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Author Topic: Dave's Redistricting App  (Read 307688 times)
Brittain33
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« on: June 07, 2009, 07:24:53 PM »

Anyone else playing with this toy? I've redistricted Missouri with 8 districts, including a VRA-compliant district covering all of St. Louis City, and played around with the Twin Cities.

There is tremendous potential here. I hope he keeps improving it.

http://gardow.com/davebradlee/redistricting/launchapp.html
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Brittain33
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« Reply #1 on: June 08, 2009, 08:14:44 AM »
« Edited: June 08, 2009, 08:17:44 AM by brittain33 »

I don't think Missouri has to comply with VRA. So which district did you hack into pieces?

I dismembered Carnahan's district as part of my goal of a Republican map.

I put all of St. Louis City and chunks of north St. Louis County in the 1st to make a 49% African-American district. Since the App doesn't have political data yet, ethnicity is the only way to carefully play with precincts. I think it's impossible to get to 50%. The district ends up fairly erose, but not ridiculous. You do get a sense of how segregated some neighborhoods are... blocks that are diverse bump up against others with fewer than 10 African-American residents.

The rest of St. Louis County and parts of St. Charles go into the 2nd district. The minority population is <5%, I think.

For Luetkemeyer, I drew a 3rd district stretching west along the Missouri River from exurban St. Charles to Columbia and Jefferson City and one country further to his hometown. I didn't split any counties other than St. Charles. It looks different from any current district, but is visually pleasing.

Jefferson and St. Genevieve were added to an 8th district that still hugs the Mississippi all the way down to the Bootheel.

The 7th district shifts east but remains a Springfield-based Ozarks district.

I put Joplin and Neosho in the 4th district, which continues to sprawl all over the west central part of the state but sheds its Jackson County portions. Ike Skelton's home of Lafayette County is in the district.

The 5th district links all of Buchanan, Platte, and Clay County with the urban parts of Jackson County.

The rest of Jackson County joins all of the farm counties of the northern part of the state, including most of the old 9th, in Sam Graves's 6th district.

Without splitting counties, I got all the districts within about 2,000 people. I could move rural precincts around the middle of the state for equality, but who would care?
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Brittain33
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« Reply #2 on: June 08, 2009, 08:26:32 AM »
« Edited: June 08, 2009, 08:29:20 AM by brittain33 »

Thanks for sucking up my night. I spent it drawing a 50-district Minnesota.

I drew a 6-district Oregon that might go 5-1. Originally I was trying to put Bend in a coastal district to rescue some Democratic votes, but instead I found myself putting much of Linn and Douglas County in the eastern district. I wish I'd had political data so I could see if the coastal districts were as efficiently Democratic as I thought; the Obama numbers do overstate Democratic strength, but they're what we have.

I divided Portland in three, creating a new district connecting enough of Portland to the south suburbs to make a reasonably Democratic district. The 1st and 3rd districts were able to shed precincts without too much trouble; The 3rd moves east to take up more Columbia River counties that went for Obama; the 1st extends south for some more rural areas.

The 5th includes Salem and Corvallis and then jogs west and runs all the way down the coast to California. The 4th connects Eugene and Springfield to Medford and Ashland while holding onto as little rural and small town territory between as possible. Everything else goes into the 2nd, including all of Bend and much of Linn and Douglas counties. I may have put Albany in the 2nd.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #3 on: June 08, 2009, 11:00:49 AM »
« Edited: June 08, 2009, 11:03:13 AM by brittain33 »

You might get by with a two-way split, as long as there was no question that one of the districts was going to be the Black district.   A similar split in Kansas City probably would not be approved since you could end up with two Republican districts.

Republicans can do whatever they want to Jackson County without regard for VRA or partisanship. 5th district demographics: 68.8% White, 24.4% Black, 1.3% Asian, 5.6% Hispanic, 0.5% Native American, 0.4% other. The representative is African-American, but the constituency does not come close to any levels that would merit protection to avoid retrogression.

I don't know if you could gerrymander away the possibility of a Democratic district from the region.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #4 on: June 08, 2009, 11:02:07 AM »

If Section 5 is overturned by the Supreme Court, I would expect that Congress would simply extend its application to the entire country, rather than trying to justify its arbitrary coverage area.

I can not imagine that enough representatives would willingly impose these procedures on their local governments, given that local elected officials are among the people with best access to representatives and could all agree on opposing them.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #5 on: June 09, 2009, 08:08:47 AM »
« Edited: June 09, 2009, 08:16:28 AM by brittain33 »

(1) No Section 5.
(2) Universal coverage under Section 5.
(3) Selective coverage under Section 5 based on objective standard (eg only Hawaii qualifies)

Which are you going to choose?

(1) has the advantage of being the path of least resistance because it involves no legislative action. Are there 218 legislators who are going to vote to impose Section 5 coverage on their local officials vs. 218 legislators who are willing to pretend they don't even know about this case? 
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Brittain33
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« Reply #6 on: June 09, 2009, 08:15:43 AM »
« Edited: June 09, 2009, 08:19:26 AM by brittain33 »

Let's say you brought a finger from MO-4 into KC.

The district is unprotected by VRA concerns. This would be similar to the incorporation/submergence of minority areas of TX-24 into suburban/affluent districts TX-26 and TX-32 in the 2004 Texas redistricting. Cleared by the Justice Department and Supreme Court, and TX-24 was a district drawn to be minority-opportunity, unlike MO-5 which has no such designation. 24.4% African-American means that the minority community in the district does not have the ability to "elect the candidate of their choice" now and could not be expected to in the future.

Granted, an Obama Justice Department would not have cleared the dismemberment of TX-24, so it's not a perfect analogy. But, again, MO-5 has a smaller minority population than Frost's TX-24 and multiple Republican-held districts today.

I also refer to the recent Supreme Court decision whose name I forget, covering legislative districts in North Carolina, that essentially said any district with fewer than 50% minority population is not inherently protected by VRA. MO-5 falls far short of that standard.

Jim, can you cite any examples of congressional districts--or even legislative districts--with as small a minority population as MO-5 being protected by VRA against redistricting that produced a chance of Republican representation? (This is not a ridiculous or contrived situation at all, no matter how it sounds.) 

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Certainly. I'm talking only about MO-5, where the minority population share is so low so as not to raise concerns about retrogression. Subunits of MO-5 at the legislative or city council level could have majority-minority populations.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #7 on: June 10, 2009, 07:45:38 AM »

Brittain33 the law is a mess in this area, a total mess, and therefore the precedents (which your characterization thereof strikes me as more of less correct  but I am not sure), are more fragile than is typically the case in SCOTUS jurisprudence in my little opinion, for what it is worth.

They may be a mess, but I'm not aware of any precedent at all that extends protection to a district like MO-5. When you have a district with such a small minority population, it become a difference in kind rather than degree, and we are discussing protected populations on the scale of the number of righteous men in Sodom.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #8 on: June 10, 2009, 10:58:24 AM »

(2) Has the advantage that it requires only minimal legislative action.  I'm sure that there will be other representatives and other persons who will remind any who may not have heard of the decision.

You're a stubborn one. Wink

I stand by my argument that congressmen aren't going to pick fights with all of the elected officials in their districts by imposing this burden, but we can agree to disagree.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #9 on: June 11, 2009, 08:37:21 AM »

Beautiful map! The Pembroke Pines-Hialeah district would make for some very interesting elections.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #10 on: June 12, 2009, 07:58:35 AM »

Minnesota with seven districts:
CD-01 - yellow (Walz and Kline put in same district)
CD-02 - red (Paulsen)

What's the population differential between the suburban Dakota parts of CD-01 and the rural counties of CD-02? What was the thinking behind stretching CD-01 up to the inner suburbs?
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Brittain33
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« Reply #11 on: June 14, 2009, 09:57:32 AM »


I read his comment as a joke...
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Brittain33
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« Reply #12 on: June 14, 2009, 06:15:43 PM »

I think they have the population now to have 3 districts bounded by and including Loudoun and Prince William counties. The 10th should be completely suburban in the next round of redistricting, and the 9th will have to expand ever outward to gobble up population.

Something's got to give with districts like the 6th, 7th, and 1st being pulled into northern Virginia. It would be ridiculous to have Richmond suburbs and Williamsburg sharing districts with exurban NoVa, but that's where we're heading.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #13 on: June 15, 2009, 10:32:52 AM »

There's a quite good redistricting of Louisiana with 6 districts in this comment. The mark of Zorro returns, tidied up and ready for review.

http://www.swingstateproject.com/showComment.do?commentId=76095
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Brittain33
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« Reply #14 on: June 15, 2009, 03:59:42 PM »
« Edited: June 15, 2009, 04:02:37 PM by brittain33 »

Great job, but why not put Platts and all of York County in Shuster's district and keep Lancaster County intact? Do the populations pencil out? Having Shuster represent northern Lancaster seems weird, even though I can see exactly how you were backed into the corner by trying to keep Holden's district as-is and rational.

I started PA yesterday and didn't get very far... your map tempts me to try again without a 5th district, having the 10th and the 3rd meet somewhere in the middle of the state and with Centre County all in Shuster's district.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #15 on: June 25, 2009, 08:50:05 AM »

Yeah, the combination of "let's create districts for white Democrats and minority Democrats" plus "ooh, computers" was ugly. Weren't the squiggly inner-city districts in Houston and Dallas overturned by the courts and redrawn?
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Brittain33
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« Reply #16 on: July 01, 2009, 08:55:41 AM »

There's some weird inversion of the 1st district (Clay, St. Louis) and the 5th district (Cleaver, KC) in your description and color choices.

Graves/Skelton reminded me of this

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Brittain33
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« Reply #17 on: July 14, 2009, 08:08:36 AM »

Is population decline going to screw LaTourette no matter what happens? It looks like any direction he goes in is going to add Democrats, sometimes in large numbers.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #18 on: July 15, 2009, 08:04:28 AM »

Is population decline going to screw LaTourette no matter what happens? It looks like any direction he goes in is going to add Democrats, sometimes in large numbers.

Yes and no.  His base of Lake County is growing along with Geauga County which is far more Republican friendly than its neighbors.  So really, his district has to expand because the Democratic counties are bleeding population.  I guess you could say his district has to gain more Democrats because it's lost too many.

Right... "population decline" was unclear, I meant in terms of the state's relative decline which is causing it to lose two districts and which will make his district take in territory because even if it's doing well for Ohio, the 14th is lagging the country as a whole.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #19 on: July 27, 2009, 08:39:23 AM »

Louise Slaughter lives in Fairport, southeast of Rochester, FWIW. The current gerrymander loops her in.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #20 on: July 28, 2009, 03:56:03 PM »

Massa does indeed live in Steuben, the only reason that county is in his district.

Was not aware Slaughter lived in that part. Wikipedia's maps showing the location of towns in NY are crappy.

I was at the Fairport High School 20th reunion this weekend with my partner. He's not particularly political but he knows Louise Slaughter is local. Smiley
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Brittain33
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« Reply #21 on: August 12, 2009, 08:18:15 AM »

I can't believe you did that.

I've never seen MV and Nantucket split before, but the ferry routes do argue for your division, and it gets the islands double representation.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #22 on: August 13, 2009, 08:09:49 AM »

I was surprised that there were two Hispanic majority districts in Boston.  One in East Boston and the other in Roxbury.  Are these mostly Puerto Rican?  Or Dominican or something else.  Are Azoreans counted as Hispanic, and are there signficant concentrations in Boston, moving up from New Bedford, Fall River, and Providence?

East Boston has, I think, a large Mexican population that only recently developed in the city.

There is a large Puerto Rican community in part of the South End that shades into Roxbury. There are public housing projects in the middle of substantially gentrified streets of townhouses. One of them is called Villa Victoria and is located on Dartmouth Street; it has a strong identity as a Puerto Rican community built literally into its walls and includes both high rises and 1960s-style modern townhomes.

I know very little about Roxbury, but parts of the South End I do know about may be classed as Roxbury for official purposes. Blame the realtors for pushing "the South End" out to the west and south.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #23 on: August 31, 2009, 07:49:36 AM »

Who does this map pair? It looks like Halvorson and Biggert, would that be accurate?

Where do Quigley and Gutierrez fall in the two earmuff successor districts?

I did some research and saw that Melissa Bean now has a Cook County district and Bill Foster is in the district to the west.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #24 on: September 05, 2009, 04:06:46 PM »

If you were to reduce the blue district to 51%-52% African-American, how might that tidy up the lines? Not that it isn't an impressively acceptable gerrymander as it is... Is there any way to trade the SE corner to that district so the yellow district doesn't extend that far south?
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