Per SCOTUS, initiative created redistricting commissions may be l'histoire

[jimrtex]

I gave you the end of free microchops and start of penalties for UCC underpacks, so I think have been eminently reasonable when I comes to good ideas that have demonstrable value. However on this one there is public value to disallow any districts where you can't drive from one part of the district to another without passing through other districts. The only exception I consider is when a county is disconnected internally due to water, deserts or mountains and the plan keeps the county whole. As to the public acceptance I will simply cite the Washington state statute on redistricting (RCW 44.05.090), "Areas separated by geographical boundaries or artificial barriers that prevent transportation within a district should not be deemed contiguous." That is very good public policy IMO and has been recommended at many panels I have attended as a strong tool to fight gerrymandering.

What is an example of either a geographical boundary or artificial barrier that prevents transportation within a district?

In WA it is primarily the Cascades where major highways are needed to justify a link, and Puget Sound where only ferries and bridges count as connections. In principle it can apply to any other part of geography that interrupts transportation.

The Cascades and Puget Sound are not artificial barriers.

The two I listed are geographical. I believe that an example of an artificial barrier would be a road along a boundary between two areas without a road that separately connects into each of those areas.

Mountain ranges and bodies of water are not boundaries.   It appears that Washington did a poor job of expressing the concept,

[traininthedistance]

For the record, I agree with Muon that districts should be required to have year-round internal connectivity (don't cross the Cascades with only seasonal trails), with perhaps exceptions for stuff like the Alaskan Bush and Hawaii.  This does not have to be via roads: ferry service and passenger rail are also acceptable, though there are few places where that actually makes a difference (Puget Sound and NYC are the only two that immediately come to mind).

[Torie]

In other news, with the Pubs winning the trifecta in Nevada of all places in 2014, there was chatter of new CD lines being drawn, but apparently the Pubs were wise enough to see the writing on the wall, and suggest - well, you guessed it - a commission to draw the lines, and then only in 2022. The latest iteration given perhaps the SCOTUS chat, was making the commission but advisory, because the legislature could vote the plan down (but maybe absent one party holding the trifecta, it would become law absent a bi-partisan deal for something else).  

Anyway, if the lines were drawn per Muon2's little rules, I suspect the below would be the top scoring plan (at least from the chop standpoint), if one slavishly follows Muon2's tyrannical edict that there must be highway connections between land masses (which has the most unfortunate consequences for the Pubs here given the North Las Vegas blockage). Thus, it's a plan that the Pubs most definitely would not like, and not be drawing themselves. Sometimes the rules work well for the Pubs, as in AZ for example, and sometimes they suck, and for them the other side of the River Styx is a river named the Colorado.

[muon2]

Indeed the connections are not friendly in NV. There are two counties where a majority of the population is disconnected from the seat of government (Esmeralda and Nye). Here is the connection map I put together last year. The yellow lines indicate state highway connections to the isolated population centers, and could be used to establish internal connectivity.



If one is willing to give up a county chop to reduce erosity, then Henderson can be linked to Nye. Within Clark this only chops Paradise. With higher inequality, Mineral could be moved to CD 2.

[Torie]

You  have a double chop of Paradise. One precinct from your NV-4 is entirely within Paradise, and two or three more have most of their population in Paradise. I could have done a double chop of Paradise too, but decided it better to do the second chop in another jurisdiction (not sure of the name of the place directly east of Las Vegas).

[muon2]

You  have a double chop of Paradise. One precinct from your NV-4 is entirely within Paradise, and two or three more have most of their population in Paradise. I could have done a double chop of Paradise too, but decided it better to do the second chop in another jurisdiction (not sure of the name of the place directly east of Las Vegas).

Thanks for the catch. I thought I had all overlapping precincts. If I place that one in CD 1 the population is still OK. If I place the overlapping precincts (or some fraction of them) in CD 1 then CD 4 needs to pick up the shore of Lake Mead and Moapa Valley to rebalance the population with some loss of erosity (but not that much since it's largely open desert). That gets the Clark muni chop back to 1.

[traininthedistance]

You  have a double chop of Paradise. One precinct from your NV-4 is entirely within Paradise, and two or three more have most of their population in Paradise. I could have done a double chop of Paradise too, but decided it better to do the second chop in another jurisdiction (not sure of the name of the place directly east of Las Vegas).

Thanks for the catch. I thought I had all overlapping precincts. If I place that one in CD 1 the population is still OK. If I place the overlapping precincts (or some fraction of them) in CD 1 then CD 4 needs to pick up the shore of Lake Mead and Moapa Valley to rebalance the population with some loss of erosity (but not that much since it's largely open desert). That gets the Clark muni chop back to 1.

Well, another difficulty in NV (and, really, in much of the South and West) is that precincts don't line up with town lines.  Like, okay, you have to split Paradise because of all the precincts it shares with Enterprise and Winchester. 

I would think that there could, instead, be some sort of effort to fudge a standardized boundary that counts as non-chopped, and which is as close to actual as you can get.  (And, perhaps, that effort might want to make sure to distinguish between what are actual incorporated towns, and what are just CDPs.)

Cutting the voting districts to conform to town boundaries would be a good thing to do in reality... but we can't do so here in DRA.  You need to dig into the weeds of GIS to get it done.

...

As for those NV counties where the center of population and county seat are disconnected... possibly we could cut them and make fictitious counties which are internally contiguous, and draw based on that?

[muon2]

You  have a double chop of Paradise. One precinct from your NV-4 is entirely within Paradise, and two or three more have most of their population in Paradise. I could have done a double chop of Paradise too, but decided it better to do the second chop in another jurisdiction (not sure of the name of the place directly east of Las Vegas).

Thanks for the catch. I thought I had all overlapping precincts. If I place that one in CD 1 the population is still OK. If I place the overlapping precincts (or some fraction of them) in CD 1 then CD 4 needs to pick up the shore of Lake Mead and Moapa Valley to rebalance the population with some loss of erosity (but not that much since it's largely open desert). That gets the Clark muni chop back to 1.

Well, another difficulty in NV (and, really, in much of the South and West) is that precincts don't line up with town lines.  Like, okay, you have to split Paradise because of all the precincts it shares with Enterprise and Winchester. 

I would think that there could, instead, be some sort of effort to fudge a standardized boundary that counts as non-chopped, and which is as close to actual as you can get.  (And, perhaps, that effort might want to make sure to distinguish between what are actual incorporated towns, and what are just CDPs.)

Cutting the voting districts to conform to town boundaries would be a good thing to do in reality... but we can't do so here in DRA.  You need to dig into the weeds of GIS to get it done.

...

As for those NV counties where the center of population and county seat are disconnected... possibly we could cut them and make fictitious counties which are internally contiguous, and draw based on that?

For the VA maps I was making a best approximation to the actual lines using precincts, and I used the same method for the Detroit hoods. The mapping exercise shouldn't be dependent on the chance that certain jurisdictions add up exactly, so as long as there is agreement about the precinct-level boundaries in advance then the task is a fair representation of what would happen with actual boundaries at a commission.

To calculate erosity it is necessary to fully assign every precinct to a county subdivision. Clark county only has 5 recognized cities: Boulder City, Henderson, Las Vegas, Mesquite, and North Las Vegas. All the other communities on DRA are unincorporated Census-designated places (CDPs). That's part of why the precincts overlap those boundaries. Presumably areas not in a city or CDP have to be assigned to a CDP.

My view of the internally disconnected counties is to treat them as whole counties, but allow state highway connections to the county through the disconnected parts as shown by the yellow lines. Cutting yellow lines doesn't add to erosity, nor does a chop that separates the disconnected parts. A chop is still a chop however.

[traininthedistance]

For the VA maps I was making a best approximation to the actual lines using precincts, and I used the same method for the Detroit hoods. The mapping exercise shouldn't be dependent on the chance that certain jurisdictions add up exactly, so as long as there is agreement about the precinct-level boundaries in advance then the task is a fair representation of what would happen with actual boundaries at a commission.

To calculate erosity it is necessary to fully assign every precinct to a county subdivision. Clark county only has 5 recognized cities: Boulder City, Henderson, Las Vegas, Mesquite, and North Las Vegas. All the other communities on DRA are unincorporated Census-designated places (CDPs). That's part of why the precincts overlap those boundaries. Presumably areas not in a city or CDP have to be assigned to a CDP.

My view of the internally disconnected counties is to treat them as whole counties, but allow state highway connections to the county through the disconnected parts as shown by the yellow lines. Cutting yellow lines doesn't add to erosity, nor does a chop that separates the disconnected parts. A chop is still a chop however.

Even Paradise is merely a CDP?  Huh, guess it is.  Forgot that detail.

Yeah, guess you just have to assign precincts to town-equivalents (which will overlap with CDPs when they can).

Your solution for the internally disconnected counties makes some sense.  But I'd still like to see districts that are internally contiguous, and I suspect that might be better protected by pseudo-counties, e.g. in the case of Stevens Pass in King, WA.

[jimrtex]

You  have a double chop of Paradise. One precinct from your NV-4 is entirely within Paradise, and two or three more have most of their population in Paradise. I could have done a double chop of Paradise too, but decided it better to do the second chop in another jurisdiction (not sure of the name of the place directly east of Las Vegas).

Thanks for the catch. I thought I had all overlapping precincts. If I place that one in CD 1 the population is still OK. If I place the overlapping precincts (or some fraction of them) in CD 1 then CD 4 needs to pick up the shore of Lake Mead and Moapa Valley to rebalance the population with some loss of erosity (but not that much since it's largely open desert). That gets the Clark muni chop back to 1.

Well, another difficulty in NV (and, really, in much of the South and West) is that precincts don't line up with town lines.  Like, okay, you have to split Paradise because of all the precincts it shares with Enterprise and Winchester. 

I would think that there could, instead, be some sort of effort to fudge a standardized boundary that counts as non-chopped, and which is as close to actual as you can get.  (And, perhaps, that effort might want to make sure to distinguish between what are actual incorporated towns, and what are just CDPs.)

Cutting the voting districts to conform to town boundaries would be a good thing to do in reality... but we can't do so here in DRA.  You need to dig into the weeds of GIS to get it done.

...

As for those NV counties where the center of population and county seat are disconnected... possibly we could cut them and make fictitious counties which are internally contiguous, and draw based on that?

You could split the precincts on the city boundaries.

[muon2]

You  have a double chop of Paradise. One precinct from your NV-4 is entirely within Paradise, and two or three more have most of their population in Paradise. I could have done a double chop of Paradise too, but decided it better to do the second chop in another jurisdiction (not sure of the name of the place directly east of Las Vegas).

Thanks for the catch. I thought I had all overlapping precincts. If I place that one in CD 1 the population is still OK. If I place the overlapping precincts (or some fraction of them) in CD 1 then CD 4 needs to pick up the shore of Lake Mead and Moapa Valley to rebalance the population with some loss of erosity (but not that much since it's largely open desert). That gets the Clark muni chop back to 1.

Well, another difficulty in NV (and, really, in much of the South and West) is that precincts don't line up with town lines.  Like, okay, you have to split Paradise because of all the precincts it shares with Enterprise and Winchester. 

I would think that there could, instead, be some sort of effort to fudge a standardized boundary that counts as non-chopped, and which is as close to actual as you can get.  (And, perhaps, that effort might want to make sure to distinguish between what are actual incorporated towns, and what are just CDPs.)

Cutting the voting districts to conform to town boundaries would be a good thing to do in reality... but we can't do so here in DRA.  You need to dig into the weeds of GIS to get it done.

...

As for those NV counties where the center of population and county seat are disconnected... possibly we could cut them and make fictitious counties which are internally contiguous, and draw based on that?

You could split the precincts on the city boundaries.

We are constrained to DRA for mapping software, and the 2010 data is given by VTD. If you know of another free web product that has finer granularity, I'm sure we'll be interested.

[traininthedistance]

Anyway, if the lines were drawn per Muon2's little rules, I suspect the below would be the top scoring plan (at least from the chop standpoint), if one slavishly follows Muon2's tyrannical edict that there must be highway connections between land masses (which has the most unfortunate consequences for the Pubs here given the North Las Vegas blockage). Thus, it's a plan that the Pubs most definitely would not like, and not be drawing themselves. Sometimes the rules work well for the Pubs, as in AZ for example, and sometimes they suck, and for them the other side of the River Styx is a river named the Colorado.

The lines outside of Clark are unfortunate... but that's gonna be true of any four-district map– Nevada just doesn't work very well with that number.  And it would probably be 2-2 in an even year (yes, the Henderson district went Obama, but those numbers aren't a trustworthy baseline I don't think). I might shift a couple of those unpopulated precincts north of North Las Vegas from 3 to 1 to make it look prettier, but it makes no actual difference.

This map is not that bad for the Pubs.

[Torie]

If a whole county is disconnected internally, pay it no mind if not chopped. That is over-thinking matters. But chopping that county between its two disconnected parts, perhaps should not count as a chop. i fear that is getting too complicated however.

[jimrtex]

You  have a double chop of Paradise. One precinct from your NV-4 is entirely within Paradise, and two or three more have most of their population in Paradise. I could have done a double chop of Paradise too, but decided it better to do the second chop in another jurisdiction (not sure of the name of the place directly east of Las Vegas).

Thanks for the catch. I thought I had all overlapping precincts. If I place that one in CD 1 the population is still OK. If I place the overlapping precincts (or some fraction of them) in CD 1 then CD 4 needs to pick up the shore of Lake Mead and Moapa Valley to rebalance the population with some loss of erosity (but not that much since it's largely open desert). That gets the Clark muni chop back to 1.

Well, another difficulty in NV (and, really, in much of the South and West) is that precincts don't line up with town lines.  Like, okay, you have to split Paradise because of all the precincts it shares with Enterprise and Winchester. 

I would think that there could, instead, be some sort of effort to fudge a standardized boundary that counts as non-chopped, and which is as close to actual as you can get.  (And, perhaps, that effort might want to make sure to distinguish between what are actual incorporated towns, and what are just CDPs.)

Cutting the voting districts to conform to town boundaries would be a good thing to do in reality... but we can't do so here in DRA.  You need to dig into the weeds of GIS to get it done.

...

As for those NV counties where the center of population and county seat are disconnected... possibly we could cut them and make fictitious counties which are internally contiguous, and draw based on that?

You could split the precincts on the city boundaries.

We are constrained to DRA for mapping software, and the 2010 data is given by VTD. If you know of another free web product that has finer granularity, I'm sure we'll be interested.

How many precincts are split?

You can export a precinct based CSV file from DRA.  It would be relatively simple to produced adjusted populations.

[Miles]

Wasserman redraws CA. He mostly just shores up the more vulnerable Democrats and gets rid of Valadao.

[Sbane]

Wasserman redraws CA. He mostly just shores up the more vulnerable Democrats and gets rid of Valadao.

At the very least, Denham and Knight could be put in swing districts in addition to getting rid of Valadao. There is no reason to strengthen the other districts to the extent that he did.

[muon2]

Wasserman redraws CA. He mostly just shores up the more vulnerable Democrats and gets rid of Valadao.

At the very least, Denham and Knight could be put in swing districts in addition to getting rid of Valadao. There is no reason to strengthen the other districts to the extent that he did.

You are thinking like the chair of the DNC as opposed to a member of the CA Assembly. State lawmakers have working relationships with their federal counterparts, and that relationship is important to get federal funds and projects to the state. It is much better from a local political perspective to have secure members of Congress than ones who are always worried about an upcoming tough election. CA was well known for creating bipartisan incumbent protection maps prior to the Commission this cycle.