Arizona takes first step to return redistricting process to Republican control

[Virginiá]

http://tucson.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/house-panel-oks-change-in-redistricting-process/article_2a0fb5af-d47b-577c-bd52-e58598ed80ac.html

You must be logged in to read this quote.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

As expected, Arizona Republicans are moving forward with their plan to fulfill their self-imposed obligation to corrupt the electoral process in their favor as much as possible. Making voters approve commissioners is just a subtle way of crafting an all-Republican commission, as the electorate currently gives them an undeniable and reliable majority. Further, allowing lobbyists and politicians to participate means they might as well just give it back to the Republican-led legislature.

As a casual observer and given events since 2011 with Arizona redistricting, I'd expect this to pass the legislature and go to voters later this year. I don't think voters are going to understand what they are voting on and what it will do without a major campaign against the initiative, so without that, this will probably be a done deal.

[Torie]

Well, there are still some legal strictures on how the lines can be drawn, presumably. However, even a non gerrymandered map holds the Dems to 2 seats, or 3 if one deliberately draws a second Dem seat in Phoenix. I really don't think the last commission followed the law, because beyond cooking the partisan baseline figures, they put having competitive districts at the top of the list, rather than, as the law provides, at the bottom, as a tie breaker, and Mathis explicitly stated she was going for competitive districts. I am surprised the Pubs were not more careful in building a record of that, and suing based on those grounds.

[Virginiá]

That's a fair point, but if they are looking to make the commission better, then they are doing it completely, 100% ass-backwards. It's pretty obvious they are just trying to return redistricting back to their control, which basically means going from maps that favored Democrats one decade to Republican-favored maps. I'd think that at least with the existing commission, the chances of getting a fair, competitive map are much better. I can't see anything good coming from this new proposal.

[Torie]

That's a fair point, but if they are looking to make the commission better, then they are doing it completely, 100% ass-backwards. It's pretty obvious they are just trying to return redistricting back to their control, which basically means going from maps that favored Democrats one decade to Republican-favored maps. I'd think that at least with the existing commission, the chances of getting a fair, competitive map are much better. I can't see anything good coming from this new proposal.

No, it is a joke, unless the parameters have judicially enforceable teeth, but the point is that the Pubs can take it all, and get their way, without a gerrymander, and really get nothing more, with a gerrymander (other than to make the one seat that would otherwise be lean Pub in Phoenix, safe Pub). In fact, AZ is probably the state with the most CD seats in the nation, where that is the case.

[Virginiá]

No, it is a joke, unless the parameters have judicially enforceable teeth, but the point is that the Pubs can take it all, and get their way, without a gerrymander, and really get nothing more, with a gerrymander (other than to make the one seat that would otherwise be lean Pub in Phoenix, safe Pub). In fact, AZ is probably the state with the most CD seats in the nation, where that is the case.

How about for legislative districts? Wouldn't their proposal still help a lot more with those than Congressional districts?

[Torie]

No, it is a joke, unless the parameters have judicially enforceable teeth, but the point is that the Pubs can take it all, and get their way, without a gerrymander, and really get nothing more, with a gerrymander (other than to make the one seat that would otherwise be lean Pub in Phoenix, safe Pub). In fact, AZ is probably the state with the most CD seats in the nation, where that is the case.

How about for legislative districts? Wouldn't their proposal still help a lot more with those than Congressional districts?

Perhaps, but I have not played with legislative districts. In theory, however, as a general rule, the small the district, the harder it is to gerrymander.

[Torie]

No, it is a joke, unless the parameters have judicially enforceable teeth, but the point is that the Pubs can take it all, and get their way, without a gerrymander, and really get nothing more, with a gerrymander (other than to make the one seat that would otherwise be lean Pub in Phoenix, safe Pub). In fact, AZ is probably the state with the most CD seats in the nation, where that is the case.

How about for legislative districts? Wouldn't their proposal still help a lot more with those than Congressional districts?

Perhaps, but I have not played with legislative districts. In theory, however, as a general rule, the small the district, the harder it is to gerrymander.

With compactness/jurisdiction splitting rules, I strongly disagree.  Look at FL House vs. FL Senate on FDF compliant maps.  Giant chamber+polite boundary rules = huge advantage for rural/exurban party.  Smaller chambers with compactness rules means both rural seats and urban seats have to penetrate further into the suburbs, keeping more districts competitive.  AZ senate (Dems got to 13/17 after 2012) vs. house is itself an example of this, as is CO senate vs. house where an officially neutral party installed soft D maps and the house is safe while the senate flipped in a wave.  Also contrast VA house, which is ironclad vs. VA senate which is not.  I'm sorry, but you're wrong on this one.      

Muon2 agrees with me. So there!    I am not saying smaller districts cannot be gerrymandered. It is just that if there is a sharp partisan division, one can with large districts, take bits out of the hostile zone, and make the opposition end up with nothing, or pack them into one districts, and leave the rest all safe for the other party, even if the partisan balance is only modestly in favor of the other party. Alternative, putting aside the VRA, a heavily Dem urban line could be chopped up in a way, that tips a bunch of districts outside it to the Dems, like  a color wheel, if one got the balance right. In Ohio, with some work, perhaps the Pubs could be held to 3 districts for example. With smaller districts, some of the seats need to be given away, and it is only no the edges of the two zones, that line drawing makes that much difference.

But no doubt Muon2 can be more eloquent on this than I. It is just that when he made the claim, it certainly made intuitive sense to me.

[Virginiá]

In all fairness, wasn't CO's Senate takeover due to those two recalls on 2 Democratic state senators? The GOP now only has a 1 seat majority, and I wouldn't be surprised if they lost that this year.

[muon2]

One way to look at the gerrymandering size argument is to consider the following points.

Imagine a state with as many districts as voters. Clearly each district is one voter and it is impossible to gerrymander.

Now consider a somewhat larger district, say with an average of 4000 people per district. That corresponds to the optimum size of a census tract. Using contiguous census blocks to build a district, it's hard to get very far away from a census tract and its nearest neighbors. To the extent that the state isn't filled with too many sharp political/demographic distinctions between adjacent census tracts, it is hard to attach a given area block-by-block far away from its start.

As districts get larger, one can reach across greater distances to group people intentionally to pack or dilute their voting strength. Of course there is a point of diminishing return, since once a district gets too large the gerrymanderer is forced to add populations that take away from the goal. In the limit of a single statewide district one can't gerrymander at all, just like the case of single voter districts.

As an example consider the IL delegations gerrymandered for the 2012 election. Obama got 58.6% of the two party vote in IL in 2012. The IL House (108K/district) was 71/118 for the Dems or 60.2%. The IL Senate (217K/district) was 40/59 for the Dems or 67.8%. Congress was 12/18 for the Dems or 66.7%, though it was drawn to have D PVI's of 13/18 or 72.2%. I might speculate that the Congressional districts were at the point of diminishing returns for Dem gerrymandering, though that may be more due to the limiting effect of the VRA, and the creation of 4 minority CDs.

[Young Conservative]

As if democrats don't do this in other states?

[Virginiá]

As if democrats don't do this in other states?

Seriously? I didn't make this thread to get into some "whatabout" debate. It's corruption when any party/people do it, end of story. If it makes you happy, I'll be sure to make a thread whenever a Democratic-led state decides to tear apart a voter-approved commission.

[Bismarck]

Well Indiana's legislature is as partisan as it gets and I would say we have one of the best drawn maps in the country in terms of compactness and keeping similar areas together. So having the legislature draw the lines isn't inherently bad.

[Torie]

One way to look at the gerrymandering size argument is to consider the following points.

Imagine a state with as many districts as voters. Clearly each district is one voter and it is impossible to gerrymander.

Now consider a somewhat larger district, say with an average of 4000 people per district. That corresponds to the optimum size of a census tract. Using contiguous census blocks to build a district, it's hard to get very far away from a census tract and its nearest neighbors. To the extent that the state isn't filled with too many sharp political/demographic distinctions between adjacent census tracts, it is hard to attach a given area block-by-block far away from its start.

As districts get larger, one can reach across greater distances to group people intentionally to pack or dilute their voting strength. Of course there is a point of diminishing return, since once a district gets too large the gerrymanderer is forced to add populations that take away from the goal. In the limit of a single statewide district one can't gerrymander at all, just like the case of single voter districts.

As an example consider the IL delegations gerrymandered for the 2012 election. Obama got 58.6% of the two party vote in IL in 2012. The IL House (108K/district) was 71/118 for the Dems or 60.2%. The IL Senate (217K/district) was 40/59 for the Dems or 67.8%. Congress was 12/18 for the Dems or 66.7%, though it was drawn to have D PVI's of 13/18 or 72.2%. I might speculate that the Congressional districts were at the point of diminishing returns for Dem gerrymandering, though that may be more due to the limiting effect of the VRA, and the creation of 4 minority CDs.

The ultimate gerrymander in Illinois would be to have each CD have the same PVI in Illinois. It might be possible to get close to that (maybe let the Pubs have one CD in Southern Illinois), if the map is hideous enough (have snake districts running along highways from Chicago to the hinterlands). But yes, the VRA stops that in its tracks.

[jimrtex]

http://tucson.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/house-panel-oks-change-in-redistricting-process/article_2a0fb5af-d47b-577c-bd52-e58598ed80ac.html

You must be logged in to read this quote.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

As expected, Arizona Republicans are moving forward with their plan to fulfill their self-imposed obligation to corrupt the electoral process in their favor as much as possible. Making voters approve commissioners is just a subtle way of crafting an all-Republican commission, as the electorate currently gives them an undeniable and reliable majority. Further, allowing lobbyists and politicians to participate means they might as well just give it back to the Republican-led legislature.

As a casual observer and given events since 2011 with Arizona redistricting, I'd expect this to pass the legislature and go to voters later this year. I don't think voters are going to understand what they are voting on and what it will do without a major campaign against the initiative, so without that, this will probably be a done deal.

The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission in the 2000s drew a congressional district through the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

"Look kids, there is another congressional district waaaay down there." (Kid looks across to opposite rim and points) "Over there?" "No that is the same district that we are in." (Waves). "Look carefully, see that brown ribbon?" "Are those ants in that other congressional district?"

This time they deliberately underpopulated Democratic districts, and overpopulated Republican districts. Hopefully Justice Kennedy will call them on it, because Breyer, Ginsberg, Kagan, and Sotamayor won't.

When the redistricting commission was approved, it was claimed that legislative districts would be as equal in population as congressional districts. Now it is claimed that you can do a partisan gerrymander as long as the deviation is within 5%.

When the redistricting commission was approved, it was required to start out with a grid map. They still do. But then they simply ignore that map.

The commission starts out with two Democrats and two Republicans. They choose the chairperson from 5 names chosen by a judicial panel. In 2011, one of the "independents" had a framed photo with them and Nancy Pelosi. Another "independent" was head of the Arizona ACLU whose politics were so left-wing, that it was said that in comparison the Arizona Democratic Party was like Barry Goldwater. Colleen Mathis was the least worst choice.

The two Democrats and Mathis chose the Republican counsel. As a mapping consultant they chose a company that had never done redistricting, but whose specialty was micro-targeting for Democratic campaigns - that is identify Democratic voters on a very fine scale. Might be handy for gerrymandering.

The independent redistricting commission in Arizona is not subject to open meetings laws, like other Arizona agencies are. Mathis and a mapping consultant were drawing maps at her house in intimate weekend map-drawing sessions.

Mathis was making deals with the Democratic commissioners. Real sweet when you only need a 3:2 vote to approve a map.

Arizona should completely dump their current redistricting scheme and start over.

[Torie]

That's why it is just so wrong to trust human beings, rather than computers, in this endeavor. Just bring the humans back at the end to cross a few T's and dot a few "i's," so they can entertain the illusion that they were somehow significantly involved in the process. One thing I have learned, is just how hard it is to be truly non partisan about these things. Your biases tend to cause you to see what you want to see, and not see, what you don't want to see. So we need 00011100101111101 to do it.

I saw a movie about Alan Turing last night. We should call the model redistricting code the Turing Model Redistricting Code in his honor.

[muon2]

I would rather trust the public to draw the maps, crowdsourcing the process. Sure, a computer could draw one, too, but I'd give the public a chance to do better. Let a computer then be the judge, eliminating plans that are gerrymandered by focusing on neutral criteria. Humans can help to verify legal issues in submissions, like compliance with the VRA. At that point I'd trust a body representative of the public at large to select from a few plans that survive the computer's winnowing.

[Torie]

I would rather trust the public to draw the maps, crowdsourcing the process. Sure, a computer could draw one, too, but I'd give the public a chance to do better. Let a computer then be the judge, eliminating plans that are gerrymandered by focusing on neutral criteria. Humans can help to verify legal issues in submissions, like compliance with the VRA. At that point I'd trust a body representative of the public at large to select from a few plans that survive the computer's winnowing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's all window dressing and you know it. And over time, the computer programming will get better and better. The selection from the few plans, is where the T crossing and I dotting comes into play. I just like to point out when the emperor has no clothes. I have been that way all my life.

And don't you admit, as we do this more, and get more skilled, that it really is possible for us to find the best map, with a pretty high degree of certainty? It just takes us a lot more time, than it would take a computer, is all.

[muon2]

I would rather trust the public to draw the maps, crowdsourcing the process. Sure, a computer could draw one, too, but I'd give the public a chance to do better. Let a computer then be the judge, eliminating plans that are gerrymandered by focusing on neutral criteria. Humans can help to verify legal issues in submissions, like compliance with the VRA. At that point I'd trust a body representative of the public at large to select from a few plans that survive the computer's winnowing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's all window dressing and you know it. And over time, the computer programming will get better and better. The selection from the few plans, is where the T crossing and I dotting comes into play. I just like to point out when the emperor has no clothes. I have been that way all my life.

And don't you admit, as we do this more, and get more skilled, that it really is possible for us to find the best map, with a pretty high degree of certainty? It just takes us a lot more time, than it would take a computer, is all.

Actually I note the range of opinions from jimrtex and train to you and I. We certainly all have our differences on how much weight to give which factor. I strongly believe that one could arrive at a small set of maps that reflects the best within that range of differences, that's why I push the Pareto frontier as the best mechanism to capture that range.

I think a perfect computer could contribute one item in that set, but it would reflect just one opinion based on the biases of its programmer's sense of relative weights. Only if you say that there will be a diverse group of programmers working independently on perfect computers, would I think that there might be a set that could not be enhanced by public input. I don't expect to see that level of computation happen anytime soon.

[Torie]

Well obviously one needs to agree on a set of parameters, and that is not easy, and may never be accomplished, and maybe in the end, different states will pick from a menu of options (but if it varies too much, then you have the vexatious problem of one state fearing unilateral disarmament vis a vis some other states, which is not good at all).

But if a set of parameters can be agreed upon in a model code, based on your system, it will be possible to rank maps in the way that we have discussed, with some potentially a tie, but not many I would think, given the odds are low that two different maps, will have the same chop and erosity scores, and then the same tie breaker scores or whatever, that will vary much at all except perhaps in very minor detail. But I understand your desire to make it seem like the emperor appears in sartorial splendor.

[muon2]

Well obviously one needs to agree on a set of parameters, and that is not easy, and may never be accomplished, and maybe in the end, different states will pick from a menu of options (but if it varies too much, then you have the vexatious problem of one state fearing unilateral disarmament vis a vis some other states, which is not good at all).

But if a set of parameters can be agreed up in a model code, based on your system, it will be possible to rank maps in the way that we have discussed, with some potentially a tie, but not many I would think, given the odds are low that two different maps, will have the same chop and erosity scores, and then the same tie breaker scores or whatever, that will vary much at all except perhaps in very minor detail. But I understand your desire to make it seem like the emperor appears in sartorial splendor.

Tie breakers apply when there is a match on chop and erosity. I think it much more likely that there will be a set of maps that vary on chop and erosity, but all land on the Pareto frontier. In our MI exercise last year a dozen maps yielded 3 (IIRC) Pareto equivalent plans. That was without the UCC factors. When the UCC and other factors were applied we had more entries and a half dozen Pareto equivalent plans.

That's where a representative group should select from the Pareto equivalent plans. I am a skeptic on the ability to reach a level of concurrence on the weight between chop and erosity, not to mention concurrence on the relative importance of the other metrics. That's what's needed to go from the Pareto set down to one plan. I would pass the Pareto set on to a human body for the final decision.

[Torie]

I think you might be repeating yourself there by and large. So let us step back. For each number of chops, the odds are high that there is but one map with the lowest erosity, and thus for each number of chops, there is but one map that reaches the pareto optimal frontier. Do you agree with that?

[muon2]

I think you might be repeating yourself there by and large. So let us step back. For each number of chops, the odds are high that there is but one map with the lowest erosity, and thus for each number of chops, there is but one map that reaches the pareto optimal frontier. Do you agree with that?

No.  It generally takes criteria beyond erosity to get only one map for a given chop score.

There is presumably a set of boxes on a graph of chop vs erosity that represents the Pareto frontier. It is quite possible that more than one plan has a the same chop and erosity score to get into a box. Inequality, skew, or polarization can be used to break that tie to reduce the number of plans in that box.

Alternatively some of those other metrics can be added to the chop score to spread out the plans into more boxes and make it less likely to have multiple plans in a box. Adding a metric to the chop score makes it more important in excluding plans than just using it as a tie breaker as we saw with the UCC scores.

[Torie]

I think you might be repeating yourself there by and large. So let us step back. For each number of chops, the odds are high that there is but one map with the lowest erosity, and thus for each number of chops, there is but one map that reaches the pareto optimal frontier. Do you agree with that?

No.  It generally takes criteria beyond erosity to get only one map for a given chop score.

You think there are a bunch of maps that would tie on both?

There is presumably a set of boxes on a graph of chop vs erosity that represents the Pareto frontier. It is quite possible that more than one plan has a the same chop and erosity score to get into a box. Inequality, skew, or polarization can be used to break that tie to reduce the number of plans in that box.

Yes, indeed. And I have a longer list of tie breakers.

Alternatively some of those other metrics can be added to the chop score to spread out the plans into more boxes and make it less likely to have multiple plans in a box. Adding a metric to the chop score makes it more important in excluding plans than just using it as a tie breaker as we saw with the UCC scores.


Don't quite follow that. Remind me please "what we saw."  I can see how adding a metric, might cause a switch in which map makes it to the frontier, but I don't quite see what "makes it more important."

Anyway, in the end, even assuming there will tend to be quite frequently more than one map with the same chop and erosity score, if you add metrics, or have tie breakers, you still get down to one map, and so in the end, you just have a few maps to pick from, as you add chops in exchange for less erosity, with the number depending how high up  in chops that you go. So the menu for humans to pick from, will be limited, and very tightly constrained, which is the whole point of course.

[muon2]

The more important means how the metric is weighted when used as an additive factor than when it is used as a tie-breaker. UCCs arose in part to exclude my Lansing-dicing plan from those deemed good. The initial application was to mandate the UCC cover, but that greatly limited flexibility, especially in the Detroit area. We then looked at the UCC scores as a tie-breaker, but it was too easy for me to get the Lansing-dicer through on chops alone. When we added the UCC scores (and we tried a number of combinations with data based analysis) we found that it raised the importance of UCC integrity enough to exclude the Lansing-dicer.

We saw the same effect with inequality. traininthedistance had a strong objection to letting inequality be a tie breaker only. He felt that a highly equal plan should have better chance of surviving even if it was slight more erose and otherwise got knocked out. We found that by adding the inequality score to the chop score, we created a value that created more preference for equal population than we saw with using inequality solely as a tie breaker when chop and erosity matched in two plans.

[Torie]

OK, we are on the same page then, if not necessarily on just what maps get culled at the end, and how. It's been fun. 1000111001011001. Yes, I know, I still owe you comments elsewhere.