2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: New Jersey

[Torie]

[Torie]

Are you referring to state law or federal VRA law? There is no such thing under federal law as a minority opportunity CD. What you do need to do is avoid gerrymandering to pack a minority or dilute it. The Newark based CD in a Dem primary would have a majority of AA voters, or very close to it. It should be performing for a candidate of the AA's choice.

Aside from state law, personally I think in places where voting is less and less racially driven, as long as you don't gerrymander, or ignore a situation where there is a compact CD that is not performing for a minority and can be in theory pushed up to a majority minority CD in a primary, the VRA is on the way out, and SCOTUS should make that clear soon, to the extent it is not already.

I realized last night that the CD crossing the state from the ocean to the Delaware River  over the empty Pine Barrens and a county line was bad, and so first thing this morning I fixed the south Jersey lines.

As you might surmise, I drew the lines totally unaware of the partisan implications. I do not have a granular knowledge of Jersey politics. It seems pretty fluid actually, as one might expect for a state that in many ways is one big suburb.

[Torie]

That NJ-7 is possibly the worst-smelling district in the country without a hog CAFO.

Driving down the Jersey coast is a life adventure that still awaits me. So far, I have not gone south of Jersey City. I had planned before I found out that 2020 was the year of most interesting times for me, to venture south through Bayonne, Statin Island, and then though the olfactory zone to which you refer, and spend the night at a gay bed and breakfast in Asbury Park. Perhaps when I and my partner are all vaccinated up, I will do that in early Spring before the beach mob infests the place. I doubt that the zone to which you refer will match the smell I experienced when knee high to a grasshopper in Phoenix in the late summer when it gets somewhat humid of all things, when its stockyards were at full throttle. That was just amazing.

[Torie]

You can get to about 40% Hispanic CVAP by taking in the north side of Newark (where have all the Italians gone, long time passing?), or Elizabeth. Even by trying to take in both, and making some erose mess that carves out the gold coast, you are not going to get to more than say 45% HCVAP.  It may be legal to do the erose mess, but it is certainly not VRA required.

I might add that a substantial percentage of the Hispanics in the zone are Cuban, and thus about a quarter of them or so vote Pub (it will be interesting to find out what the Trump 2020 share turns out to be). It is just not there. I really think Hispanics and the VRA are on its last legs. That may be one of the very few silver linings of the Trump show. He has reduced the salience of color as a proxy for partisan preference.

[Torie]

[Torie]

[Torie]

In terms of redistricting, it's kind of annoying that Smith lives in blue Mercer and Pallone lives in red Monmouth.

For sure.

You chopped the most beautiful city in America! 

[Torie]

Our flat in Hoboken is directly below the "t" in the "1st St" label on the map.

[Torie]

Our flat in Hoboken is directly below the "t" in the "1st St" label on the map.

Visited Hoboken a few times. Lovely place.

[Torie]

Not a comment on any map but the real one, but I hate hate hate that Plainfield is stuck in NJ-12.

Man, having just looked a the map, with a cf it is. The persons responsible are going to hell, and will have to share a cell with me there.

[Torie]

Based on the content of the article below, I think the Pubs have the high ground here (as to the odds of their choice being picked), and the judge retiring is not retiring prior to the August 10, 2021 SCONJ "election" day for them to pick one or the other of the two choices presented to them.

https://newjerseyglobe.com/congress/who-will-the-supreme-court-pick-as-the-congressional-redistricting-tiebreaker-15-questions-and-answers-about-what-comes-next/

[Torie]

Here is my submission to the NJ commission for a CD map.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/7224b3db-0c0f-4182-a964-204342d33d4e

[Torie]

I don't know. Clinton won the CD as I drew it by a 2.5% margin, and Menendez in 2018 won it by 1%. I suspect Biden won it by a 5%-7% margin. This particular piece of real estate both swung and trended Dem in the 2020 POTUS election by a non negligible amount.

In this endeavor, I took some cognizance of existing lines, and thus kept Elizabeth City in the Hudson County based CD (it is the Hispanic CD in the state, not that the VRA demands it here, but because it is still an important consideration), and also was careful not to mess too much with the Newark based black CD. Some of the convoluted  lines where they exist in the existing map must be inside baseball, because I don't understand the rationale that much, given the Pubs knew that it was either their map or the Dem's map, which one would assume would contain their more "predatory" instincts.

Myself, I did not check the division of the partisan spoils until finished, although I had a general idea of the landscape, but certainly not on a town by town basis, but did check when done just to see if the map had some reasonable partisan balance. I also used the new city feature a lot on the DRA, to minimize municipal splits. That is a great feature on the DRA. It now drives my maps, almost as much as county lines do. In the real world, it has driven maps a lot as well, but not those who drew them with the DRA because it was too difficult and time consuming in many cases.

[Torie]

How many people live in the purple bit of western Monmouth County? I would give that to the Ocean County district and rotate all the other south Jersey districts to compensate. That would make NJ-2 more Republican by bringing some of the Gloucester County suburbs into the Camden district. I don’t think it’s an issue to split southern Ocean County.

34,000.

[Torie]

Here is my submission to the NJ commission for a CD map.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/7224b3db-0c0f-4182-a964-204342d33d4e

I know you’re going for minimal county splits, but your map splits the New Brunswick area hard between three congressional districts, and separates North Plainfield from Plainfield. Morris also isn’t really connected to Bergen as much as it is to west Essex or Union

This is minor but I would adjust the splits of Gloucester and Burlington to make the CD1 portions of them more Philly-centric; I would swap Monroe for West Deptford and stay west of Rancocas Creek in Burlington, swapping Delanco for Mount Laurel. It’s also worth noting your CD7 voted for Biden by virtue of keeping Somerset whole

Thank you for your comments. Wazes to get us from south central Hoboken to the I-87 on the NY state line has taken on all kinds of routes to contend with the traffic, so I have come to know the real estate in the Morris, Passaic, Essex and Bergen areas rather intimately. And for some reason I often end up on the streets of Paramus. I have become quite bored with Paramus. The most loathsome of all is NJ-17 to Mahwah, with its crazed ugly somewhat dangerous hybrid of partial access and limited access design. Whomever put that all together must have been on hard mentally disabling drugs.

The state lines are right where they "should be" topographically however. The mountains start at the NY state line with NJ (ignoring Rockland) as the Appalachian Mountains hop the Hudson River, and NY is separated from Mass and much of CT right at the crest of the Taconic Mountains, at least what is left of them after a billion years of erosion or whatever (it's one of the oldest ranges around).

[Torie]

I just shipped off this beauty, a ward map for Hoboken, to the city council members and the mayor, to save them some time.  

https://davesredistricting.org/join/7df20b23-ad3d-47b9-acee-2aa8aa450ff0





Here are the current lines. I sent them to the power structure, with some humor. Least change baby, for the incumbents. I also have some hope I can be a change agent on stopping a horrible development project, one council person at a time, but that is another story. Keep hope alive!



No matter what the outcome, being in the fray is the thing, to try to make a positive difference, win or lose. That's what gives my life more meaning and purpose. Losing does not matter that much at this stage of my life. The journey is the thing.

[Torie]

Tie breaker Wallace's rationale for picking the Dem map? The Pub map was picked last time. That's it. Nothing more. Not sure why Wallace bothered to show up at the hearings. His mind was made up from day one. He gave the Dems his proxy vote.

The failure to publish the two competing maps, and invite comment, was a sad fail. This commission was the antithesis of transparency in all things. At least the MI commission, when it did its Dem gerrymander to offset the Dem's geographic disadvantage and embrace the efficiency gap metric as the statistical loadstar for what not "unduly" favoring one party means, was transparent. This gang seems to no redeeming merit whatsoever.

[Torie]

Tie breaker Wallace's rationale for picking the Dem map? The Pub map was picked last time. That's it. Nothing more. Not sure why Wallace bothered to show up at the hearings. His mind was made up from day one. He gave the Dems his proxy vote.

https://twitter.com/wildstein/status/1473683787968036866?s=20
On one level this is a total L O L, on another though it shows that the D Courts and Murphy were the indirect arbiters of the outcome - just like Christie was in 2011. The NJ system is horrible, but it is working as designed.

Since the NJ Supreme Court picked Wallace (biased, and apparently close to non compos mentis to boot), it shows that partisan courts are far too often packed with political hacks who don't give a damn about their oath of office to be impartial and not be partisan hacks. Impeach and convict and remove them all.

[Torie]

Tie breaker Wallace's rationale for picking the Dem map? The Pub map was picked last time. That's it. Nothing more. Not sure why Wallace bothered to show up at the hearings. His mind was made up from day one. He gave the Dems his proxy vote.

https://twitter.com/wildstein/status/1473683787968036866?s=20
On one level this is a total L O L, on another though it shows that the D Courts and Murphy were the indirect arbiters of the outcome - just like Christie was in 2011. The NJ system is horrible, but it is working as designed.

Since the NJ Supreme Court picked Wallace (biased, and apparently close to non compos mentis to boot), it shows that partisan courts are far too often packed with political hacks who don't give a damn about their oath of office to be impartial and not be partisan hacks. Impeach and convict and remove them all.

But Torie you told us in the NY and FL thread the courts weren't complete hacks lol

Keep hope alive! Notice however that it seems the party controlling the trifecta does seem constrained a bit in both NY and FL from acting on their most rapacious impulses, based on the law proscribing unduly favoring one party. And in NJ, since there are no legal standards other than federal ones, the hackness was about choice of personnel rather than blowing off the law or twisting it into a pretzel.

[Torie]

Here is the Menendez map. He won NJ-03 and NJ-05 by 5 and 6 percentage points respectively.

[Torie]

Here is the Menendez map. He won NJ-03 and NJ-05 by 5 and 6 percentage points respectively.

How much did he win 11 by?

8.4%

[Torie]

Can Kean win in a district that contains Linden and Rahway? They are not Republican-friendly...

And Sherill gets another term because Maplewood and South Orange is added there...

I think given Malinowski's weakness and the fact that it's a good GOP year in 2022, Kean will win. However in 2024 with a presidential election Kean could definitely be in some trouble.

What if Malinowski runs in a different district or retires? Does that increase or decrease Kean's chances of winning?

Actually, speaking of Jack Ciattarrelli, he should be living in the new NJ-7, maybe he'll consider challenging Kean with the publicity and attention (and credibility on the R side) he gained this fall?

He already said he's running for Gov again in 4 years so I don't think so.

[Torie]

Court orders their tiebreaker to detail his decision process.

It is hard to amplify the null set. Wallace explained his reason. His reason did not require him to actually look at the maps at all. It is heartening that high courts actually take their reputations seriously. I expect more action out of Ohio and New York courts as well, along with Florida if the Pubs get too greedy. If Wallace comes up with more reasons, they obviously will be reverse engineered. I wonder if the court can deem Wallace unfit after the fact, and replace him, or just supersede his finding.

[Torie]

The reasoning in what one could read from the tweet is absurd, the 50-50 snapshot as the measure of fairness standing alone is absurd, but given NJ has no standards for CD redistricting, unless the Court applies some rather basis test like SCOTUS, there does not seem to be a clear legal path toss the decision of the commission.

https://ballotpedia.org/Redistricting_in_New_Jersey

I hope more states go the direction of the VA law, where if a commission cannot reach a decision on a bipartisan basis, two special masters do it, appointed by the court, one each from a list of names provided by each party. The other tie breaker mechanism don't seem to work well often where one person rather than two are the tie breakers, without any checks and balances on such person.

[Torie]

Cooked data and a breach of confidentiality. What is a court to do, when a former judge, and one of their own, goes rogue?

https://newjerseyglobe.com/redistricing/claiming-partisan-fairness-models-are-proprietary-princeton-gerrymandering-project-wont-show-their-work/