CA CD Wine Country Map Quest poll

[muon2]

This is the southern region of CDs. The counties closely match Torie's wall and is only 1019 over population for 31 CDs. The counties can be divided into three groups: Kings-Tulare-Kern-Mono-Inyo-SanB (5 CDs), LA (14 CDs), Riverside-Orange-SanDiego-Imperial (12 CDs), and each of these groups is close enough in population to a whole number of CDs that they could all be drawn within 0.5% of the ideal size without crossing out of their group of counties.

In this map, populations are with 100 of the ideal (except 24 at -119) so the microchop rule is used on four fragments in LAC (22, 24, 26, 27) and one in Riverside (25). There is one extra fragment due to the VRA requirements for CD 23 at 65.2% HVAP and it is over 50% HCVAP.

CD 53 uses the excess in Riverside in Coachella to avoid any part of the city of San Diego and get 65.5% HVAP. That allows all of the city of San Diego to be only in either CD 50 or 52.

The minority CDs are as follows:

CD 23: 65.2% HVAP
CD 27: 63.1% HVAP
CD 29: 63.9% HVAP
CD 32: 61.3% HVAP
CD 34: 64.5% HVAP
CD 35: 51.0% AVAP
CD 36: 68.4% HVAP
CD 37: 43.3% BVAP/44.9% HVAP (BCVAP majority)
CD 38: 67.5% HVAP
CD 39: 72.1% HVAP
CD 42: 51.3% HVAP
CD 46: 65.0% HVAP
CD 53: 65.5% HVAP

[Хahar 🤔]

I'm not sure I quite understand the purpose of drawing an Asian-majority district in Santa Clara County. I can't think of any reading of the VRA that would require it.

[muon2]

I'm not sure I quite understand the purpose of drawing an Asian-majority district in Santa Clara County. I can't think of any reading of the VRA that would require it.

I don't think the VRA under the 9th circuit does require it. But I could do it while only splitting one city that had to be split anyway. I chose that to be my community of interest rather than using some other grouping.

[Torie]

Excellent map, Mike.  I am wondering why you messed with my LA County CD's however.  What bothered you?

Do you have any sense of how many options vis a vis regions, and vis a vis micro chops, the Commission would have to choose from under the micro-chop regime?  That is a sensitive point.

[muon2]

Excellent map, Mike.  I am wondering why you messed with my LA County CD's however.  What bothered you?

Do you have any sense of how many options vis a vis regions, and vis a vis micro chops, the Commission would have to choose from under the micro-chop regime?  That is a sensitive point.

It was faster for me to start with my January map, so it wasn't that I was trying to mess with your CDs. I do like that Brea is just about the right size to join the Asian tiger so that Chino Hills avoids the chop. Have you looked at that as an option?

I don't know the number of permutations, but from my comments about Napa you can see where I've provided for some trade offs in the rules. For instance I use four microchops to eliminate your single chop into Pomona. If a single chop better preserves a city that becomes a legit tradeoff to consider. With this plan I count 106 total pieces, including whole county pieces, and 10 microchops.

[Torie]

Well my last map got rid of the Chino Hills chop, and had that small chop in Pomona. Where are the 4 micro-chops, and how do they avoid my small chop into Pomona?  I didn't consider appending Brea to the Asian CD (it lost Chino Hills, and took most of West Covina instead, and it worked out pretty well), and there is a big empty zone between Diamond Bar and Brea through a long pass, and the two towns are really different worlds. That is an undesirable mix, and should be avoided if possible. I much prefer adding Seal Beach to Long Beach.  That is an excellent fit, with Corona being appended to an OC based CD the second best (strong commuter and economic connections there).

[Sbane]

Well, it looks like I can't convince you not to cross into CCC from Marin, but other than that good map. The Marin situation can be easily fixed of course, but would need a chop of Solano.

[Torie]

2. Contiguous county pieces require a connection by public road, and two whole counties in a CD shall not be connected if their only connection is through a split piece of a county.

Not a bad rule... but doesn't your proposed CD-12 violate it? 

You are right. But as I mentioned many on the thread preferred a community of interest that linked the whole coast, so this commission might well accept that violation. Also, with that grouping of counties Napa will always link to other counties through a split Sonoma, or there would be a split of both Napa and Sonoma for no reason other than to preserve that rule, and for me the first rule has priority over the second. Another alternative I looked at was some other grouping, such as my initial wine country plan, but that created districts on either the east or west side of the state that were roundly rejected.

I understood the sense of the posters was to have rules that had a certain amount of flex so that there was a way out of a bad map. The way they are constructed, there are times where they will conflict with each other and the mapper can choose how to resolve the conflict.

You are preserving exactly what rule?  As to this business of the Commission voting for something that is not legal, do you mean simply per the statute having the power to depart from the otherwise applicable rule, maybe by a supra-majority?

Another issue is compactness. To get compactness might require an override of something else. We should consider one of your definitions of that perhaps. This compactness issue mostly obtains in the CA-01/CA-02 territory, or around the Sierra's potentially. But that may be a mechanism by which Sonoma acting as a bridge could be adopted as the price for compactness (the Commission used it as a bridge too of course, I suspect for that reason actually).

[muon2]

Well my last map got rid of the Chino Hills chop, and had that small chop in Pomona. Where are the 4 micro-chops, and how do they avoid my small chop into Pomona?  I didn't consider appending Brea to the Asian CD (it lost Chino Hills, and took most of West Covina instead, and it worked out pretty well), and there is a big empty zone between Diamond Bar and Brea through a long pass, and the two towns are really different worlds. That is an undesirable mix, and should be avoided if possible. I much prefer adding Seal Beach to Long Beach.  That is an excellent fit, with Corona being appended to an OC based CD the second best (strong commuter and economic connections there).

I agree that the Chino Hills chop has to go. Leaving it in costs a chop over all since the excess pop is in OC/SD/Riverside, not in SanB. I noted that since Kern and SanB were inked at Ridgecrest I could consider the whole 6 counties as a single unit with 5 CDs. It was short by 11,774 persons which you grab from Pomona (plus the extra 1K pushed through from Tulare's microchop in your map. If I take the 11,774 and divide it between 4 CDs I can make it into 4 microchops. They are in NW LAC from Kern (24), in Claremont from Upland (26), in Pomona from Chino (27), and in Calimesa from Yucaipa (25). The 1 K that you chopped into Tulare I rotated all the way around to a microchop into Agoura Hills from Oak Park.

I didn't realize the Orange Fwy into Brea was any worse than the connection from Anaheim to Corona which also seems pretty empty between. I'll look at your Seal Beach version again, and see what it does to HVAPs. But there's some advantage to multiple implementations, as it shows that there is limited flexibility within the rules.

[muon2]

2. Contiguous county pieces require a connection by public road, and two whole counties in a CD shall not be connected if their only connection is through a split piece of a county.

Not a bad rule... but doesn't your proposed CD-12 violate it? 

You are right. But as I mentioned many on the thread preferred a community of interest that linked the whole coast, so this commission might well accept that violation. Also, with that grouping of counties Napa will always link to other counties through a split Sonoma, or there would be a split of both Napa and Sonoma for no reason other than to preserve that rule, and for me the first rule has priority over the second. Another alternative I looked at was some other grouping, such as my initial wine country plan, but that created districts on either the east or west side of the state that were roundly rejected.

I understood the sense of the posters was to have rules that had a certain amount of flex so that there was a way out of a bad map. The way they are constructed, there are times where they will conflict with each other and the mapper can choose how to resolve the conflict.

You are preserving exactly what rule?  As to this business of the Commission voting for something that is not legal, do you mean simply per the statute having the power to depart from the otherwise applicable rule, maybe by a supra-majority?

Another issue is compactness. To get compactness might require an override of something else. We should consider one of your definitions of that perhaps. This compactness issue mostly obtains in the CA-01/CA-02 territory, or around the Sierra's potentially. But that may be a mechanism by which Sonoma acting as a bridge could be adopted as the price for compactness (the Commission used it as a bridge too of course, I suspect for that reason actually).

The rule I was preserving was to minimize chops. Consider that I could have split Napa into two pieces shuffled some population in Sonoma and attached the southern piece of Napa to northern Marin through southern Sonoma. At that point there is no rule violation for a bridge since Napa is not whole, but is was a gratuitous chop of Napa that allowed the bypass. It seems silly to chop Napa just to avoid that rule, so I decided that the bridge rule was of lower priority.

Based on comments, I viewed the rules as binding the commission without an override vote. My observation is that not all see the law the same way. I would say the Commission's map violated section 2 of the VRA in the CV, but clearly they agreed that section 5 allowed them to meet the VRA without 50% HCVAP districts in spite of the finding that the Gingles conditions were met.

I agree compactness should count, and there are two ways. One is to look at the district as a whole. The other is to look at how a chop changes the compactness of a district as in MI.

[Torie]

Is this 4 micro-chops in lieu of one large but still small chop really going to sell? How can it be defended without looking silly?  Maybe a micro-chop only counts where it is in lieu of one non micro chop. I think the idea is to drive to your regional groupings (assuming we have some choices), and require a supra majority to dump them.

A normal majority should make legal determinations, and if they think the VRA demands a rule be violated, with no other way, then that should be enough. You think they thought section 5 trumped section 2, and using a section 5 standard could negate the violation of a section 2 violation, thereby making suspect jurisdictions have an easier standard in some instances?  That makes no sense at all?

[muon2]

Is this 4 micro-chops in lieu of one large but still small chop really going to sell? How can it be defended without looking silly?  Maybe a micro-chop only counts where it is in lieu of one non micro chop. I think the idea is to drive to your regional groupings (assuming we have some choices), and require a supra majority to dump them.

The basis of the microchop is that SCOTUS has permitted population deviations in some narrow instances creating a range of up to 1% for CDs, which can be achieved by keeping individual deviations to 0.5%. For example MA had a range of 0.29% for its CDs in the 2000. The WV case will probably add some clarity, and the SCOTUS order is generally viewed as favoring that state's position on deviations. With microchops, a plan can have exact equality and if they are removed by swapping the population back to district on the other side of the county line, the districts are all still within a 1% range.

Generally CDs require exact equality under the standard of Wesberry. In followup cases the court ruled that states can deviate but must provide specific justification for deviations showing they could not be reduced. This is from Karcher:

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The CA Constitution provides a possibility for deviations:

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I read all of that as saying if law permits the deviations to meet the constitutional goals properly applied, then there can be population deviations. SCOTUS permits deviations for compelling state interests such as constitutional clauses involving whole counties or towns. Therefore deviations that would exist by swapping microchops back into whole counties are permitted, and if they are not for specific districts, restoring the microchop is the simple remedy. AR did just that in 2001 where they had two maps one with whole counties and one with microchops for equality. The whole county map was not challenged.

In this scenario the commission would have to determine if a certain number of microchops outweighed one regular chop. The size and placement of those microchops could also factor into the commission's determination.

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Reading the report, this is the only conclusion I can draw. If there was some other basis for avoiding a section 2 district when it was possible and the preconditions were met, it is not in the report.

[Torie]

What is the SCOTUS microchop case, and if the law is clear, why then just not have the population deviations? That makes a lot more sense than a host of microchops, on the theory that they can be done away with, but won't be. In any event, when you say the commission can decide on one bigger chop or four microchops, is that by a normal vote, or a supra majority vote in your thinking? If by normal majority, than the microchop regime gives the commissions more options. I assume you think it needs a supra majority if the issue is one normal chop versus one microchop, is that correct? It is only when you have extra microchops, that this issue arises.

[muon2]

What is the SCOTUS microchop case, and if the law is clear, why then just not have the population deviations? That makes a lot more sense than a host of microchops, on the theory that they can be done away with, but won't be. In any event, when you say the commission can decide on one bigger chop or four microchops, is that by a normal vote, or a supra majority vote in your thinking? If by normal majority, than the microchop regime gives the commissions more options. I assume you think it needs a supra majority if the issue is one normal chop versus one microchop, is that correct? It is only when you have extra microchops, that this issue arises.

There is some lack of clarity in the law, which is why almost all states go to exact equality. The court said that if you don't want exact equality you had better show why in detail. New Jersey lost in the Karcher case, because they couldn't show that they had the best way to achieve state goals with minimum deviation. Yet IA never has exact equality because they have rigidly adhered to their standards. Historically AR and MA also had significant deviations as they held to standards involving counties and towns respectively. However, they both bailed in this cycle and went to exact equality, not because of the courts, but because the legislature didn't like the map those standards would create.

Here's a useful table showing the states and their deviations in the last cycle. One can see a number with deviations beyond exact population. Of note is the 0.6% range (0.3% max deviation) in ID. That came from a commission and includes a county and city split.

As I noted this is the crux of the WV case. Most observers felt that the SCOTUS order overturning the lower court's decision to force a remap for smaller deviations read favorably for the state. I hope this case clarifies the standard required of a state to deviate from equality.

[Torie]

I have promised myself to have some rules up in a couple of days for discussion, elaborating on yours, which are a most useful start. Some of this hazarai needed to be worked through. There are just so many sand traps.