NY with 26 CDs in 2020

[Torie]

Towns rule over villages. Cities and Towns have equal status. What did I do wrong in Westchester?  Is there a better way to do it? Something has to be chopped it appears to me.



In other news, my residual CD, that orphan child, NY-06, has too many people in it, and I can’t figure out the source of the error. Help!   Oh, NY-04 does not have enough people. Never mind. I will deal with that tomorrow.



The 3 black CD’s are all a bit over 50% BVAP (well, NY-05 is 49.9%), my NY-12 has about 55.1% HVAP, NY-15 is at 62.4% HVAP, and NY-14 is at 54.2% HVAP.

[muon2]

Everything south of North Castle and Greenburgh is a good fit for 16 CDs. You have chopped Greenburgh to peel off the river villages. I like the line keeping all of Greenburgh in the north. That leaves the question of where to get the extra pop for the Rockland/Orange CD. I'll look at the options.

[Torie]

Here is the corrected map. NY-05 is at 50.0% BVAP. I found that it had about 5,000 too many people, and that allowed getting rid of a Nassau County chop.  I jiggled the lines in Westchester a little bit, to get rid of a town chop between NY-17 and NY-18.   FWIW, I drew the lines between NY-04 and NY-06 hewing to ward lines and minimize ward chops (unless too erose, but that did come not into play here because I found the degree of erosity tolerable), except I had to chop one precinct out of NY-04 to connect NY-06 to the Bronx, and then with respect to the other ward that was chopped, I tried to keep as much as possible the Asians in NY-06, unless the lines got too erose, in which event avoiding excessive erosity took precedence.   Nevertheless there was some division of the Asian population, with NY-04 20.1 % AVAP, and NY-06 24.7% AVAP.

NY-06, the way I drew, is probably the most ethnically heterodox CD in the US:  32.4% WVAP, 24.7% AVAP, 23.6% HVAP, and 17.2% BVAP.  ☺ I wonder what it will be like in 2022.  Given the VRA, I suspect something like it will have to be drawn (well the map makers might not care about NY-04 making a traveling chop to the Bronx through Queens, and/or caring whether there is a bridge connection, but I digress).  I did try to draw NY-04 so that it took the entire southern tier of NY-06, and lost its northern Queens salient, so that NY-06 had a better shape, but the population numbers did not work.

NY-03 is the green CD, and NY-02 is the brown CD by the way. That is the way they are currently numbered.

 

[traininthedistance]

NY-06, the way I drew, is probably the most ethnically heterodox CD in the US:  32.4% WVAP, 24.7% AVAP, 23.6% HVAP, and 17.2% BVAP.  ☺ I wonder what it will be like in 2022.  Given the VRA, I suspect something like it will have to be drawn (well the map makers might not care about NY-04 making a traveling chop to the Bronx through Queens, and/or caring whether there is a bridge connection, but I digress).  I did try to draw NY-04 so that it took the entire southern tier of NY-06, and lost its northern Queens salient, so that NY-06 had a better shape, but the population numbers did not work.

Well, the current NY-6 is already 37% Asian (and rising!) and represented by Grace Meng.  I don't think people will take kindly to blowing that up.

Also, I didn't notice this before, but nice work chopping Borough Park to keep NY-11 Pub.  That was slick.  If you're going to draw that Southern Brooklyn Pub district, least you can do is keep all the Hasids together.

[Torie]

NY-06, the way I drew, is probably the most ethnically heterodox CD in the US:  32.4% WVAP, 24.7% AVAP, 23.6% HVAP, and 17.2% BVAP.  ☺ I wonder what it will be like in 2022.  Given the VRA, I suspect something like it will have to be drawn (well the map makers might not care about NY-04 making a traveling chop to the Bronx through Queens, and/or caring whether there is a bridge connection, but I digress).  I did try to draw NY-04 so that it took the entire southern tier of NY-06, and lost its northern Queens salient, so that NY-06 had a better shape, but the population numbers did not work.

Well, the current NY-6 is already 37% Asian (and rising!) and represented by Grace Meng.  I don't think people will take kindly to blowing that up.

Also, I didn't notice this before, but nice work chopping Borough Park to keep NY-11 Pub.  That was slick.  If you're going to draw that Southern Brooklyn Pub district, least you can do is keep all the Hasids together.

COI does not count (except for VRA considerations). I followed ward lines between NY-08 and NY-11. Prior to doing that, I made the line as straight as possible, but my protocol is that following ward lines takes precedence (unless the erosity by doing so becomes too grotesque), so the line became somewhat more jagged. In any event. there is no other place for NY-11 to reasonably go, other than into the NY-08 Pub zone. Finally, the PVI difference, whatever it does, is marginal.  You really don't trust my good faith in drawing these maps do you Train. 

[traininthedistance]

NY-06, the way I drew, is probably the most ethnically heterodox CD in the US:  32.4% WVAP, 24.7% AVAP, 23.6% HVAP, and 17.2% BVAP.  ☺ I wonder what it will be like in 2022.  Given the VRA, I suspect something like it will have to be drawn (well the map makers might not care about NY-04 making a traveling chop to the Bronx through Queens, and/or caring whether there is a bridge connection, but I digress).  I did try to draw NY-04 so that it took the entire southern tier of NY-06, and lost its northern Queens salient, so that NY-06 had a better shape, but the population numbers did not work.

Well, the current NY-6 is already 37% Asian (and rising!) and represented by Grace Meng.  I don't think people will take kindly to blowing that up.

Also, I didn't notice this before, but nice work chopping Borough Park to keep NY-11 Pub.  That was slick.  If you're going to draw that Southern Brooklyn Pub district, least you can do is keep all the Hasids together.

COI does not count (except for VRA considerations). I followed ward lines between NY-08 and NY-11. Prior to doing that, I made the line as straight as possible, but my protocol is that following ward lines takes precedence (unless the erosity by doing so becomes too grotesque), so the line became somewhat more jagged. In any event. there is no other place for NY-11 to reasonably go, other than into the NY-08 Pub zone. Finally, the PVI difference, whatever it does, is marginal.  You really don't trust my good faith in drawing these maps do you Train.  

Well, which lines are you even using as "wards"?  Looks like it's certainly not the CB districts, which would be the best option (with the caveat that they are large enough that some splits would still be necessary).  They don't even match up with City Council districts or anything– I'm now quite confused as to what it is you're working off of here.

And NY-11 would be better off taking the rest of Dyker Heights.  Yes, it's marginal, but it so obviously makes much more sense for both districts.

[jimrtex]

Thanks for the elaboration. "Straddle" means the line of the urbanized area is connected at some point (no matter how small) to the county line of the other UCC county?

Straddle means the urbanized area is in two or more counties.

Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas are collectively Core-Based Statistical Areas (CBSA).

The core of a CBSA is an urban area with a population greater than 10,000.  This includes urbanized areas, which have a population greater than 50,000, but urban clusters with a population greater than 10,000.

The census bureau first defines the central counties of potential.  Central counties are based on the UA with the largest population within a county.  In the Rochester area, the Rochester urbanized area is the most populous urban area in Monroe and Ontario counties.  But the Newark urban cluster is the largest urban area in Wayne County.  Newark UC has 13K population in the county vs. about 12K for the Rochester UA.

So Monroe and Ontario are the central counties for a potential Rochester, NY CBSA, while Wayne is a central county for a potential Newark, NY CBSA.  Outlying counties are added based on commuting patterns into the central counties.  In this process, central counties of a potential  CBSA can become an outlying county of another CBSA.

In this case, Wayne became an outlying county of the Rochester, NY CBSA, and there is no Newark, NY CBSA.   Livingston, Orleans, and Yates are the other outlying counties of the Rochester, NY CBSA.  Yates is included based on commuting into Monroe and Ontario counties, while there is likely commuting into Rochester from Yates, I suspect that most of the commuting is into Ontario County.

A county can become a central county with just a very small part of a urbanized area (5000) so long as the urbanized area is the largest in the county.  Wayne has enough of the Rochester UA for it to be a central county of the Rochester CBSA - it is just that Newark is slightly larger.

The 25K standard for a UCC requires a larger dense population than the census bureau does for making a county a central county.

[Torie]

NY-06, the way I drew, is probably the most ethnically heterodox CD in the US:  32.4% WVAP, 24.7% AVAP, 23.6% HVAP, and 17.2% BVAP.  ☺ I wonder what it will be like in 2022.  Given the VRA, I suspect something like it will have to be drawn (well the map makers might not care about NY-04 making a traveling chop to the Bronx through Queens, and/or caring whether there is a bridge connection, but I digress).  I did try to draw NY-04 so that it took the entire southern tier of NY-06, and lost its northern Queens salient, so that NY-06 had a better shape, but the population numbers did not work.

Well, the current NY-6 is already 37% Asian (and rising!) and represented by Grace Meng.  I don't think people will take kindly to blowing that up.

Also, I didn't notice this before, but nice work chopping Borough Park to keep NY-11 Pub.  That was slick.  If you're going to draw that Southern Brooklyn Pub district, least you can do is keep all the Hasids together.

COI does not count (except for VRA considerations). I followed ward lines between NY-08 and NY-11. Prior to doing that, I made the line as straight as possible, but my protocol is that following ward lines takes precedence (unless the erosity by doing so becomes too grotesque), so the line became somewhat more jagged. In any event. there is no other place for NY-11 to reasonably go, other than into the NY-08 Pub zone. Finally, the PVI difference, whatever it does, is marginal.  You really don't trust my good faith in drawing these maps do you Train.  

Well, which lines are you even using as "wards"?  Looks like it's certainly not the CB districts, which would be the best option (with the caveat that they are large enough that some splits would still be necessary).  They don't even match up with City Council districts or anything– I'm now quite confused as to what it is you're working off of here.

And NY-11 would be better off taking the rest of Dyker Heights.  Yes, it's marginal, but it so obviously makes much more sense for both districts.

Below is a map showing the ward lines.  I see that I did chop four precincts out of Ward 49. Whether I just missed those, or decided to cheat a bit to reduce erosity, I don’t remember. I probably just missed them. It’s erosity city there.  



If I put the four precincts in Ward 49 back into NY-08 where they belong, NY-11 moves 20 basis points to the Dems. My bad.



I originally had clean lines, ignoring ward lines.  That map below is 70 basis points more Dem.



You want to ignore ward lines, and try to move NY-11 into Bensonhurst (I see now you modified you post, and it's now Dyker Heights - whatever)? You can’t get there (to Bensonhurst). But if you go in to direction per the below, it does not change the PVI from the clean line map.



You want to chop another ward rather than Ward 48? The only other candidate is Ward 49, and that means NY-11 has to take heavily Dem Sunset Park (otherwise the map will look insane).  The map below does that. It’s the most Pub of all, 20 basis points more Pub than the map I drew to which you took exception .



Well, I take that back. It's not so horrible. 90 basis points more Dem. But in comparing my map as corrected, and a map chopping Ward 49, I suspect most people would find my map less erose. Your mileage may vary. For some reason, what folks like best, tends to favor their political party oddly enough, however.



Anyway, I went through all this bother, because this is a good object lesson as to why one needs to have objective criteria, and the DRA utility shows ward numbers, so those are useable.  Without objective criteria, one is exposed even when acting in the best of faith, of gaming.  Folks don’t like their motives being questioned. I certainly don’t. It kind of angers me.  So I am going to stick to objective criteria.  Sure, one must pick the ward to chop, but I think the maps above clearly demonstrate that Ward 48 is the best one to chop. The only subjective issue remaining is whether to do more than one chop, where the lines get ludicrously erose. And that is possible in some parts of NYC, because clearly the ward lines have themselves been gerrymandered. But in most places, one can work with them.

[traininthedistance]

the DRA utility shows ward numbers, so those are useable.  

GIGO.  They are profoundly not useable.  NYC doesn't use wards.  You want to go by the community boards instead:



I honestly have no idea what that numbering scheme in DRA is even referring to.  It's not any current lines, not CBs or City Council or anything like that.

EDIT: Oh, wait: it's based on the 2000-2010 Assembly districts.  I hope you can see why they shouldn't be used.  Explains why they're so awful.

[Torie]

the DRA utility shows ward numbers, so those are useable.  

GIGO.  They are profoundly not useable.  NYC doesn't use wards.  You want to go by the community boards instead:



I honestly have no idea what that numbering scheme in DRA is even referring to.  It's not any current lines, not CBs or City Council or anything like that.

EDIT: Oh, wait: it's based on the 2000-2010 Assembly districts.  I hope you can see why they shouldn't be used.  Explains why they're so awful.

OK. I take your word for it. But I certainly am not going to go through the bother of painstakingly comparing a map in my lap to the DRA map, while clicking a mouse. I suppose for this exercise, one just sticks to clean lines.

Just for kicks, I tried to approximate the neighborhood lines in the area of controversy. 80 basis points more Dem. I will use those lines, and use clean lines between NY-04 and NY-06 in Queens, since neighborhoods 3 and 4 need to be chopped anyway, given the VRA and where NY-06 needs to go. Happy now? No, of course not! You're insatiable.

[muon2]

FTR, I'm with train that the community board boundaries are the most accepted, though one could also use the neighborhood tabulation areas as a smaller division, and are built from census areas consistent with the 55 PUMAs in NYC.

Anyway, Given Torie's work I thought I would post my estimates of how big a 2020 CD in the NYC area should appear using the DRA 2010 data. To get the number I use 780K as the 2020 CD quota, then assume uniform growth within the county. This is the average target number one goes for with 26 CD plan for a CD entirely in that county. For a CD that spans counties the DRA size would be the weighted average.

Bronx 714K
Kings 701K
Nassau 755K
New York 725K
Queens 710K
(Richmond 762K)
Suffolk 768K
Westchester 737K

For example the Staten Island CD in 2020 has 480K in Richmond and 300K in Kings (2020 population). Averaging (480*762+300*701)/780 = 739. So that CD should be about 739K in population as seen on DRA.

[traininthedistance]

OK. I take your word for it. But I certainly am not going to go through the bother of painstakingly comparing a map in my lap to the DRA map, while clicking a mouse. I suppose for this exercise, one just sticks to clean lines.

Just for kicks, I tried to approximate the neighborhood lines in the area of controversy. 80 basis points more Dem. I will use those lines, and use clean lines between NY-04 and NY-06 in Queens, since neighborhoods 3 and 4 need to be chopped anyway, given the VRA and where NY-06 needs to go. Happy now? No, of course not! You're insatiable.

No, actually, assuming that you're drawing the South Brooklyn Orthodox district (which of course I'd be interested in exploring alternatives too, but that's beyond the scope of this post ), those are very good lines for it. I'd guess I'd probably tweak around Flatbush a tiny bit, it being my hood and all, but that matters very little.

Apologies for being harsh earlier, and assuming malice rather than ignorance.  I guess my defense would be that I did so out of respect for your intelligence and perceptiveness: that you'd have thought twice about simply accepting putative "wards" that were erose as all hell and sliced/diced/etc. neighborhoods. But in any case that tone really was unnecessary and I take it back.  Sorry!

[Torie]

My Dad grew up in Flatbush, until age 12, and his parents both grew up there on Pacific Avenue, and were childhood sweethearts. Somewhere I have a photo of the house his parents bought, in a new subdivision in 1906, with the house mostly surrounded by fields. I am told the house is still standing. My dad went back and knocked on the door and got a tour sometime in the mid 1980's. I have never been to Flatbush. It's on my list, and I too will knock on the door.

Thanks for the apology. I appreciate it. Damn the DRA! I just used what was available. In Chicago, Muon2 and I use ward lines, which the DRA has, and they tend sometimes to be gerrymandered too, although not as grotesque typically as Mr. Silver's handiwork. One uses what is available. But with the DRA not using NYC neighborhoods, obviously they are cumbersome to hew to when drawing lines. One saving grace, is that the precinct lines sometimes tend to follow the hood lines more it seems in NYC, so that helps. I was able to draw pretty clean lines between NY-06 and NY-04, in lieu of the more erose ones. No partisan or change in the Asian percentage by doing so.

Train, this map has a clear Dem skew now (and probably considerably worse given the Dem trend since 2008. Oh, the horror, the horror!  NY-11 bounced up another 10 basis points Dem, when I checked my spreadsheet, and NY-11 needed to drop a precinct by the way.

[Torie]

FTR, I'm with train that the community board boundaries are the most accepted, though one could also use the neighborhood tabulation areas as a smaller division, and are built from census areas consistent with the 55 PUMAs in NYC.

Anyway, Given Torie's work I thought I would post my estimates of how big a 2020 CD in the NYC area should appear using the DRA 2010 data. To get the number I use 780K as the 2020 CD quota, then assume uniform growth within the county. This is the average target number one goes for with 26 CD plan for a CD entirely in that county. For a CD that spans counties the DRA size would be the weighted average.

Bronx 714K
Kings 701K
Nassau 755K
New York 725K
Queens 710K
(Richmond 762K)
Suffolk 768K
Westchester 737K

For example the Staten Island CD in 2020 has 480K in Richmond and 300K in Kings (2020 population). Averaging (480*762+300*701)/780 = 739. So that CD should be about 739K in population as seen on DRA.

Mine is at 737,536, and the "perfect" number per my spreadsheet is 238,215, FWIW.

[jimrtex]

It looks like you chop towns in Westchester. I assumed that villages were like in MI, and subsidiary to towns that are the appropriate entity to keep intact. Is your experience there telling you that towns are less important than villages?

A reasonable case could be made for use of villages in Westchester County.

In Abate v Mundt, the SCOTUS upheld the use of towns for apportionment of county legislators in Rockland County, even though the deviation range was more than 10%.  Abate v Mundt was one of the cases that established the 10% safe harbor for deviation range.

If the deviation is less than 10%, the burden in on the plaintiff to prove a violation of equal protection.  If the deviation was greater than 10%, then the governmental entity must provide justification for the excess deviation.  The SCOTUS found that that the interlocking nature of the town and county governments justified the excess deviation.

Abate v Mundt is sometimes used as justification for weighted voting because its districts were based on towns.  But Rockland County did not use weighted voting.  It apportioned legislators among the five towns in the county.

It is also sometimes used to argue against the use of wards and weighted voting in Hudson.  But an argument that wards aren't the same as towns does not mean that the use of wards can not be justified.  And in any case, Hudson is within the 10% safe harbor.

Two decades later, a federal district court in Abate v Rockland County Legislature determined that Rockland County could not apportion legislators among the towns of the county.  The deviation range had increased substantially.  The court also found that most people in Rockland County identified with their village or school district rather than their town.  Villages and school districts were not contained within towns.  The court may have been attempting to rationalize their decision, and avoiding getting into a discussion of the maximum deviation that could be used for an apportionment scheme.   That is, if 12% is OK, but 20% is not; what about 18% or 14%?  Rockland County now has single member districts that largely ignore town boundaries.

New York only has 62 cities, which must be chartered by the state legislature.  The latest (last?) city, Rye, was chartered in 1943.  A city is outside any town, and is therefore a subdivision of a county, while also being a municipality.  Cities are somewhat akin to independent cities in Virginia, but rather being independent of any county, they are independent of any town.

Villages are the only local government that can be created by the people.  Residents of a village, are also residents of their towns.  Villages may span town and even county boundaries.  Villages are more like cities in the South and West, where persons can be resident in both a city and a county. 

Villages are particularly prevalent in suburban areas of NYC, where they have developed to provide municipal services, which towns were ill-equipped to do, and their boundaries may more closely match current land use.

[muon2]

I pulled the ACS racial and ethnic percentages for some of the NYC counties to look at how the VRA might affect city CDs in 2020. The table is based on the groupings used in DRA and uses the total population, not VAP. The first number is the percentage from 2011-2013 and the second is the change since 2008-2010.

Group	Bronx	Kings	Nassau	New York	Queens
White	10.6: -0.5	35.8: +0.1	63.8: -2.4	47.5: -0.4	26.7: -1.3
Black	29.7: -0.8	31.6: -0.8	10.8: +0.3	12.8: -0.2	17.5: -0.3
Asian	3.5: +0.0	11.0: +0.6	8.1: +0.5	11.3: +0.2	23.7: +0.5
Latino	54.3: +1.2	10.7: -0.1	15.3: +1.1	25.7: +0.1	27.8: +0.5

The decline of the black percentage in Kings and Queens indicates that to maintain a 50% BVAP CD, one needs a higher number using 2010 data in DRA. In particular, this suggests that the South Jamaica CD may have to reach into more of Nassau where the black percentage is growing.

The growth of the Latino population in Bronx and Queens indicates that a CD evaluated with 2010 data on DRA will likely have a higher HVAP in 2020 than shows up on the app. The slight decline in the Kings Latino fraction will make it harder to draw the traditional CD that loops down to Red Hook through Brooklyn. That suggests a CD linking Bushwick to Corona will work better, leaving two other Latino CDs in the Bronx plus the northern tip of Manhattan.

[Torie]

No surprises there, and that is the way I drew the map. In fact, it is the way the map should have been drawn by the court last time, in my view. That jut of the Hispanic CD down to the docks in Brooklyn was ridiculous. I guess the court was reluctant to upset the apple cart too much in NYC, after junking the south Brooklyn CD unjustifiably. As NY-05 juts more into Nassau, that makes NY-02 more Pub, and NY-04 more Dem, assuming a map is drawn that is intended to follow reasonable guidelines. One cannot be that optimistic in NY about anything that has much nexus with good government however. The court drawing the map last time was quite a surprising accident.

[muon2]

Here's may take on the NYC metro. I used my various projection tables to get populations appropriate to 2020. I avoided all extraneous county chops with the only exception for Nassau-Queens to accommodate the BVAP majority CD. Within NYC I used community district boundaries when not otherwise constrained by VRA districts or population.

The 6 VRA CDs have the following VAPs using 2010 data.

CD 5: BVAP 50.8%
CD 8: BVAP 53.1%
CD 9: BVAP 52.8%

CD 7: HVAP 55.0%
CD 14: HVAP 58.1%
CD 15: HVAP 56.5%

Because the black population in Brooklyn is growing at a much slower rate than the overall borough population I estimate that to keep CD 8 and 9 over 50% they will need to show at least 52% BVAP in the 2010 numbers. The difference in Queens isn't as much, but the South Jamaica CD will need at least 50.5% BVAP in 2010 numbers to stay at 50% in 2020. That leads me to link all the way out to Hempstead to get sufficient black population. Because of that connection, I decided chopping towns and keeping villages intact was preferable to the nasty erosity of trying to wrap CD 4 all the way around the CD 5 peninsula into Nassau.

The one nasty piece of erosity I have left is CD 6. The shape of CD 7 and borough constraints forced me into the link through LaGuardia along the Grand Central Pkwy to connect Astoria to Forest Hills. I like my Bronx CDs, which I think track the neighborhoods quite well (though I may be out of date in my understanding), but it pins CD 6. I'm open to ideas about all that. I'm also curious to get train's take on my splits around his home.

At some point I'll post my revised upstate with an Albany pack for Torie but no extra Westchester chop across the Hudson. In any case, I presume one can marry this to any plan for the upstate CDs.

[Torie]

A new NYC concept. The key was discerning that  NY-06 could be linked on its north end if it no longer was going to the Bronx, thus creating the Queen's donut CD. It always bothered me that Queens did not have at least one CD that it could call its own. It gets up the Hispanic percentage of NY-12, along with the Asian percentage in NY-06, and loses two chops. Life is beautiful.  




Depiction of the map spoliation precincts. NY in NYC, which has a bad habit of doing that in a few places. Sometimes they a long narrow lines in on top of a highway for a mile or more, with no people living there. Maybe the census bureau was looking for homeless people living in the highway median or something.

[muon2]

I like much of the new Torie concept as it mirrors my own. I take it you agree with the needed erosity in CD 6. I am concerned with the BVAP majority CDs. I suspect that 2 of the three won't be over 50% in 2020.

Because the black population in Brooklyn is growing at a much slower rate than the overall borough population I estimate that to keep CD 8 and 9 over 50% they will need to show at least 52% BVAP in the 2010 numbers. The difference in Queens isn't as much, but the South Jamaica CD will need at least 50.5% BVAP in 2010 numbers to stay at 50% in 2020. That leads me to link all the way out to Hempstead to get sufficient black population. Because of that connection, I decided chopping towns and keeping villages intact was preferable to the nasty erosity of trying to wrap CD 4 all the way around the CD 5 peninsula into Nassau.

[muon2]

I'm assuming that this plan is designed to potentially show people off-Atlas what might come to pass in 2020. It's entirely possible that a Dem legislature/gov would consider CDs with BVAPs under 50% that would still be likely to elect the black candidate of choice. I'm less sure that a court would make that decision, nor am I certain a neutral commission would either when a 50%+1 option exists.

I think it's much easier to say this is what a BVAP 50% CD would look like in 2020, then to explain why a sub 50%, but high 40's CD is likely to be drawn. If that's the case subtract 2.0% from the BVAP in Kings and 0.5% from the BVAP in Queens when describing the districts.

[Skill and Chance]

This is a good proxy for what the commission will draw and this is probably what gets adopted if the GOP still controls the state senate in 2021.  However, my understanding is that the NY legislature can vote down the commission maps and take control of the process?  So, in the event of full Dem control, how ugly would they have to get to draw 23 >60% Obama districts?  Would 24 be viable while respecting the VRA?

[Torie]

It should be possible to get both Brooklyn CD's up to 52% BVAP, with some jiggling of the lines, particularly if one is willing to allow the Hispanic percentage to erode a bit in NY-12. All this is rather wild speculation, and I suspect a slightly sub 50% BVAP CD would work, given the Hispanic percentages. Moreover, there is no law that one must draw an erose CD to get up to 50% BVAP, unless the black area perhaps is erosely contiguous. It certainly would not be legally required to make NY-05 erose, since the entire black area that is contiguous is contained therein.

[muon2]

Defining shape will be a challenge here. There's really only a one town hop in my version of CD 5 and it gets to 50.8% with 2010 numbers - about 50.3% with 2020 estimates. Since this isn't adhering to any specific rules about hops, the shape is certainly no worse than the Queens-based Hispanic CD. I agree that a sub-50% district will elect a candidate of choice in that area, but would anyone but the Dems draw it?

I also return to my question about the goal of this plan. Given the shape of the aforementioned Queens Hispanic CD, is it appropriate to then say one doesn't like the potential shape of a 50% BVAP CD so the percentages were reduced? I think there would be merit in pointing out what could come to pass if the 50% BVAP standard is used. It seemed like pointing out the possibility for Hudson's CD was a goal of the description Upstate, so why not push that same line in NYC?

[Torie]

There is nothing illegal in refusing to gerrymander to get a CD up to 50% BVAP, if the evidence is there that a lower percentage without gerrymandering will elect a candidate of the minority's choice. It is not even clear that any gerrymandering is required to keep a CD at 50%, given that it is totally clear that it is a gerrymander in a way not otherwise standard in the plan. As to the third Hispanic CD, to reach the percentage that is needed to elect a minority's candidate of choice bearing in mind the low voter turnout of Hispanics, that entails a twisted shape to take in a quite contiguous area of Hispanics, albeit an erose one, might well be required, but again even that is uncertain. Anyway, it is really not possible to get the BVAP up much no matter what one does with erosity, so no court on this planet is going to demand something grotesque over a percentage point or two, particularly when the evidence will be so weak that a 50%b BVAP percentage is needed, while say 48% or 49% will greatly imperial it.

Anyway, I can get to 52% for both CD's without too much sweat, so it's a moot point in Brooklyn (assuming your assumptions/speculations prove out as to where the percentages will end up). There is zero chance that any court will demand the Queens CD to do something grotesque to reach out to a non contiguous area, all over less than a percentage point. We are in the surreal zone now.