Iowa-style Redistricting: Measuring Erosity

[Torie]

That seems to work well with reasonably shaped counties, but maybe not so well with erose counties. An example would be Inyo County, and then appending counties to the north and south, which creates a CD which looks erose, and is erose, but might not be erose by your standard. It also does not measure erosity within counties, which obtains for LA County, Cook County, and NYC in particular (do the boroughs in NYC count as counties?).

[Torie]

That seems to work well with reasonably shaped counties, but maybe not so well with erose counties. An example would be Inyo County, and then appending counties to the north and south, which creates a CD which looks erose, and is erose, but might not be erose by your standard. It also does not measure erosity within counties, which obtains for LA County, Cook County, and NYC in particular (do the boroughs in NYC count as counties?).

If the county is erose, it will still be fine. I'll see if I can get some examples from southern states to show, since they tend to have quite a few strange shaped counties. CA shouldn't be worse than any southern state in that regard. What this can't measure is when a state highway connection shouldn't be used such as in a mountain pass. I haven't worked out a way to discriminate those.

For in-county splits, I am leaning toward the MI rule for township splits. It would provide that the split should not increase the bounding circle size around the district, and if it must it should do so minimally. For microchops into a county I'm content that the microchop be connected by any local road to the other county and not unduly create more municipal splits.

Well one can create an erose CD within a County, or part of a county, without city or township splits, so some rule may be needed for that, if there is a viable one. Do you remember my action in Oakland County, MI, where CD's wrapped around three sides of Pontiac to pick up the Pubs and keep out the Dems except via a chop of one of the Dem townships?  You also still need a rule for splits within cities, in particular Chicago, LA, and NYC. We are osculating here between erosity and splits, which are not the same thing. I still wonder how this rule would work with the Owens Valley and Inyo county, with an erose county and topographic issues.

[Torie]

Anyway, for the boring county states, I think your rule is most excellent Muon2. Well done. I of course want it all, and want it now, so thus my comments. 

[Torie]

Muon2, how do you get to a count of 9 for your WV-2 CD in your "perfect" map?  I count 6 internal border counties myself. I read this entire thread and your explanation of your method, and my mind came up short. I just could not parse how you got your numbers. I feel like an idiot!

It does seem like the 1% variance rule is alive and well assuming that it is justified to avoid splitting stuff. You must be very happy. 

[Torie]

Oh, it is driven by where the roads are eh?  How creative. Is that your personal little invention? And if you don't like the result, why just build or remove an inter-county road!  Or upgrade/degrade it from a state highway/county road or something.

I might add that this is not so much an erosity test, as a communities of interest test, no?

[Torie]

I find nothing in the content or your post with which I disagree or question. Well done! Yes, all that "hard science/the maths thing" jargon about links theory that I had already penned in the prose poetry of a lawyer more suitable to the noisomeness of the public square, was noted but ignored with mens rea.  

[Torie]

What is the definition of a "micro-chop" again?

[Torie]

What does "proxies" mean in this context?

 I might note i passing that Interstate 5 occasionally closes due to snow over the Gorman Pass between LA and the Central Valley. I once had to drive from Bakersfield back to LA via driving to Santa Maria, and then down 101 due to a closure - three times the distance and all in the pouring rain, but no snow that way.  So temporary closures to me indeed should not count.