighborhoods and so forth go together be a population accident. Your reply? Well the highest scoring map need not be picked! I understand. But lower scoring maps have a headwind against them. And they might be knocked out of the box entirely if not pareto optimal.

I might add that my bridge chop rule I think will tend to hurt the Pubs. They can't without penalty I in this case losing by virtue of the preference rule) suck up rural fragments in two counties in some cases by applying it, as was true here in Washington. Sucking up two more rural fragments is almost the definition of a Pub gerrymander. Instead it is the other CD in the urban county that will suck up the rural fragment in the adjacent county. The two rural fragments would tend to be put into different CD's.

The planning areas in Tucson are not really usable, given how the roads flow. Take a look.

[Torie]

Obviously that is what one is left with, if you want subunits. Find something, and if it does not work, then modify what you find selectively, based on stuff being too small or whatever. The subunits also need to work with state highways, ala Tucson, or something will collapse. Perhaps the one chop rule will help there. And what if the subunits are too erose? Keep looking for others that are less so, until one finds something?

I really don't think my proposed rule changes are going to cause a collapse of your maps. They are changes on the margins. With total respect, I consider that argument make weight. I have yet to see one example of that anywhere. Well there is your King County map perhaps, if it is the winning map, which I am not persuaded it is, but I agree that if there were no subdivisions, you need a road cut regime, and I further agree that it is not good to have some counties with no subunits ala King, and other large counties that do have subunits, if it can reasonably be avoided. I am not against subunits per se. I think I can help SKEW with my one chop rule, at least at the margins (with that chop leashed by road cuts however defined within the chop, and bearing in mind, that with relatively small subunits, we are not talking about chops of areas with big populations. It just avoids situations where there is a map that happens to have no chops, that then knocks all the other maps out).

The other argument you make, is that my changes are too complex. That one brings a smile to my face, given many of the rules that have been fashioned. I really don't think preference rules, or the one chop rule to help with SKEW, are particularly complex at all. I mean, how can it be, when I actually understand it!  The nick rule does add some complexity I must admit. But if it causes better maps (by lower chop and UCC penalty points), it is probably worth it. It won't really apply very often anyway.

I still don't know what the regional roads are in King County by the way, that has no county road numbers it seems, assuming that is what regional roads mean. I guess that point is moot, except perhaps within chopped subunits, if one has subunits. Well not really I guess, assuming that there is no numbered county highway between subunits intra-county (if that is the definition of an intra county regional highway), unless then any pavement counts as a highway cut. And we don't want there to be too many such highways, or the map is back in the box again, with only one map to be drawn even with the one chop rule. We want some sensitive highways, but not too many. In short, we want a regime that helps with SKEW, but still has maps that look reasonable to the eye. It's another Goldilocks situation.

By the way, I assume that if you chop into a city, and then also a neighborhood within the city, that  counts as two chops, right?

Macro-chops are hell. A necessary hell, but still hell. It is by far the toughest aspect of this all - at least to me.

[Torie]

What is the purpose of rule number 5? Is this a case where the portion of an unincorporated area that is not within a municipality but is within the same school district is less than 0.5% of the quota?

[Torie]

OK. You might clarify in your text that that is your intent.

I have been busy too.  Here is the neighborhood map for Phoenix.



Of course the precincts are not nested. Here is my best effort of approximating the neighborhoods.   Note the wide range in populations. Maybe the tiny hoods on the northside should be combined, maybe not. I am not sure it will make much difference.  Tiny hoods unless strewn around randomly, will tend to be in one CD anyway.


 
As feared, the other version map version chopping Phoenix, which shoves AZ-09 three points in the Pub direction, and into Pub hands, seems to have the same number of cuts.  I am counting for intra county cuts, any pavement. I don’t think picking and choosing what is a qualifying road is wise. Just like when a particular division of a city or county avoids a chop, based on the accident of what population fits, I think that is arbitrary, and interferes with SKEW patrol. As long as the map does not get too erose, that is bad policy. It will never be accepted I don’t think, and it should not be accepted. It is one thing to have such arbitrary and accidental results with county chops, because given our UCC rules, just how the rural counties are shoved around, will rarely make much partisan difference. That is not true when handling macro chopped counties. I might add that the pro Pub map version of Phoenix gets close to avoiding a neighborhood chop. It is off by maybe 15,000 people. If the north end of Phoenix grows faster than the south end, that discrepancy might disappear. It is a roll of the population dice, in a context where the dice should not be rolled, assuming erosity is kept under control.

 




So I propose for marcro-chop situations the one bite rule. You can have one extra intra county chop over the minimum that can otherwise be achieved while hewing to the VRA, without penalty. The map with the fewest road cuts, counting any pavement as an eligible highway, would still prevail however if the chop count is the same after getting your one bite. In this case, the two maps are tied on road cuts in Phoenix, so SKEW is the tie breaker, and the more Dem friendly map prevails – as it should. And it should prevail even if the Pub map managed to avoid that chop of Deer Valley on the far north end thereof.

I might add that we have never really thoroughly explored this issue before. Most cites, and for that matter, urban counties, of the size that brings this issue into play, with which we have dealt, are either so pro Dem, or driven by the VRA, or both, that it makes no difference. But it makes a difference in Arizona, and Washington potentially, and maybe in the Dallas and Houston area, to name some areas off the top of my head. Thus even if estoppel were an appropriate response in some contexts (I don't think that appropriate in any context as to the metrics here), it certainly is not in this context.

So here is the list that I can think of, which are sources of disagreement (maybe reconcilable or maybe not) or under discussion, or works in progress.

1.   Definition of bridge chops, and the penalty regime therefor.

2.   The highway nick issue.

3.   The issue of whether you need to chop into counties on state highways and the penalty therefor.

4.   What counts as an intra county highway cut.

5.   The one bite rule.

6.     The regime for handling Indian Reservations. My statutory text is substantively different from Muon2's. I oppose treating reservations in a way that is identical way to counties. They are hybrids, and should be deemed so. I also oppose any incentive to have two adjacent reservations of different tribes, being placed in one CD. The result is to reduce flexibility, and incentivize chopping counties to bits. I think my proposal is the right balance.

I have given up on the precinct nesting thing, and I believe that the one bite rule, makes Muon2’s protocol of shoving everything into districts within a county a tolerable constraint, vis a vis the SKEW patrol issue.

Oh, on the matter of where municipal lines are (the Maricopa area on its west end is a mess, I found this utility. You’re welcome! ☺  

Notice, that my perusing of the muni lines in west Maricopa using this utility, caused my map to go ugly in that area, and that Goodyear is chopped. That is another problem with the macro-chop rules. It tends to incentivize incurring pack penalties, and maybe both pack and cover penalties. The dice are loaded against macro-chops.  Which is yet another reason to go with the one bite rule to mitigate that.  It’s one thing to stack the dice, it’s another thing to load them. The one bite rule helps to get from the load category to the stack category.

[Torie]

I'm not sure I'm clear on the one bite rule. Is this for cases that are macrochops and governs the number of chopped subunits? If so, is this applicable in well-divided counties like in the Midwest? How does it function if there are 3 or more districts in a macrochopped county?

Yes, you get one extra chop of a subunit in macro chopped counties, and it is per each set of two adjacent CD's. There is no one bite rule otherwise. It is not needed, and population accidents will be accepted, because most are into limiting county chops. By the way, we need a rule as to when a subunit gets too large, so one needs to create neighborhood subunits. Perhaps it should obtain where its population size is in excess of two microchops, which would be around 70,000 people. Maybe that is too small. Some of the hoods in Phoenix are more like 150,000-200,000 people.

Ideally, rules should be the same across the Fruited Plain, absent a compelling reason to depart from that. In the Midwest, it will not matter, given that we have done maps for all the states there, and know the lay of the partisan, racial, and population land. But the same issue obtains, if it did matter.

I think you misunderstood my reservation rule. Each separate reservation was its own entity, much like my split of King unincorporated areas by school district.

OK, that resolves one area of discrepancy between our two rules. Your text did not read that way, the way I interpreted it. Your regime still requires county chops however, rather than just a preference. I don't like that, and I don't think it is justifiable. Bear in mind that most reservations are small in population. Avoiding a chop of such tiny entities, causing a map potentially to change substantially, is a really egregious example of the tail wagging the dog. If say, by mandating a chop of Pinal County, the CD population were too small for the Pinal County CD, then potentially the whole map goes down the drain, or if a Maricopa CD needed to chop out. The preference rule avoids such unpleasantness.

Oh, I remember the German guy's name now. We are talking about the Lewis Trondheim rule.

Keep in mind (and it may already be so) that inequality, chop and erosity are used to form the Pareto set. Skew (and polarization) comes in afterward, applied to those plans in the Pareto set.

I always bear that in mind, each and every second of my time while awake, and sometimes even in my dreams. But here's the thing. My AZ maps are identical, except in Phoenix. So guess what? One of the maps, unless otherwise tied (which fortunately appears to be the case here) absent my one bite rule, is not on the pareto optimal frontier. It needs to be the map that has the lowest SKEW, and not driven by population count accidents of the respective city hoods. The one bite rule will not cause ugly, erose maps.

You have inequality above SKEW? Not good. It should be below SKEW, not above. Inequality is a trivial concern in the larger scheme of things. Add that one to the disagreement list!

The tie breaking order should be:

1. Bridge chops
2. Indian reservations
3. SKEW
4. POLARIZATION
5. Using state highways for chops into counties as opposed to any pavement, to wit, state highways, then county numbered roads, and then any all weather two lane highway pavement
6. Inequality

[Torie]

Why is there a need to define a precinct node?

If I understand the intent of the language (some of it is confusing, and it needs to be made clearer in places), state highways are needed to chop a county from an adjacent county (with the issue of the highway used nicking another county on the discussion list). A chop does not cause  other CD's in a chopped county to become illegal because their connections are severed by the chop. Macrochops require state highways in as the location of the chop, other chops do not. Within a chop, one only needs public all season pavement as the connections within. Except with respect to highway cuts involving crossing a county boundary, highway cuts between subunits in a macro chopped county look at the cut of any public pavement. There is but one cut counted between subunits. With respect to highway cuts crossing the county line, one only counts state highway cuts, again one per subunit adjacent to the county line.

If I have the above right, we have a couple of issues. One is this business of counting state highway cuts. Normally we count just one cut between counties that are in separate CD's. That is still the case for chopped counties that are not macro chopped. But with respect to macro chopped counties, we start counting state highway cuts for subunits on the county line adjacent to another CD across the county line. But I think we are doing that only for subunits within the chop area, while not doing it for the other CD or CD's in the county. I suppose if the other CD's are all nested in the county, that might be workable. But if not, how do we distinguish between which CD is deemed to chop in? I don't think we suddenly want to count every state highway cut that goes across county lines for macro chopped counties, albeit it being only one cut per subunit.

I remember in Marion County we just counted state highway cuts for the subunits with respect to the CD that chopped in. We did not start counting cuts for the other nested CD. Would we have done so if the other CD was not nested, but itself took in an adjacent county? Should we only count such cuts for none nested  CD's in a chopped county that are other than the CD with the highest population within the county? Thus only one CD would be counted for a bi-chopped county even if neither CD is nested, and just for the smallest two CD's in a trip-chopped county, where none of the CD's are nested.

My second issue is requiring that macrochops go in on a state highway for counties that are otherwise deemed regionally connected per a state highway somewhere. I am not sure that I agree with that as other than a preference (with the ranking where I placed it on my list), just as with the case for ordinary chops. I think that reduces flexibility too much. It might force a chop in a place that is inconvenient. Granted, with the one bite rule, one can get away with the state highway in requirement for a chop where the location limitation causes a subunit chop, but the purpose of the one bite rule is to reduce skew, and it should not be "wasted" by accommodating that state highway in constraint. Also, absent skew considerations, the idea is to minimize chops, and having this state highway in requirement for the chop seems to be another tail wagging the dog situation.

And we still need to decide when a municipality should be chopped up into subunits. 

[Torie]

I agree with the use of the "internal villages" of Phoenix for subunits. I used them myself in my post on Torie's AZ thread back in March.

Anyway here's a version of AZ that only keeps one HVAP-majority CD (56.8%). There is only one extra cover in the Phoenix UCC and no pack penalties. I had a choice between an extra chop into Pinal or a chop into one of the large suburbs, so I went with the Pinal chop. It turns out that Phoenix has 15 recognized "villages" within the city limits. My CD 7 chops none of those to the extent that precincts allow, and only one of the 15 is chopped between CD 8 and 9. I could have avoided that chop but the erosity would suffer.

Yes, and you made AZ-09 a Pub CD by having AZ-08 chop into Phoenix where it did, presumably because choosing to chop in and absorb the Deer Valley neighborhood avoided a neighborhood chop. Congratulations.   Wait a minute, you chopped Deer Valley it seems. Which raises the question of why AZ-08 did not chop in to take in the northern neighborhoods, so that AZ-09 could take in North Mountain? Did it involve an extra highway cut, or was that before the sensitivity to SKEW arose?

[Torie]

Yes, I think having a size requirement for municipalities is a bad idea, except for when it comes down to having subunits within a municipality. My one bite rule might help here. The downside of small entities, is that the roll of the population dice becomes more salient perhaps in drawing the lines, and might make for more erose maps. The upside of small units is that it will help to avoid chops. The one bite rule helps hopefully to come up with a reasonable balance, and reduce the import of the dice roll factor. By the way, Michigan law embraces a one bite rule. It's just that in Michigan, the idea was to maximize SKEW, and it was unconstrained by highway cut counts. Thus that magnificent bridge chop to Pontiac.   Oh dear, do we have a bridge chop issue now for subunits? Probably the same preference rule should be in play - perhaps. The Pontiac syndrome will never work anyway, given highway cut counts, even if SKEW weren't a factor. It is grand that Section 5 is dead. Some of the mess created by the VRA is now gone, with retrogression in the dumpster, and the test with what is performing now the law of the land.

I assume that the reason for assigning precincts is where they are non nested, which hopefully would become a moot point. I know that I assign precincts based on where most of the population is, based on zooming down, and trying to discern where the bulk of the residential units are. Sometimes it is hard to tell, particularly if it is a matter of deciding whether buildings are apartment units or commercial buildings. Maybe defining precinct nodes is done to deal with non nested precincts. Non nested precincts are a bane. They should be made illegal.

[Torie]

OK, but could a plan that did not Pub up AZ-09 be drawn that reached the pareto optimal frontier is the question. The issue is whether by playing with the lines within Phoenix, in a way that does not look too ugly, we could get a 6-3 map, rather than a 7-2 map. It's a darn important question. This is where the rubber meets the road as to whether this whole scheme will ever fly, when all of its implications are understood, by the Democrats in particular. And it's darn important to try to get the party on the short end of the SKEW stick more seats in such states, consistent with good maps, particularly where the SKEW is very high, and a 7-2 map has a really high SKEW, just like a 9-0 map in Massachusetts has a really high SKEW. That is simply good government. We don't want a Pub party totally dominated by the South, and a Dem party totally dominated by areas outside fly over country. That's an increasingly serious problem that we have. So we need, to the extent that we can, consistent with good maps, to try to get there. The Pubs will still have the SKEW advantage overall. It's a pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered, situation.

If it is not possible to draw an AZ-09 that affects SKEW in a downward direction, without the map getting too choppy or erose, then so be it. Then it becomes defensible. We don't "gerrymander" to get SKEW down. We just need to be careful in how we define what is a gerrymander. Very careful.

[Torie]

Well at the moment we are working on AZ and WA. What more do we need to work out?  I am proposing we work out my one bite rule, and try to get this road cut thing nailed down. I accept dumping everything into subdistricts, and that the nesting tail should not be wagging the dog. So we are making progress! And we now have a nice little list of the open issues, which seem actually to be growing. Perhaps one day over the rainbow they might start shrinking again. Miracles happen.

And we need to see about drawing a second Dem district in Phoenix per the 2010 census, and whether these rules knock out a nice looking map that would have such a district, as opposed to something that deserves to die because it's butt ugly, and/or chop chubby (the latter being more about not letting some unpleasant genie out of the bottle, that might wreck havoc elsewhere). Could we help Mathis out here in a more defensible way in Phoenix?

[Torie]

Mirror, mirror on the wall, should the one bite rule apply to highway cuts at all?

 I think the answer is probably no. Using my AZ map using the 2010 census, here is the only map that makes AZ-09 a true tossup CD (49.9% McCain). The key is downtown Phoenix. That is where the white Democrats are in highest concentration, in the Encanto neighborhood. That is the neighborhood that needs to be in the second Dem CD in Phoenix. But to do that, you are doing a couple of more highway, cuts, and guess what? The map gets kind of ugly. Really too ugly.  

 

Here is a map that is justifiable, at 51.5% McCain, just out of the tossup category, although close at a 1.7% Pub PVI if you do a 4 point, rather than a 3 point McCain adjustment.



Adding a chop is not going to help much here.  It is more about reaching into downtown, and except directly to the north, downtown is surrounded by Hispanics needed for the VRA CD.  It’s more about erosity. In 2020, the population increase will probably allow the VRA CD to reach down and take the Ahwatukee Foothills, and retreat south so that it does not wrap around Encanto. Then that neighborhood can be liberated to be put in the second more Dem friendly CD.

So yes, I think the one bite rule needs to be about chops, and mostly the rationale is to avoid a population accident, where a map happens to avoid a chop due to that, and screw the skew, even thought the map that gets the skew down and would be competitive absent a population accident is not a Dorian Grey affair at all. Such a population accident skew screw based on neighborhood lines that nobody knows about except some weirdos and appear on next to no maps that anybody sees, is not going to be tolerated in this context by the partisan victim, but in particular the Dems, who will need to be sold that this scheme is not some Machiavellian plot to screw them out of what is rightfully theirs.

Make sense?

Do whatever you think best Muon2 as to what state to pick to work out these details, in the order that you want to work them out. All I ask is that they all be worked out, even if in the end we part ways on something.  After going through this hell with me, you will be ready for anybody! ☺

[Torie]

I had some questions I laid out about the subunit rules that I set out, mostly out of confusion. I don't know what the Jimrtex zero rule is. Where to put bodies of water? Who cares? We don't want to generate a chop over areas with no population anyway. I am skeptical about erasing small cities. There had better be a good reason for that. Otherwise, they might feel picked upon. And it does give more guidance as to where precise lines should be drawn. I grant that it does not involve skew issues.

Any county really that is subject to a macrochop in end should be mapped out, not what our maps happen to chop up. Granted, Spokane is not subject to chop, and never will be, at least for CD maps. Clarke county might be subject to macrochop. I still want to know when city neighborhoods need to be mapped out. When they are subject to macrochop?

[Torie]

I had some questions I laid out about the subunit rules that I set out, mostly out of confusion. I don't know what the Jimrtex zero rule is. Where to put bodies of water? Who cares? We don't want to generate a chop over areas with no population anyway. I am skeptical about erasing small cities. There had better be a good reason for that. Otherwise, they might feel picked upon. And it does give more guidance as to where precise lines should be drawn. I grant that it does not involve skew issues.

Any county really that is subject to a macrochop in end should be mapped out, not what our maps happen to chop up. Granted, Spokane is not subject to chop, and never will be, at least for CD maps. Clarke county might be subject to macrochop. I still want to know when city neighborhoods need to be mapped out. When they are subject to macrochop?

The jimrtex rule 0 was that municipalities and school districts are cut at the county line. I thought it went without saying since this was about county subunits, but since everyone want more clarity, I can include it.

Any county with a population over 10% of the quota could get macrochopped. In WA that includes Benton, Chelan, Clallam, Clark, Cowlitz, Franklin, Grant, Grays Harbor, Island, King, Kitsap, Lewis, Pierce, Skagit, Snohomish, Spokane, Thurston, Whatcom, Yakima. I'll set up a thread for all WA related tests of the rules. The subunits will go there as needed.

Any city that gets macrochopped gets subunits. There are 13 cities big enough to macrochop.

As I understand the one bite rule, it exempts one chop of a subunit cut between two districts from scoring as a chop. The chopped subunit still creates connections as appropriate that can contribute to erosity.

A chopped subunit may or may not create another highway chop. It depends on where the adjacent subunits and CD's lie. Map beauty is more a function of these highway cuts, particularly since we don't have this state highway limitation except with respect to cuts attending county lines. My focus is on avoiding a map that is deemed a beast when it comes to these subunit chops, but is nevertheless beautiful. Hopefully this one bite rule will avoid that, and allow the lower skew map to hit the pareto optimal frontier. That assumes of course that the subunits are not themselves unduly erose. When it comes to these "artificial" subunits, picking a set of subunits with unduly erose lines should be avoided. That is not an issue in Phoenix. The subunits we both latched onto work just fine. Anyway, the unduly erose aspect should be kept in mind. If some universal rule about the default being school districts where nothing else seems available, in an instance has unduly erose lines, then we have a problem. Obviously if mountains or rivers or the like is the reason for the erosity, that is OK.

[Torie]

I had some questions I laid out about the subunit rules that I set out, mostly out of confusion. I don't know what the Jimrtex zero rule is. Where to put bodies of water? Who cares? We don't want to generate a chop over areas with no population anyway. I am skeptical about erasing small cities. There had better be a good reason for that. Otherwise, they might feel picked upon. And it does give more guidance as to where precise lines should be drawn. I grant that it does not involve skew issues.

Any county really that is subject to a macrochop in end should be mapped out, not what our maps happen to chop up. Granted, Spokane is not subject to chop, and never will be, at least for CD maps. Clarke county might be subject to macrochop. I still want to know when city neighborhoods need to be mapped out. When they are subject to macrochop?

You probably did not notice, but school districts and cities can cross county lines in Washington, and they do in King County. Since subunits must nest, there are three ways to handle this:

(1) Chop cities and towns at county boundaries.

Pro: Simple.
Con: May produce micro-units if a city merely laps across the boundary.

I don't see yet the con for having micro-units, so at the moment such subunits should be chopped.

(2) Adjust county boundaries, to match city boundaries that cross county lines.

Pro: Better reflects COI based on cities.
Con: Makes county boundaries irregular. May divide county-based COI, and might disrupt county-based election administration.

I can see the merit perhaps in adding a county chop that keeps a subunit whole as being added to the preference list that I formed. I am not sure just where on the list it should best be placed. Beyond that, no. County lines rule. That is the standard out there now on the Fruited Plain, and there had better be a darn good reason to depart from that. I see no such reason.


  (3) Permit cities that cross-county boundaries to be considered as being in both (or more) counties, or in the individual counties.

Pro: Gives more discretion to the mapdrawer.
Con: Can be gamed, since it effectively creates two micro-counties where a city crosses a county boundary.

On Muon's map, there were subunits in Puget Sound, offshore Federal Way and Des Moines, but not offshore Normandy Park and Berien, because those two cities have annexed the area in the water. The same thing happens along Lake Washington.

Including these areas creates contiguity, and may foster an impression of connected, for example in this case, with Vashon Island, which should only connect based on the ferry (and the ferry landing).

In Florida, the area within the 3-mile limit is included in their maps, and within their compactness scores. It is gamed, along with the Everglades.

This one confuses me some. We don't do compactness. We require bridge or ferry connections. If we have an instance where municipal water surrounds an area not within the municipality, and that area not within the municipality has adequate connections to another CD, I am leery of using the water to merge that water surrounded area to the municipality, but on this one my views are more tentative.