City of Hudson's weighed voting system under scrutiny
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  City of Hudson's weighed voting system under scrutiny
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Author Topic: City of Hudson's weighed voting system under scrutiny  (Read 63425 times)
Torie
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« Reply #350 on: March 29, 2016, 10:38:06 AM »

The map which shall make history, and become legendary, if I have anything to do with it. Smiley

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jimrtex
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« Reply #351 on: March 29, 2016, 11:39:31 AM »

The map which shall make history, and become legendary, if I have anything to do with it. Smiley


Are there statutes setting out the process?
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Torie
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« Reply #352 on: March 29, 2016, 12:13:56 PM »

Yes, there are, and they are very hard to follow, with no precedents. But I followed it all to the letter, and found a template of a petition, without common council involvement, that gave me some comfort. The City Clerk prepares the ballot language and the abstract, but I wrote it out, and will be meeting with the City Attorney to get him to sign off on it, and so advise the clerk, so what I wrote will be the text they use.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #353 on: March 29, 2016, 11:44:14 PM »

Yes, there are, and they are very hard to follow, with no precedents. But I followed it all to the letter, and found a template of a petition, without common council involvement, that gave me some comfort. The City Clerk prepares the ballot language and the abstract, but I wrote it out, and will be meeting with the City Attorney to get him to sign off on it, and so advise the clerk, so what I wrote will be the text they use.

What is confusing me is why would these be necessary?

A06321
A04929
S04441

Current bills before NY legislature.
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Torie
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« Reply #354 on: March 30, 2016, 06:46:44 AM »

Yes, there are, and they are very hard to follow, with no precedents. But I followed it all to the letter, and found a template of a petition, without common council involvement, that gave me some comfort. The City Clerk prepares the ballot language and the abstract, but I wrote it out, and will be meeting with the City Attorney to get him to sign off on it, and so advise the clerk, so what I wrote will be the text they use.

What is confusing me is why would these be necessary?

A06321
A04929
S04441

Current bills before NY legislature.


What are these bills about?
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jimrtex
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« Reply #355 on: March 30, 2016, 03:00:01 PM »

Yes, there are, and they are very hard to follow, with no precedents. But I followed it all to the letter, and found a template of a petition, without common council involvement, that gave me some comfort. The City Clerk prepares the ballot language and the abstract, but I wrote it out, and will be meeting with the City Attorney to get him to sign off on it, and so advise the clerk, so what I wrote will be the text they use.

What is confusing me is why would these be necessary?

A06321
A04929
S04441

Current bills before NY legislature.


What are these bills about?

A06321 Summary: Provides electors with the power of initiative and referendum.

S04441 is senate companion to A06321

A04929 Summary: provides for initiative and referendum and recall; empowers the electors with the ability to propose statutes and amendments to the constitution, approve or reject statutes or parts of statutes, and remove elective officers.

All three have provisions for municipal initiative.

Are the statutes that you are using codified?

ps congratulations on your appointment to office.
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Simfan34
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« Reply #356 on: April 01, 2016, 01:26:09 PM »

Torie, I don't want to sound stupid, but what are chops and erosity?

I'll answer. Chops refer to the number of times that political units are divided between districts. If a political unit, for instance a county, is split between two districts then it has one chop. If it's divided between three districts then it has two chops.

Erosity is a measure of how irregularly shaped a district is. It comes from the word erose: having the margin irregularly notched <an erose leaf> (merriam-webster.com). Rather than just measure the perimeter of a district, erosity recognizes that small irregularities in an urban area are just as important as large irregularities in rural areas. Following a recognized political border that is itself irregular doesn't count towards erosity any more than if the border were a straight line.

A good neutral redistricting plan generally reduces the number of chops and reduces erosity, though at some point has to make a trade off between the two. The measures have been developed for our redistricting discussions on this board over the last 3-4 years.

I understand. But what is the difference between erosity and compactness? A distinction between perimeter and area?
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muon2
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« Reply #357 on: April 01, 2016, 02:06:41 PM »
« Edited: April 01, 2016, 02:08:16 PM by muon2 »

Torie, I don't want to sound stupid, but what are chops and erosity?

I'll answer. Chops refer to the number of times that political units are divided between districts. If a political unit, for instance a county, is split between two districts then it has one chop. If it's divided between three districts then it has two chops.

Erosity is a measure of how irregularly shaped a district is. It comes from the word erose: having the margin irregularly notched <an erose leaf> (merriam-webster.com). Rather than just measure the perimeter of a district, erosity recognizes that small irregularities in an urban area are just as important as large irregularities in rural areas. Following a recognized political border that is itself irregular doesn't count towards erosity any more than if the border were a straight line.

A good neutral redistricting plan generally reduces the number of chops and reduces erosity, though at some point has to make a trade off between the two. The measures have been developed for our redistricting discussions on this board over the last 3-4 years.

I understand. But what is the difference between erosity and compactness? A distinction between perimeter and area?

There are about 50 different measures of compactness. They could involve just the perimeter or the dimensions of the shape, but most take into account some ratio of the area and/or perimeter compared to an ideal shape such as a circle. My problem with compactness measures in redistricting is that they reward ideal shapes over good shapes just as much as good shapes over poor shapes. I think it is much more important to penalize poor shapes than to reward ideal shapes. However, I don't want to penalize poor shapes that are solely due to the shape of a real political unit like a county. I use a definition based one converting the map to a graph. You can get more sense of it on the thread where I'm ironing out some of those details.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #358 on: April 03, 2016, 04:06:27 AM »

This is alternative number 4. It moves the crossing of Warren to east of 5th Street, an area that is currently in Ward 5. Ward 3 already crosses Warren east of 7th (and has done so for the last 160 years).



Where does Supervisor Cross live? Does your map move him into Ward 4?

In my map:

Ward 1: Sarah Sterling and Don Moore
Ward 2: Revd. Ed Cross, Sr.
Ward 3: Open
Ward 4: William Hughes, Jr.
Ward 5: Richard Scalera
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Torie
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« Reply #359 on: April 03, 2016, 07:11:31 AM »

That's your best map so far, but not as good as mine. Smiley
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jimrtex
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« Reply #360 on: April 03, 2016, 09:13:38 PM »

That's your best map so far, but not as good as mine. Smiley
15% of the voters is quite a large number in most cities.

If the Common Council were placing the matter on the ballot, they may provide alternatives, which can go way beyond different boundaries. For instance, they could propose a seven-member common council, that perhaps might be elected from single-member districts, or perhaps would continue to have a council president and one at-large member along with five aldermen elected from districts.

Hudson is quite unusual among New York cities having two aldermen per ward.

I don't understand why you insist on drawing ward boundaries through someone's home.
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Torie
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« Reply #361 on: April 04, 2016, 03:29:23 PM »

That's your best map so far, but not as good as mine. Smiley
15% of the voters is quite a large number in most cities.

If the Common Council were placing the matter on the ballot, they may provide alternatives, which can go way beyond different boundaries. For instance, they could propose a seven-member common council, that perhaps might be elected from single-member districts, or perhaps would continue to have a council president and one at-large member along with five aldermen elected from districts.

Hudson is quite unusual among New York cities having two aldermen per ward.

I don't understand why you insist on drawing ward boundaries through someone's home.

Because it doesn't matter. The BOE can put the home in either ward. I find continuing to split that census block makes the map work better, and I don't want wards that must expand to lose existing territory. I want to hew to a least change regime.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #362 on: April 04, 2016, 08:13:54 PM »

This is the previous attempt to switch to equal population districts.

March 18, 2003 Common Council minutes. Resolution for equal population wards is at Page 15 of PDF

Gossips of Rivertown has suggested that it was a vote to switch to 6 districts, and has produced a map drawn by the city clerk, which was indeed based on 2000 census numbers, but I have not found any official record. There is a glitch in the common council minutes beginning in about August of 2003, with a couple of months missing, so it is conceivable that there was a replacement in the few months before the November election. The results of the referendum are on the Columbia County BOE web site.

This is my interpretation of the text.



Yeah, that is the map. The City clerk went on a hunt for me, since it was missing from the minutes, and found it in another file. Of course, given the population errors for the split census tracts, the map if a fail because the population numbers are wrong, but that will all be fixed soon. See below. Smiley
Why do you suggest that there are errors for the split census blocks?
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jimrtex
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« Reply #363 on: April 04, 2016, 08:16:02 PM »

That's your best map so far, but not as good as mine. Smiley
15% of the voters is quite a large number in most cities.

If the Common Council were placing the matter on the ballot, they may provide alternatives, which can go way beyond different boundaries. For instance, they could propose a seven-member common council, that perhaps might be elected from single-member districts, or perhaps would continue to have a council president and one at-large member along with five aldermen elected from districts.

Hudson is quite unusual among New York cities having two aldermen per ward.

I don't understand why you insist on drawing ward boundaries through someone's home.

Because it doesn't matter. The BOE can put the home in either ward. I find continuing to split that census block makes the map work better, and I don't want wards that must expand to lose existing territory. I want to hew to a least change regime.

Splitting blocks is horrid public policy, and arguably in violation of state law.

In Hudson this has led to miscalculating the voting weights, and placement of voters in the wrong wards - a practice that continues to this very instant.

The only reason you are able to propose a change is that the old regime was rotten. I can accept that you don't want to upset the election of an overly large government, and the unconstitutional voting weights for the Columbia Board of Supervisors, but to not recognize changes that have happened over the past 130 years?

Splitting blocks does not work, so it is impossible that it makes your map work better. The requirement for population equality is as equal as practicable. It is impractical to split block when you know that it requires estimates that you know are wrong.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #364 on: April 05, 2016, 12:54:43 AM »
« Edited: April 05, 2016, 11:23:19 AM by jimrtex »

Don't tell me you haven't ever dreamt of arguing a case before the Supreme Court of the United States.



And only 1.9% deviation range.

See Municipal Home Rule Law § 10.1.a(13)(c) and 'WMCA v Lomenzo'.
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Torie
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« Reply #365 on: April 05, 2016, 10:10:40 AM »

"Splitting blocks is horrid public policy, and arguably in violation of state law."

Citation please.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #366 on: April 05, 2016, 11:31:47 AM »

"Splitting blocks is horrid public policy, and arguably in violation of state law."

Citation please.


ELN § 4-100
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Torie
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« Reply #367 on: April 05, 2016, 12:14:14 PM »

"Splitting blocks is horrid public policy, and arguably in violation of state law."

Citation please.


ELN § 4-100

That section deals with election districts (precincts), and not ward lines. It further says a block may be divided as long as the addresses are appropriately identified that belong in each election district. So its 1) inapposite, and 2) does not prohibit dividing blocks (meaning street blocks), much less census blocks.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #368 on: April 05, 2016, 04:58:34 PM »

"Splitting blocks is horrid public policy, and arguably in violation of state law."

Citation please.


ELN § 4-100

That section deals with election districts (precincts), and not ward lines. It further says a block may be divided as long as the addresses are appropriately identified that belong in each election district. So its 1) inapposite, and 2) does not prohibit dividing blocks (meaning street blocks), much less census blocks.
It is clearly a strongly discouraged practice.

The Columbia County Board of Elections is demonstrably incompetent in administering elections that involve non-visible boundaries and split blocks.
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Torie
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« Reply #369 on: April 05, 2016, 05:07:00 PM »

"Splitting blocks is horrid public policy, and arguably in violation of state law."

Citation please.


ELN § 4-100

That section deals with election districts (precincts), and not ward lines. It further says a block may be divided as long as the addresses are appropriately identified that belong in each election district. So its 1) inapposite, and 2) does not prohibit dividing blocks (meaning street blocks), much less census blocks.
It is clearly a strongly discouraged practice.

The Columbia County Board of Elections is demonstrably incompetent in administering elections that involve non-visible boundaries and split blocks.

Not me me around (and you of course, who keep me on the straight and narrow, for which I am profoundly grateful Smiley ). I picked up on your idea, of getting the census bureau to make counts in split census blocks, or potential split census blocks, and I will prepare a list for the City Clerk (we're buds), and make sure it happens in the next census. Everybody in City Hall knows me now. I'm a regular. Tongue

It was fun after I was done with the City Attorney going through my little (well actually rather big) pile of documents, knocking on the door of the Mayor's Office, to pick up my hat that I left there, and see 4 women in the room, the Treasurer, the Mayor, her executive assistant, and the City Clerk, who collectively basically run the executive branch of the government, and have 2 of the the 3 votes on the Board of Estimate, which basically controls spending.
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Torie
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« Reply #370 on: April 08, 2016, 01:06:38 PM »

The VAP map is nice (but I am in the wrong ward, which discommodes me). But VAP is irrelevant honey. Smiley
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jimrtex
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« Reply #371 on: April 08, 2016, 01:28:58 PM »

The VAP map is nice (but I am in the wrong ward, which discommodes me). But VAP is irrelevant honey. Smiley

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"Registered voters" might not be constitutional, so we could use CVAP. But since CVAP is not readily available, we can use VAP. All perfectly legal.

Since the VAP is from the US Census (as adjusted by LATFOR) it is quite rational. Splitting census blocks is irrational, as is using Rope Alley.

You said that the north side of State between 2nd and 3rd had to be in Ward 2. This forces the south side of Robinson in the same ward. No luck on the toriemander.
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Torie
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« Reply #372 on: April 10, 2016, 06:29:20 PM »

"This forces the south side of Robinson in the same ward. No luck on the toriemander."

Forces? In law? Where? Other than in the VAP fantasy, legal under state law, but not mandated, and thus DOA, absent Constitutional issues.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #373 on: April 10, 2016, 07:55:35 PM »

"This forces the south side of Robinson in the same ward. No luck on the toriemander."

Forces? In law? Where? Other than in the VAP fantasy, legal under state law, but not mandated, and thus DOA, absent Constitutional issues.
Use of the alleyways is arbitrary and capricious.
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Torie
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« Reply #374 on: April 10, 2016, 08:00:52 PM »

"This forces the south side of Robinson in the same ward. No luck on the toriemander."

Forces? In law? Where? Other than in the VAP fantasy, legal under state law, but not mandated, and thus DOA, absent Constitutional issues.
Use of the alleyways is arbitrary and capricious.

I think not keeping streets together sucks. The folks you know, run into, deal with, hit up (yeah!), live on your street, not across the alley, as to which nobody uses for vehicular parking, but rather for storage in the garage wrecks, or junk just strewn around in the back yard. It's sort of a visual feast, actually. Pity when it all goes away, which will not be that long.
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