City of Hudson's weighed voting system under scrutiny

[muon2]

I'm in MA this weekend so i don't have access to my usual software tools. What are the 2010 populations of the wards, subtracting the prison pop?

[muon2]

From what i can tell wards 1, 2 and 4 are lumped together by the census because the census cannot allocate blocks thatare shared between two wards. As jimrtex noted the boundary between wards 1 and 2 involves the westward extension of Warren to the river. That splits a census block with 362 people. Similarly the boundary between wards 2 and 4 involves the nothward extension of 3rd which splits a block of 289 people. i can get a block-based ward count by allocating those blocks entirely to one ward or another.

The prison population in ward 3 is 363 according to the census. I'm surprised that there would be so much upward adjustment in other wards, since i would have expected virtually none of the prisoners to have Hudson residences.

[muon2]

I'm looking at the mapquest satellite image to tery to discern how one might guess at the split census blocks.

One block is west of front between ferry and dock. it appears to be dominted by apartments with 5 large buildings south of warren and 8 such buildings north of warren. ideally this should all be in one ward.

the other block is the large area generally bounded by 2nd st, strawberry aly, robinson st, 3rd st, state st, carroll st, and harry howard ave. the great majority of the houses would seem to be in ward 4, with a few homes on mill st being the exception.

if i were to place all the apts west of front in ward 1 and all the other split block in ward 4, then subtract the 363 prisoners from ward 3 i get the following populations:

ward 1: 824
ward 2: 1183
ward 3: 1498 - 363 = 1135
ward 4: 736
ward 5: 2472
total: 6713 - 363 = 6350.

if the total is divided into 5 even wards there would be a quota of 1270 and a permissible range of 1207 to 1333 per ward. none of the current wards complies with the equal population requirement even with the 5% variance for local districts. quite a bit of block shifting is needed to get compliant wards.

the hofstra suggestion of 6 wards would create a quota of 1058 and a permissible range of 1005 to 1111 per ward. none of the current wards meets this range either, so it doesnt provide a very useful alternative. it wwould require less block swapping to make compliant wards assuming the split of the 5th that was part of the suggestion.

[muon2]

This is based on data from New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment, which was charged with adjusting the census population for prisoners.   It includes not only data (see 2010 Data) but an explanation of methodology.



Block 1002, Tract 13 (, Columbia County, NY) had 3 additional persons allocated to it.  I divided them 2:1 between Wards 1 and 2, similar to the division of the original census population.  The two blocks split by ward boundaries are shown with a block population in parentheses, and then the portions allocated to the two wards that comprise parts of the block.

Some curiousities.

There were 7 prisoners allocated to the block containing the public housing tower (population 421 in Ward 2).  The block immediately to the north with one person, is totally an allocated prisoner - that is the census population is 0.

The census population for the 4 blocks containing the prison population (southern edge of Ward 3) does not completely disappear:

Block 2007: Census 77, Adjusted 20.  
Block 2009: Census 51, Adjusted 13.

The above two are totally surrounded by internal roads.

Block 2008: Census 126, Adjusted 33.

This block extends outside the prison, but there are only a couple of houses.

Block 2009: Census 232, Adjusted 60.

This block contains houses along the northern edge.

It is pretty inexplicable.  Did some prisoners give the Hudson prison as their previous address?  Are they halfway type facilities, with live-in counselors?   Non-felons?

The redistribution of prisoners to their residences comes from all prisons, not just Hudson, so there could be people placed in Hudson from other places. I believe the law also provides that if prisoners refuse to give an address or if they are from out of state they are counted at the prison. However, there are certainly a number of individuals at the prison who are not "involuntarily in group housing". Torie's map is close, but I'll trust LATFOR on jimrtex's map. Compared to the 2010 Census redistricting data set I have the following changes:

Columbia Census Tract 12
Block 2001: 0 -> 1 (+1)
Block 2002: 414 -> 421 (+7)
Block 2006: 109 -> 111 (+2)
Block 3000: 53 -> 55 (+2)
Block 3001: 91 -> 93 (+2)
Block 3003: 49 -> 50 (+1)
Block 3005: 66 -> 70 (+4)
Block 3006: 53 -> 55 (+2)
Block 3010: 70 -> 74 (+4)
Block 4003: 27 -> 28 (+1)
Block 4004: 57 -> 59 (+2)
Block 4005: 62 -> 63 (+1)
Block 4010: 70 -> 71 (+1)
Block 4012: 116 -> 118 (+2)
Block 4015: 17-> 18 (+1)
Block 4017: 61 -> 64 (+3)
Block 4019: 40 -> 41 (+1)

Columbia Census Tract 13
Block 1002: 362 -> 365 (+3)
Block 1008: 33 -> 34 (+1)
Block 2003: 232 -> 60 (-172)
Block 2007: 77 -> 20 (-57)
Block 2008: 126 -> 33 (-93)
Block 2009: 51 -> 13 (-38)
Block 2013: 140 -> 141 (+1)
Block 4001: 96 -> 98 (+2)
Block 4011: 82 -> 83 (+1)
Block 4012: 42 -> 43 (+1)
Block 5007: 30 -> 31 (+1)
Block 5013: 75 -> 76 (+1)
Block 5014: 118 -> 119 (+1)
Block 5018: 55 -> 56 (+1)

There is a net outflow of 360 prisoners and a net inflow of 50, for an adjusted population of 6713 - 360 + 50 = 6403, so jimrtex and I match. With six districts the quota is 1067 and the range is from 1014 to 1120. To look at six wards I've split ward 5 between the part in Tract 12 and the part in Tract 13 (which I will call Ward 6). This split follows the line of North 6th and Glenwood.

Ward 1: 755
Ward 2: 1309
Ward 3: 1142
Ward 4: 712
Ward 5: 1564
Ward 6: 921

None of the six wards is within the required range, but there are adjacent pairs that are nearly within range (2028 to 2240).

Wards 1+2: 2064
Wards 4+5: 2276
Wards 3+6: 2063

That implies a shift from Ward 2 to Ward 1, from Ward 3 to Ward 6 and from Ward 5 to Ward 4 and a bit to Ward 6 would make a balanced 6-ward map.

[muon2]

This is my proposed 5-ward equal population map.



The objectives were to retain Warren as boundary line, and attempt to retain the core of the existing wards.

Hudson has a prison-adjusted population of 6403, resulting in an ideal population of 1281 (1280.6).

Ward 2 has a population of 1309, 2.1% over the ideal.  It is not changed.

Ward 1 has a population of 755 and is underpopulated by 41%.  With Ward 2 fixed, there is no place to go but east.  Ward 3 used to be in two precincts, with 3-1 extending from 3rd to 6th, with 3-2 the area further east.   The population of Ward 3 is strung out for quite a distance and doesn't really form a single core.  The gridded portion (formerly 3-1) is added to Ward 1, giving a total population of 1300, 1.5% over the ideal.  Ward 1 includes the corrections institution, but not the prisoners.

The remnant of Ward 3 has 597 or 46.6%.  We extend Ward 3 to the north.   I split the large block with 325 persons.  The areas along 6th Street and Glenwood Boulevard is quite distinct from the area to the south which appears to be a mix (hodge podge) of residential, commercial, and (former?) industrial.  I have imputed a population of 702 persons in the area moved from Ward 5 to Ward 3, for a total of 1299, 1,4% over the ideal.

The core of Wards 4 and Wards 5 are in the gridded portion of the city along Warren.  Ward 4 is almost entirely in the core area.  With a population of 712 it is 44.4% underpolpulated.

The core area of Ward 5 is only about 40% of the total population of the Ward, but I would expect that those who live in the area are more likely to think of it as their neighborhood vs. simply a political district.  To keep the cores of Wards 4 and 5 intact, an area to the east of Harry Howard is added to Ward 5.  With 566 persons it brings the total of Ward 4 to 1278, 0.2% below the ideal.  Two blocks are split along Underhill Pond and an associated stream.  Most of the population in the block with 200 persons is in an apartment complex along Harry Howard.  Part of the complex with 5 buildings is within a driveway loop which forms a census block with 59 persons.  The remaining 8 building are within the much larger census block.  The remnant of the block is in a few residences along Clinton.  A downside of this division is that the area along Harry Howard and the core area are somewhat disparate.

This leaves the remainder of Ward 5, including the core area in the gridded portion of the city, along with an extension along 6th Street and Glenwood.  Persons in this area would have a mental picture of "going to town" as traveling down 6th into the core area of Ward 5.  The much trimmed down Ward 5 has 1217 persons, 4.97% of the ideal.

In general, the visualization of the city is of the gridded area of the old city along both sides of Warren, and 3 spines to the east (Columbia and Green); east-northnortheast (6th and Glenwood); and northeast (Harry Howard).

An alternative would be combine the gridded core areas of Wards 4 and 5, and have the other ward being a suburban area to the east and northeast.  This does a poorer job of preserving the cores of existing wards (4 and 5) but may make the two resulting wards more demographically and politically homogeneous.

Your split block between Wards 3 and 5 follows the natural boundary of the railroad tracks. I'm surprised the tracks weren't used as census block boundaries as they so often are in other areas of the US. That would have helped separate the prison from the houses as well.

The split of Wards 4 and 5 seems too artificial since there is not a well-identified geographic feature to describe it. You could leave 4 with its current boundaries and add the blocks between Warren and Prospect to Ward 4.

[muon2]

Here's a 6 ward split with minimal changes from the current wards. I started with the pairs I identified and made minimal population shifts consistent with keeping the districts within range and avoiding excess erosity. The two chopped blocks were kept, but no additional one were added. All shifts avoided splits of blocks defined by regular blocks and alleys were not used.



Ward 1 (pink) 1016
Ward 2 (blue) 1048
Ward 3 (lilac) 1076
Ward 4 (green) 1082
Ward 5 (cream) 1097
Ward 6 (gold) 1084

[muon2]

The boundary splitting the apartments within 1011 and outside 1011 is reminiscent of what almost happened in Texas.  The census bureau split some apartment complexes into blocks using driveways/parking lots.  They then managed to place some of the blocks in different block groups.  During redistricting a little more population was needed/wanted, and the block group was clicked on, which put parts of the apartment complex in different House districts.  This was caught and amended but it was actually placed in the bill definition.

The issue with split apts is not uncommon in my experience. In the 2000 Census the splitting of the apartments by the roads and parking lots led to the placement of 200 people outside the municipal line in my town. I caught the error and got a correction by the Census. Since some state funds are tied to population, this was not an insignificant error.

Even with the correction there were some buildings that backed up to a large residential subdivision. In creating wards for the city there was no good way to separate the subdivision from those buildings.

[muon2]

Here's a 6 ward split with minimal changes from the current wards. I started with the pairs I identified and made minimal population shifts consistent with keeping the districts within range and avoiding excess erosity. The two chopped blocks were kept, but no additional one were added. All shifts avoided splits of blocks defined by regular blocks and alleys were not used.

I used the LATFOR DOJ groupings to get the following VAPs:

Ward 1 (pink) 1017; WVAP 64.2%   BVAP 24.0%   HVAP 4.3%   AVAP 6.2%
Ward 2 (blue) 1047; WVAP 35.7%   BVAP 43.1%   HVAP 7.6%   AVAP 12.8%
Ward 3 (lilac) 1076; WVAP 73.0%   BVAP 14.7%   HVAP 6.5%   AVAP 4.1%
Ward 4 (green) 1082; WVAP 59.4%   BVAP 24.0%   HVAP 8.1%   AVAP 6.3%
Ward 5 (cream) 1097; WVAP 70.7%   BVAP 17.9%   HVAP 4.9%   AVAP 4.0%
Ward 6 (gold) 1084; WVAP 73.7%   BVAP 12.6%   HVAP 5.9%   AVAP 6.0%

Ward 2 is a solid majority-minority district, though not quite majority BVAP. If all of block 13-1002 along the river went into ward 2 and some blocks are swapped into ward 1 to compensate I get a little higher but it takes more serious gerrymandering to break 50% BVAP.

[muon2]

Having personally eyeballed the structures in that split river block,  to me from the exterior at least, they look identical in design, and I have great difficulty believing that the south of Warren Street portion thereof has the lion's share of either the population or the bedrooms. But maybe exterior appearances are deceiving.

Quite inexplicable, particularly if you take into account the amount of parking.  I kept getting Ward 1 and Ward 2 reversed because it was obvious that the larger share of the population is in the northern part.  The buildings were there by 1994, the roofs have been changed and solar panels added.  It is interesting how much new construction is on the west end of town.  There are the apartments (or townhouses) just west of the public housing tower, with the parking lot inside, and the strip center at Warren and Front.

What is the large building on the north end of the block west of Front?   Until about 10 years ago there were three buildings.  Possibly an old school where they tore down the old building and kept a newer addition.

So does this mean that the split populations on your map for block 13-1002 should be reversed?

[muon2]

I suppose that there could be wards to elect supervisors, and wards to elect alderman if need be. The excuse for the redrawing now of course is that the current system is illegal most probably because there is a 16% variance from population in voting power for the 5th ward from its population share, well over the 10% max that New York courts have embraced. I guess it is possible a court would insist that just the voting weights be adjusted given the proscription against mid decade redistricting in New York that Jimtex thinks may obtain, and overturn a new single member system for the wards if the city choose that fix in a referendum (it takes a referendum to make any change is what has been asserted out there), but I would tend to doubt that would happen is my guess.

When the Hofstra group recommended 6 wards for the Common Council, did they take into consideration the impact of the Board of Supervisors? It sounds like they did not. If the BoS uses weighted votes anyway and Kinderhook is larger than Hudson, then it is hard to see any rationale to have more than one supervisor from Hudson. If a referendum is needed to change the number of aldermen on the the council, is a county-wide one also required to change the representation on the BoS?

[muon2]

In IL the political parties are organized based on weighted votes. Each elected committeeman (by precinct, or township in Cook, or ward in Chicago) has a weighted vote equal to the number of partisan ballots cast at the last primary. Those weighted votes are cast to elect the party chair of each county. The GOP also uses the weighted votes to elect the members of the state central committee, one per congressional district. On the state central committee the board members have weighted votes proportional to the number of partisan ballots cast in the primary.

An interesting issue with the system occurred last year when the GOP had to replace its state chair. The CDs had been educed from 19 to 18 for the 2012 primary, but the state central committee serves for 4 years and wasn't up until 2014. That caused the weighted vote to be tabulated for districts that no longer existed. As you can imagine there's a pretty large spread in GOP strength in the different districts. This was the weighting for the 19 CDs last year:

District 15 – 9.66
District 13 – 8.50
District 14 – 8.46
District 18 – 8.34
District 16 – 7.68
District 19 – 7.64
District 6 – 7.48
District 11 – 7.09
District 10 - 7.00
District 8 – 6.49
District 17 – 5.00
District 12 - 4.22
District 3 - 2.98
District 9 – 2.89
District 5 - 2.14
District 1 – 1.4
District 7 – 1.36
District 2 - 1.08
District 4  – .60

[muon2]

I'm actually impressed that the IL GOP State Committee is as balanced as it is with the deviations between actual weight and Banzhaf power within 5%. My initial guess is that it is due to a suitably large group and a cluster of both high weight and low weight districts to share power. That leads me to speculate that perhaps the weighted vote becomes more efficient as the number of members rises.

[muon2]

I think you hit it on the head. A weighted vote that is based on a clear proportion of a quantity like population would seem fair to the public. The Banzhaf weight would lose most of the public, and deviations of a few percent in the power index wouldn't be of great concern. The fact that some representatives have slightly larger or smaller indices would be seen as a feature of the weighted voting system.

OTOH if a weighted vote was based on equal power indices and that caused votes to be noticeably different than the direct proportional share, the public would not be happy. There would be ridicule from some corners, and charges of a "fixed" system from others. If it was in place for a long time the charges might abate, but the media would perennially ask why the weighted vote didn't match the proportions.

[muon2]

This seems to bear out my conjecture that weighted voting improves with the number of units, and is weakened when there are large disparities between unit populations. The county results would argue in favor of a reduction of wards in Hudson.

This is one of the complexities of the Hudson situation. From a city council view having more wards but with even population and single representation would seem to be better. From the county view having fewer wards within their weighted system would be better. Ideally a single Hudson rep to the county makes sense since the population is smaller than Kinderhook with one rep. As an intermediate position, I wonder if NY law would permit 6 wards in the city but grouped in pairs resulting in three seats for Hudson in the county weighted vote.

[muon2]

Earlier you cited state law that provides for sufficiently large towns to be split for county representation. But now it looks like a split town would create an issue of governance of the town board. I presume that state law also provides a resolution of this issue.

[muon2]

Are those the only two election board members? What official role do they have in NY?

[muon2]

It sounds like the map errors occurred at different times, and the boards at those separate times reacted differently to the errors.

Does the board have a staff, or do they actually maintain the voter lists themselves?

[muon2]

Is the Torie plan still slated to go before the voters later this year? If it is and it is approved, does that force the BOE to make the requisite changes to the election districts?

[muon2]

One issue in all of this is the assignment of parcels and residences that are split by political lines. It happens frequently in IL. Consider this gem from the Chicago suburbs.



The orange line is a current boundary between state representative districts. The red line is a boundary between state representative, senate and congressional districts. The subdivision sits entirely within a single village, but spans a township line which was used as the red boundary line. Since election precincts are assigned by township, it might make some sense that a line follow the township line and not local streets.

Initially townships were divided into one square mile sections, and then the sections into quarter-sections a half mile on each side. Those section lines are used in survey references and in some parcel descriptions. When subdivisions are built the parcels are typically designated based on the recorded plat of subdivision and not based on the section, though surveys will reference back to the (quarter-)section. The orange line follows one of those old section lines which isn't a precinct line.

In most cases when a subdivision comes in, the census blocks are adjusted for the next decennial census to follow streets, rather than section lines. The exception is when a political line already follows that section line and then census blocks are defined splitting subdivision blocks along the section line. That tends to perpetuate into future censuses, and then those lines can get used for future political boundaries as in the map above.

The difficulty is in the assignment of residences to political districts given the splits that occur. In IL the residence is associated with its address which geographically is generally the main door of the building. Thus someone may actually sleep in one district, but officially reside in another based on the location of the address door. Needless to say it is easy for both the Census and local election officials to miscode these locations and I've caught quite a few such errors over the years. To complicate assignment, school district residence is based on the location of the master bedroom in a residence.

The Hudson ward issue may require knowledge of how individuals are assigned residence, and I don't know if NY uses the same type of assignment as IL.

[muon2]

It's interesting that voter assignment in NY is left up to the local officials for split residences. That's very different from my experience where the statute gives explicit direction to the local election officials, which makes it easier to bring mistakes to their attention for correction.

[muon2]

The history you note is accurate for the Aurora/Batavia line, and since that line still has meaning for the elected township offices, I would expect it to remain as a division for Census blocks. It's the use of the section line and the difficulties associated with the assignment of residents along the line that I thought might have relevance here.

Counties have some say in the definitions of geography in IL, and I've notice that some eliminate the section lines when new subdivisions come in, but others don't bother. The section line could have been removed as a block splitter in 2006-7 as the geographies were formed since it wasn't a political boundary in that decade and the subdivision was well established. I presume the county didn't recommend changes so the line just hung on in the maps. In neighboring DuPage county there were locations where such lines were intentionally cleaned up during the phase where the Census defined its 2010 geography.

As I noted earlier, Census enumeration is prone to error in these split blocks as they may use a landmark like the driveway entrance instead of the door to assign residents to a block. In 2000 I was part of a petition to reassign about 100 people in an apartment building that was placed in the wrong parcel. It was relevant since it had been assigned to an unincorporated parcel and would cost the host city about $10K a year in lost state funds.

But back to Hudson, one possibility is that if a timely change is made to the Charter then the confusing invisible lines could be eliminated from 2020 geography. I would think that would help all parties in the coming decade.

[muon2]

It is interesting to see all the growth they anticipated from the infill and development of North Bay.

[muon2]

Sam Wang, a political scientist, who argues that the correct way to measure partisanship in redistricting is to compare the two-party share of the vote in the median district, with that of the state average. He assumes that population distribution is not skewed.

I appreciate Wang's contention that a difference between the median and mean is evidence of skew. However, I'm not sure that the statistics hold up when there are districts averaged in that only have one party on the ballot. The distribution of districts is certainly not normally distributed at the edges. There can also be significant bias introduced if one of the uncontested districts would normally be near the median, but is uncontested due to a popular incumbent. I think the better measure is to look at the results of a statewide race in each district (I use the presidential results).

His method also can fail to account for effects due to a preponderance of marginal districts for one party. Many gerrymanders will place a number of districts with enough advantage for the gerrymandering party. The median district may not reflect how many districts were gained by a gerrymander. Hence my desire to count the difference between districts that nominally should go for each party.

Finally I don't know if his method accounts for the known effect that a statewide swing has on individual districts. Each 1% swing in the vote is predicted to produce a 2% shift in the delegation. In a state like AZ there is a decided shift to the Pubs statewide, and it's not clear to me that the bias he sees isn't just due to the 2 to 1 effect. It's worth some simulation to see if that's the case.

[muon2]

The way I have done ward descriptions in IL would make Ward 1 read as follows:

A.  First Ward.  The first ward shall consist of that part of the City lying south and west of a line described as follows: Beginning at a point where a northwesterly extension projecting the center line of Warren Street intersects the northwesterly bounds of the City, and thence along said projection and the center line of Warren Street in a southeasterly direction to the center line of Worth Avenue, and thence along the center line of Worth Avenue in a southerly direction to a point at the southerly bounds of the City, said point being the terminus of the described line.

Note that this method of description relies on the non-necessity of repeating the boundary that is the corporate limit. It assumes that the corporate limits are well defined elsewhere. In IL it has the advantage of adjusting to future annexation changing the corporate limits, though that presumably is less of an issue in Hudson.

[muon2]

Oh, per Google Earth, you are right about the N. Second Street affair, so I changed my legal descriptions for the 2nd and 4th wards accordingly. The other 2nd Street is called 2nd Street Extension.

Interestingly on Google Maps the dirt road that forks to the northwest is N 2nd St. On Mapquest (using TomTom) the same road is called 2nd St Ext. Just to really mix things up, Bing maps calls all of the road past Mill St into the factory 2nd St Ext, and they have no label for the dirt road the branches and defines the boundary of the Census block. Ugh. What does the county actually think it is?

For what it's worth Google shows that the dirt road it calls N 2nd St actually intersects the corporate limits at its terminus.