I remember Baron Von Otto Matic. He was part of the original George of the Jungle show.



But professionally I should give props to Otto Hahn, who as a chemist I would have expected on angus' list.

This is my fix for Canton. Instead of trying to park Medina somewhere whole, I let it be the subject of a chop. In Cuyahoga I'm going with my chop described above, until someone can convince me that my earlier version isn't a GOP-favoring racial gerrymander. There are only three county chops beyond what's needed and I think the districts would pass the shape test of any public panel.



Edit: Here are the erosity scores by CD:
1: 8
2: 4
3: 10
4: 22
5: 9
6: 22
7: 17
8: 2
9: 25
10: 16
11: 18
12: 8
13: 10
14: 6
15: 3
Total: 180/2 = 90
This is an improvement on the first plan I put up, so the discussion drove a better result without creating more county chops.

Which links wouldn't you count on my map?  Just quickly glancing, I'd score yours at 192/2.

Here's my list of contiguous but not connected counties:
Darke-Montgomery
Clinton-Clermont
Madison-Greene
Ross-Hocking
Muskingum-Noble

All of these come into play as boundaries on my map. All but Muskingum-Noble are on boundaries of your map. If I counted correctly there are 97 X's on your map and two should be discarded based on my list above. I can't tell if any should be added from the Columbus district so I'll ignore that. It looks like there are two more cut links in Guernsey. That would put the erosity at 97.

How is the extension of 14 into Ashtabula scored?

That is a microchop of two whole townships with less than 0.5% of the population. In previous threads there was discussion about microchops not counting as a chop, so it doesn't count towards erosity either. A case could be made to count it globally, and certainly the erosity within the chopped county matters.

I think you are gaming the scoring system by cutting off Hamilton from Butler, and to a lesser extent Cuyahoga from Lake.

The OH-1 part of Hamilton has an extremely long panhandle that does not appear to have any reason other than to reduce the link count.

The factors that I used in the Hamilton and Cuyahoga chops was to maintain wholly connected chops and to reduce internal erosity. Sharonville overlaps the border between Hamilton and Butler, so to keep it together and not double chop I needed to extend along the northern border of Hamilton. I do agree that my counting for chops can lead to gaming the system, noting that your chop of Warren is less erose by my measure than mine is. I think a rule about minimizing erosity within the county, using local roads to determine connections would reduce the possibility of such antics.

The non-connection of Darke-Montgomery illustrates the probelm with using highways as links.  The North Dayton-Greenviile Pike is obviously a direct route between the two cities, but because it clips a corner of Miami, it doesn't count.  Muskingum-Noble is perhaps arguable, but the real reason is the shortness of the border.   I wonder if a simplified border length would not be a better measure.

When we looked at WA, I concluded that counting any contiguous county did not effectively change the ranking of plans compared to using highway-defined connections. If highway-defined connections are used for contiguity, then it's simpler to have one map of connections, rather than one for contiguity and one for erosity.

Guernsey doesn't connect with Tuscarawas except along I-77 going north from Cambridge.  What is the Guernsey node for the blue part of the county?  Whatever it is, there isn't a very direct route from Zanesville.

I used Byesville for the node. OH 146, 313, 660 and 209 provide a path from Zanesville. I agree that there is no connection from Tuscarawas, as I had mistaken a numbered county road for a state road.

How do you like this for MO.

Why such crazy districts across the middle of the state?

I was trying to make dem district, and instead of making one, i made two.  So i have a 4-4 map

Do you think the Dems will have that much control after the 2020 election that they could draw that? Nixon couldn't do anything about a 6-2 map, and it seems unlikely that the Dems would regain a chamber. Another 6-2 seems more likely.

How do you like this for MO.

Why such crazy districts across the middle of the state?

Now the tricky bit about the VRA.

Some section 5 overlay is needed as well (I see Muon2 disagrees, but ignoring that is going to kill this project in its crib - black politicians will freak out, if they think that freezes them out), but again, there is a gray zone, within which perhaps again it is not an all or nothing deal. In my map, OH-11 is 39.3% black VAP. The CD using my numbers cannot get any higher than 40%.  Oh, I don't have local projections, so I assumed the 81K population loss for Cuyahoga all come out of OH-11. If you guys have projection data for the localities, all on an organized spreadsheet, that would be helpful, but to actually use it to draw maps would take too much work I think, beyond dealing with section 5 issues, and for the Columbus CD. You guys didn't actually do that did you? 

Here, I'm slightly confused; I was under the impression that the VRA forbid cracking minorities to lessen their chance of gaining a representative who is the choice of the minority group. I'd imagine the Cleveland NAACP for one would throw a fit over the newest map you proposed. Apart from race, honestly that map does better serve the communities of interest in the Cleveland area better than the first two you drew. Clearly, as a Republican I'd prefer it not to be drawn either, but other than that, this map isn't bad.

Only section 5 has that approach, TJ, and unless section 5 applies to Cuyahoga, Muon2's map is legal. Section 2 of the VRA only protects minorities, if one of them hits 50% VAP or CVAP, depending on the appellate court district. But whether for prudential reasons, a state law should have a section 5 overlay of some sort, is the issue that I am raising - for the same reasons as you. It is an evidentiary matter as to whether 39%-40% or so black VAP is enough to trigger Section 5, or whether blacks are out of the hunt irrespective here. As I noted above, it is in the grey zone, and is really a function of odds, so maybe there should be some penalty for dilution in the grey zone, rather than just prohibiting it.  Section 5 also has an anti-dilution aspect, but I don't favor incorporating that prong of it. And as we all know, Section 5 may not be long for this SCOTUS world.

Let's posit that section 5 is indeed on its way out. That leaves section 2, and Gingles won't apply in OH in 2020. What remains is the direction in Bartlett v Strickland. The holding permits but does not require the creation of crossover districts where some fraction of the white majority will vote with the minority to elect the minority candidate of choice. A state may create crossover, as well as coalition and influence districts to provide opportunities for minorities. A stated preference for such districts when other criteria are met is one way to address the situation. One has to be careful, because a non-retrogression clause could look like a racial gerrymander and throw any process into the courts.

Now for my thoughts on methodology.

Any comments on my scoring methodology? I am now fully convinced one needs to use this kind of balancing test approach to get the best maps, rather than a bright line, or lose, test, based solely on chop counts.  And how does my map score compared to the ones above, using either my scoring method, or whatever one that you prefer?

I must say it is kind of hard to work together, because we don't seem to agree on so much. Is there any way to get our ideas more in sync, or is this a negotiation that is just destined to fail? I know not using a balancing test scoring formula where erosity is a key factor, and measured by shape rather than road connections, is  something that I cannot accept. The maps will just look a whole lot uglier, and in my view, for no good reason. I think using my approach, or some facsimile thereof, will make for more "salable" maps.

During the CA discussions we agreed that a balancing test had to provide for substantially different maps to be considered as OK. That allowed for some choice by the map maker, which we agreed was imperative to take into account information about local preferences. To me this is the way to address concerns about metro areas. If there are multiple maps that each meet the criteria, then the commission can select one that best meets metro integrity.

There are three criteria that must be balanced - population equality, political subdivision integrity (chops), and district shape (erosity). Equality is important to keep on the list, since the WV case (Tennant) shows that you can permit a pop deviation if other criteria are strongly met. The best way to balance the criteria is to consider each separately, without combining them. Forcing them into combination requires weighting the criteria with respect to each other, and that gets into minutiae that don't necessarily improve the outcome.

Not combining the criteria also allows implementation of a system that can produce different maps that are equally good by the criteria. This then solves the problem of allowing choices to factor in local preference. The best method to balance criteria without combining them is a Pareto test. A Pareto optimal plan is one in which improving any one of the criteria makes another one worse. Comparing two maps, we can then say they are equally good if each one is better in at least one of the criteria. In some sense the Tennant court was declaring that the WV map was Pareto optimal since improving population in the challengers maps forced the displacement of more residents to new districts while keeping chops at zero (whole counties and minimum displacement being the state's goals). Our discussion about TN was an illustration of trade off between chops and erosity.

Another observation I would make about assessing systems with multiple criteria is to reduce the scoring to simple integer measures. Chops automatically have this feature. In the OH competition chops, competitiveness, and political fairness all were based on simple integers (sometimes divided so it wasn't obvious), but compactness was a mathematical entity that ha many digits of precision. That allowed one to game the system to some degree by concentrating on eking out hundredths of a point of improvement on that measure without substantially improving the plan. The coarser nature of the other measures meant that one had to make a substantial change to make a real improvement. A better plan should be substantially better, not incrementally better, to warrant consideration. The use of course measures for chops and erosity also allows one to easily justify population deviations under Tennant. If erosity is a precision measure that can be tweaked by movement of parts of counties and munis, it will be inevitable that population equality will draw mappers into a necessary hierarchy of splits like MI. I would like to keep whole county solutions in the mix, and so if there is an erosity requirement, it must be coarse.

I do think that at least one hierarchy is useful. That is the notion of apportionment regions of whole counties championed by jimrtex. A plan can first be assessed at the level of apportionment regions then again at the district level. That gives a commission the ability to see plans at the big picture level first. Your plan has four regions and can be compared to other four region plans, while mine has eight regions of whole counties. For a given number of regions, it's much easier to test for Pareto optimality. For example all four region plans would be assessed based on population and erosity and non-optimal plans would be discarded. After selecting a set of optimal regional plans, the commission can compare the plans at the district level independent of region count. The AZ commission took a two tier approach this cycle, not based on regions and erosity, but on "grid" districts and compactness. It helped them look at the big design before getting into details.

Now I'll address chops.

You then divide that score by the number of chops, to get your final score. County chops count as one chop, locality chops an 0.5 chop (unless say the chop involves more than say 5,000 people, and then it counts as a full chop), chopping more than 20% of the population of a county as a half chop, and maybe chopping say more than 20% of the population of a metro area as a chop potentially, along with a tri-chop counting as a double chop. (I just added the trichop thing, because I could lose a chop, by tri-chopping Summit, or for that matter moving OH-15 into Lorain avoiding Summit, which would increase the erosity of OH-15, but not enough to make it not worth getting rid of the chops for OH-14; I guess that is why there needs to be a rule counting  traveling county chops as two chops - which still might be worth it, if it avoids a metro chop, however that is defined.)

I would count as a chop a county that is part of the CD that has no state highway connecting that county with any other part of the CD. Other than that, I am not sure I think using Muon2's highway thing is a workable or wise exercise. I don't think anybody cares, and matters can turn on whether a highway is a mile this way or that. That does not make much sense to me.

In almost every state, and almost every hearing and panel I've attended counties reign supreme. It's the first measure of map that most go to, and it's one the public gets right away. Counties are the basic unit of elections so their importance in redistricting makes sense from that perspective, too.

Where we seem to be most in disagreement is in how to handle counties. You look at the map as a whole and then split the counties that preserve your shapes or CoIs. What you seem to resist is the idea of apportionment regions. Since you have a spreadsheet with the county pops, it's easy to group counties so that they not be close in population to one district, but instead to nearly a whole number of districts while maintaining whatever erosity measure you like. Creating the most such regions within a narrow range is equivalent to minimizing the county chops. It directly addresses the goal to balance erosity and chops.

As to measuring the chops I know we went through this at length before and we were in agreement. The total count is equal to the sum of all the counties in each district summed over all the districts in the whole state. If you then subtract the number of counties in the state the difference is equal to the county chop count.

You can apply the same method to county subdivision within a split county. I think a two tier approach is best, first counting county chops, the sub-county chops. This gives the judge of the map clear and separate measures (NJ keeps separate track of them, and essentially the MI rules do too.) It also gives the mapper more flexibility to respect CoIs without being forced into an awkward map.

You raise metro chops as a formal criteria as well, and that is essentially new to our discussion (it never really arose for CA or WA.) If it does figure in a formal sense (I'm not yet sold) then it must be based on the Census definition for the state. My initial inclination is to not make it formal in chop counting, but to let it be a factor as one looks at competing maps as a balancing test.

Needs to be done federally.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/22/1201551/-Did-Gerrymandering-Cost-Dems-the-House-A-33-State-Look-at-Alternative-Non-Partisan-Maps

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/States_with_initiative_or_referendum

The feds could only legislate redistricting for Congressional districts. This is about state legislative districts.

So many thoughts that deserve a response. I'll split my posts to address them. I'll start with erosity.

I also have come up with an erosity test. You can either put a square around a CD that measure the percentage of the area in the CD not in the square, or put a square that fits entirely within a CD, and then draw straight lines connecting the farthest points outside the square (whichever approach gives you the highest score). You then take the area that is that not within the CD that is within the polygon that connects the outside points, or the area outside the CD that is within the square that contains all of the CD within it, as a percentage of the square or polygon, subtract that from 100%, and that gives you the erosity score for the CD. You then sum the percentage scores (with a perfect square CD getting a 100 score, and one that takes up half the polygon, or say 60% of the square that contains the entire CD within it,  getting a 60 score (you take the higher score), and that gives you a total erosity score for the map.

You describe at least two different variations on tests that are well known in redistricting.
I interpret them as a variation on the Reock and Ehrenberg tests. In both those tests the ideal shape is a circle rather than a square as you suggest. Reock uses the smallest circle that can be drawn outside the district and Ehrenberg uses the largest circle entirely contained in the district.

Reock was used in the Ohio Competition, and I can attest to the fact that there were some interesting ways to game the formula. I think changing from a circle to a square or other polygon, doesn't change the way the system can be gamed. The map below scored very highly, yet look at the shapes of CD 3 and 8 for example. A more detailed description of the shortcomings of these methods, with counterexamples is referenced in the paper at this link with the relevant part towards the beginning before the heavy math sets in.



In any case, as you point out its the visual shape that should matter. My experience is that the public eye can pick out bad districts easily, but become hard pressed to sort out good districts without a sophisticated mathematical tool. The public view is very important to me. As I look at our two maps I find hard to imagine an observer unfamiliar with OH rejecting either on shape alone.



If it is the case that an outside observer would pass both on shape, I think that argues for the simplest possible measure of erosity. The public can easily count connections with any mapping software. As I observed in the WA analyses a while ago, changing to contiguous counties doesn't much affect the score, it just doesn't prevent trans-mountain districts.

...some days partisanship makes me cry

That's so true with gerrymandering - it was created precisely to cement partisan control and for no other purpose. It worked that first time in 1812 for the MA Senate, and it's been a feature in the US since.

All the Democrats complaining here are being huge hypocrites. I'd rather have a huge GOP house majority with more Nonpartisan redistricting in left-wing states.

Unilaterally disarming is stupid and counterproductive. Like I said, the only way to deal with this is on the Federal level.   

Redistricting reform didn't hurt the Dems control in CA, and IL has a similar partisan make up. This proposal here is only for the state legislature so the feds can't intervene. Of course other states should do the same and I worked in favor of the OH amendment that failed.

A new initiative to put a constitutional amendment on the 2014 ballot was announced this week. It is somewhat similar to the CA process and the summary of the proposal with a link to the draft text is here.

The coalition is looking for comments before finalizing the language for the petitions. I know there are plenty of posters here who could bring some useful comments forward. I'd be happy to see that comments on the draft get to the coalition.

Yes, I often say sir and ma'am in certain contexts, regardless of the station of the person to whom I am speaking. It just "depends."

This.

In the context of a restaurant (fast food or otherwise), I find it a helpful way to get attention when the staff doesn't recognize that I'm trying to get attention. For example, if a friendly glance doesn't connect, and "Excuse me" gets lost in a busy room, "Excuse me, sir" or "Sir, excuse me" will almost always get through.

Yes, all the time.  You will be surprised by the increase in quality service you receive by being polite and expressing to the person serving you how much you appreciate their work and effort.  (I usually end up not having to pay for my drinks and/or get free substitutions on my orders as a result.)

I address anybody I don't know except small children as sir and/or ma'am, so yes.

This.

^^^^

I think you've missed the point.  Here, calling someone sir or ma'am might be seen as patronizing.

There are better ways to show you appreciate someone's hard work and effort.  You could say something like "thanks a bunch, I really appreciate it.  Have a good day" accompanied by a warm smile.

As a professor I get called sir a lot by students, and I don't think they are being patronizing, so I don't find it patronizing to use the word myself with others.

This is my fix for Canton. Instead of trying to park Medina somewhere whole, I let it be the subject of a chop. In Cuyahoga I'm going with my chop described above, until someone can convince me that my earlier version isn't a GOP-favoring racial gerrymander. There are only three county chops beyond what's needed and I think the districts would pass the shape test of any public panel.



Edit: Here are the erosity scores by CD:
1: 8
2: 4
3: 10
4: 22
5: 9
6: 22
7: 17
8: 2
9: 25
10: 16
11: 18
12: 8
13: 10
14: 6
15: 3
Total: 180/2 = 90
This is an improvement on the first plan I put up, so the discussion drove a better result without creating more county chops.

Which links wouldn't you count on my map?  Just quickly glancing, I'd score yours at 192/2.

Here's my list of contiguous but not connected counties:
Darke-Montgomery
Clinton-Clermont
Madison-Greene
Ross-Hocking
Muskingum-Noble

All of these come into play as boundaries on my map. All but Muskingum-Noble are on boundaries of your map. If I counted correctly there are 97 X's on your map and two should be discarded based on my list above. I can't tell if any should be added from the Columbus district so I'll ignore that. It looks like there are two more cut links in Guernsey. That would put the erosity at 97.

In the meantime, here is a screen shot of the population variances. And here is a link to the county population projections for the counties in 2020. Just select Ohio from the list of states drop down to get the county numbers for Ohio. Remember if you switch out population growth counties, for population losing ones, you will need to make adjustments. Good luck.

On another issue, I see that our data sets are quite different and that can also make it hard to reconcile our maps. jimrtex and I use the census estimate data and project it forward assuming a constant growth rate equal to the rate so far this decade. Your link is using some substantially higher rates, so for example I project the state will be at 11.586 M in 2020, but the linked site projects 11.682 M which is almost 100K larger. They also don't say how they make their projections since I presume that is their proprietary info. The extra growth in their model is not distributed uniformly, either. Here's a list with both numbers for 2020 side by side in thousands.

.Adams County      27.7   27.9
.Allen County      101.1   102.9
.Ashland County      52.4   54.3
.Ashtabula County   96.7   98.7
.Athens County      62.8   64.7
.Auglaize County      45.4   46.3
.Belmont County      67.2   69.4
.Brown County      42.8   45.9
.Butler County      379.2   394.8
.Carroll County      27.7   27.5
.Champaign County   37.8   40.6
.Clark County      133.4   135.9
.Clermont County      205.1   209.3
.Clinton County      41.4   42.0
.Columbiana County   102.0   103.0
.Coshocton County   36.4   34.7
.Crawford County      39.8   40.1
.Cuyahoga County   1214.7   1196.0
.Darke County      51.0   51.2
.Defiance County      37.5   38.6
.Delaware County      206.8   216.6
.Erie County      74.1   74.3
.Fairfield County      152.1   159.9
.Fayette County      28.4   28.2
.Franklin County      1313.1   1313.9
.Fulton County      41.9   42.4
.Gallia County      29.9   29.7
.Geauga County      94.7   95.6
.Greene County      170.7   166.7
.Guernsey County      38.9   38.5
.Hamilton County      800.9   806.4
.Hancock County      78.8   76.2
.Hardin County      30.2   32.3
.Harrison County      15.2   14.9
.Henry County      27.5   26.7
.Highland County      41.0   40.9
.Hocking County      28.9   28.9
.Holmes County      45.4   45.6
.Huron County      58.1   58.3
.Jackson County      32.0   34.0
.Jefferson County      64.0   64.9
.Knox County      59.9   64.2
.Lake County      228.0   241.0
.Lawrence County   60.9   62.7
.Licking County      171.2   176.0
.Logan County      44.2   46.3
.Lorain County      301.9   314.6
.Lucas County      425.1   426.9
.Madison County      41.8   48.9
.Mahoning County      222.9   219.2
.Marion County      65.3   67.3
.Medina County      178.4   194.2
.Meigs County      23.0   23.8
.Mercer County      41.1   40.1
.Miami County      105.0   104.1
.Monroe County      14.2   13.5
.Montgomery County   531.5   508.6
.Morgan County      14.4   14.0
.Morrow County      35.3   35.0
.Muskingum County   85.5   84.7
.Noble County      14.4   14.8
.Ottawa County      41.0   40.6
.Paulding County      18.2   18.6
.Perry County      35.9   37.0
.Pickaway County      58.9   57.9
.Pike County      27.7   27.3
.Portage County      161.6   170.4
.Preble County      40.6   40.7
.Putnam County      33.2   33.7
.Richland County      116.7   117.3
.Ross County      75.3   77.7
.Sandusky County   59.0   58.0
.Scioto County      75.1   78.7
.Seneca County      53.6   53.3
.Shelby County      48.3   51.0
.Stark County      372.4   372.7
.Summit County      537.5   532.2
.Trumbull County      197.7   197.0
.Tuscarawas County   91.7   91.8
.Union County      54.2   58.6
.Van Wert County      28.7   26.6
.Vinton County      12.6   13.0
.Warren County      233.7   248.0
.Washington County   60.4   60.1
.Wayne County      116.0   116.6
.Williams County      37.1   34.9
.Wood County      138.0   128.2
.Wyandot County      22.6   22.3

For comparison I scored Tories square boxes map from two days ago. Here's my erosity score by district.

1: 4
2: 8
3: 10
4: 22
5: 15
6: 1
7: 14
8: 10
9: 21
10: 17
11: 3
12: 12
13: 24
14: 11
15: 12

total 184/2=92

It looks like this could be improved quite a bit without major changes simply by adjusting the chops (I didn't count Portage since I found a way to make it a microchop and it would apply to yours as well.) This is important in my scheme since you have 10 chops to my 6. Using a Pareto analysis in order to justify more chops there should be a lower erosity.

This is my fix for Canton. Instead of trying to park Medina somewhere whole, I let it be the subject of a chop. In Cuyahoga I'm going with my chop described above, until someone can convince me that my earlier version isn't a GOP-favoring racial gerrymander. There are only three county chops beyond what's needed and I think the districts would pass the shape test of any public panel.



Edit: Here are the erosity scores by CD:
1: 8
2: 4
3: 10
4: 22
5: 9
6: 22
7: 17
8: 2
9: 25
10: 16
11: 18
12: 8
13: 10
14: 6
15: 3
Total: 180/2 = 90
This is an improvement on the first plan I put up, so the discussion drove a better result without creating more county chops.

Politically the DOJ seizure of AP phone records is the most serious. Benghazi was portrayed as a political election year fight in part because it fit the media story line for 2012. The IRS prioritizing certain political groups for further review could have fallen into the same portrayal.

Going after the AP hits at the heart of the press' ability to manage their confidential sources and activates the media to write a new story line. That story line is now about political intimidation by the White House, and when it shows up on the NY Times editorial page one can assume it will continue to be the narrative.

The White House actions to spin Benghazi and the IRS actions to pursue political groups can now fold into that narrative. Future attempts for political spin at the WH have now been damaged because the media will be prone to view the action through this new narrative.

Thanks for clarifying that. Now I understand the choice of suburbs. I guess this highlights the issue with applying a generic formula for determining county erosity: in practice switching Euclid and Richmond Heights for Parma change little about the apparent erosity when looking at a map, but do change the number of county line connections.

For me personally, I take a dislike to districts that appear long and narrow or have concave shapes. In Torie's "You know it when you see it" view, that's what tips me off to erosity. For this reason, and the difference in cultural identity between the east and west sides of Cleveland's suburbs, I'm inclined to favor a map similar to those of Torie or Sbane that does a tri-chop of Cuyahoga County to prevent a thin suburban ring like your CD-14.

I posed a question earlier, and it's worth repeating. Is it better to create the largest BVAP district with only a chance of controlling the outcome, or should race be subordinated to compact shapes or creating more balance with partisan districts?

I think the goal should be to create the largest BVAP possible without taking the CD out of Cuyahoga County and without creating a bunch of split municipalities. I also think leaving out the small villages of Oakwood and Glenwillow from the black CD are acceptable if doing so is needed to prevent splitting Summit County to come back in. So I think the largest BVAP should be the first among several competing goals.

You raise two points that are worth thinking about. My goal is to create a set of criteria that allow a map to be drawn, with some flexibility, but not so much that political gerrymandering is an easy task. Communities of interest are a fuzzy idea that are easy to manipulate for political purposes.

First, you've pointed out the cultural differences between the east side and west side suburbs and their differences from Cleveland and the close in suburbs. Cultural differences are often synonymous with political differences and using political information is exactly what a neutral mapper wants to avoid, unless it is to test a plan for partisan fairness. Can you suggest a neutral way to identify the leanings of the communities that would tend to force the groupings you prefer? If not, then I can at best leave that as a mapping choice if other criteria are met.

Second, you've suggested maximizing the BVAP as a goal. That is a racial gerrymander and constitutes packing on the basis of race. Based on past decisions that rationale would be vulnerable to a section 2 court challenge. I suspect that the Dems would make that challenge and win since it would be to their benefit to split the black vote. I've included their counter-proposal below that has the same county erosity (there's no connection between Medina and CD 14) and less internal erosity. Can you suggest a way for the GOP to make the grouping you suggest and withstand a court challenge?

I'm not terribly enthralled by the choice of suburbs that are in OH-15 vs OH-14 here. What was the strategy? Is it based just on population projections for each, drawn in such a way that no split should be made at this point?

I think Euclid and Richmond Heights at least should be in OH-15. Both of them have large black populations and will be even more black by 2020. I think with Parma in particular, you've put enough white Democrats in OH-15 that it's fairly likely Fudge could lose in a primary. Parma is the type of area full of white ethnics where although the election results might not be that lopsided, party identification is.

On the other side of things, I'd imagine the folks in Rocky River wouldn't be thrilled with that map at all! I also think Fairview Park shouldn't really be in OH-15. The Rocky River is a pretty significant cultural boundary, north of Berea anyway (after that point it is no longer in a large ravine).

The map was based on projections and minimizing county-level erosity. That required no connection between CD-15 and any other county. It obviously ignores internal erosity for CD 14, but shows the role of county erosity in forming a district. Without trying to build black population it get over 36% BVAP.

There will be no VRA requirement to maximize black population in a Cuyahoga CD. The max is about 41% BVAP and that splits the east and west suburbs. About 40% is the max that keeps the Cuyahoga suburbs connected. Even at that it's dicey as to whether blacks could regularly elect a candidate of choice. They would most likely win with a crossover vote from the white majority if they could win the primary.

I posed a question earlier, and it's worth repeating. Is it better to create the largest BVAP district with only a chance of controlling the outcome, or should race be subordinated to compact shapes or creating more balance with partisan districts?

This topic has been moved to 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.

http://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=171577.0

The first map is too erose. The second one looks good, but it depends what it does to the overall erosity of the map.  However, 37.5% black VAP may be an issue. My OH-11 has 40% black VAP.  I suspect that 40% is probably right around the tipping point where the black voters in a Dem primary fall below 50% for this area (5% of the VAP is Hispanic, and 20% voted for McCain). Black politicians are simply not going to tolerate the black box screwing them out of a seat - particularly if something that looks reasonable will hold it for them.  As a practical matter, as I noted about, there needs to be some sort of variant of Section 5 to the black boxes computer program.

Using my erosity rules rather than Muon2's, which uses links, while I use geography and the perfect square rule (I think my rule is better for a state like Ohio, with few natural barriers), I think this map wins going away. Anyone disagree?  I don't know why I didn't think of it before. Another advantage is that OH-09 has almost a perfect population, only off by about 2K, so it fits within the microchop rule, and loses a chop. That gives the map some bonus points.

I guess perhaps the link rule for a state like Ohio would practically only apply when using cross chops the way sbane did. Presumably state highways link all whole counties where there is substantial contiguity between them. Well there is that Portage choke point for OH-15 in my map, but I see in checking that highway 306 goes south through the OH-15 Portage bite, connecting to highway 82 going west. Whew!

Is the game over?

Oh, Mike, your idea that you can chop in half major cities, like Columbus and Cleveland, just isn't going to sell. You are a politician. You need to think about PR!    Giving preference to minor chops to reach surrounded burbs is however negotiable maybe. Maybe that should be deemed a neutral factor, where each of the two map options has equal points.  Then if my procedure is more or less followed, it is the luck of the draw (unless both parties agree one way or the other).

I accept sbane's point about the eastern Cleveland burbs, if one doesn't care about the black percentage, assuming it does not exacerbate erosity, but the problem is that I don't think it is possible to take them all into OH-14, so if some are in, and some are out, then having straight lines should dictate where the cut goes.  I guess I should check that, and see what it does to erosity. However, trashing the black percentage (as opposed to perhaps a more minor erosion), is also not going to make the rule set salable.

Anyway, below the state map, is one for Cleveland that may get the erosity down to close to a minimum, without chopping the city itself. I guess playing this game that this is the map for Cuyahoga (except that the line between OH-10 and OH-11 now needs to be smoothed out as depicted in the second Cleveland map below (primarily to reduce the erosity of OH-10). Now, I like much better Muon2's idea of putting Geauga in my OH-14.   However, I don't think that would pass the erosity test.

This reduces however the black percentage down to 31% in OH-11, so the black community is going to freak out. It makes it likely that when the seat is open, a white will take it, while at 42% or whatever, a black would have a much better chance of holding it. So we have a practical problem. I am not sure what rule will cleanly address this problem, but it bears pondering. Maybe an overlay of the probably soon to be axed by SCOTUS Section 5 of the VRA needs to be incorporated (a CD needs to elect a candidate of a minority group's choice where that can be done within a community of interest). That might cause a revision to the Cleveland map to the third one below.

For someone who made such a big deal about my initial partition of Cleveland, I don't get the willingness to chop Parma and Lyndhurst. If cities matter, they must matter more for the smaller cities than for the larger ones. I can live with a rule that they remain intact except where split by county lines, but chopping in the name of improved erosity doesn't pass a reasonable balancing test for me.

I am looking forward to your comments on my set of rules Mike, and particularly how to measure erosity. I have suggested that you fit a perfect square into the CD in a way that takes up the most area within the CD, and then with respect to the percentage area of the CD outside the square, you weight that area outside by its distance from the edge of the square on some exponential basis.

This is very similar to the effect of the two IA compactness rules taken together. It can work in some areas, but even in IA they balance it against the preservation of counties and munis, and political subdivisions generally get priority. The disadvantage of any geometric rule is the difficulty in making the calculation. You can't make it in DRA, but you can zoom to find the info needed to execute my rule. I want the public to be able to ascertain the values with a minimum of specialized software.

I  kind of like my locality chop rule, where the higher the population for the smaller  share of the chop, the more of a point deduction the CD gets. What do you think?  That rule will also effectively "solve" my concern about chopping major cities. You can chop them at the margins, but you can't halve them, or anything close to that. That way, you get a rule that comes the closest I think to treating all localities equally (except that I like my extra chop rule, where a locality that can suck up a whole CD, including its surrounded burbs, fails to do so because another CD takes up too high a percentage of it).

I disagree Mike with you idea that the size of a county chop prevails over the metric of reducing erosity. That is not to say that there cannot be some sort of balancing test, so if you can lose a chop because its a micro chop, that gives you positive points, to measure against the negative points from the additional erosity. Putting aside the issue of keeping metro areas together, a smaller number of positive points could be given for smaller county chops, just as with locality chops. But to come up with a map that has considerably more erosity to get the chop avoidance score up solely due to reducing the size of the chop or to bag micro-chops, I think just has the priorities wrong. I don't think that would be the choice of the voters if asked just which emphasis that they prefer. And it will make the end product less salable, and more controversial is my guess.

My experience with public comments on maps is that once a district is reasonable, there is less concern about how ideally compact it is. At the point that a district becomes reasonable, the public focus turns to preservation of political subdivisions.

Anyway in looking at your map (and why can't you guys make pretty maps the way I do? ), I see that you have a deep and nasty chop of Stark, severing the Canton, or Canton-Akron, merto area. That is not good - at all - in my opinion. My nasty chop is Fairfield, but that chop is justified as dividing the part of Fairfield in the metro area from that outside - just as is the case with Warren County, on which we both agree I see now.

I think I now have about 90% of the names of counties in Ohio memorized from their location and shape. At least I have accomplished that much with this exercise, if nothing else.

Your issue with my map goes in part to the complaint about the shape of my CD-6 in my original offering. I looked and agreed that I could definitely improve its whole county erosity by cutting off the area around Muskingum and moving CD-6 into the counties SW of Columbus. That pushed the northern Columbus CD into Richland county and CD-10 had to rotate into Medina. Something had to pick up Muskingum and that is the Canton CD. I could keep more of Stark together by putting Portage with Summit, but that makes for a Youngstown CD that stretches from Ashtabula to Belmont county. I'll look to see if there's another way to absorb Muskingum while leaving most of Stark intact and avoid too much erosity or chops.

In any case this points out the difficulty in discerning chops. My Stark chop totally follows muni and township lines, yet it gets as negative a reaction as when I split the city of Cleveland. Yet a chop following muni lines in Summit doesn't generate anywhere near the same reaction. Both divide a clear metro area yet one gets more reaction. How should one distinguish that difference in a neutral way?

I think I like Torie's design for Cincinnati better, but that isn't horrible. It looks like you might have split off some of the black areas in northern Hamilton County from the Cincinnati district, though. That's absolutely out of the question and would constitute dilution (not in a VRA sense, of course, but it's definitely worse than splitting counties).

Forest Park could be swapped for the Evendale-Blue Ash piece which would increase erosity. That switch only increases the BVAP from 20.8% to 22.3% so it would be hard to make a antidilution argument for a 1.5% increase.

Seems like a significant difference to me. A 1.5% decrease in BVAP is much more important than a tiny bit of erosity.

Not really. Below 25% the minority population cannot generally control the primary of the majority party, and therefore can't elect a candidate of choice. They can act as an influence in a primary and general election, however so there is a reason to keep much of that influence intact. 1 or 2% isn't going to matter for an influence district.

This issue becomes more interesting in the Cleveland area. A reasonable district of whole munis entirely within Cuyahoga isn't going to top 40% BVAP. With a district at 75%+ Dem there's no guarantee that blacks will be able to elect a candidate of choice in that arrangement since they must control the primary as well as the general election. On the other hand splitting the black population between 2 CDs in the region creates more partisan competitiveness for Dems and provides two districts where the black population would have an influence. In a plan that would otherwise favor the GOP that might be a worthwhile trade to restore some partisan balance.

I'm not comfortable with all those county splits in search of square districts. Here's my improved plan keeping counties whole while minimizing erosity. All CDs are within 1% of the projected population. I've used the revised Cuyahoga from my previous post with a microchop into Ashtabula. In Franklin I've treated all the suburbs surrounded by Columbus equally and put them in my CD-8 for a very non-erose district.

I'm willing to concede keeping Cleveland together, but I prefer to have only one chop into Cuyahoga. Starting with my apportionment region that has Lake, Cuyahoga, Medina, Summit, Wayne, and Holmes (3 CDs) I can get this area map with the least erosity. It maintains a BVAP of 37.5% in CD 15 which isn't far off other plans without extensive community splitting.



If the goal is to fully nest a CD in Cuyahoga with one chop, the minimum muon2 erosity plan is to avoid that CD from touching any other county. An apportionment region with Cuyahoga, Lake and Geauga is just within 1% of the ideal population and has very low erosity. CD 15 is 36.3% BVAP so it isn't so different from the above map.



Do either of these meet with general approval?