Chops and Erosity - Great Lakes Style

[muon2]

Anyway, this illustrates again a problem with the pareto optimality regime. A map can win with a massive dose of additional erosity, just in order to lose a chop or two. That is what we are seeing here. I am losing a ton of erosity points, just to get rid of two or three chops, including in one iteration, a fair amount of erosity just to get rid of one micro-chop, and in the case of Detroit, massively more erosity (that should not be rewarded). So a total score concept makes some sense, or to be pareto optimal, the variation in the total score cannot exceed a certain amount.

This doesn't faze me, in large part because chops just fundamentally bother me a lot more than erosity.  And, also, because a lot of that erosity is, to be frank, artifical erosity, in particular the fact that a fairly straight line within Oakland which passes by small-sized towns and boros is more "erose" than something which heat-seeks the larger square towns, even if the actual squiggliness is not appreciably different.  (Also, outside of metros, when district lines are cut across a perfect grid of counties rather than offset rows of squares).

What I do take as a potential problem, though, and this is a backtrack from other things I've said earlier, is trying to use inequality as a co-equal factor and then gerrymandering to all hell with perfectly equal population.  That would be an issue, and yeah, does present an issue with the inequality measures.  What to do about that, other than just accede to your idea that inequality below a bright-line threshold just shouldn't matter?

This is perhaps a bit of a kludge, but let me float this trial balloon: perhaps, the inequality and erosity scores be combined into one number which can then be set against chops (which I continue to consider the most important factor in my mapmaking) in a two-prong pareto test.  How to balance the two would take some trial and error; I would certainly give erosity the lion's share of the impact but exactly how much is an open question.

One thing to keep in mind is the application of this to states that don't need any chops at all like IA or WV. A state like IA will have many options for zero chops, so all one can balance is erosity and inequality. Is a single value going to work? In a state like WV with no county subdivisions one can always get exact equality with a number of chops equal to one less than the number of districts. Does that suggest an upper limit on chops?

To Torie's point, let's score some of these plans and see how much is the pointwise tradeoff between the chop and erosity scores.

[Torie]

In Iowa and VW, I think a chop or two to get rid of gross erosity is a good thing (WV being a particularly egregious example), so I would keep erosity in play in all states. I still think population inequality should be in a tie breaker role applied after skew and balance - it's really much ado about nothing, and having population inequality in trivial amounts to get much better maps, in particular with respect to getting the chop score down, but also potentially in some instances from an erosity standpoint,  I think is important, and I am confident that the public will agree.

I haven't figured out how to weight/mix/match skew and balance. I really dislike Mike's scoring of political fairness, but that is an empirical issue for which I am awaiting his data (other than the 4 number little contretemps thing, which I think is about right (and was more about wording anyway), but was just curious to see it again). I am skeptical that I will be convinced, but some of the things Mike proposed initially like highway cuts that I thought were close to bizarre, I now find something close to an insight of genius, so there is always hope.

[traininthedistance]

Recall these are the implementation effects of the UCCs in this model.

=Chops in multi-county UCCs got higher scores over a base value depending on the excess number of districts.
=Chops in multi-county UCCs would count double if they chopped a county and were sufficiently large.
=Chops in multi-county UCCs could not count double if they otherwise maintained whole counties.
=Chops in single-county UCCs could not count double, but could trigger greater erosity if a macrochop was present.
=Avoiding chops in UCCs smaller than a single district could be rewarded with lower erosity (for example Lansing in MI).
=The threshold to determine if a chop could count double was set at the same level as the macrochop to avoid introducing a separate threshold from the one used to trigger the use of subunits to measure erosity.

I personally think that a whole county chop is better than a partial county chop, and I think that most public viewers would see it that way, too. But I also think a small chop is better than a big chop. What this system does is balance those two such that a whole county chop into a UCC is equal to a small chop into a UCC county. A large chop that is not whole county is judged to be worse than either of those other alternatives and gets a higher score.

I think that's a good balance, but others may not. What weight would you give to those three scenarios?

Basically I am on board with those effects with the exception that I would strike the "and were sufficiently large" clause from part 2.  I'm fine with macrochops triggering erosity penalties (and thereby being discouraged), but I do think that for chop counts (single or double), the KISS principle of "a chop is a chop is a chop" is the road I'd take.

So you would judge all three scenarios equally, right? The original UCC surcharge idea (ca 2013) would cost any plan that chopped Clinton 2 points. My model reduced that penalty for small chops of Clinton, but left the large chop penalty at 2. To meet what I think you are saying for Lansing I can imagine a statement like this: "The UCC penalty only exists if there is not another county chop penalty that would give that same result."

If try to apply that to the other UCC's I foresee difficulties. Consider the GR UCC. My statement would imply that a clean split along the Kent/Ottawa line counts the same as a chop through Kent. What if the plan chops both Kent and Ottawa, between three districts - there would be already 2 county chops, so how does one assess a penalty for the extra district in the UCC? That would seem like the UCC minimum of two really didn't have any effect.

Now consider the Detroit UCC. I can draw a plan that has the same number of divisions of each of the counties as the offerings here so far, yet has 7 districts instead of 6. Oakland already has one chop more than the minimum. Given that, how does one determine whether the county chop penalty eliminates the need for an extra UCC penalty?

I would suggest that the county chop penalty eliminates the need for UCC penalties in single-county UCCs, and not otherwise.

[traininthedistance]

having population inequality in trivial amounts to get much better, and much more chopless maps, I think is important, and I am confident that the public will agree.

I agree with this, more or less–I just don't really think of districts that are four digits off of ideal "trivially" unequal, I guess.  They might be equal enough to pass muster, and if it saves us chops then that is a tradeoff I will easily take, but my personal calculus will take a couple points of erosity (not chops!) if it gets inequality down some.

[Torie]

having population inequality in trivial amounts to get much better, and much more chopless maps, I think is important, and I am confident that the public will agree.

I agree with this, more or less–I just don't really think of districts that are four digits off of ideal "trivially" unequal, I guess.  They might be equal enough to pass muster, and if it saves us chops then that is a tradeoff I will easily take, but my personal calculus will take a couple points of erosity (not chops!) if it gets inequality down some.

I suspect the public cares about both chops and erosity (COI comes into play sometimes when it comes to erosity, even though Mike and I both are militant that COI is a Trojan horse to be burned before it gets in the gates, rather than after), but where Mike and I differ, is that the public hates subunit chops almost as much as county chops, or if not the public, at least the election management bureaucrats, which is probably why gerrymanderers try to avoid subunit chops, unless absolutely desperate (which they might have been in the Pub PA SE area gerrymander, where anything went to make marginal CD's a tad less marginal).

But yes, moving up to a few thousand folks around is far more about reducing chop scores than erosity, so I think we are basically "good" on this one from a practical standpoint.

[jimrtex]

I like this as an algorithm to design a plan, but I tried something similar a year or so ago and had difficulty turning it in to a metric to judge plans. At a minimum it requires the mapper to submit their regions with their plan, and that has the downside of potentially disqualifying plans that were designed without regions. My sense is that isn't as good for public participation.

The intent is that the whole process be done in a stepwise fashion.  All participants would submit a regional plan.

If someone skipped that step, they could still produce a regional map.  This is how I comprehend Torie's map.



Presumably, he is going to need a large transfer from the Lansing region to the Grand Rapids region.  That may cause his plan to not advance.

But if it did, I'm pretty indifferent to whether the population is moved from northern Clinton, western Clinton, western Eaton, or perhaps even Calhoun.  If we have complete plans, then we are faced with variants that cause the whole number of plans to explode.

I think it is better in terms of public participation to start out with simple plans.

[Torie]

It is less than a macro-chop Jimtex (however defined), and just why absent a macrochop, should UCC's be sacred cows, since the number of votes detached is a relatively trivial percentage? Also the Clinton chop is of rural areas, so they are probably pleased to be detached from the Green, egghead/intellectual, quasi Marxist, gay loving, God-less, cultural cesspool, and bureaucratic, public employee (government and public universities) tax loving parasitical types to boot, that Lansing is all about, in favor of being moved into the culture of the more traditional and steady practical Dutch heavy, into practical money making, and growing the economic pie rather than shrinking it, folks in the Grand Rapids UCC.

This post was just for fun. It has a mild point (the amount of population is small enough to just chill and it really is rural, which is why the population is small), and then I went ballistic, trolling my butt off, and I loved it. Maybe it will earn me my first death point.

[traininthedistance]

It is less than a macro-chop Jimtex (however defined), and just why absent a microchop, should UCC's be sacred cows, since the number of votes detached is a relatively trivial percentage? Also the Clinton chop is of rural areas, so they are probably pleased to be detached from the Green, egghead/intellectual, quasi Marxist, gay loving, God-less, cultural cesspool, and bureaucratic, public employee (government and public universities) tax loving parasitical types to boot, that Lansing is all about, in favor of being moved into the culture of the more traditional and steady practical Dutch heavy, into practical money making, and growing the economic pie rather than shrinking it, folks in the Grand Rapids UCC.

This post was just for fun. It has a mild point (the amount of population is small enough to just chill and it really is rural, which is why the population is small), and then I went ballistic, trolling my butt off, and I loved it. Maybe it will earn me my first death point.

Eh, I chuckled.  I'm sure that's an accurate description of the mindset of plenty of folks.  Whether their perception has any relationship to reality, well that's another kettle of coconuts. 

In an absolutely ideal process, yeah I could see how maybe we don't want to keep the rural portions of UCCs to be sacred cows... but an absolutely ideal process would also try to re-introduce CoI measures, or at least take into account things like combined statistical areas (such that, say, you'd get dinged for separating Saginaw from Midland and Bay City, or somesuch) and well-recognized rural cultural regions (like the three counties of the Thumb).

In the absence of such loosey-goosey "Trojan horses" (to use a phrase), then it's for the best that we hold a strict line on what few proxies for CoI that we actually have at our disposal.  That's my theory at least.

[Torie]

You are correct of course, Train - the key point being a non macro-chop is relatively harmless in the larger scheme of things - and that goes for any county really.

[muon2]

Well I dealt with the inequality issue by switching out townships in Clinton, and at the cost of grotesque erosity (but I can afford that probably still, even though my map to win gets uglier with each iteration (boo!), I lost the hood chop in Detroit in favor of a micro-chop of Hamtramck.  (Yes, the BVAP for MI-13 drops to 49.1%, but that is still probably legal, inasmuch as there are a fair number of non citizen and/or non voting Hispanics in the CD), so blacks will still be casting a majority of the votes. So assuming micro-chops are freebies, I move back into the lead!  

But yes, this exercise hopefully will persuade Mike that freebie micro-chops are a dog that just won't hunt. It's dead, dead, dead, no matter how hard he tries to give EMR treatment to reanimate it.

MI Torie 2015D


Anyway, this illustrates again a problem with the pareto optimality regime. A map can win with a massive dose of additional erosity, just in order to lose a chop or two. That is what we are seeing here. I am losing a ton of erosity points, just to get rid of two or three chops, including in one iteration, a fair amount of erosity just to get rid of one micro-chop, and in the case of Detroit, massively more erosity (that should not be rewarded). So a total score concept makes some sense, or to be pareto optimal, the variation in the total score cannot exceed a certain amount.

The Detroit plan to Hamtramck looks like an equivalent of the Orchard Lake jut. However, I can't get the populations to match (CD 12=+196, CD 13=+6984, CD 14=-3504), so I can't score it. Are there microchops in there, as you suggest? I can't cover the gap with just one to Hamtramck. A zoom with town lines would help.

edit: I found a precinct in Hamtramck that gets CD 14 to +2075 as you have. However, the precinct population is 5579, so it's too big to be a microchop. That doesn't fix my CD 12/13 discrepancy, but both are within limits with the precinct move.

[jimrtex]

It is less than a macro-chop Jimtex (however defined), and just why absent a macrochop, should UCC's be sacred cows, since the number of votes detached is a relatively trivial percentage? Also the Clinton chop is of rural areas, so they are probably pleased to be detached from the Green, egghead/intellectual, quasi Marxist, gay loving, God-less, cultural cesspool, and bureaucratic, public employee (government and public universities) tax loving parasitical types to boot, that Lansing is all about, in favor of being moved into the culture of the more traditional and steady practical Dutch heavy, into practical money making, and growing the economic pie rather than shrinking it, folks in the Grand Rapids UCC.

This post was just for fun. It has a mild point (the amount of population is small enough to just chill and it really is rural, which is why the population is small), and then I went ballistic, trolling my butt off, and I loved it. Maybe it will earn me my first death point.

You failed to follow instructions.  Given this map,



(1) Create whole-county regions with a population approximately equal to a whole number of districts.
(2) Multi-county UCCs must be contained in a single region.
(3) Create as many regions as possible.

Having done that, the following map can be derived which shows the minimum population shifts to bring the regions into balance.

If your plan advanced, the next phase would be to define where the county chops were to be made.  By trying to do everything at once, you have to try to deal with all the problems of chops and erosity at different levels.   In addition, you would have to try to compare competing plans that differed only at a local level, such as choosing between chopping Clinton or Eaton counties. 



Eaton County is quite remote from East Lansing.   East Lansing is in Clinton County.  A typical couple in northern Clinton is a split commuter couple, with one working for Dow in Midland, and the other for the state government or for Michigan State.  The typical couple in western Eaton is a split commuter couple, with one working for the state government or GM, while the other works for a furniture manufacturer, tulip bulb cultivator, or Zondervan in Grand Rapids.

[jimrtex]

But Osceola can be shifted producing better equality between regions and reducing the stranded population outside UCC to under 10% of the quota (around 64,000).

[Torie]

Well I dealt with the inequality issue by switching out townships in Clinton, and at the cost of grotesque erosity (but I can afford that probably still, even though my map to win gets uglier with each iteration (boo!), I lost the hood chop in Detroit in favor of a micro-chop of Hamtramck.  (Yes, the BVAP for MI-13 drops to 49.1%, but that is still probably legal, inasmuch as there are a fair number of non citizen and/or non voting Hispanics in the CD), so blacks will still be casting a majority of the votes. So assuming micro-chops are freebies, I move back into the lead!  

But yes, this exercise hopefully will persuade Mike that freebie micro-chops are a dog that just won't hunt. It's dead, dead, dead, no matter how hard he tries to give EMR treatment to reanimate it.

MI Torie 2015D


Anyway, this illustrates again a problem with the pareto optimality regime. A map can win with a massive dose of additional erosity, just in order to lose a chop or two. That is what we are seeing here. I am losing a ton of erosity points, just to get rid of two or three chops, including in one iteration, a fair amount of erosity just to get rid of one micro-chop, and in the case of Detroit, massively more erosity (that should not be rewarded). So a total score concept makes some sense, or to be pareto optimal, the variation in the total score cannot exceed a certain amount.

The Detroit plan to Hamtramck looks like an equivalent of the Orchard Lake jut. However, I can't get the populations to match (CD 12=+196, CD 13=+6984, CD 14=-3504), so I can't score it. Are there microchops in there, as you suggest? I can't cover the gap with just one to Hamtramck. A zoom with town lines would help.

edit: I found a precinct in Hamtramck that gets CD 14 to +2075 as you have. However, the precinct population is 5579, so it's too big to be a microchop. That doesn't fix my CD 12/13 discrepancy, but both are within limits with the precinct move.

Yes, sorry about that. The chop in Hamtramck was too big (I kept looking so hard for less black precincts to cut, and obviously was trying too hard). The only micro-chop I could find that worked is as below (leaving MI-13 at its absolutely max legal population). BVAP is 48.5%, still probably legal given the 7.5% HVAP population (but cutting it close perhaps).  So equality goes to hell, but hey, it's only a secondary tie breaker.

[Torie]

Jimtex, I don't think your "instructions" are part of the game, nor the 10% figure wherever that came from. Also, there is no penalty for the size of an I-chop, so one can play with that to get a higher score in other areas. Sure, your approach is a more efficient process I admit, once you have gathered the data base on a spread sheet, which takes a fair amount of work, including knowing where the counties are (so putting the percentages of each county on a map is probably what one should do first perhaps following your method).

Anyway, for scoring,  "your" map is below (as best I could draw it), avoiding subunit chops, assuming that they are penalized in the chop score (as they should be). I must admit "your" MI-04 achieves absolute perfection.  Good luck!

Your cut of Kent is a macro-chop by the way, and in my view should get another penalty point (all macro-chops of any county except those internal to counties in a UCC, should be so penalized in my view. But I guess Muon2's rules (still not absolutely clear to me) just look take into consideration an overall UCC macrochop, including severing a whole county, and after severing a county that is itself a macrochop (or is together with whatever is chopped in another county in the UCC), call it a day.

Oh wait a minute!  While what I said would be potentially applicable in a 3 county UCC, in a two county UCC such as Grand Rapids, I guess that one could view MI-02 as holding the Grand Rapids UCC, and thus whatever is in MI-03 is viewed as the chop, so perhaps there should be no additional penalty point - the midget county in the UCC rules.  Tricky stuff! Anyway, for discussion purposes, with respect to 3 county UCC's, I dissent from Muon2's approach, assuming that is his approach. Two separate macrochops into two different counties in a 3 county UCC, whether being a whole county severance or a county macrochop), should both get an extra penalty point, and of course one would get a penalty point for two I chops into a UCC that together add up to a macrochop.



This version of MI-08 might be better from a road cut standpoint. I leave that to Muon2 to figure out.

[muon2]

Your cut of Kent is a macro-chop by the way, and in my view should get another penalty point (all macro-chops of any county except those internal to counties in a UCC, should be so penalized in my view. But I guess Muon2's rules (still not absolutely clear to me) just look take into consideration an overall UCC macrochop, including severing a whole county, and after severing a county that is itself a macrochop (or is together with whatever is chopped in another county in the UCC), call it a day.

Oh wait a minute!  While what I said would be potentially applicable in a 3 county UCC, in a two county UCC such as Grand Rapids, I guess that one could view MI-02 as holding the Grand Rapids UCC, and thus whatever is in MI-03 is viewed as the chop, so perhaps there should be no additional penalty point - the midget county in the UCC rules.  Tricky stuff! Anyway, for discussion purposes, with respect to 3 county UCC's, I dissent from Muon2's approach, assuming that is his approach. Two separate macrochops into two different counties in a 3 county UCC, whether being a whole county severance or a county macrochop), should both get an extra penalty point, and of course one would get a penalty point for two I chops into a UCC that together add up to a macrochop.



This version of MI-08 might be better from a road cut standpoint. I leave that to Muon2 to figure out.

I don't have time this afternoon to put up a full score, but I thought I would at least address the question about how I am scoring chops in UCCs.

1. Count the number of chops in the UCCs and add it to the score. Both of the above maps score 1 chop for GR, 2 chops for Lansing, and 5 chops for Detroit, only the Lansing chops are above the minimum for their UCC. The total here is 8.

2. Assess whether the chops of the UCCs are macrochops. The GR and Detroit chops are macrochops, as they must be due to the population of the UCC exceeding 105% of the quota. In the first map the total chop size for Lansing, adding both chops together, is 35,749 which is a macrochop since it exceeds 35,298. The Lansing map has an affinity for macrochops right near the threshold, and map 2 intriguingly come in at 35,289 just 9 under the threshold, so it isn't a macrochop. I suspect that affinity has to do with the amount of population in the counties of central MI and the types of arrangements needed to get to the quota, so one is likely to get numbers close to 5% in many plans that place chops in the area.

3. Count the chops in counties that aren't part of UCCs and those that are in in macrochopped UCCs and add those to the score. Outside the UCCs there are 2 such counties with 1 chop each. The GR UCC has one chopped county with 1 chop. The Detroit UCC has three chopped counties with a total of 5 chops. In map 1 the Lansing there are two UCC counties chopped with 1 chop each, but in map 2 there was no macrochop, so the only penalty was for the initial chops. The county total is 10 in map 1 and 8 in map 2.

4. Count any local chops in macrochopped counties. I assume there are the usual 2 in Detroit.

The total CHOP is 20 in map 1 and 18 in map 2. Just like one can take advantage of county arrangements that come in within 0.5% to avoid initial chops, one can take advantage of county arrangements within 5% to avoid macrochops and their additional penalties.

[Torie]

A penalty of 2 rather than 1 for a macrochop into a [multi county only?] UCC, on top of a penalty of 1 for the chop itself, seems excessive to me. Isn't a penalty of one point sufficient for each macrochop? Does a microchop into a UCC also generate a 2 point penalty (while nothing for the microchop itself)?

I figured out in the map above how to get rid of the Detroit hood I chop - barely - so that reduces both maps by one chop, since I used my Detroit area map for Jimtex's maps. In my proposed scheme, the Detroit hood microchop would get a quarter point penalty.

[jimrtex]

Edit: Missaukee not Manistee

Jimtex, I don't think your "instructions" are part of the game, nor the 10% figure wherever that came from. Also, there is no penalty for the size of an I-chop, so one can play with that to get a higher score in other areas. Sure, your approach is a more efficient process I admit, once you have gathered the data base on a spread sheet, which takes a fair amount of work, including knowing where the counties are (so putting the percentages of each county on a map is probably what one should do first perhaps following your method).

Your first map came in at 11.5%.   The version with Osceola (not Manistee Missaukee) shifted came in at 9.1%.  There was no magic about 10%, it was just to indicate the level of equality one can achieve in a state with more populous counties than Iowa.

I believe that is a mistake to not consider the size of the chops.  To paraphrase Reynolds v Sims, people vote, not chops.   To survive a legal challenge, we are going to going to have to establish that reducing county division was of paramount concern.  Stranding 64,000 persons is better than stranding 81,000 unless there was a significant erosity cost.

A commission in Michigan that wanted public participation would provide an application that might have an interface similar to what I drew.  They would publish their numbers, so interested parties could verify them (as you know governments sometimes make mistakes in this area).  They would publish a standard for describing a plan, so that if some drew map with a spreadsheet and paint, they could submit a plan.

In a real app, you would be able to click on the county and it would be painted.  You might be able to draw areas, etc. but that is hardly needed given the relative small number of counties.  One could hover and see the county name, and switch to a satellite layer with translucent colors.  One could show the actual populations, though that is less practical in my experience.

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It wasn't really "my" map.  I found a map on the Internet, and was using it for example.  You've jumped ahead to the next step.  But your going back and forth about whether it is better to split Eaton or Ingham illustrates a weakness of a single comprehensive stage.  It become exceedingly complex when trying to consider where the boundary should be between Grand Rapids and Lansing, when it is somehow tied to the division of Hamtramck.   If your statewide map had been approved, then there could be a simple focused discussion on where to get 13,647 persons, where all the options might be considered.

The switch of Osceola (not Missaukee) was automatic.  When a single county on a boundary can be switched and improve the equality between the two districts, then it is shifted.  The algorithm is simple.   Determine counties in the more populous district that have less population than the difference.   Choose the one that reduces the difference the most, while not breaking contiguity.

I had noticed that the shift of Missaukee would produce a 3rd district within 0.5% bounds.  I'll submit it as a joint effort.

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I would only use road connectivity to control which counties may be directly connected.  In Michigan this is mainly to force the Lake Michigan crossing at the bridge, and to disqualify a few near corner connections.  Within counties I would be inclined to treat contiguity and connectivity as equivalent, other than corner connections of townships.  An exception might be made for a place like King County, WA, where Lake Washington would either have to be crossed on a bridge, or go around the ends of the lake.

[jimrtex]

Here is our collaborative effort with Missaukee rather than Osceola shifted.  The increase in the number shifted is slight, from 9.1% to 9.3%, the number of chops is reduced from 5 to 4, and erosity is reduced.

[muon2]

A penalty of 2 rather than 1 for a macrochop into a [multi county only?] UCC, on top of a penalty of 1 for the chop itself, seems excessive to me. Isn't a penalty of one point sufficient for each macrochop? Does a microchop into a UCC also generate a 2 point penalty (while nothing for the microchop itself)?

When the UCC concept was rolled out, we looked at it from the bottom up. In that view, chops into Clinton and Ingham would count 2 towards the total in all cases. Then since the arrangement had two more districts than the minimum it would be assessed a 2-point penalty. The total is 4 points. I thought that was generally agreed, since that was how we would run up the score to punish my "bad" map in 2013.

Now look at how I scored that map 1. I took it from the top down. A tri-chop of the UCC counts 2 and two separate county chops makes the total equal to 4. It's the same as it always was.

What I changed in this version softened the impact for chops of the UCC that were minor. I still count the tri-chop in map 2, just not the county chops (since it isn't a macrochop of the UCC). If you want to view it as counting the two county chops, but ignoring the UCC tri-chop because it is sufficiently small, you may. You get a score of 2 in either case.

Suppose one of those two chops in map 1 were a microchop and microchops didn't count against the chop total, but the total was still a macrochop (which is what I think you are asking, though I thought you didn't like them and I'm trying my best to ignore them here). Then the UCC would have two chops, but one didn't count in the score. The microchop still counts in the total chop size so it's still a macrochop. There are two counties with chops, but the microchopped county doesn't score. Net result is a chop count of 2.

You might ask if all UCC macro-tri-chops count double. Nope. Suppose all of Clinton were in CD 4, and a piece of Ingham were chopped off of CD 8 into CD 11. There's a tri-chop of the UCC for a score of 2, but only one county is chopped for a score of 1. The total is 3.

[traininthedistance]

Quick question that I missed the answer to: if, say, you have a large multi-district UCC, and you have the minimum number of districts in it, but more than one of those districts crosses the UCC boundary, does that give you any extra penalty?  What if, say, there's a county that is not part of the UCC but is literally only accessible through the UCC, does that get mulliganed or not?

Spoiler alert: in particular I'm thinking about various ways to draw the Pittsburgh area.  It has to take at least parts of four districts but do three of them need to be entirely within the UCC, especially with non-UCC Greene in the corner mucking things up?

[jimrtex]

Quick question that I missed the answer to: if, say, you have a large multi-district UCC, and you have the minimum number of districts in it, but more than one of those districts crosses the UCC boundary, does that give you any extra penalty?  What if, say, there's a county that is not part of the UCC but is literally only accessible through the UCC, does that get mulliganed or not?

Spoiler alert: in particular I'm thinking about various ways to draw the Pittsburgh area.  It has to take at least parts of four districts but do three of them need to be entirely within the UCC, especially with non-UCC Greene in the corner mucking things up?

The Pittsburgh UCC requires 4 districts, so Greene can be included.  I'm ambivalent whether you have one district with just a small portion of the UCC, or two districts that are closer to 1/2 and 1/2, or perhaps three districts that extend outside the UCC, if one includes Greene.  I'd probably try to put Greene with a district that comes in from the east.  Fayette is fairly remote from Pittsburgh, in likely gets pulled into the UCC based on settlement along the Monongahela.  Then if could reach Erie, I'd have the other district heading that way.  If I couldn't reach Erie, I'd go east so as to leave as much population north of the UCC to put in the Erie district.

In Virginia, I included Accomack and Northampton with the Hampton Roads UCC, and stripped some of the UCC off the north.  That was based on the region between the James and Potomac being rather short of population, and it also needed some of the excess from the Washington UCC. Conceivably you could cross the Chesapeake, as has been done in the past based on some COI argument, even though there are no longer ferries operating.

[muon2]

Quick question that I missed the answer to: if, say, you have a large multi-district UCC, and you have the minimum number of districts in it, but more than one of those districts crosses the UCC boundary, does that give you any extra penalty?  What if, say, there's a county that is not part of the UCC but is literally only accessible through the UCC, does that get mulliganed or not?

Spoiler alert: in particular I'm thinking about various ways to draw the Pittsburgh area.  It has to take at least parts of four districts but do three of them need to be entirely within the UCC, especially with non-UCC Greene in the corner mucking things up?

My interpretation is that you count the number of districts in the UCC. Whether or not those districts spill into other counties, or even other UCCs doesn't affect the counting within the UCC. Basically, put blinders on and just address each UCC on its own. It's no different than with county chops, where it doesn't matter how many other counties a district extends into, one just focuses on the county in question.

It's entirely possible that a county not in the UCC is isolated by the UCC. It's also possible that the isolated county plus the UCC would cause the minimum number of districts to increase. Nevertheless, one just counts the chops in the UCC, and in this case everyone would need at least one more district to comply. Since it's the relative number that matters, adding one to all plans doesn't change their ranking.

[jimrtex]

This is based on what Muon has labelled as Torie 2015 C.  Its main feature is no chops needed for the Grand Rapids region.   Note I required this to be within 0.5% x sqrt(2) of 2 quotas, which is barely.  Otherwise, you have a bit of systemic population bias.



There is an alternate that would move the shift from Flint to Detroit to Flint to Saginaw Bay, reduce the shift northward from Lansing to Saginaw Bay, and increase the shift eastward from Lansing to Detroit.

[Torie]

A penalty of 2 rather than 1 for a macrochop into a [multi county only?] UCC, on top of a penalty of 1 for the chop itself, seems excessive to me. Isn't a penalty of one point sufficient for each macrochop? Does a microchop into a UCC also generate a 2 point penalty (while nothing for the microchop itself)?

When the UCC concept was rolled out, we looked at it from the bottom up. In that view, chops into Clinton and Ingham would count 2 towards the total in all cases. Then since the arrangement had two more districts than the minimum it would be assessed a 2-point penalty. The total is 4 points. I thought that was generally agreed, since that was how we would run up the score to punish my "bad" map in 2013.

Now look at how I scored that map 1. I took it from the top down. A tri-chop of the UCC counts 2 and two separate county chops makes the total equal to 4. It's the same as it always was.

What I changed in this version softened the impact for chops of the UCC that were minor. I still count the tri-chop in map 2, just not the county chops (since it isn't a macrochop of the UCC). If you want to view it as counting the two county chops, but ignoring the UCC tri-chop because it is sufficiently small, you may. You get a score of 2 in either case.

Suppose one of those two chops in map 1 were a microchop and microchops didn't count against the chop total, but the total was still a macrochop (which is what I think you are asking, though I thought you didn't like them and I'm trying my best to ignore them here). Then the UCC would have two chops, but one didn't count in the score. The microchop still counts in the total chop size so it's still a macrochop. There are two counties with chops, but the microchopped county doesn't score. Net result is a chop count of 2.

You might ask if all UCC macro-tri-chops count double. Nope. Suppose all of Clinton were in CD 4, and a piece of Ingham were chopped off of CD 8 into CD 11. There's a tri-chop of the UCC for a score of 2, but only one county is chopped for a score of 1. The total is 3.

I understand now your system.  It raises two issues. The first is whether the huge incentive it creates to have just one macrochop into a UCC, rather than two I chops into a UCC that add up to a macrochop, should generate a 2 rather than 1 point incremental penalty. Yes, it deserves some penalty, but if you make it too large, it has the potential to swamp competing map considerations. The second is whether a macrochop into a UCC should be penalized in a way a macrochop into a non UCC county, would not be (or as has been discussed, for scoring purposes, UCC's must be multi county UCC's to become sacred cows as it were). Which scoring system ultimately makes for better maps?  It may be that UCC's, would be adequately protected, without becoming sacred cows, by just universally penalizing macrochops (adding up all the chops into a county), and counting a whole county severence of a multi county UCC as a chop. The real idea is how much of a UCC or populous county is in CD's outside the UCC or populous county that should be within. Each such 5% increment would count as one penalty point. I am not persuaded that the one point penalty should apply to county chops internal to the UCC (or two points if the internal chop is itself a macrochop (if I understand that right)).

[muon2]

A penalty of 2 rather than 1 for a macrochop into a [multi county only?] UCC, on top of a penalty of 1 for the chop itself, seems excessive to me. Isn't a penalty of one point sufficient for each macrochop? Does a microchop into a UCC also generate a 2 point penalty (while nothing for the microchop itself)?

When the UCC concept was rolled out, we looked at it from the bottom up. In that view, chops into Clinton and Ingham would count 2 towards the total in all cases. Then since the arrangement had two more districts than the minimum it would be assessed a 2-point penalty. The total is 4 points. I thought that was generally agreed, since that was how we would run up the score to punish my "bad" map in 2013.

Now look at how I scored that map 1. I took it from the top down. A tri-chop of the UCC counts 2 and two separate county chops makes the total equal to 4. It's the same as it always was.

What I changed in this version softened the impact for chops of the UCC that were minor. I still count the tri-chop in map 2, just not the county chops (since it isn't a macrochop of the UCC). If you want to view it as counting the two county chops, but ignoring the UCC tri-chop because it is sufficiently small, you may. You get a score of 2 in either case.

Suppose one of those two chops in map 1 were a microchop and microchops didn't count against the chop total, but the total was still a macrochop (which is what I think you are asking, though I thought you didn't like them and I'm trying my best to ignore them here). Then the UCC would have two chops, but one didn't count in the score. The microchop still counts in the total chop size so it's still a macrochop. There are two counties with chops, but the microchopped county doesn't score. Net result is a chop count of 2.

You might ask if all UCC macro-tri-chops count double. Nope. Suppose all of Clinton were in CD 4, and a piece of Ingham were chopped off of CD 8 into CD 11. There's a tri-chop of the UCC for a score of 2, but only one county is chopped for a score of 1. The total is 3.

I understand now your system.  It raises two issues. The first is whether the huge incentive it creates to have just one macrochop into a UCC, rather than two I chops into a UCC that add up to a macrochop, should generate a 2 rather than 1 point incremental penalty. Yes, it deserves some penalty, but if you make it too large, it has the potential to swamp competing map considerations. The second is whether a macrochop into a UCC should be penalized in a way a macrochop into a non UCC county, would not be (or as has been discussed, for scoring purposes, UCC's must be multi county UCC's to become sacred cows as it were). Which scoring system ultimately makes for better maps?  It may be that UCC's, would be adequately protected, without becoming sacred cows, by just universally penalizing macrochops (adding up all the chops into a county), and counting a whole county severence of a multi county UCC as a chop. The real idea is how much of a UCC or populous county is in CD's outside the UCC or populous county that should be within. Each such 5% increment would count as one penalty point. I am not persuaded that the one point penalty should apply to county chops internal to the UCC (or two points if the internal chop is itself a macrochop (if I understand that right)).

Think it might be better to look at the Detroit UCC to decide how the penalty should be applied. The issue is not whether there is a whole county chop, but if the Detroit area is being excessively fanned out into the neighboring counties. We measure that by counting the number of districts that cover the Detroit UCC. If that number exceeds 6, then the scoring system should reflect that excess. Note that this is a statement independent of the number of chops in the Detroit UCC counties. If you just count the county chops in the Detroit UCC, it doesn't necessarily tell you whether the total number of districts has exceeded the minimum.