Mid-2014 county population estimates out tomorrow, March 26

[Torie]

"The result is that once a county is macrochopped it is treated as a collection of subdivisions for all districts in that county when calculating erosity."

Oh, I see. That makes sense, and also, tends to discourage multi-chopping counties. I think we both thought the Florida scoring system favoring multi-chops was just nutter.

So the way to game this I guess is to have MN-06 chop into Washington or Anoka County from the north (only Anoka would be available absent your keep the Red River basin whole map), that are not toxic counties, because there is not a macrochop already in place. As to doing it in Washington, I remember now the firefight we had over that one about Lansing. It was about aggregating or not multiple chops into a county, no one of which was macro, but collectively they were. I guess you ended up, deciding to keep the regime that there is no summing of the chops.

I can exploit the 0.5% variance rule if necessary to deal with the Wright County chop getting too big, if necessary. In some maps, it would help to have a software program that does that for you. In NY, you can play with all the populations of the CD's south of Westchester, to shove the Westchester CD to just about any place you want it, given the funnel shape of the state, with Westchester being the choke point. Which raises its own issue. One could overpopulate, or underpopulate, the two regions of NY by quite a bit, just by adding up variances going all in one direction, in the NYC based region. Maybe there should be a regional variance limit to shut down that game. In most states, that will not be an issue, but in a state shaped like NY, it could be. And given the upstate versus NYC area divide in NY, that could be a sensitive issue.

[Torie]

This mappie appears to navigate through all of Muon2's little quicksand traps.  How it scores is another matter. It has no muni chops however, and no extra macrochop. Spread those chops out baby. This map was population tested throughout. I created a spreadsheet. The lines of MN-05 needed to get ugly to keep within the 0.5% quota for each CD, while avoiding muni chops. \

As a matter of clarification, when you have a macrochop, do you count as cuts any township or city subdivision appending a subdivision in another CD, as long as the two are connected by some road (presumably paved), even if not a state road?

[Torie]

Well, our spreadsheets don't agree again for some reason. But that's OK.

Addendum: I found the errors on my spreadsheet, figured out how you determined that the cuts into Washington and Anoka, minimized the population inequality between CD's (it's better to sort MN-03 rather than MN-04 given the size of the townships), so my map is now identical to yours. I also determined that the allocation to MN-07 and MN-06 of counties there around Todd County, while not too pretty on the map, minimized road cuts, because there are no state roads between the county seats of Todd and Otter Tail and Douglas counties to the west. Well done!

I realize now that on one side of my spreadsheet, I need the 2010 population numbers, to make sure that they match what I see on Dave's redistricting utility. If one doesn't do that, one misses errors.

[Torie]

Well given that AZ is sure to gain a seat, I looked into the matter using 2014 projections. And guess what? First, the additional CD will all be in Maricopa County. The bad news for the Dems is the Pubs are certain to gain the additional seat, Mathismander or no. The good news for the Dems, is that even absent a Mathismander, the current AZ-09, the Sinema CD, can now actually be legitimately drawn using good government, Muon2 metrics. My AZ-05, per 2008 results, has only a Pub PVI of 2% (before cutting that figure down to account for the McCain favorite son effect), just 0.7% more than the current AZ-09. The CD trended substantially Dem in 2012. Sinema will be safe there. So the Dems keep that seat, even if say, Torie is doing the line drawing, rather than Mathis. Of course, the AZ-03 Guijalva CD will be gone if I had any say in the matter, or Muon2 metrics are followed, but that is another matter. Guijalva will need to learn how to attract white liberal votes in a Democratic all Tucson based CD. So the Dems keep 3 seats, with AZ-01 and AZ-02 off the table for them.

Hey it only took me 90 minutes from start to finish to draw out Maricopa County, including cranking out the population numbers (about 614,000 folks per CD in Maricopa County). I am getting better at this. Pima County has had slower growth than the national average, and Cochise is losing population, so I know that the cut into Maricopa will be from the south. My AZ-07 will basically be a part of the AZ-02 CD. The cut into Maricopa represents 21% of a CD, or about 152,000 people (135,000 per the 2010 census).

[Torie]

Tempe/North Chandler/West Mesa/Ahwatukee are a natural community of interest. Appending Tempe to eastern exurbs does not feel right, it feels like an effort to drown out a Democratic community's votes in heavily Republican territory.

1. Muon2 metrics ignore communities of interest to the extent not defined by keeping municipalities or towns or counties together, with lines not too erose based on highway cuts, and of course subject to the VRA. That is the whole point of the metrics, to have objective, and automatically applied, constraints, that involve no subjectivity, because everybody has their own idea of what communities of interest are, and guess what - they almost always seem to comport with one's partisan preferences. Now one need not worry in whose hands the pencil that draws the lines happens to be in. It is a mere ministerial task, that a very smart computer should be able to do all on its own. After being properly programmed, humans are no longer needed.

Humans get back into the act, when the process of selecting the map, out of those that make the cut, occurs. I have my own little process for that, which I find appealing, that selects the maps with the fewest chops, and then the map with one extra chop and then two extra chops, and then three extra chops, and then four extra chops (what the map with the least erosity for a given number of chops selected), and both parties have to agree on one of the 5 maps, and if they fail to do so, maps are randomly eliminated from the pool, one by one, until a final default map is selected. At any time before the final selection, the parties can agree on any of the five maps. They can also agree to increase a minority's percentage that is at least 30% in a CD from the five maps in the pool, to get it up to no more than 50% BVAP or HCVAP, making changes to the lines that cause the least decline in the score of a map. The uncertainty causes both parties to try to compromise, to reduce the uncertainty of ending up with a map that screws one side of the other. In the end, the incentive is there to end up selecting a Goldilocks map.

2. There is this obsession with Tempe that I find rather odd. It really does not make much of a difference from a partisan standpoint where Tempe goes. It is really not all the Democratic, nor is it that large in population, to cause that much of a swing. And if my AZ lines went there, causing another chop, and/or more erosity, some Dem precincts in AZ-05 would probably have been lost elsewhere diluting the impact of appending Tempe. As I said, AZ-05 has lines not all that different from what Mathis did. It is almost as Dem without Tempe, because the CD has contracted, given the population increase, so it lost Pub precincts in the city of Phoenix as it contracted.

3. I drew two Dem CD's in Maricopa, one an Hispanic VRA district, and now the second district. That is all the Dems can get. Sure, with more chops, the PVI of my AZ-05 could move a point or so more Dem, but it's already effectively Dem, and trending more so. It will be safely Dem by 2022. Aside from not including Tempe, I deliberately drew, subject to Muon2 metrics, AZ-05 to maximize the Dem PVI. There are some choices as to how to play with the lines in the city of Phoenix. I picked the version that made AZ-05 the most Dem, subject to having nice clean lines. Muon2 metrics actually require that to get the Pub SKEW down, all other things being equal. If AZ, like say the WA map, had a Dem SKEW, I would have drawn the lines to avoid a second Dem CD in Maricopa.

Fair enough?

[Torie]

Thank you for the full explanation. I want to speak to one point in particular.

2. There is this obsession with Tempe that I find rather odd.

I confess to having a personal interest in Tempe because it's an area I know unusually well, and because it is tech- and academic-heavy so feels like a distant cousin of areas I know in Boston. But I think there are reasons beyond that for treating it as unusual in the Phoenix area.

1. It's a college town. These are often Democratic islands in conservative areas, so like Bloomington, Lawrence, Charlottesville, or Gainesville, or on a different scale, Austin, it's going to stand out demographically and punch above its weight politically.
1a. Not saying you're doing this, but there is consequently a Republican tradition in red states to pack or crack these kinds of communities.
2. The previous Dem representative from this district was the mayor of Tempe.
3. Neighboring municipalities like Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, even Scottsdale are sprawling and contain political multitudes. Tempe is more compact geographically and has a smaller population.
4. The parts of those communities closer to Tempe—specifically west Mesa, north Chandler, south Scottsdale, and Ahwatukee in Phoenix—are more like Tempe than they are like the strongly Republican and affluent zones in those communities.

As a Democrat, I'm going to see Tempe as a hub of a more liberal, more diverse (but not purely Anglo vs. Latino), and more tech-oriented part of Maricopa that is different from most of the rest of the county.

Thanks for your interesting post. I feel your pain. No doubt, we both would want to live in exactly the same kind of places, and relate to those places in particular. I, by the way, am really not a Pub hack anymore. I have had enough. I "hate" both parties really.

[Torie]

Grijalva, it should be noted, is a pretty liberal guy--he is one of the most left-wing members of Congress, and is co-chair of the Progressive Caucus. He would love a map where he were to lose his district's pubbie bits, particularly Yuma.

Of course, I imagine that Arizona's growth is going to be a little asymmetrical--the territory outside of Maricopa is growing slower than inside.

Grijalva's portion of Yuma is all Hispanic, and not Pub, although very few of the Hispanics there vote. Anyway, he's not going to like the maps below at all. His career will be over, and he will need to find a new line of work. Both of the Pima County based CD's are way too marginal for him to survive.

Below are three AZ map versions.  It seems that almost every map I do these days, causes me to think about the details of Muon2 metric policy issues. In these maps, the Indian Reservations were really put into play. Arizona, like Washington, is full of blockades. The state is at once parsimonious with the number of its highways that are state highways, and given the rugged and/or arid landscape, tends to lack pavement at all, where one would wish it existed. One consequence, is that most roads to the CD boundary lines seem to lead to the reservations, as it were.

So, for example, Tucson needed to be macrochopped. There is no escape. The only state highway from the west has no other state highways connecting to it that a CD can follow, until it hits downtown Tucson.  So my AZ-03 district has to follow that highway in. Also, Tucson really has no neighborhoods that are useable, and precincts are not nested. So the boundary lines follow the highways. The partisan consequence here is interesting.  AZ-02 is Dem, but barely so. My best guess of the PVI adjustment for the McCain favorite son effect is 3 points (maybe it is 4 points). It is hard to guesstimate it, because in 2012 I strongly suspect two things were happening in AZ. First, the McCain favorite son effect was gone, favoring the Dems. On the other hand,  the border incursions by large numbers of illegals at the time, was a factor causing the state to trend Pub. I am netting the two somewhat offsetting factors out at 3 points, but perhaps the adjustment for the McCain favorite son effect in 2008 should be more. One can argue either way.

Anyway, using a 3 point adjustment, the winning map, map version 1, has AZ-02 at a Dem PVI of 1.8%. Such a rather low Dem PVI for AZ-02 means that AZ-03 concomitantly has a rather low Pub PVI.  It’s about 2% Pub.  

Now on to the maps and the Indian Reservation issues. Winning map version 1, has two  extra chops beyond the obvious mandatory ones, one in Navajo County, plus the chop into Tucson in macro-chopped Pima County.  It also has the disfavored per my definition but allowed bridge chop by AZ-03 through Maricopa County since Pima and Yuma Counties have no road connections.  No chop is counted in Apache County, because the northern portion in AZ-01 is part of the Navajo Reservation. A chop is counted in Navajo County because in addition to AZ-10 taking in the Apache Reservation at the south end of the county, it also takes in a few precincts outside it.  The chop of AZ-10 into Maricopa is also an Indian reservation.

Oh, notice that under Muon2's iteration of the bridge chop rule, unless having bridge chops through two counties rather than one, makes it a non bridge chop, that my AZ-03 under his definition is still a bridge chop. Santa Cruz and Yuma are whole counties. Not good, both as to his definition, and sanction. His definition and sanction needs to be fixed in my opinion. It just does too much that is undesirable in my opinion. And it is not needed to preclude abuse, if it were switched out for my definition. My full court press on this one will continue unabated.

Map version 1



OK, no issues so far.  But look at version 2, a rather unfortunate map, but I put it up to further explore the Indian reservation issue. In Apache County, both the Navajo Reservation and the county are chopped. Should that count as just one chop or a double chop? My inclination is to count it as a double chop.  On the other hand, Navajo County is not chopped at all, but the Apache Reservation as its south end is. Should that count as a chop? My preference is that it should not.  I researched the matter, and the reservations do indeed vote for County boards of supervisors and so forth. So they do some functions separate from the county, some jointly and on yet still others, participate in county government just like everybody else. Reservations are a hybrid when it comes to local governmental functions.

However, where the choice is between chopping either a county, or an Indian reservation, chopping the reservation is disfavored. In this case, pushing AZ-01 into Gila County to take in the balance of the reservation pushed the population numbers out of the permissible variance zone, so it could not be done.  The same issue comes up with the AZ-10 chop into Maricopa County. There the population numbers allowed the chop, so I did it, given the preference for keeping the reservation together. But if the population numbers did not allow it, the reservation could have been chopped without penalty, in lieu of chopping into Maricopa.

Map version 2



Finally, there is map version 3, which I thought I might have had to live with, until I worked my way out of it vis a vis the Indian reservations, which has an extra chop in Mojave County (the chop into Gila is part of the Apache Indian Reservation), so it loses (it also pushes AZ-03 about two more points into Pub territory, and that would be disfavored due to SKEW considerations if version 1 had had AZ-03 in the tossup zone, which it almost did)). It also chops Lake Havasu, which while not counting as a chop because the county is not macro-chopped, is most undesirable, and hurts the erosity score.

Map version 3

[Torie]

I like the first AZ plan.

The reservations are indeed a problem area. They are like munis that cross county lines, but there's more desire to keep them together than munis at county lines. At a minimum I would agree that there should be no chop penalty for an area that is exactly coincident with the reservation land in a county. At one point jimrtex and I suggested treating reservations as separate counties since that would then create a chop penalty for reservation splits, but not for chopping into the counties to keep them whole. It all depends on how strong one wants to make the incentive to keep reservations whole.

I think I have come up with the right objective function here. I like the preference metric as a way to resolve some of these issues. I will be getting to your King County Pub gerrymander post/map soon. I have quite a bit to say about that one.

[Torie]

I like the first AZ plan.

The reservations are indeed a problem area. They are like munis that cross county lines, but there's more desire to keep them together than munis at county lines. At a minimum I would agree that there should be no chop penalty for an area that is exactly coincident with the reservation land in a county. At one point jimrtex and I suggested treating reservations as separate counties since that would then create a chop penalty for reservation splits, but not for chopping into the counties to keep them whole. It all depends on how strong one wants to make the incentive to keep reservations whole.

I think I have come up with the right objective function here. I like the preference metric as a way to resolve some of these issues. I will be getting to your King County Pub gerrymander post/map soon. I have quite a bit to say about that one.

Can you write your reservation preference metric in concise words? It seems plausible but I'd like to test it.

On the AZ-3 bridge chop issue, i think it comes down to the fact that we agreed, and I still believe, that there is no preference for CDs nested in a county - it's just about chops. I can rearrange your AZ-3 to put Tucson with Santa Cruz county and the rest of Pima with Yuma and SW Maricopa. The bridge chop vanishes with no extra chops.

The pack penalty does not obtain for single county UCC's? Is that wise? What is the downside of penalizing non nesting? Shouldn't, at a minimum, nesting be encouraged as a preference? Anyway, the policy issue still obtains, even if an escape can be effected here.

I might further note, that assuming the erosity score is the same, your posited escape might be a fail because it might well degrade the SKEW or POLARIZATION score, or both.

[Torie]

I thought that single county UCCs were given no special status. When we considered it in other states it created double penalties of the sort one should avoid.

I think that the bridge chop issue should not be measured with SKEW or POLARIZATION factors. We only consider those after a set of plans has made the Pareto cut.

I know that bridge chops in urban counties can shift the political numbers. They are very good at that. It's for exactly that reason I want to discourage them. If political factors come in after the Pareto cut, then I can use bridge chops to shift CDs a few points in the direction I want, often without any erosity consequences as you have noted. That gets my partisan map through the cut, perhaps at the expense of a neutral plan.

1. Single county UCC's, or any county having a population in excess of one CD (same thing), in general yes, should not get special status. But with respect to the pack issue, perhaps they should. It is a policy issue.

2. Bridge chops do not raise the concern that you have, if disfavored. I keep saying that.

3. If two maps are tied on chops and erosity, then first SKEW, and if that is also tied, then POLARIZATION, do come into play as the tie breaker, no? So your map loses, at least if my bridge chop definition and rules apply. And it should lose. Beyond the partisan numbers, it is bad practice all other things being equal, to increase the size of a chop.

4. I am thinking now for various big picture, macro reasons (both in helping to sell your/our scheme (particularly to the Dems, who are likely going to be the source of most of the opposition), and for those who think it good policy for the minority party to get more seats in a state dominated by the other party, and at the same time, have more swing CD's (the two factors tend to be fairly substantially correlated - any Pubs that manage to get elected to Congress in MA or CT or Maine or Hawaii, or Dems from Kansas or Utah or Nebraska, are going very likely to be moderate, and all will come from "swingish" CD's), that we need to give more emphasis to SKEW and POLARIZATION, and thus we need to modify a bit your rules when it comes to macro-chops. But I will get to that when I comment on your King County Pub gerrymander map. That is the place to try to improve SKEW and POLARIZATION scores. But we still want good maps. It is another of those balancing tests. Life is a balancing test. It's time to start thinking out of the box, just as you did so brilliantly with your highway cut scheme, which was an insight of sublime beauty and elegance, that has worked splendidly well (except at the edges where Jimrtex and I are still nipping at your heels, sometimes in unison, sometimes in stereo).

Oh, here is statutory language for you about Indian Reservations. We should call this after that German guy who left us over the Opebo affair, who cared so deeply about the integrity of Indian Reservations, and gave me the spanking I deserved when I started mapping AZ, and paid them no attention.

With respect to Indian Reservations, the following rules shall apply:

1.  The placement of an Indian Reservation into two different CD’s shall count as a chop, unless such division is done solely to avoid a chop of a county, and a division between CD’s of both a county and an Indian Reservation within that county shall count as two chops.

2.  A division of a county into two different CD’s that is solely the result of avoiding causing a division between two CD's of an Indian Reservation that crosses over into that county from an adjacent county shall not count as a chop.

3. With respect to two Qualifying Maps that otherwise have the same chop score, the map that causes a division of a county between two CD’s solely in order to avoid dividing an Indian Reservation between two CD’s, shall be deemed to have a higher chop score than the map that divides an Indian Reservation between two CD’s solely in order to avoiding dividing a county between two CD’s.

A higher score chop score is bad. This is a game of golf. The term Qualifying Map, means a map that is legal under the rules.

[Torie]

Putting aside the tie breaker issue, your text has very different substantive provisions. First you levy a chop for dividing different reservations. I do not. There is no commonality there in governmental function. This issue actually obtains in Gila County where the San Carlos reservation is contiguous to the Apache reservation. Putting them in separate CD's should not be penalized. You have no chop penalty avoidance mechanism where a reservation chop is done to keep a county whole. If a reservation is chopped elsewhere, it should not generate another penalty in order to keep a county whole. So the only change here is to avoid levying a chop penalty for a chop of Apache along reservation lines.

1. A reservation area within a county is automatically a subunit of the county. Contiguous reservation subunits form a Reservation Subunit Cluster (RSC). The CHOP score shall increase by one for each district over the minimum needed for the cover of the RSC.

2. A chop into a county that only includes a reservation subunit shall not count as a chop of that county if the RSC is covered by the minimum number of districts.

As to tie breakers we disagree on that. I think that mechanism useful, and not particularly confusing, whether it be about reservations, or bridge chops, however defined. As to reservations, it is not that important, at least in my system. You either have an incentive to keep a reservation whole by chopping into a county, or you do not. In your system, counties are ignored in favor of reservations. I don't think that can be justified if the metric is about lines following governmental functions. Of course, reservations are localities. And just like localities, they can be chopped without penalty if they cross a county line. In your system Gila or Apache will always need to be chopped to avoid a chop penalty if the CD lines are around there.

Tie breakers are important for bridge chops to avoid your doomsday scenarios (potentially - it really has yet to be proven). It is not about partisan gerrymandering however, because it is all random. It is about whether it generates ugly maps. Playing the gerrymander card is a total red herring. It does not obtain at all really in any of this really.

As to selling this thing, this system really protects the Pub majority, after it drops about 10 seats or so or whatever. That is the effect. It cannot be denied. Allowing more flexibility in line drawing in big counties might end up giving the Dems a shot at some more seats net on a nationwide basis, while protecting map integrity, and give on a systematic basis more help potentially to the minority party on the short end of the SKEW. That is the point.

But I will get into that dealing with your King County map on that thread. On that map, did you count non state highway road cuts between municipalities in separate CD's that do not involve another county? I ask, because in general, the county chops are incentivized to go where fewer jurisdictions exist, which would tend to help the Dems because it is less populated areas that are chopped. In general, if one CD takes in the more rural areas, and the other CD takes in the populated areas, you will have one CD appending inside a county a ton of localities, with a lot of road cuts. Each and every road that leads out from a municipality to the balance of a county, even if there are no sub jurisdictions in the balance of the county, would count as a road cut. So that issue needs to be resolved first.

Our list of disagreements is getting longer again.

[Torie]

Here's New Hampshire based on population projections. The location of the chop was driven by the equality metric. Even though in my world, equality is at the absolute bottom of the heap, everything else was equal, so that was all that remained as the tie breaker as to the precise location of the chop. Also interesting is that both CD's have almost the same partisan complexion circa 2008, 1.28% and 1.06% Dem PVI's. The Dems would be pleased as NH trends slowly their way (or if you believe one poster here, at WARP speed). 

[Torie]

I am more interested in skew and polarization than equality. We just disagree on that. But here, it makes no difference as I said just where in the food chain inequality is. And I am getting nervous that you are setting up different rules for different states. You seem searching for more clusters of stuff, be it ethic clusters, and now this variant of clusters. I am not sure what is driving this, other than perhaps boredom or something.

Using town estimates would only make a difference here for the size of the chop, and I am quite sure that this is still the best place to chop for equality purposes. The population number is small, and NH growth rates don't vary that much across the state.

[Torie]

Jimrtex's map has UCC areas in NH. Were they made up out of thin air? Is there no UCC area for those two adjacent counties? I don't understand why you say they don't work.

NH's counties do have government functions (I looked it up before drawing the map). It is not like CT. And even if they didn't, that does not mean they should not be used ala what was used in MD. Anyway, with the counties having real government functions, to make the lines just disappear, seems like an inconsistent approach to me. When does a county do enough, to keep its lines from disappearing?

Without checking back to the other thread, using counties worked splendidly well in CT, work fine in NH, and also worked very well in Mass. So color me confused on that one.

[Torie]

Even if SKEW and POLARIZATION were used to contrast against EROSITY, I don't think it would do much good in states like RI and MA. INEQUALITY is the only game left in town.

Yes, of course, and it turned out to be that way in NH, using standardized metrics, rather than custom metrics developed by your creative little mind. RI is losing a seat, so the map there should be really easy to draw in any event.

Mass counties seem to have functions too by the way. I came across that trying to check on the demographics of Lincoln in connection with how rich places vote.

[Torie]

I've ignored New England pretty much while you were up to your mischief. Anyway, it is up to the state to decide what matters to them, if their counties have less authority than in most places. I think that is OK. Just give them the options. Myself, I would stick with the counties. They work just fine. But it should be their decision, not ours, or yours, or mine. That is my point of view anyway. In the end, it really does not make much difference as a national matter. You didn't answer my UCC question for New Hampshire. I guess if you erase county lines, you were searching for something else to create urban clusters. Did you do that all across New England, creating non county based urban clusters, or just in New Hampshire? You seem to have a lot of urban clusters in New Hampshire. Might some think that you were a bit urban cluster happy?

Anyway, on to Montana. Here’s Montana if it gets a second seat.  The only thing of interest here is the Indian Reservation issue. To keep the reservation whole, a chop of Chouteau County was done, which increased inequality, but again, that is at the bottom of the food chain for me. However, another more erose map, avoids any county chop to avoid a reservation chop. Should such a map have a preference? If so, the second map wins the chop contest, even while being more erose, so both maps make the pareto optimality cut in that event.

The second map also has a more Dem CD in the west (almost kind of a Dem gerrymander really), which probably pushes that CD down to “r” territory to the extent that it is not in the first map. If so, that helps the polarization score. However, like skew, polarization is but a tie breaker in the food chain, so that does not matter. If Muon2 comes up with some grand unified formula for erosity which factors in skew and polarization (which he seems to be pondering to cull down my long preference list), then maybe it would matter.  I am willing to consider such a grand unified formula, but would need to see how it works in practice.  

Obama is now suddenly interested in the gerrymandering issue, and I know that he cares a lot about skew, and heck, maybe even polarization.  In any event, there is more and more interest out there in doing something to change the status quo. It’s perhaps beginning to reach critical mass. And something really can be done, if the formula is just right, and both parties are on the smart side, rather than the dumb side (that assumption perhaps being unrealistic, but whatever).

Man, I really milked a lot out of this rather boring state didn’t I, and all because of an itsy bitsy little Indian Reservation. One thing leads to another thing, and then yet another thing.

[Torie]

I don’t know if this exact iteration of a NY map based on population projections has been put up before, but it seems to me to be the wining map. My sentimental favorite is the second map, but it chops Greenburgh Town in Westchester generating an extra chop, and in the end is just an interior map.  The first map has a bridge chop per my definition (not Muon2's), so is disfavored, but with one fewer chop, stills prevails over the second map using my preference metrics.

I went through this exercise, because I am meeting a Dem candidate for Congress, Will Yandik, this coming Monday, and I wanted to show him what his CD might look like in 2022 assuming he gets elected. It is rather important, because with the second map, unless Mahoney in NY-18 retires in 2022, Will will need to find another line of work then. On the other hand, with the first map, he will be in a CD that merges basically with NY-22 (will lives near Hudson in Livingston Town). So he will be in much better shape, particularly if a right wing Pub wins in NY-22 this year. I will advise him to spend some time when he can up in Rome and Utica.

This is not a wholly theoretical exercise, because NY now has a redistricting law that will cut way back on the gerrymander regime. So reasonable maps are now the order of the day. This map is reasonable, and also has a good skew of Pub plus 1., and low polarization at 33 (2R, 4r, 5e, 5d, 10D).  Two CD’s are just barely r, and if both went to e, the skew would be zero. Both maps have the same skew and polarization scores, although the first map has NY-17 going from e to r, and NY-22 going from r to e.

Will is a moderate Dem who seeks consensus, with a calm and intellectual temperament, and an environmentalist. He’s a biologist. And he’s extremely smart (he was valedictorian at Hudson High School, and got a scholarship to go to Princeton). So I anticipate that I will be supporting him. He’s basically a Gibson type with a D label, who is somewhat more liberal on social issues.

The big unknown is whether Teachout chooses to run for the seat in the Dem primary. If she does, she will probably win the primary (she will have lots of money and name ID), but as a Birkenstock/Emily’s List type liberal, she is not a good fit for the district in a General Election, while Will Yandik will be an excellent fit. My instinct is that Teachout will not run, because she realizes the problem. If so, it may well be that Yandik will be our next Congressmen. It will be kind of fun to actually know my Congressman personally. I birded with him and my brother last month, which is where I met him. I did not know then of his political ambitions, but do now (we didn't talk politics while birding, because that just isn't done with serious birders).

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[Torie]

This is not a wholly theoretical exercise, because NY now has a redistricting law that will cut way back on the gerrymander regime. So reasonable maps are now the order of the day. This map is reasonable, and also has a good skew of Pub plus 1., and low polarization at 33 (2R, 4r, 5e, 5d, 10D).  Two CD’s are just barely r, and if both went to e, the skew would be zero. Both maps have the same skew and polarization scores, although the first map has NY-17 going from e to r, and NY-22 going from r to e.

I get a different value of SKEW from your distribution of seats. If I assume that NY is still D+11 in 2022, then 26 seats gives a skew offset of 11 D seats (11% * 4 * 26). Your distribution has 15 D+d seats and 6 R+r seats for a difference of 9 D seats. The SKEW is 2 R.

Yeah, I took the e seats off the table, and that is wrong. If all the CD seats were e, there would be no skew, per my formula, and that makes no sense.

BTW I know you looked into this last spring. Are there significant changes from that plan to his one?

No, it seems per one of my maps. It's just this map gets rid of the micro-chops on that map per the 0.5% leeway rule. Well, I take that back. I needed to put North Castle and Pound Ridge into NY-16 to get rid of the chop of Greenburgh (in both maps above actually, since in the second map, I needed to do that to avoid a tri-chop of Greenburgh). Greenburgh is the driver of all of these maps for this portion of the state it seems. Interestingly, I read the new NY law, and it is not clear to me if that law allows population variances to avoid town chops. It refers to avoiding town and block chops with respect to allowing population variances. Towns tend to be bigger than blocks.

In other news, after years of ignoring you and Jimrtex on this, I finally learned to take the population of each county, get the percentage of the CD quota for that population, and work with the CD quota fractions until I got to within .995 to 1.005. Things work much easier that way, and it reduces the chance for error. Sometimes, I am a really, really, slow learner!  

[Torie]

This morning I went to Will Yandik's event in Hillsdale. About 100 people showed up. Will Yandik loved my maps, and instantly understood the political implications. His eyes just glistened with delight in fact. He loves maps as much as we do. He even knew that Columbia County was neither part of the Albany UCC area, nor the NYC UCC area, and that Dutchess was part of the latter, and the implications of that vis a vis map drawing give the new New York law. Fancy that? I also told him about the Birkenstock Belt, and where it was, and that Hillsdale was a part of it, which fascinated him.

His speech was brilliant, well crafted, district specific, and politically smart - small farms, home health care for a population losing area filled with seniors (10 years older than the average for the nation), internet broad band, bipartisan, working with Republicans on issues where it was realistic to get stuff passed, and so forth. He was happy to see me. I suggested on the broad band issue, that he get in touch with some incumbent Congressmen for both parties, to get an idea of what the obstacles are, and why this has not been pushed by rural Pub Congresspersons, so he can get more specific, and show by his actions, that he can actually make his approach work. It's a big issue, because the economics of the region, and higher paying jobs, are all about using the internet, and working from home, or a small business. And the service sucks, and is driving folks crazy. My cousin is really frustrated, and has found all three currently available options unsatisfactory.

He's smart as a whip, charming, high energy, disciplined, and charming, great sense of humor and very articulate. I think he will be the next Congressman from the district, and the DCCC understands he's their best shot to win the district, and are pushing for him. I think the odds are pretty good he will be the next Congressman from the district. It will be kind of neat if he does, that I will know my Congressional representative personally. And oh, I pledged some money for him.

I also chatted with the former Hudson Common Council President about the weighted voting issue, and laid out my strategy, and what needs to be done when, to whom. He thought it a good approach.  

[Torie]

The Home Rule Law does not allow the weights to be corrected except by referendum. The county can for supervisors, but the city cannot for aldermen. It's a gap in the law, because the law was not written contemplating cities having weighted voting. So the weighed votes cannot be changed by a mere Council vote. When they did that in 2013, it was illegal. Much of what Hudson does is illegal. That era is now coming to an end. That's what happens when pushy lawyers with too much time on their hands come to town.

[Torie]

Here is what happens to NY-18 if the NYC metro area for the remaining 5.75 years of the decade grows at a rate of 0.74% per year, rather than 0.69% per year,  ending the incumbent's career in what is now NY-19, assuming NY faithfully follows its new redistricting law. Greenburgh town is chopped, and NY-18 has a Dem PVI of 1.3%, while NY-17 has a Dem PVI of 0.5%, circa 2008. Columbia County really is on the cusp as to where it ends up. If growth slows down  a tad, rather than speeds up a tad, a Muon2 metric map would chop Geeene County, but is what is more likely to happen, is that Ulster County would be chopped, with Columbia County still in NY-18.

In other words, Columbia County goes to NY-22 only in the narrow window of current population growth rates in the NYC metro area. Outside the metro area, the population is almost precisely stagnant, with a very slight population loss, and that is unlikely to change. Upstate NY overall is very stagnant and stable, and likely to remain that way, without much change. On the other hand, the NYC metro area is much more unpredictable, with the health of Wall Street having much to do with what happens to its growth rate. Given the shape of NY, and its respective regional growth rates, one can predict what happens to one CD, mine, with a pretty high degree on certainty. In that sense, the situation I think is rather unique out there on the Fruited Plain.

[Torie]

The Home Rule Law does not allow the weights to be corrected except by referendum. The county can for supervisors, but the city cannot for aldermen. It's a gap in the law, because the law was not written contemplating cities having weighted voting. So the weighed votes cannot be changed by a mere Council vote. When they did that in 2013, it was illegal. Much of what Hudson does is illegal. That era is now coming to an end. That's what happens when pushy lawyers with too much time on their hands come to town.

MHR § 10.1.a.(13)(c) applies generally.

A change in weighting does not count under the once-in-a-decade rule.

The change to the board of supervisors will count since it remove several of the supervisors from Hudson.

Correct as to your first sentence, but it still needs a referendum. That's the rub. The supervisor thing has its own dynamic.

[Torie]

Here is what happens to NY-18 if the NYC metro area for the remaining 5.75 years of the decade grows at a rate of 0.74% per year, rather than 0.69% per year,  ending the incumbent's career in what is now NY-19, assuming NY faithfully follows its new redistricting law. Greenburgh town is chopped, and NY-18 has a Dem PVI of 1.3%, while NY-17 has a Dem PVI of 0.5%, circa 2008. Columbia County really is on the cusp as to where it ends up. If growth slows down  a tad, rather than speeds up a tad, a Muon2 metric map would chop Geeene County, but is what is more likely to happen, is that Ulster County would be chopped, with Columbia County still in NY-18.

In other words, Columbia County goes to NY-22 only in the narrow window of current population growth rates in the NYC metro area. Outside the metro area, the population is almost precisely stagnant, with a very slight population loss, and that is unlikely to change. Upstate NY overall is very stagnant and stable, and likely to remain that way, without much change. On the other hand, the NYC metro area is much more unpredictable, with the health of Wall Street having much to do with what happens to its growth rate. Given the shape of NY, and its respective regional growth rates, one can predict what happens to one CD, mine, with a pretty high degree on certainty. In that sense, the situation I think is rather unique out there on the Fruited Plain.

I wouldn't leave out the possibility that Columbia goes with Albany after 2020. The Albany metro has to be chopped, and assuming that NY doesn't necessarily hew to the UCC pack rule the chop could give the Capital district a major role in two CDs.

True, but that would be politically toxic. I strongly doubt that will happen. Swallowing Rensselear (sp) is enough. Reaching down to Columbia, which has nothing to do with Albany, and everything to do with the rural Hudson Valley, is something else entirely. And I don't know how such a scheme would affect the chop count, and under the new law, chops matter - all of them, and if the legislature goes rogue, the highest NY court should bounce it.

[Torie]

"I just realized that MHR § 10.1.a.(1) forbids a city from changing the duties of city officials acting in their capacity as county officers (eg supervisors elected from Hudson).

Hudson can not change the districts from which supervisors are elected from."

Not sure why one follows from the other. In any event, assuming that the supervisors number remains at five from Hudson, as opposed to some other number, are you saying that the now illegal supervisor lines cannot be changed with County approval?

[Torie]

True, but that would be politically toxic. I strongly doubt that will happen. Swallowing Rensselear (sp) is enough. Reaching down to Columbia, which has nothing to do with Albany, and everything to do with the rural Hudson Valley, is something else entirely. And I don't know how such a scheme would affect the chop count, and under the new law, chops matter - all of them, and if the legislature goes rogue, the highest NY court should bounce it.

Some rural counties will invariably be appended to UCCs. Can Columbia make a case that is different from any other county adjacent to the Albany UCC?

As I read the redistricting language, I don't see that chops have that high of precedence. Compactness gets its own line as a principle (who defines it?), but chops are buried with political considerations and CoI.

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Yes I understand, but I think my maps stand despite that. Your metrics have actually something to do with COI, absent the BS. Who knew? But in my neck of the woods, it is well understood what the COI's are, more than in most places. The hood goes back generations, and their issue are still here, without much change, absent weirdos like myself moving in.