Draw the Congressional Districts of the Alternate States!

[jimrtex]

That seems like an excellent redistricting plan, Cranberry. The borders look very nice, so if it's also VRA-compliant there's no need to look any further!

Muon, it might seem surprising in light of statewide results but yes, local Democrats tend to have the upper hand in this area of Texas. Just look at the House results: Democrats hold 7 of 11 seats even despite living in a nominally R-gerrymandered map. The same is true in the State Legislature. According to my calculations, Democrats hold almost 3/4 of the Texas House of Representatives seats in the area corresponding to RG.

The Dems might well be down one additional US House seat but for the VRA requirements on the state of TX as a whole. It would be easy to take my map and make both of the swing seats, solid R without compromising any of the R seats or changing the VRA seats, which a Pub gerrymander certainly would do. The Texas HoR is a court-ordered map and after the favorable 2012 election the Dems hold 30 of the 47 seats in the RG counties (64%). I don't know how many of those are in play for 2014.

Two: 43 and 117
In several 2nd tier targets, 34, 78, 45, and 54 the challenger party doesn't have a candidates.

Edit: It looks like statewide VRA compliance also affects the TX HoR. For example Bexar county is 43.1% SSVR, but 7 of the 10 House districts are drawn with an SSVR majority, this leads to the current 8D-2R margin. Yet overall the county is close to national average, being about 1% more R than the nation in 2008. That would project a roughly equal split of House districts between the parties. Given the numerous easy VRA districts that can be drawn along the Rio Grande, I doubt that RG would have to gerrymander Bexar to meet the VRA.

Those seven districts converge on an area a couple of miles across, with districts fanning out and wrapping around the city.   The Republicans managed to win HD-117 in 2010.  Based on the west side it had relatively high growth, and would logically have shed population on the south side.  Instead, the court ordered northern areas to be dropped, which pushed the other two Republican seats into that area.

The legislature plan increased the HCVAP population, while decreasing the SSVR percentage.  The claim was that this was that this was to add "non-mobilized" Hispanic voters.  But I would infer that there were more non-Spanish-surnamed Hispanic voters.   Someone with a last name of Abbott or Bush might not be targeted by "mobilizers" or would probably be more likely to vote Republican.

The 8th district is held by a black Democrat, Ruth McClendon.   The district includes the only area of high black concentration in San Antonio, but is only 28% black VAP.  If you increased the HVAP in the district you could flip the district in the primary.

[jimrtex]

To get a better feel for the dynamics of the hypothetical RG state, I created a legislature. I assumed that the new state would replicate much of the existing state of TX. To that end I gave RG a 150 seat house, just like TX has now. TX has very specific rules about how to apportion house districts to counties, so I kept those for RG. The population range across the entire map must not exceed 10% of the quota of one district. Counties larger than a district get as many whole districts as can fit within the population range. Counties smaller than a district can be combined with other smaller counties or fragments left over from a large county. In general no small counties or fragments can be chopped, but exceptions can be made if necessary to keep districts within range.

I used the 2010 data and made an apportionment following the above rules. Numbers on the map indicate an apportionment of more than one district to a county or group of counties. The range based on the apportionment is 9.7%.



TX has 31 Senators, but to make things easy I reduced it to 30 Senators. The senate districts were formed by grouping five house districts together, keeping the districts within large counties as much as possible. This is roughly how OH does its three-to-one nested districts. The plus indicates a house district that was shifted out of Bell county which has six house districts. That extra is attached to the adjacent Williamson county with a minus sign. The house district with Falls, Milam, and a small part of Williamson is used in forming a different Senate district.



A detailed map with partisan and ethnic data is forthcoming.

When was the Rio Grande constitution written?

Historically, Texas has not had 150 House members.  The current constitution was written in 1876 and provided for 31 senators, which could never be increased.

The House was to have 93 members, which could be increased but never more than a ratio of one per 15,000 members, and never beyond 150.

By 1900, the population was sufficient to have 150 members representing more than 15,000 persons, but there were only 133 representatives.  No apportionment occurred after the 1910 census; but following the 1920 census, a House of 150 members was established.

In 1999, the constitution was amended to its current version which provides for specifically 31 senators and 150 representatives, since the conditions for smaller numbers had long since passed (there was never the ability to change the number of senators, but perhaps the authors of the constitution wanted to make sure.  A goal of the 1876 constitution is to restrict the government, so making it explicit that the 31 could not be increased was probably deliberate.

Following the 1930 census it was found that Bexar, Harris, and Dallas would have more than 7 representatives, and the constitution was amended to limit them to one representative per 100,000 persons.  Despite passage of the amendment in 1938, there was no redistricting after the 1940 census (and there had been none after the 1930 census) so redistricting in 1951 was the first to apply the amendment.  At that time, Harris County had over 800,000 persons and given an 8th representative, though based on population it would have been entitled to 16.  Dallas and Bexar were limited to 7 each, though they would have been entitled to 12 and 10 respectively.  Tarrant had also reached the limit of 7.   While Harris had one representative per 101,000 persons, the smaller counties had one representative per 45,000. 

The 1951 redistricting did provide for election by place in multi-representative counties.  Like, the US Constitution, the Texas Constitution does not provide for the manner of election, but only for apportionment.

By 1961, the 1938 amendment was beginning to severely bite into representation of the larger counties, and instead of 19, 15, 11, and 8 representatives, Harris, Dallas, Bexar, and Tarrant were apportioned 12, 9, 7, and 7 representatives respectively.  A curiosity of the 1938 amendment was that it set a fixed ratio of one representative per 100,000.  Once the statewide ratio exceeded 100,000 (as it did in 1990), the 1938 amendment would have been moot - or possibly give additional representation to larger counties, inverting the effect.

The OMOV decisions overturned the 1938 amendment, and in 1964, the legislature did provide for 19, 14, 10, and 8 representatives for the larger counties.  They appear to have truncated 19.46, 14.89, 10.76, and 8.43, but that might be preferred to using a floterial district for the surplus population.  The 19 representatives were elected from 3 subdistricts, electing 7, 6, and 6 representatives by place within the district.

The Texas Constitution provides for three types of House districts.
(1) Single-county district with one or more representatives.
(2) Multi-county district with one representative.
(3) Multi-county district with zero or more counties entitled to less than one representative, and one or more counties where the district represents the surplus population from a Type (1) district, electing one representative.

Type 3 is a floterial district.  For example, if Adams County were entitled to 2.4 representatives, and its neighbor Baker County was entitled to 0.6 representatives, then District 1 would be Adams, with 2 representatives; and District 2 would be Adams+Baker, with 1 representative.  The voters in Adams could vote for all 3 representatives.  While a floterial district makes sense from an apportionment viewpoint, it doesn't make sense from an electoral viewpoint.  While Baker is providing 40% of the population for apportionment purposes, it only has 20% of the electorate, and will likely be dominated by the Adams voters.

The 1964 plan had 11 such floterial districts.  These were declared unconstitutional in 1967, and a new plan was adopted.

In some instances a portion of the more populous county was detached and added to the smaller counties.  For example Bell had a single-member district, plus there was a floterial district for Bell and Williamson.   Bell was split, with the major part electing one representative, and the remnant along with Williamson electing another.   This pattern was used when the larger county had one representative plus a fraction.  It in effect, cut off an area comprising the surplus population and attached it to the smaller counties.  This is still current practice.

In other cases, a mult-member single county and an associated floterial district were combined into a multi-county multi-member district.  For example a 3-member Nueces district, was combined with a Nueces + Kleberg floterial district, to create a 4-member Nueces + Kleberg district, where Kleberg voters would vote for all 4 members.  While there is some risk of Kleberg being swamped, there might be balancing strategy of setting was position aside for Kleberg.  If one party did so, then Kleberg voters might overwhelmingly ignore party when voting.

After the 1970 census, the legislature ignored the Texas Constitution, and started chopping up counties, under an interpretation that it was impossible to comply with equal protection and the Texas Constitution.  The Texas Supreme Court said that you could stretch the Texas Constitution by attaching a portion of a larger county containing its surplus above a whole number of representatives to smaller counties or similar surplus areas of other larger counties.  So you could replace floterial districts, with a district that contained only the surplus population.   We could call these districts quasi-floterial.

Division of counties may only be done to comply with equal protection (the 10% rule).  In the first plan approved after this ruling, there were two larger counties that had their surplus split between two quasi-floterial districts.  It is not clear that this complies with the stretched Texas Constitution or not.  When there were true floterial districts, there were instances where a surplus of a county was recognized in two floterial districts (eg a county had its own representative, plus was included in two floterial districts with two other sets of counties.

Your Williamson and Bastrop districts are examples of this.   Would the legislature have created a Bastrop district; a Lee, Fayette, Bastrop district; and a Bastrop, Caldwell district?  Likely not.  But on the other hand you avoid splitting smaller counties by doing so.  The legislature may have decided to split Bastrop and Williamson this way after discovering it avoids multiple splits of smaller counties.  That is, it is better to stretch the constitution than to break it.

The Texas legislature would likely have not placed Williamson and Bexar in quasi-floterial districts.  Current legal is that if the districts within a large county may be created within a 5% deviation (or technically to comply with a 10% overall range), then they must be kept within the county.   This is an overly localized analysis.  It in effect says that it is not necessary to use quasi-floterials for such large counties to achieve equal protection, therefore don't do so since it doesn't comply with the Texas Constitution.

On the other hand, from a larger perspective, it may avoid splitting a smaller county, which is in total violation of the constitution.  In the current Texas map, the split of Henderson County can be avoided, if a quasi-floterial district were drawn in Dallas and Ellis counties.  This would also improve overall equality, since Dallas is entitled to over 14 districts, and its districts tend to be oversized.

Your plan might be improved by extending a quasi-floterial district out from El Paso, and placing Webb and Jim Hogg in another.  This eliminates the need for the double quasi-floterial for Bexar.
It appears that one small county split is unavoidable.   Are three quasi-floterials preferable to a one double quasi-floterial?

Also in the early 1970s, the use of at-large elections was ruled unconstitutional if it violates the ability of minority voter to elect representatives.  After an analysis was done, it was determined that this was the case in all but Hidalgo County.  The Texas Supreme Court has said that there is nothing in the constitution that prevents election from single member districts.  Under early plans, districts within a county were numbered 22-A, 22-B, etc. to recognize that they were subdistricts for election purposes, of the districts specified in the constitution.  This has since switched to a simple numbering from 1 to 150.

[jimrtex]

To get a better feel for the dynamics of the hypothetical RG state, I created a legislature. I assumed that the new state would replicate much of the existing state of TX. To that end I gave RG a 150 seat house, just like TX has now. TX has very specific rules about how to apportion house districts to counties, so I kept those for RG. The population range across the entire map must not exceed 10% of the quota of one district. Counties larger than a district get as many whole districts as can fit within the population range. Counties smaller than a district can be combined with other smaller counties or fragments left over from a large county. In general no small counties or fragments can be chopped, but exceptions can be made if necessary to keep districts within range.

I used the 2010 data and made an apportionment following the above rules. Numbers on the map indicate an apportionment of more than one district to a county or group of counties. The range based on the apportionment is 9.7%.



TX has 31 Senators, but to make things easy I reduced it to 30 Senators. The senate districts were formed by grouping five house districts together, keeping the districts within large counties as much as possible. This is roughly how OH does its three-to-one nested districts. The plus indicates a house district that was shifted out of Bell county which has six house districts. That extra is attached to the adjacent Williamson county with a minus sign. The house district with Falls, Milam, and a small part of Williamson is used in forming a different Senate district.



A detailed map with partisan and ethnic data is forthcoming.

When was the Rio Grande constitution written?

Historically, Texas has not had 150 House members.  The current constitution was written in 1876 and provided for 31 senators, which could never be increased.

The House was to have 93 members, which could be increased but never more than a ratio of one per 15,000 members, and never beyond 150.

By 1900, the population was sufficient to have 150 members representing more than 15,000 persons, but there were only 133 representatives.  No apportionment occurred after the 1910 census; but following the 1920 census, a House of 150 members was established.

In 1999, the constitution was amended to its current version which provides for specifically 31 senators and 150 representatives, since the conditions for smaller numbers had long since passed (there was never the ability to change the number of senators, but perhaps the authors of the constitution wanted to make sure.  A goal of the 1876 constitution is to restrict the government, so making it explicit that the 31 could not be increased was probably deliberate.

The instructions didn't say when the hypothetical states were created, though it was before 2010. I hypothesized that the creation was after 1970, so the impact of the OMOV decisions was known. However I chose to place the division before the 1999 change to the TX constitution (or a most concurrent with it) so that that amendment wouldn't be part of the constitution. Instead RG would reduce the Senate to 30 and use OH-styled nesting for  the SDs. I could have gone with a 90-member House in line with the average of the states, but I specifically wanted a higher degree of granularity and adoption of the House description from TX worked towards that end.

This is the 1961 House map for the area of Rio Grande



There are 45 or so House districts (and around 12 senate districts).  Bexar was clipped at that time, and if the initial House had been tripled it would have pushed El Paso, Nueces, Travis, Hidalgo, and perhaps Cameron into the cap.  The districts aren't uncomfortably vast, so I think they would have modified the language of that time.   On the other hand they would have wanted a larger senate.

The initial size of 93 representatives and 31 would have permitted nesting.  I'm not sure if there was ever nesting since senate districts could not split counties (in 1961, Harris, Dallas, Bexar, and Tarrant were each a senate district).

An odd number of senate members is preferred, since that eliminates the possibility of the Lieutenant Governor have to use his casting vote.  An even number is OK for the House, since Speaker doesn't vote unless there is a tie, and removing him leaves the normal voting number as odd.

So the Rio Grande Constititution of 1962 provided for a House of 50 members, and senate of 25 members.  The size of the house could be increased by multiples of 5 (which would provide for nesting for groups of 5 senate districts), until the House reached 75 members.

The House would then increase by multiples of 6, and the senate by multiples of two when they reached 105 and 35,  The House would then increase by multiples of 7 until it reached a maximum of 140.

The size of the House would be automatically calculated to ensure that it was the smallest size that would provide more than 1 representative per 50,000 persons.

I realize that this has nothing to do with your purpose, but I had initially thought you hadn't followed the current rationalized interpretation of the Texas Constitution.  It is ambiguous whether you did or not.  It is particularly hard to do so because of the large number of house members, the constrained number of counties either side of the I-35 corridor, and the particular concentration of population in the cities in South Texas, and relatively large size of counties.

In Texas, there are choke points around the major metropolitan areas.  It used to be harder in East Texas, because of the irregular shapes of counties and numbers of counties per district.  As the population per district has increased, the number of counties per district has increased and it has become quite flexible.

Incidentally, the petitions for the 6 California's initiative have been submitted, and are in the process of being counted.  It will be real close whether it has enough signatures to qualify.  But if it qualifies and passes, I'd be surprised if Jefferson and West California adopt the same configurations for their legislatures.

[jimrtex]

The Texas Constitution provides for three types of House districts.
(1) Single-county district with one or more representatives.
(2) Multi-county district with one representative.
(3) Multi-county district with zero or more counties entitled to less than one representative, and one or more counties where the district represents the surplus population from a Type (1) district, electing one representative.

Type 3 is a floterial district.  For example, if Adams County were entitled to 2.4 representatives, and its neighbor Baker County was entitled to 0.6 representatives, then District 1 would be Adams, with 2 representatives; and District 2 would be Adams+Baker, with 1 representative.  The voters in Adams could vote for all 3 representatives.  While a floterial district makes sense from an apportionment viewpoint, it doesn't make sense from an electoral viewpoint.  While Baker is providing 40% of the population for apportionment purposes, it only has 20% of the electorate, and will likely be dominated by the Adams voters.

The 1964 plan had 11 such floterial districts.  These were declared unconstitutional in 1967, and a new plan was adopted.

Consistent with RG's creation between 1970 and 1999, I struck pure floterial districts as unconstitutional. I left them both options 1 and 2.

Pre-1967, Type 1 (single county) and Type 3 (floterial) overlaid each other in a vertical stack.  If there had been single member election districts, then a county entitled to 4.5 representatives would have been divided into 4 districts of roughly equal population, and then all voters would have voted in the floterial district.  Of course we don't know if this would have been done, since floterial districts were declared unconstitutional before at-large elections.

Post-1967, and particularly Post-1971, the Texas Constitution is stretched to transform Type 1 and Type 3 districts to a horizontal configuration, such as the Type 1A district only covers the portion of the county with a population corresponding to a whole number of counties; and the Type 3A district includes an area of the county with the surplus population.

You don't have Type 1 districts except when a whole number of districts are coincident with county boundaries.

The rules in priority order order are:
(1) Don't violate the 10% rule;
(2) Don't split small counties (or create as few as possible)
(3) Don't create type 1A/3A districts (or create as few as possible)

Guidance given to the legislature appears to add a rule (1.5) Don't split large counties into 1A and 3A, except when necessary to comply with the 10% rule for that county.  That is, it's being treated as corollary to rule (1).  That is, if you can comply with (1) without splitting the county, then don't split it.

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In the RG constituion I hypothesize that it is clear that adding excess from a large county should be considered before resorting to splits of a smaller county, but splits of smaller counties are not forbidden. I did have to split Atascosa to achieve population equality. However, not all the districts are within 5% of the quota. I used the 10% range rule instead since that provides some extra flexibility to avoid unneeded splits while keeping to federal law.
[/quote]
The Texas constitution has not been clarified.  But based on the stretched interpretation by the Texas Supreme court, it is clear that not splitting small counties is preferred,  But it is ignored.  Incidentally, the 10% rule comes from a Texas House redistricting case.  It happened that they could get within 10% by having one district over 105%, but didn't need to go down to 95%.  They then voluntarily created another district over 105%.   The 10% rule is too much like moving the bulls-eye to match where the arrows landed.  I'd prefer a 5% rule, with an only if necessary exception, but possibly permitting a one-way deviation up to 10%.  Any plan that has a smaller deviation would automatically beat one with a larger deviation greater than 5%. 

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I looked at a quasi-floterial El Paso district, since El Paso is almost exactly 15.5 districts. However, Val Verde is almost large enough for a HD by itself, and the counties between El Paso and Val Verde are just barely over the size of an HD. A quasi-floterial district to deal with the excess El Paso population would have helped in the east, but it forces a chop to Val Verde so I discarded the idea.

Removing Terrell still left the counties east of El Paso very slightly above the quota plus 5%, but not so much that I couldn't arrange the eastern part of RG to make it fit within the range. I quick look didn't show me that the El Paso qF and chop of Val Verde would eliminate more such chops in the east. If it did, then that would be preferable to the apportionment I did.
[/quote]
I had missed that I split Val Verde.

I converted the double qF of Bexar to a single qF, but added a split of Val Verde.  It is close question whether the double qF of Bexar is better than the split of Val Verde.  The constitution doesn't really suggest that Bexar has two surpluses that add to 0.196.  But on the other hand placing a county in two different floterial districts has been done in the past, and there were such qF districts in the 1971 map.

It could be argued that you aren't complying with the Texas Constitution with your Bexar-Kendall district since the Bexar surplus is way short of that needed to complete Kendall.  In effect, you are spreading the error over the rest of the many Bexar districts.  But I don't think that was ever a concern.  Originally most counties in East Texas had one or more representatives, and you could take the counties with surpluses of around 1/2 of a district and pair them.  So you might pair a district with a 0.60 surplus with another with 0.65, or 0.4 with 0.35.

[jimrtex]

The Texas House was not redistricted between 1921 and 1950, skipping redistricting after the 1930 and 1940 censuses.  This, despite the 1938 constitutional amendment to restrict the representatives to larger counties, including Bexar in the future state of Rio Grande.  In 1948, an amendment was passed that provided that if the legislature did not redistrict, the Legislative Redistricting Board would.  That provided enough incentive for the legislature to redistrict in 1951, applying the 1938 amendment for the first time; and in 1961, again applying it, as the caps really began to bite. 

Bexar was limited to 7 districts, instead of the 10 that its population warranted, and the restriction was even more severe in Harris and Dallas counties.  The seats taken from the big counties permitted undersized districts elsewhere.

Rio Grande 1961



In 1964, Reynolds v Sims required legislative districts to be relatively equal.  In Texas, Kilgarlin v Martin, applied the Reynolds v Sims decision to declare the 1938 amendment unconstitutional.  William Kilgarlin was the chairman of the Harris County Democratic party.  He would later become a Supreme Court Justice.  Crawford Martin was the Secretary of State, later Attorney General.

This meant that Bexar was given its full complement of 10 districts.  But elsewhere in Rio Grande districts had to expand and be redrawn.  Floterial districts were created for Bell, Travis, and Nueces counties.  Previously they had been given a whole number of seats, but now they needed to have their population augmented.  In addition a floterial anchored in Ector (Odessa) extended to include Reeves.

The number of house districts in the Rio Grande area was reduced from around 42 to around 40, with three gained in Bexar, 5 were lost elsewhere.

Rio Grande 1964



In 1967, Kilgarlin v Hill found the floterial districts to be contrary to Reynolds v Sims.  John Hill was Secretary of State.  He later became Attorney General, and then lost a bid to become governor in 1978, becoming the first Democrat to lose since 1869.  He was later elected Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

In the area that has become Rio Grande, most of the floterial districts were converted to multi-county multi-position districts.  For example, where before Travis had 3 representatives, and a floterial district shared with Burnet, it became a 4-representative 2-county district with Burnet.  In general, this was the pattern where the larger county had multiple representatives (eg Cameron, Nueces, and Travis).  This pattern of multi-county, multi-representative districts has not been used since.  Perhaps it made more sense before multi-seat at-large districts were ruled
unconstitutional.

In the case of Bell, and the Bell+Williamson floterial, Bell County was divided, with one district representing a full quota within the county, and a portion representing the surplus combined with Williamson.  This of course is the current practice.  Perhaps it made more sense when there were only two representatives involved.

Rio Grande 1967

[jimrtex]

Following the 1970 census, the legislature redistricted the House.  It split 33 counties, including 18 that a population smaller than one district.  It also divided parts of Grayson between two districts, even though Grayson had enough population for its own district, plus a small surplus.

This plan was overturned by the Texas Supreme Court in Craddick v Smith.  Tom Craddick was one of a handful of Republican representatives, and was targeted by the plan which split Midland County.  He was also one of the Dirty Thirty who opposed House speaker Gus Mutscher.  Because of the decision, Craddick was able to retain his seat, and has continued to do so up until the present.  Preston Smith was governor at that time, but after being tainted by the Sharpstown Bank scandal that resulted in the conviction of Mutscher (later overturned), finished 4th in the Democratic primary in his re-election attempt.

The author of the 1971 redistrict plan was Delwin Jones, a Democratic representative at the time.  After being defeated by Pete Laney, and being out of the legislature for a time, he became a Republican and was elected to the House.  In 2001, then-Speaker Laney named Jones as chair of the redistricting committee.  Jones fashioned a plan that favored West Texas by underpopulating its districts, pressing the lower 95% limit, meanwhile costing Harris County its 25th district.  He gained the support of Harris County districts by letting them run amok and cut out a Republican representative.  Jones was later defeated in a Republican primary.  He is currently attempting to be elected to the Senate in a special election, though was recently hospitalized in critical condition.

After the Senate failed to pass the House map, the Legislative Redistricting Board drew the map.  The USDOJ and a federal district court forced redrawing of the Bexar county districts into their bunch of banana configuration.  The Republicans took control of the House based on this map in the 2002 elections, and Tom Craddick became speaker.   In 2003, the legislature redistricted the congressional districts, which they had failed to do so in 2001.

The Texas Supreme Court in Smith v Craddick harmonized the Texas Constitution with the OMOV provisions of Reynolds v Sims.   In particular, it said that counties entitled to one or more representatives must be apportioned that whole number of representatives.  It also said that to comply with OMOV requirements a portion of a large county could be attached to contiguous counties or parts of counties to form a district.  It did not really treat these districts as quasi-floterials, but they effectively are since they must be single member districts.

I think that floterials can be justified as complying with OMOV for apportionment purposes; but not for electoral purposes; in the same way that multi-member districts are justified for apportionment, but not electoral purposes.  It would be absurd to say that Harris County was not apportioned 24 representatives, but rather that that 24 representatives were individually apportioned to 24 districts within the county.  Since the Texas Constitution is foremost about apportionment of representatives among the counties, this can be used to determine that division of a county entitled to more than one representative is preferable to one that is entitled to less than one.

Rio Grande 1971 House Districts



Note: division of counties is symbolic.  The statute is defined in terms of enumeration districts, and I did not want to research that deeply.

Small counties that are split include Willacy, Wharton, Midland, and Tom Green.  Remarkably, the district that begins in Lee, continues through Burleson, Washington, Austin, and Waller to include a portion of Harris County.  The sliver of Harris County would be around 1/8 of a district.

Bexar, Bell, and Nueces are split, with the major portion electing 11, 1, or 3 representatives, and small portions (2 separate areas in the case of Bexar and Bell) being attached to adjacent counties.  These surpluses are fairly small, though in the case of Bell it is because a surplus of 0.668 is divided into two small areas.

In the case of Hidalgo and Cameron, areas in adjacent counties were included in a mult-member district.  This might be because of the split of Willacy, or the large surpluses in Cameron and Hidalgo counties (0.880 and 0.432, respectively).  Noteworthy is that Cameron lost population during the 1960s, while Hidalgo was flat.  Coupled with statewide growth of 16.9%, this meant considerable loss of representation for the two counties.

After the Craddick v Smith decision, the Legislative Redistricting Board was compelled to redistrict.  Ordinarily, the LRB is only activated when the legislature fails to redistrict.  The LRB which had been activated to perform senate redistricting argued that since the legislature had enacted legislation it had no authority with respect to house redistricting.  But in Mauzy v. Legislative Redistricting Board, the Texas Supreme Court decided that the legislature had failed to enact a redistricting measure that complied with the Texas Constitution, based on its earlier decision in Smith v Craddick

The map produced by the LRB, was later modified by a federal court in Graves v Barnes which ordered single member districts in Dallas and Bexar counties, based on minority vote dilution.  Harris County had already been formed into single-member districts, but Dallas and Bexar elected their 18 and 11 representatives at large.

Rio Grande 1972 House Districts



The map shows sketched in boundaries within counties, based on the online map in the Legislative Council's redistricting website.   Bexar County was divided into 11 single member districts, illustrated by  11*, plus an area which was attached to 6 adjacent counties.  Representatives in El Paso (4), Travis (4), Nueces (3), and Hidalgo (2) were still elected at large from the entire county, or a major portion of the entire county.

Statewide, the 1972 map split one smaller county, Red River.  This was required because the population of Bowie was less than one quota, but the addition of any of its three neighbors, Red River, Morris or Cass would put it more than 5% beyond the quota (the closest would have been Bowie+Morris at 1.073.

The overall deviation was 9.9%, somewhat asymmetric because the largest district was 1.058, and the smallest 0.959.

There a number of interesting things about the map.

Cameron County was not divided into two districts.  It was entitled to 1.880 representatives.  The eastern district had a population equivalent to the quota, while the large surplus was combined with a small portion of the surplus for Hidalgo.  Cameron could not be combined with Willacy since that would have required splitting Willacy.

Hidalgo was entitled to 2.432 representatives.  The larger part of the county elected two representatives, while the surplus was split between two areas, one combined with the Cameron surplus, and the other combined with 3 counties to the North.  This handling of the Hidalgo surplus, which was necessary to avoid division of other counties, would appear to provide a precedent for your handling of Williamson, Bastrop, and Bexar counties.  In all three cases, you apportioned the proper number of whole districts to the counties, and attached areas containing the surpluses to adjacent counties.

Nueces was entitled to 3.182 representatives.  Most of the county elected three representatives, while a small part of the county was combined with San Patricio and Aransas which formed the bulk of the district.

Bexar County was entitled to 11.125 districts.  That small of a surplus could have easily been distributed with only a 1% error.  Moreover, I doubt that the surplus was necessary to create districts within the 10% range, given the access to smaller counties to the northwest and west.  A plausible explanation why it might have been done, was it was unknown whether the overall deviation of 10% would be acceptable to the SCOTUS.

El Paso was entitled to 4.813 representatives, which would have permitted apportionment of 5 representative, with a -3.7% deviation.  It was instead split into an area with 4 representatives, and a remnant containing the large surplus.  The -3.7% deviation would have been within the overall limit of 9.9%.  The underage would have been partially balanced by the overage from Bexar counties.

So either the treatment of Bexar and El Paso violated the Texas Constitution, and no one was aware or challenged it; or they did not violate the Texas Consitution.

The Supreme Court in White v Regester upheld the 1972 districts.  Mark White was Secretary of State, later Attorney General and Governor.  The case originally had been styled Bullock v Regester, after Bob Bullock who was the second next previous Secretary of State, and later Lieutenant Govenor.  Leon Jaworski argued the case for Texas.  Later that year he would become the special prosecutor for Watergate.  The Attorney General was John Hill.  David Richard argued the case for the appellees.  At the time he was the husband of Ann Richards, later to be elected governor who oversaw the infamous 1990s Democratic gerrymander.  He was assisted by Jim Mattox, who was later Attorney General.

The Supreme Court decided that the 9.9% overall deviation was acceptable, given the State's interest in recognizing county boundaries.  A 3-judge panel in Graves v Barnes had ruled the deviation too great, but had stayed their decision for the 1972 election.  Texas was appealing that decision, which the SCOTUS overturned.  The SCOTUS made note that average deviation was only 1.82%, and only 23 districts had a deviation of more than 3%, and only three of more than 5%.

The Supreme Court did uphold the single member districts for Bexar and Dallas counties, which had been used for the 1972 elections.

The district court in Graves v Barnes extended its decision with regard to single member districts to apply to all counties, and in 1975, the legislature passed a new map creating single member districts.   It does not appear to have made substantive changes to the other districts, at least in the Rio Grande area.  Districts within counties were given suffixes (eg District 37 had been a 4-member district in Travis County.  It was divided into 4-single member districts: 37A, 37B, 37C, and 37D).

[jimrtex]

The legislature redistricted the House after the 1980 census, but like in 1971, the Texas Supreme Court said it did not comply with the Texas Constitution due to excessive cutting of counties.  There were 10 small counties with population less than one quota that were split.  Some, such as San Augustine, were quite small.  In addition, most counties with even small surpluses had quasi-floterial districts.  For example, El Paso was entitled to 5.059 representatives, and had 5 districts, plus a small portion in a district extending east to Odessa.  There were 8 such larger counties that could have had whole districts contained within their boundaries and be withing constitutional limits of deviation.

In addition, the court noted that 3 counties had their surplus divided among two districts.  Of particular concern was Nueces County, which was entitled to 2.827 districts, but with only one wholly in the county.  The voters in Nueces County probably were not too concerned since they would have totally dominated all three districts, but it was a clear violation of the Texas Constitution, that large counties be apportioned the whole number of representatives they were entitled to.

Rio Grande 1981 House Districts



County splits are symbolic, since I only had text of legislation available.  Note that Nueces county had one district entirely in the county, as well as one extending into Aransas, and another extending into Kleberg.

Clements v Valles was the Texas Supreme Court decision that overturned the legislature plan.  Bill Clements was the first Republican governor since reconstruction, and had the honor of having the lawsuit styled after him, even though the legislature was firmly in Democratic hands.  

The plaintiffs in the case had demonstrated that the deviation could be within the 10% limit, and reduce the number of counties split.  The court also rejected the State's argument that retaining surpluses within larger counties would discriminate against minorities, since it would tend to make districts within the county larger.  This of course only true of some counties.  A county with entitled to 4.8 representative would have a nominal surplus of 0.800.  But if apportioned 5 representatives, would average 96% of the ideal population.

After the Supreme Court decision, the Legislative Redistricting Board took over.  Comprised of the Attorney General, Comptroller,  Land Commissioner, House Speaker, and Lieutenant Governor, in 1981, it was firmly in Democratic hands.  Given direction by the Supreme Court, they fashioned a new map.  One advantage they may have had, is that they had less self-interest in preserving existing districts.  Splitting small counties is one way to minimize changes to districts.  Otherwise the requirement to compose districts of whole counties, usually requires wholesale rearrangement each decade.

The districts drawn by the LRB were challenged on a number of grounds, including being racially discriminatory, politically discriminatory, too much population deviation, and dividing communities, including Baytown and Montgomery County.

The Attorney General made his Section 5 submission to the USDOJ, and then the Secretary of State, appointed by the governor, made a separate submission, in which he suggested several problems with the LRB's plan.  The USDOJ later objected to the districts in most of the larger metropolitan areas, and to a Val Verde district.  This stalled the court proceedings in Terrazas v Clements, since the USDOJ objections meant that the LRB districts could not be used.  The federal court was left with considering whether to use the 1970s districts - by 1980, the largest had 4.5 times the population of the smallest, or not holding elections.   The USDOJ eventually, withdrew its objections, except with respect to Bexar, Dallas and El Paso counties.  The federal court then fashioned an interim plan meshing the LRB plan, with plans submitted by MALDEF for Bexar and El Paso counties.

This was an interim plan, to be used for the 1982 elections.  The court warned that if the State did not adopt a plan that was precleared by the USDOJ, that any plan they drew would likely require greater population equality than one drawn by the legislature.   This presumably would have meant wholesale splitting of counties, since the largest deviations are typically found where combinations of counties are forced as the only way to get within 5% (or 10% total deviation).  This might have run afoul of a modern SCOTUS which has directed federal courts to respect state laws and legislative priorities in redistricting cases to the extent possible.

The 1983 legislature adopted the LRB plan with the MALDEF changes for Bexar and El Paso.  The committee report noted that with the election of Mark White as governor, the Secretary of State had changed, and that the USDOJ had informally approved the Bexar and El Paso maps.

1982 Rio Grande House Districts



Several changes are notable.   The splits of El Paso (5.059 entitlement), Webb (1.040), and Bexar (10.424) were eliminated.  While the surpluses in El Paso and Webb were minuscule, that in Bexar was substantial.  Further, Bexar previously had 11 districts, so that the LRB change meant a loss of a district.  So even though not splitting Bexar resulted in an average 4.2% deviation, it was within the presumptive 5% (or 10%) OMOV limits.

Dallas County had a similar surplus (16.407).  In Dallas, 17 districts were apportioned.  This was primarily done so Dallas would only lose one representative from 18 to 17.  Increasing to the next whole number is legal if the population "substantially" warrants it.  In this case, the average Dallas district had a -3.5% deviation.

Even though Dallas had a nominally smaller surplus than Bexar, (0.407 vs 0.424), rounding Dallas up can be justified on apportionment grounds.  Dallas would have the greater right to the additional seat under a list method, regardless whether the arithmetic mean: (n+(n+1))/2, geometric mean: sqrt(n*(n+1)), or harmonic mean: 2*n*(n+1)/(n+(n+1)), is used.  The harmonic mean might be preferred for this application since the goal is to minimize population deviation.

Overall, the LRB eliminated county splits of 8 large counties where the surplus could be absorbed within the county, and all 10 small county splits.

There were three large counties that had their surplus distributed between two districts, the same as in the legislative plan.  But in all three instances under the LRB, the county had the correct number of districts wholly within the county.

Legislative Plan: Brazoria, Nueces, and Denton.
LRB Plan: Brazoria, Jefferson, and Collin.

Brazoria is adjacent to three large counties, and one moderate sized county.   With a fairly large surplus (1.788) it is difficult to find partners,   Most of its matched up with Fort Bend (1.379), but together there population of (3.167) was slightly too much for 3 districts, so the excess was combined with Matagorda.  Conceivably, Fort Bend could have been the double split county, but one or the other would be necessary.

Jefferson in the southeast corner had a large surplus (2.645) and only three neighbors.  In the legislature's plan, the use of split surpluses was avoided by dividing nearby counties of Liberty and San Augustine.

Nueces was double split under the legislature's plan and had only one district wholly in the county despite a population of 2.827.  Clearly the double split was not needed, since the LRB plan eliminated.

Denton (1.509) and Collin (1.529) could have been paired for a total population of 3.038.  In fact, the populations were similar enough that a conventional floterial district could have been used.  But neighboring Grayson had a population of 0.947, just outside the 5% limit (the overall deviation was 9.95% so it may not have been possible to use an asymmetric range that included Grayson.   Instead under the legislative plan, a small portion of Denton was added to Grayson; and under the LRB plan a small portion of Collin was added.  So one of the counties was double split so as to avoid a OMOV was split.  It also appears that this was done to avoid splitting a smaller county.

So it appear the rule is:

(1) Don't split larger county unless necessary to avoid a OMOV violation.  And always provide the whole number of representatives.
(2) Don't double split larger county unless necessary to avoid a OMOV violation, and (1) is insufficient.   And always provide whole number of representatives.
(3) Don't split smaller counties unless necessary to avoid a OMOV violation, and (1) and (2) are insuffiicient.

[jimrtex]

Here is the apportionment for a weighted 150-member Rio Grande legislature.



Counties with an entitlement of more than one were guaranteed their own representative.  The collective entitlement of these 17 counties was 131.279, which was rounded to 131.  Their base entitlement (the sum of the integer part of their entitlement) was 124.  The difference between 131 and 124, which is 7, was apportioned on the basis of a list method using the the harmonic mean.  The harmonic mean is favorable to smaller counties, and this case resulted in Bastrop (1.436) gaining its 2nd member, while Travis (19.826) was left with 19.  This is desirable, since a single member from Bastrop would have a weight 43.6% above parity, while two members are each only 21.8% below.  Meanwhile the 19 Travis representatives will only average 4.3% above parity.  And of course, each county's total weight will be precisely proportional to its population.

The remaining 19 representatives (150-121) were distributed among the 52 smaller counties.   I tried to apportion a single district to the largest of these counties (those closest to 1).  These counties may have in the past been above 1.0 and had their own district, but lost population share; or in the future may gain population share, and be required to have their own districts.  This provides stability.  There were 6 large-small counties (Burnet, Kerr, Val Verde, Medina, Atascosa, and Wilson).

The remaining 13 representatives were distributed among the 46 smallest counties, generally trying to apportion representation to larger regions (eg an area entitled to around 3 representatives would have 3 districts).

An alternative would be to maintain districts over time, letting their weight grow or shrink in response to a change in population share, and only making adjustments when necessary.  This would provide stability over longer periods.  In Texas, a district in a zero-growth area would decline by half in population share over 38 years.  So many districts could be retained for multiple redistricting cycles, since even slow growth would delay the need for adjustment.

In rural areas, it may be possible to simply combined districts every few decades, while in high growth suburban areas a district might be split, or perhaps 2 districts rearranged into three groups.

There is no structural reason to have 150 reprsentatives, even though the total weight is 150.  In such a system, Travis and El Paso could have been apportioned an additional representative, based on their share of the total population, rather than their share relative to other counties.  And the same is true for the districts in the smaller counties.  Districts could simply be permitted to drift across a range of values (2/3 to 4/3 of parity), with redistricting only occurring when a district is out of range.  Redistricting may be simpler at that time, when it may be possible to combine two districts or split a district, rather than trying to fashion 3 districts from parts of four, or 4 districts from parts of 3.

[jimrtex]

Would Adirondack really have a GOP leg? I could see the state senate, but I doubt they'd have the trifecta.

Local politics would have developed differently.  If the state were Republican, the party would have an easier time recruiting town councilmen and county officials for the legislature.  A potential Democrat candidate would have to (1) pay the filing fee; (2) try to raise campaign funds, or paint the signs himself; (3) get elected; and (4) if elected, be assigned to the pencil-sharpening committee.  As a result, the Democratic candidate might be someone who has the money for the filing fee; and was planning to get a tattoo anyhow, and "Vote for Smith" with a couple of eagles looks cool, and knows a graffiti artist who will paint his 1983 Votemobile.   They may be willing to try again and again in two years.