Chops and Erosity - Mid Atlantic Madness

[Torie]

This is what I originally had in Pennsylvania, on muon's advisement that UCC fans were no big thang:



(The 5/9 line, and those within Washington/Allegheny, can be tweaked.  Presumably erosity could still be improved.  In particular I probably would like to change the 5/9 line to what I used below, assuming that traveling chops are not a worry.)

This is basically what Western PA would have to look like if the UCC fan was a sliding scale:



The 12/18 line goes from I-chop to macrochop; you need another (I-)chop between 12 and 5 as well.  Oh, and inequality has risen since Allegheny/Butler is close enough but underpopulated.

I have not calculated erosity for this map as opposed to the earlier one: it's entirely possible that the vagaries of Allegheny County's roughly 50,000 boroughs means that this could even score better!  The proliferation of teensy-tiny towns around Pittsburgh, and the iron necessity that a district line navigate through them, makes Pittsburgh possibly the worst place in America to apply our current erosity measurement.  It certainly fails the eye test, I think, with that ugly duckling 18 (and 12 isn't much better).  Though I guess 3 is actually nicer.

If fans are just given a flat one point hit, then my earlier PA (which– to be clear– might be improvable in Allegheny) would still be competitive.  But, since its 12 and 4 both span the UCC boundary, it gets some number of hit points.  At least two, since the old 12 has Greene (38K) and Armstrong (68K) outside of the UCC, which I guess is fortuitously just under the threshold for three hit points.  (4 is more thoroughly split between UCC and non-UCC; Pittsburgh is roughly 3 and a half districts after all.)

In any case, it makes my old map have a worse chop count, and I don't think it really deserves that.

Here is my entry for PA, playing by Mike’s rules (e.g., the search for the non UCC county chop – in this case “finding” poor UCC-less Carbon County for the chop hit), which I am posting below Train’s for comparison purposes in a new thread for the Mid-Atlantic states. I drew my map entirely independently of his, but I see our maps are the same in NE PA, and the York County based CD. Great minds think alike, particularly when the population miraculously just works, as in the case of the Scranton area CD.  Addendum: Well there was this invisible spillover of PA-10 into PA-05, so my map alas must have a microchop to make PA-05 fit within the population parameters, and the Carbon County chop now just barely works, and needs to be split to avoid a subunit chop (unless I missed something). I hate when that happens! So I have one more chop than Train (unless I missed a way to do it, absent going Train's route). I guess I am just left to savor the additional erosity points he racks up to avoid his little microchop. For me, it's worth it, but that is just me.

The precise lines in SE PA, were dictated by trying to minimize inter-county highway cuts, while avoiding subunit chops. Job one of course is to first identify the county seat, and work from there. I was unable to find a way for PA-08 to chop into Philly without a ward chop, so it chopped into Montco instead. And I needed to make sure PA-02 took in downtown Philly where the courthouse is, to avoid a highway cut from Montco by having the most direct highway able to go from Norristown to the Philly courthouse, without ever touching PA-01. This aspect of the game is the most time consuming. The way PA-16 juts into Chester County was no accident either. Finally, the cut into Montco by PA-06 was designed to avoid a traveling chop, which I think should be prohibited, and thus I won't due it.


 

[Torie]

Never mind. I solved the problem. Erosity is better too. I also fixed the lines in Chester County to make them less erose, and moved PA-07 into Philly to get rid of a macrochop by PA-06 into Montco (albeit pushing PA-07 out of the competitive category politically), which also lost a highway cut in Chester Coutny. I found a stray precinct in PA-18, which when eliminated, pushed it over the population limit, so PA-14 needed to take in another town, to get the populations back in line.

So I have one more chop than Train, coming out of Allegheny County.

[Torie]

You have an unnecessary UCC chop in the west: five districts enter the Pittsburgh UCC when only four are necessary. I believe chopping into Chester does the same thing– unless we've decided that single county UCCs get the penalty point instead (in which case I guess it's a wash)?  And PA-8 can in fact go into Philly with no split wards– some erosity, admittedly, but I don't think any more than you incur in Montgomery there.

I have an extra chop in Allegheny, as I admit, but don't you have an extra chop in Philly (you having both PA-07, while I have just PA-07, in lieu of my extra chop into Chester? The PA-08 is 80,000 folks or so, and Philly needs a total chop in of about 120K. So you have two chops into Philly, one in Montco,  one in Chester and one in Berks, and I have one in Philly, two in Chester, and and two in Montco. Yes, if chopping into single county UCC's does not get an extra penalty point, then you have a higher score in the Philly UCC too. But currently under Mike's rules, it does.

Oh, but I forgot that PA-09 enters the Pittsburg UCC. My bad. How inconvenient. PA 09 needs to chop more so that PA-03 does not. I don't like that rule in this case!  Ah, if we just had incremental penalties, and nothing more. But we don't.

I don't think any chops should be treated differently myself, no matter the status of the county, with the sole function of UCC's, multi county UCC's, being aggregation (hopefully with incremental penalties for the aggregated size of the chop in). So if you have the requisite pack in a UCC, no extra penalty beyond the county chops themselves, but if you do, then you count the size of the chop due to the failure to pack for extra penalty points. We both have the minimum pack of 3, so no extra penalty points in the Pittsburg UCC.

But right now, all that matters is whether a county is, or is within, a UCC, or not, and the incentive is to chop non UCC counties wherever one can. Not a good system, but in this instance, in PA,  it works pretty well. There is absolutely no reason to prefer chopping Berks in lieu of Chester, and it makes splendidly bad public policy, that no state will enact - ever. There needs to be a level playing field, applicable to all, and just based on the numbers of people involved.

[Torie]

Fixed. My bad. I hate when that happens. (Plus Brandywine TWP is confusing, because it has labels like West Brandywine West and East, rather than precinct numbers, but the Chester Twp map I found clarifies it is one Twp., so thus a bit more erosity.)

Anyway, I am coming to the opinion regarding UCC's, that you just have the pack rule (if you don't you get penalty points), plus the whole county severance penalty point for multi-county UCC's when there is more of a CD cover in the UCC than the minimum, and call it a day. And perhaps we should just be content to just use Mike's erosity test for macrochops (the idea being not to punish them, but to punish erose macrochops (thus my idea of penalty points only if the intra-county cuts exceed the minimum for the size of the chop). All chops count the same. KISS. UCC's won't be eviscerated or hideously fanned out given the pack rule, and the severance rule, and because if one chops into them, you still get chop points, so it won't be done gratuitously. I think maybe that is enough. It creates minimum complexity, and basically treats all counties the same when it comes to chops (which I think the public will demand).

The suggested UCC rule would however favor Train's map over mine however in the Pittsburg UCC, because his severance of Fayette does not cause the minimum cover to be exceeded, while mine does. The CD that chops of Fayette must also do the other cut, due to the trapped Washington County anomaly, such that if PA-18 takes Washington County in along with Fayette to keep Fayette in the UCC, it causes that CD to cease to be a pack CD. Do we want a trapped county exception to the pack rule?  

[Torie]

I'm not quite sure what is suggested then for UCCs.

It sounds like single county UCCs get no special treatment, and I lean that way, too.

It sounds like the new UCC pack rule is favored. I'm not sure it's as strong as some think, but it's worth continued consideration.

For the cover rule it sounds like Torie is suggesting looking at the cover of a UCC and if it exceeds the minimum and the number of county chops plus 1 in that UCC a penalty occurs. For example in my favorite guinea pig of Lansing, a cover of 2 would only get a penalty if the county chop count is 0, but not otherwise. I think this breaks down when one is able to exactly fit a number of districts into a subset of the counties in a UCC (like 4 CDs in Wayne+Macomb+St Clair), or if there is a double-spanning chop (perhaps for the VRA).

The simple cover rule still seems to me to be the strongest of the UCC rules, and I would not shy away from the double penalty it incurs (unless one wants to revisit microchops). Nonetheless, I'll keep working on the MI map set and try to put together a comprehensive study.

I would apply the cover rule only to penalize whole county severances if  the minimum cover is exceeded, not chops. You can chop away at UCC's like you can in any other county, with no special penalty other than the chop itself - at least until you chop to the point that you interfere with a pack CD by shoving it out beyond the borders of the UCC and causing it to cease being wholly contained in the UCC.

Thus, you can chop away at the Lansing UCC, but if you sever off Clinton in its entirety (so no chop penalty per se), then my rule applies, because the minimum cover of the UCC is 1 CD, and now two are covering it, so thus a penalty point for the whole county severance. We rely just on chop penalties ordinarily, but with multi-county UCC's, we need to avoid being able to chop them up by whole counties, without penalty, unless the population numbers dictate that. I think my cover rule here nicely addresses the competing considerations, until of course, as is so often the case, somebody points out that I have missed something.

[Torie]

I can apply your suggestion just fine in 0 pack UCCs like Lansing. It's very hard to write a rule that applies in multi CD UCCs. You can look at a large county like Livingston and say that's bad. It becomes hard when there's a large UCC with a small excess and some small counties on its periphery. I would rather encourage a chop of a whole county rather thana chop into a larger county. If this ddoesn't make sense I'll find a state with an example.

Why not just have a double penalty for a chop into a county in a large UCC that also exceeds the cover minimum?

I understand your concern, but the additional potential erosity points would tend to discourage the chop (overwhelmingly so, if all intra-county cuts count, rather than just those cuts over the minimum as I propose). And you can sever the county without penalty, if both the cover and pack maximum/minimum are not violated (to deal with close cases, one might perhaps consider the pack/cover rule as not being violated if the amount of the otherwise pack CD outside the UCC, or the additional CD in the UCC, caused by the whole county severance, is less than a macrochop in size). Anything beyond a macrochop pad to me is just traducing the whole meaning of UCC's, and is a huge loophole.

You final point is about having two smaller chops into a UCC being penalized as opposed to one larger chop (the infamous Lansing example again). I don't think that should be penalized myself, beyond the chop penalty itself. That is protecting UCC's over other counties without good reason in my view.  

[Torie]

I can apply your suggestion just fine in 0 pack UCCs like Lansing. It's very hard to write a rule that applies in multi CD UCCs. You can look at a large county like Livingston and say that's bad. It becomes hard when there's a large UCC with a small excess and some small counties on its periphery. I would rather encourage a chop of a whole county rather thana chop into a larger county. If this ddoesn't make sense I'll find a state with an example.

Why not just have a double penalty for a chop into a county in a large UCC that also exceeds the cover minimum?

I understand your concern, but the additional potential erosity points would tend to discourage the chop (overwhelmingly so, if all intra-county cuts count, rather than just those cuts over the minimum as I propose). And you can sever the county without penalty, if both the cover and pack maximum/minimum are not violated (to deal with close cases, one might perhaps consider the pack/cover rule as not being violated if the amount of the otherwise pack CD outside the UCC, or the additional CD in the UCC, caused by the whole county severance, is less than a macrochop in size). Anything beyond a macrochop pad to me is just traducing the whole meaning of UCC's, and is a huge loophole.

You final point is about having two smaller chops into a UCC being penalized as opposed to one larger chop (the infamous Lansing example again). I don't think that should be penalized myself, beyond the chop penalty itself. That is protecting UCC's over other counties without good reason in my view.  

Actually my final point was to consider the distinction between small UCCs like Lansing and large UCCs greater than one CD. I can see the value of treating small UCCs like single county UCCs and your rule would be easy to implement for those. I think it is in this class that you have most observed the problems of overprotecting the UCC.

I think problems occur in larger UCCs where there will be a lot of combinations that make a rule for whole county chop vs chop in vs chop out hard to construct. For those I think the separate cover and pack penalties remain the best tool, and I think they would also best pass your public square test by their simplicity.

Actually I think my rule is simple - almost elegant really. Whether it has drawbacks in actual implementation remains to be seen with examples (which I can't envision at the moment, but no doubt your most active and creative mind is trying to do so ). In big UCC's, nest CD's per the pack rule, and if you sever off a county, if that sucks another CD in per the cover rule, that is penalized. If it doesn't, well something has to be cut off from the UCC, and if it is a whole county, that's great, and no penalty. Other than that, all chops are the same, everywhere, subject to triggering the intra-county erosity test, which while complicated, is necessary, to avoid mischief in how the chop in densely populated areas is effected. But with my unnecessary cuts only get a penalty rule, if you draw the chop cleanly, almost by definition you won't get hit too much with penalty points.

[Torie]

Well I might get infracted for necro-posting, but I am not sure where to dump my latest map effort. This CD draw is based on the latest county population estimates that just came out. Having become more enamored with the Muon2 penchant to take a chop hit or two in order to avoid a macro-chop, I ended up doing something that would get me tarred and featured perhaps in my own back yard. I carved out Hudson and the town of Greenport which surrounds it from the balance of Columbia County. Ouch! The upside is that if the NYC metro area grows just a tad more slowly (a good chance since the growth is slowing down), then that chop (involving about 10,000 people) should go away. The slowing of the NYC metro area growth has been dramatic enough, that the NYC metro orbit needed to take in about 30,000 more people upstate, then it did last year. 

[Torie]

Is it possible to extend the Syracuse district south instead of west (so as to not go into Wayne County, which is clearly in the Rochester orbit, and instead go into Cortland County, which more neutral)?

Also looks like you have some stray bits in Herkimer County from the North Country district.

Yeah, but the stray bits don't matter since the lines were drawn from a spreadsheet, and the whole counties just filled in, so it doesn't matter. The CD that was chopped up was mine, NY-19. Rensselaer and Schoharie and a bit of Montgomery go to the Albany CD, Columbia (except Hudson and Greenport) and northern Dutchess go to the current NY-18 to the south, part of Sullivan goes to NY-17, and the balance of the CD goes to the current NY-22 (except for a tiny bit of Broome that goes to the current NY-23). NY-22 loses Broome to the current NY-23.

Wayne is not defined by the Jimrtex/Muon2 metrics as being in the Rochester urban cluster. If it were, then there would be an incentive to put Wayne and Ontario counties in the same CD, to avoid a cover penalty.

[Torie]

Honey, just bear in mind I did not want to macro-chop Westchester a second time, nor Rockland. Nor did I want to macro-chop Saratoga. And I paid the price, in exchange for a boatload of avoided erosity penalty points. I did basically the same thing you did, by spreadsheet, moving CD quota percentages around between CD's, and looking for macro-chop situations to either suck up or avoid.

Yeah, maybe you have found a way to avoid a chop involving the Albany CD (I have a small clean chop of Saratoga). But it looks like you got 1.1% to divide up, sluffing off 0.6% (requiring two CD's to stuff off onto), maxing out inequality, and then you have the issue of whether you will be chopping towns to get a perfect split.

[Torie]

Below is the Jimrtex map for upstate, with the details filled in. It has one less chop point as compared to mine (by avoiding a pack penalty for the NYC urban cluster), but it is at the cost of a macro-chop in Rockland, sending the erosity score through the roof (it also has to chop Orangetown), and creating a rather unfortunate looking CD that happens to be the one in which I reside.  But it does make the pareto optimal frontier.

Below that map, is mine again, plus the CD's for the NYC area. My NY-07 raises interesting VRA issues. Its HVAP is 50.8%, and it could get up up a couple of more points (no more than that really), by cross-chopping Queens and Kings, so that NY-07 can pick up more Hispanic precincts in Kings, and lose some light Hispanic precincts in Queens near the East River. The problem was created, because the slower NYC growth rate, has caused the silk stocking CD to no longer have to cross over into Queens, and the available spill over precincts for NY-07 in Kings to be fewer. The CD's in the Bronx and Manhattan are all quite beautifully shaped now. I tend to doubt the VRA would require the cross chop, creating more erosity as well, but who knows. The erosity that I created I think would be required, because the Hispanic area, erose as it is, is all contiguous. Of course by 2020, the ethnic data as compared to 2010, may make all of this legal angst moot.

[Torie]

I would think that LATFOR has the minority data from the ACS mapped to the census block group level for NYC as well as the rest of the state.

Why would one think otherwise?  I am not sure why you are mentioning this.  Did you notice my question about how subdivision chops are treated, and how it varies between ordinary chops and macro-chops?

[Torie]

For NYC neighborhood mapping, should one use the NYC map, or the “official” neighborhood tabulation map. The latter has smaller hoods, and election result data (which is very convenient).  Are smaller hoods better or larger ones better, that is the question.  Some of the NYC hoods in the first map like Bensonhurst, have very large populations, and others wander around quite a bit, making things unwieldy.

[Torie]

For NYC neighborhood mapping, should one use the NYC map, or the “official” neighborhood tabulation map. The latter has smaller hoods, and election result data (which is very convenient).  Are smaller hoods better or larger ones better, that is the question.  Some of the NYC hoods in the first map like Bensonhurst, have very large populations, and others wander around quite a bit, making things unwieldy.

One way to think about the ideal size of neighborhoods is to think about the point at which they can't be macrochopped by a single chop. If the threshold for a CD macrochop is 5% of the quota, then a unit which is 10% of the quota can't be macrochopped by one chop since one piece will always be under 5%. For NY in 2010 that number is 71,771. So subunits with populations around that size will generally work well. The second map is a better fit by that measure.

There are 59 community districts (the first map), and 188 official tabulation districts (the second map). So in 2010, that was an average of 138,814 residents for the 59 districts, and 43,564 for the 138 districts. I assume one goes smaller until perhaps the size gets down to less than half of the 5% quota perhaps (unless the other option is more than twice the quota perhaps? What is the metric for choosing, taking into account how erose or wandering the shape of the districts are presumably?

[Torie]

Below is the Jimrtex map for upstate, with the details filled in. It has one less chop point as compared to mine (by avoiding a pack penalty for the NYC urban cluster), but it is at the cost of a macro-chop in Rockland, sending the erosity score through the roof (it also has to chop Orangetown), and creating a rather unfortunate looking CD that happens to be the one in which I reside.  But it does make the pareto optimal frontier.

The division of Ontario, Oswego, and Schoharie counties are not needed.

You could put Newburgh with Dutchess, Putnam, and northern Westchester.

"The division of Ontario, Oswego, and Schoharie counties are not needed."

My spreadsheet says that they are.

'You could put Newburgh with Dutchess, Putnam, and northern Westchester."

You mean divide the macro-chop into two pieces, so that there is no longer a macro-chop? That generates another chop, and you are tossed off the pareto optimal frontier (if my spreadsheet numbers are right). It also generates a bridge chop, which is penalized in some fashion, and which I think should be avoided. Allowing them without substantial punishment allows games such as the one you suggest, to be played.

[Torie]

A larger range makes the whole exercise problematical. The "game" here is about what ifs. Sure with changes in population trends over time, maps can change. For example, in my map, with a very slight change down in the Albany cluster's growth rate, with the NE corner CD growth rate the same, the chop of Saratoga could be lost, with the Albany CD taking in Hamilton County instead. With a larger variance in populations allowed, maps would look very different, and many chops would disappear. I don't think that exercise is very useful myself.

Another issue which bothers me, that particularly applies to NY, would be to systematically short change or "over change" CD's in the NYC urban cluster, and with that magnified by 16 or 17 CD's, one could say make the chop into Columbia County disappear. That would be wrong. There should be a limit as to how much regions in a state involving multiple CD's could vary in population per CD from other regions of the state. I suspect that in the end, one will find that the Muon2 rules need more details than they have now, and I am further not satisfied that one can do away with preference rules entirely. We shall see. The proof is in the pudding.

Oh, I find that using the smaller hoods in NYC works quite nicely, unlike using the larger hoods. The lines between NY-11 and NY-10, and NY-3 and NY-3 and NY-6 fit the hoods perfectly (a few precincts cross hood lines, but that is it), and the same for the line between NY-6 and NY-3,, and NY-5, with just three or four precincts involved in a hood chop. Indeed, with the exception of what NY-7 needs to do under the VRA, I suspect that the same will be true of the balance of the CD's in NYC (they can follow hood lines and hew to the VRA at the same time).  I have not fitted the balance of the CD's into the hoods because it is too much work, and my lines look so clean as they are, and I have no motivation to "desecrate" my most beautiful "art work!"  

I was particularly tickled that I was able to have the CD line for the silk stocking district follow the famous dividing line of 96th street, which divides the upper east side from East Harlem. Of course, that dividing line means somewhat less now as East Harlem gentrifies at warp speed.  Lawyers are getting rich representing tenants in East Harlem, as landlords are desperate to get them out, so they can fix up and "condoize" whole buildings. Under NYC rent control laws, tenants can rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars if they play the game right.

[Torie]

Putting aside whether SCOTUS would tolerate deviations in excess of 1%, this conversation confused me. The census will generate the final numbers. Until then, what we are doing is just a theoretical exercise. The idea that the deviations should be increased given the numbers are uncertain going forward, makes no sense to me. No map will become law based on projections. Am I missing something here?

[Torie]

If the goal is to share maps that show what might be in 2020, and those maps are based on minimizing chops and erosity, then I'm saying those maps may have little to do with what will really be possible after Census data comes out. A 1% shift in the overall deviation due to differences in projection vs future reality can substantially change the groupings that minimize chops.

Indeed they can. That's why nobody knows where Columbia County will ultimately be parked, even if we knew that your metric was going to be followed, which obviously is not the case either. The only thing this exercise does is test your metric as the numbers change, as to what the maps would look like if those were the final numbers. That to me is why using a wider range is a total waste of time. Heck if the range is wide enough, we can get rid of most chops.

[Torie]

That "speech" by Muon2 has a nice cadence. He must be a politician or something.

[Torie]

That "speech" by Muon2 has a nice cadence. He must be a politician or something.

But what of the map? Did the rules work on this year's data set well enough to satisfy the fruited plain?

I quite like your map. The major flaw is the carve out of Schenectady from the Albany CD, but life is not perfect. But the CD that Columbia County is parked in is far superior to mine, which had a carve out of Hudson, that would freak folks out. although the folks involved are so few, that the freak out would not have much punch. Faso will send you an Xmas card for your map. You saved his butt.

[Torie]

That "speech" by Muon2 has a nice cadence. He must be a politician or something.

But what of the map? Did the rules work on this year's data set well enough to satisfy the fruited plain?

I quite like your map. The major flaw is the carve out of Schenectady from the Albany CD, but life is not perfect. But the CD that Columbia County is parked in is far superior to mine, which had a carve out of Hudson, that would freak folks out. although the folks involved are so few, that the freak out would not have much punch. Faso will send you an Xmas card for your map. You saved his butt.

The Albany UCC is like Grand Rapids, a UCC too large for one CD and requiring a macrochop to satisfy the pack rule. Shifting the macrochop to a UCC pack penalty greatly reduces erosity in both cases.

Yeah, I understand. But you asked the Fruited Plain reaction. The Fruited Plain would accept easier the severance from Albany of Saratoga County than Schenectady County.

[Torie]

As I noted above the chop of Saratoga County in my map is right on the edge, very close to the point where the chop can be lost, with the Albany CD taking Hamilton County instead.

Granted in some cases the precinct lines do not fit, but it should be villages that are used (the precinct lines can be corrected). Even if the entirety of the territory is not covered in villages, the odd territory remaining would need to be cut reasonably to keep the erosity score down.

I asked you before to remind me what the penalty is for a subdivision chop, and again for a bridge chop. My impression in both cases is that it results in more erosity penalty points.

[Torie]

As I noted above the chop of Saratoga County in my map is right on the edge, very close to the point where the chop can be lost, with the Albany CD taking Hamilton County instead.

Granted in some cases the precinct lines do not fit, but it should be villages that are used (the precinct lines can be corrected). Even if the entirety of the territory is not covered in villages, the odd territory remaining would need to be cut reasonably to keep the erosity score down.

I asked you before to remind me what the penalty is for a subdivision chop, and again for a bridge chop. My impression in both cases is that it results in more erosity penalty points.

A bridge chop incurs a penalty if it causes the counties to be connected only by local roads and not be regional roads. Groups of regionally connected counties are called components and a plan gets an erosity point for each component in a district in excess of 1. Note that this definition also solves the nick cut problem when counties are otherwise locally connected.

In a macrochop the rule is clear - a subdivision chop gets treated just like a county chop. For other chops we've gone back and forth. It's clear we like chops to be made of whole subunits, at least that's what we are doing in upstate NY.  If so, then chopping a subunit should be counted as any other chop. Otherwise why bother keeping subunits whole in upstate. However, you have in the past desired a "one bite" rule which allows one subunit to be chopped as part of a chop of the unit containing it. If that's applied uniformly then a simple chop of a county can include one chopped subunit.

I understand about villages, but subunits have to cover all the population of a county. They can be a hybrid of different units, such as incorporated cities and remaining school districts as we did in WA. The key point is that no population in the county can be left out of the defined subunits. If villages leave population unassigned, what is the mechanism for assigning that remmant population?

You have the same issue as between cities and unassigned territory. And villages are real. They are incorporated with real powers. They are not mere hamlet addresses, such as Stottville or Spencertown in Columbia County.

Regarding unassigned territory, if most is assigned, with just a few gaps, does it matter much? Just assign a penalty point for each village that appends it that is in a different CD.

Thanks for the other explanations. I prefer the one bite rule (it should not be the same as a county chop, which is far more important, as most would agree), but there should be a preference where there is no bite at all. I know you don't like preferences, but not having one, defies common sense.

Your bridge chop rule is way too weak for me. In most cases, it will be possible to avoid severing a state road. To not penalize a bridge chop at all where such severing is avoided, I think can lead to mischief, and allows to much discretion. I dissent.

[Torie]

Does the erosity measure scale within cities, and does it matter if it does or not? If a better division of Queen can be devised, should it matter to the upstate districts?

I don't know about Queens but I gave this a close look when considering plans for WA and MI. Without scaling, gerrymandered divisions in and around Seattle or Detroit can get lost in the larger shapes of districts that extend out from the city and suburbs. Clever gerrymanders shouldn't be protected just because they are hidden in the high-density areas of a state. The exact definition of a macrochop as a percentage may be arbitrary but it is at about the right point to create a natural scaling.

Macro-chops in highly populated counties, and the configuration of lines that define such chops, is where the bulk of the action as to gerrymanders occurs. If that is not tightened up, so that partisan numbers have little or no traction subject to the VRA as to where the macro-chop lines lie, the Muon2 rules are rendered largely toothless, and the exercise becomes largely a waste of time. Moving rural counties around, given the partisan divide these days, has a very minor impact in most places.