Blumenauer Congressional Plan

[EastAnglianLefty]

If you're increasing the number of congressional districts by 50%, I think you need to make an effort to increase the number of VRA seats by the same percentage. You can't draw three black-majority districts in Greater Detroit by CVAP without squiggly lines, but you can easily draw three fairly compact districts where black voters would be a majority in the Democratic primary so I think you should.

It's doable just using Wayne and Oakland counties (with an arm reaching up to Pontiac) but much cleaner if you use southern Macomb (where Eastpointe is now black-plurality and Warren and Roseville are much less white than a decade ago). In either case, you don't need to split any cities.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Here's what I came up with: https://davesredistricting.org/join/add10d91-1c0c-449a-b1ba-0a116f60a484

Two seats at 50% black or above by CVAP, the other at 48.8% but black majority by total population (which the other two aren't.) All should function. The Arab communities are divided, but they aren't large enough to control a congressional district anyway, even at this size.

6 safe Dem seats (defined as at least Biden +10), 7 same R seats (at least Trump +5), 6 swing seats (only one of which voted for Trump, but most of which would have flipped in a Trump victory.)

[EastAnglianLefty]

Connecticut with zero towns split: https://davesredistricting.org/join/fadacab6-a2fa-456f-b1fa-9279a405da28

I started out aiming for compactness and for a New Haven-Bridgeport seat which might be a plausible minority access seat (though in practice it's 54% white by CVAP so I'm not sure it's possible without splitting towns.) It ended up winding up as a Democratic gerrymander, because to get sufficient population equality and keep vaguely cohesive districts Waterbury needed to end up in the NW district.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Kansas with no counties split except for Johnson (and keeping cities and towns whole there): https://davesredistricting.org/join/4a425d15-d732-40dd-8a23-414a514f734e

This is intended as a compromise map if Republicans were unable to override a veto, or as a commission map. Both the Johnson County and the Kansas City-Topeka districts voted for Biden by around 10 points, whilst the other 3 districts are safely Republican.

It is still possible to gerrymander five safely Republican districts, but you do need to bacon-strip multiple districts from the Colorado border to the KC metro.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Nebraska is a trickier question from a Republican perspective. On the one hand, Douglas County isn't that strongly Democratic. On the other hand, it's still large enough relative to other counties that it's hard to drown it out entirely. With four districts, splitting it between two districts just means that both are vulnerable in a wave and I don't think splitting it three ways is possible without the map looking stupid, especially since you also have to worry about Lincoln.

I think the easiest solution is to create one district that narrowly voted for Biden and three others which are safe, then hope Bacon can hold down that district. Something like this: https://davesredistricting.org/join/aff14830-3f67-4ad5-8511-163b6e0e86c6