State legislative redistricting, Maori-style

[bgwah]

I decided to redistrict Washington's legislature using a method like New Zealand does with the Maori seats. Feel free to post other states!!

I just ripped the overall numbers off of Dave's Redistricting App and excluded "Other." This came to:

36 White seats (haven't bothered doing this one, yet)
6 Hispanic seats
4 Asian seats
2 Black seats
1 Native American seat (would just be the entire state, obviously)

First I'll show the black map. While it might have more sense to do a King-and-north & Pierce-and-rest-of-state split, I simply couldn't resist the possibility of an enormous district encompassing almost the entire state, with a much smaller Seattle-to-Tacoma district taking the rest.




The four seat Asian map: unsurprisingly, the Asian population is very concentrated in King County. Roughly 37/39 counties are in the red district, with the remaining 3 in King/Pierce (and a portion of Snoho). Yellow is Seattle to SE Snohomish, blue is East King, and green is South King + Pierce.




And finally, the six seat Hispanic map. In contrast to the previous two maps, the Hispanic population is much more spread across the state. One of six districts takes all of King County---the hispanic population is pretty small here for a major Western metro. One can see the heavy Hispanic concentration in South Central Washington when looking at the red district. Much of the Hispanic population in the neighboring brown and yellow districts are very close to the red district as well, with brown getting much of its Hispanics from the city of Yakima, and yellow getting many from Adams, Franklin, and Grant counties.




Comments?

[ilikeverin]

This is pretty awesome!   Keep going!

[Seattle]

That's really cool, actually!

[Vazdul (Formerly Chairman of the Communist Party of Ontario)]

Alright, I'll do New Jersey, because I kind of feel like it.

New Jersey has 40 legislative districts, each of which elects one State Senator and two State Assemblypersons. By the d'Hondt method, which I used because I have a calculator for it, the following is the racial allocation.

25 White districts
7 Hispanic districts
5 Black districts
3 Asian districts

There aren't enough Native Americans to justify getting their own district.

Since race is the primary factor in these districts, I attempted to draw districts that preserve communities of interest, though that can be difficult when drawing districts in areas that are sparsely populated by the race in question. Here is the Asian map:



I decided to place most of the areas where there aren't a lot of Asians in one district, leaving the remaining areas for the other two districts. I also decided that the most urban areas should go into one district, so I put Newark, Jersey City, and Elizabeth in the same district, which necessitated that both Essex and Hudson Counties be split.

[bgwah]

Montana House - Native Americans get six seats. Given the small seats (10k) and the nature of reservations, this was actually semi-difficult in spots... A single block group could easily have more Natives than a dozen counties. The brown green districts might actually approximately exist in real life, but I'm too lazy to double check. But here is what I came up with:



*waits for Lewis to point out what I did wrong*

[So the Heroes Fall]

Minnesota has 134 State House seats:

Whites: 117
Blacks: 6
Hispanics: 5
Asian: 4
Native American: 1
Other: 1

Wouldn't be all that interesting, but I might do it sometime. Blacks I'll predict are three seats in Minneapolis, two in St. Paul, one in the suburbs, and one for everywhere else. Hispanics would be two in Minneapolis, one in St. Paul, one in the suburbs, and one everywhere else. Asians would be one in Minneapolis, two in St. Paul and one everywhere else most likely.

[So the Heroes Fall]

I should try North Dakota, 47 districts, and the Natives get three, Hispanics actually get one. Blacks and Asians don't, but they would each get one under the House apportionment, which is 94 seats, though those are from the same districts.

[So the Heroes Fall]

OK three Native seats for North Dakota:



I'm not a fan of how I split Grand Forks, but the only other option was to split Reservations, Rolette County is kind of frustratingly just short of a seat. So basically you have one seat in northeast ND which is basically Turtle Mountain Reservation plus some white rural areas and a few neighborhoods in Grand Forks, one district which is Forth Berthold + Devils Lake + the town of Minot (which you might've heard about in the news recently for not so happy reasons), and one district which is Standing Rock + Bismarck + Fargo + the rest of Grand Forks + a bunch of almost all white rural areas.

[Vasall des Midas]

Montana House - Native Americans get six seats. Given the small seats (10k) and the nature of reservations, this was actually semi-difficult in spots... A single block group could easily have more Natives than a dozen counties. The brown green districts might actually approximately exist in real life, but I'm too lazy to double check. But here is what I came up with:



*waits for Lewis to point out what I did wrong*

You split Fort Peck. It makes more sense to split Fort Belknap, since the Atsina and the Fort Belknap Assiniboine want as little to do with each other as possible, always have, always will. Put the Assiniboine with Fort Peck as that also has Assiniboine people. (Obviously, you need to know the place better than I do to know where to split it.) Very good otherwise.

Montana House is gerrymandered-by-commission to actually have six Native majority seats, requiring quite fine splitting (two or possibly three of them fell to White Teabaggers in 2010 IIRC. One of them quite certifiably insane.) so obvy they don't look like your map.

[Senator Napoleon]

BRTD,

Your list of black districts adds up to seven.

[bgwah]

Montana House - Native Americans get six seats. Given the small seats (10k) and the nature of reservations, this was actually semi-difficult in spots... A single block group could easily have more Natives than a dozen counties. The brown green districts might actually approximately exist in real life, but I'm too lazy to double check. But here is what I came up with:



*waits for Lewis to point out what I did wrong*

You split Fort Peck. It makes more sense to split Fort Belknap, since the Atsina and the Fort Belknap Assiniboine want as little to do with each other as possible, always have, always will. Put the Assiniboine with Fort Peck as that also has Assiniboine people. (Obviously, you need to know the place better than I do to know where to split it.) Very good otherwise.

Montana House is gerrymandered-by-commission to actually have six Native majority seats, requiring quite fine splitting (two or possibly three of them fell to White Teabaggers in 2010 IIRC. One of them quite certifiably insane.) so obvy they don't look like your map.

While I may have split the reservation, the parts that actually have Natives are all in the brown district.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Can you explain how this works for those of us who aren't familiar with it?

[Verily]

Can you explain how this works for those of us who aren't familiar with it?

In New Zealand, there are two electoral lists, Maori and non-Maori. If you are Maori, you can choose to be placed on the Maori list or the non-Maori list, while all non-Maoris go on the non-Maori list. Constituencies are then crafted based on the distribution of the Maori and non-Maori enrolled voters. Seven seats are distributed and drawn based solely on the Maori electorate, and all of the other seats are drawn based on the non-Maori electorate. Thus, there are seven seats in which only Maori may vote.

(In practice, only about two-thirds of Maori choose to register in the Maori electorate; one-third vote in the general electorate. The distribution of Maori v. non-Maori seats is done by registration rather than actual population, but this hypothetical is assuming all racial groups register with their own electorate rather than with the general electorate.)

The system is designed to ensure Maori representation even though Maori voters are fairly evenly distributed across New Zealand.

This article might explain it better: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maori_electorates

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Okay, I think I get it, so here's the Virginia Senate. I used total population rather than VAP and cut out "other". I got the following breakdown:

White - 27
Black - 8
Hispanic - 3
Asian - 2

White:



Black:



Hispanic:



Asian:

[jimrtex]

I decided to redistrict Washington's legislature using a method like New Zealand does with the Maori seats. Feel free to post other states!!

I just ripped the overall numbers off of Dave's Redistricting App and excluded "Other." This came to:

36 White seats (haven't bothered doing this one, yet)
6 Hispanic seats
4 Asian seats
2 Black seats
1 Native American seat (would just be the entire state, obviously)

Nothing prevents having individual House districts as long as they are nested within the senate districts.  This would be a case where splits would be appropriate.

First I'll show the black map. While it might have more sense to do a King-and-north & Pierce-and-rest-of-state split, I simply couldn't resist the possibility of an enormous district encompassing almost the entire state, with a much smaller Seattle-to-Tacoma district taking the rest.

Does the Sea-Tac district include Fort Lewis?  If not, it might make sense to split in the manner of your alternative.

[jimrtex]

Alright, I'll do New Jersey, because I kind of feel like it.

New Jersey has 40 legislative districts, each of which elects one State Senator and two State Assemblypersons. By the d'Hondt method, which I used because I have a calculator for it, the following is the racial allocation.

Use Sainte Lague (divisors are N - 1/2, rather than N).   d'Hondt violates the VRA.

If you want a short cut, calculate   

min__group = INT(population_group/ideal)

This will give you the minimum number of districts for the population.  Sum these and subtract from 40 to determine the number of additional seats that need to be apportioned (n_extra)

Calculate the quotient for the next seat for each population.

quotient_group = population_group / (min_group + 1/2)

The largest n_extra values of quotient_group get another seat.
[/quote]

25 White districts
7 Hispanic districts
5 Black districts
3 Asian districts

[jimrtex]

(In practice, only about two-thirds of Maori choose to register in the Maori electorate; one-third vote in the general electorate. The distribution of Maori v. non-Maori seats is done by registration rather than actual population, but this hypothetical is assuming all racial groups register with their own electorate rather than with the general electorate.)

NZ electorates are based on census population, but this is weighted by the share of the Maori voters who choose the Maori electorate.

For example, if an area has 3000 Maori, and 2/3 of the Maori votes choose the Maori register rather than the general register, the area is attributed 2000 persons for drawing electorates, and the other 1000 plus non-Maori are used for drawing the general electorates.

[bgwah]

I decided to redistrict Washington's legislature using a method like New Zealand does with the Maori seats. Feel free to post other states!!

I just ripped the overall numbers off of Dave's Redistricting App and excluded "Other." This came to:

36 White seats (haven't bothered doing this one, yet)
6 Hispanic seats
4 Asian seats
2 Black seats
1 Native American seat (would just be the entire state, obviously)

Nothing prevents having individual House districts as long as they are nested within the senate districts.  This would be a case where splits would be appropriate.

I'm not exactly sure what you're replying to.

[So the Heroes Fall]

BRTD,

Your list of black districts adds up to seven.

Yeah it was late.

I guess I'll find out if I actually draw the map.

[So the Heroes Fall]

OK what I got. One black seat entirely in Minneapolis, one split about half between Minneapolis and suburbs, one in suburbs north of Minneapolis, one in St. Paul plus a few precincts in the suburbs, one most of the rest of the metro, and obviously the rest of the state is one more district.

[ilikeverin]

Asians would be one in Minneapolis, two in St. Paul and one everywhere else most likely.

Nice try, BRTD, but you are underestimating the proportion of Asians in my graduating class:



(You could also swap some of Brooklyn Park for Edina)

[ilikeverin]

Hispanics would be two in Minneapolis, one in St. Paul, one in the suburbs, and one everywhere else.

You really seem to like overestimating the amount of segregation in Minnesota, BRTD

Hispanics:

[ilikeverin]

Michigan

According to a Sainte-Laguë calculator I found online, Michigan's 110 MI House members would be split as follows:
85 White
16 Black
1 Native American
3 Asian
5 Hispanic

Black






To be continued tomorrow?

[jimrtex]

I decided to redistrict Washington's legislature using a method like New Zealand does with the Maori seats. Feel free to post other states!!

I just ripped the overall numbers off of Dave's Redistricting App and excluded "Other." This came to:

36 White seats (haven't bothered doing this one, yet)
6 Hispanic seats
4 Asian seats
2 Black seats
1 Native American seat (would just be the entire state, obviously)

Nothing prevents having individual House districts as long as they are nested within the senate districts.  This would be a case where splits would be appropriate.

I'm not exactly sure what you're replying to.

In Washington, each legislative district elects one senator and two representatives.  The representatives are elected from the entire legislative district.  But what you actually have is 3-coterminous districts.  There is no constitutional requirement that it be done this way.  There is a requirement that house districts not cross senate district boundaries.  In the past there have been separate house districts in certain areas.  For example there was a senate district that include parts of the southern Pacific Coast and then went up the Columbia.  There was a Pacific house district, and a Columbia house district.

In small Urban) areas there might not be a clearly defined interest between different parts of the district.  But when there are only a few districts statewide, it could make sense to create two house districts in each senate district.

[bgwah]

I decided to redistrict Washington's legislature using a method like New Zealand does with the Maori seats. Feel free to post other states!!

I just ripped the overall numbers off of Dave's Redistricting App and excluded "Other." This came to:

36 White seats (haven't bothered doing this one, yet)
6 Hispanic seats
4 Asian seats
2 Black seats
1 Native American seat (would just be the entire state, obviously)

Nothing prevents having individual House districts as long as they are nested within the senate districts.  This would be a case where splits would be appropriate.

I'm not exactly sure what you're replying to.

In Washington, each legislative district elects one senator and two representatives.  The representatives are elected from the entire legislative district.  But what you actually have is 3-coterminous districts.  There is no constitutional requirement that it be done this way.  There is a requirement that house districts not cross senate district boundaries.  In the past there have been separate house districts in certain areas.  For example there was a senate district that include parts of the southern Pacific Coast and then went up the Columbia.  There was a Pacific house district, and a Columbia house district.

In small Urban) areas there might not be a clearly defined interest between different parts of the district.  But when there are only a few districts statewide, it could make sense to create two house districts in each senate district.

Oh yeah, that. The 39th was also split in the 80s.

So you were just suggesting I could have even more fun by doing another map with twice as many districts for each group?

(of course, if we're using this Maori system, then it's probably safe to assume we've completely changed the laws regarding redistricting )