Ohio - a celebration of the Muon2 rules

[Torie]

This map is based on the county population projections for Ohio counties based on the latest census data. In my biased opinion, since I drew it, this is a really good map. The erose looking CD in the NE corner of the state is to preserve a performing district for a black candidate in Cleveland. Nobody is going to want to bleach out the Ohio delegation. The Cleveland CD is 41.7% BVAP. It cannot go much lower. Interestingly, Trump really got trashed in the CD in north Franklin County, plus Delaware and the prong into Licking. In the Franklin portion, Trump lost by about 36,000 votes, and lost the district maybe by about 18,000 votes or so - a massive swing from the Romney numbers there. And that is the advantage of the tight rules about metro areas. It gives the suburbs more of an undiluted voice.

[Torie]

What's the black VAP for the Columbus seat? Any VRA concerns about dilution there?

I'm not a huge fan of the NE corner seat or the green one that is around 1 county wide on the Indiana border, but all in all a good map.

24.5% BVAP circa the 2010 census. There is not much dilution. The black neighborhoods are mostly in that CD. The VRA is not triggered unless there is a 50% BVAP CD to be had. No way is it in play in Columbus. The Cleveland CD is 41.7% BVAP, which makes it performing as a minority CD, but not by all that much. Thus the lines cannot be cleaned up with the CD that mostly wraps it, without making the Cleveland CD non-performing for a minority. That won't happen. The NE corner CD is only lean Pub anyway.

The map is drive by metro areas as defined by Jimrtex's map, and avoiding county splits. That forces a long narrow CD on the west side of Ohio.

I would hate to have the task of assigning a real PVI to the Ohio River CD on the east side of the state. It did a massive flip between 2012 and 2016. Where it really lies going forward is very hard to discern. In a much more muted fashion, the CD in the north Columbus metro area did the reverse. I think it had around a 1.5% Dem PVI based on the 2016 results alone.

[Torie]

How did the Youngstown CD vote?

What's a 15 point swing of the two party vote among friends? And as an added bonus, I offer up the numbers for a couple of other CD's.  And Clinton carried the Akron CD by about one percentage point, so based on the numbers in 2016 alone, it had a Pub PVI.

[Torie]

FWIW, I don't think there is any precedent that a theoretical 50% BVAP CD, that is impossible to draw in practice, or would look ridiculous, triggers Gingles, and I don't think SCOTUS will ever go there. It is going in the opposite direction. I also think 41.5% BVAP is clearly performing. So I don't think there is any case to chop Cleveland, and in particular a macrochop.

[Torie]

FWIW, I don't think there is any precedent that a theoretical 50% BVAP CD, that is impossible to draw in practice, or would look ridiculous, triggers Gingles, and I don't think SCOTUS will ever go there. It is going in the opposite direction. I also think 41.5% BVAP is clearly performing. So I don't think there is any case to chop Cleveland, and in particular a macrochop.

Aren't we supposed to balance erosity against chops, so the right course would seem to be to look at both alternatives. If you are saying that there is insufficient black population to trigger Gingles then there is no need to try to draw a performing district - chops and erosity should be the only factors.

Yes, per your rules, you are absolutely correct. But in the real world, such a CD would never be drawn. That is why if I wrote the legislation, I would allow a deviation of the rules to allow drawing performing minority CD's, if both parties agree, and they would in this case, particularly if the NE corner CD is only marginal politically, which it is. If one does not allow this flexibility, I don't think your rules would ever become law, nor adopted by a court.

[Torie]

I'd expect the Cleveland based CD to elect a black Democrat barring any freak scenarios.

Really like the competitiveness of this map. There's a solid 6-7 seats that could be won by either party (Though the Lake Erie district and the blue Cleveland district are trending hard R, and the Youngstown based district might force Tim Ryan to either finally run statewide or just carpetbag over to Akron.

Yeah, it's great when a map that follows good redistricting principles, also generates a host of competitive districts, and gets close to replicating the political balance of the state. One then has it all, as it were. It's healthy for our democracy, when control of the Congress changes hands back and forth. That way, ideas can be tried out, and if a fail, then the party in power will be bounced out, and the other party gets in. The alternative, tends to be stagnation.

[Torie]

I'd expect the Cleveland based CD to elect a black Democrat barring any freak scenarios.

Really like the competitiveness of this map. There's a solid 6-7 seats that could be won by either party (Though the Lake Erie district and the blue Cleveland district are trending hard R, and the Youngstown based district might force Tim Ryan to either finally run statewide or just carpetbag over to Akron.

Yeah, it's great when a map that follows good redistricting principles, also generates a host of competitive districts, and gets close to replicating the political balance of the state. One then has it all, as it were. It's healthy for our democracy, when control of the Congress changes hands back and forth. That way, ideas can be tried out, and if a fail, then the party in power will be bounced out, and the other party gets in. The alternative, tends to be stagnation. Thus, the more competitive districts, the better, in that sense.

[Torie]

I don't agree with you as a legal matter on this one. The recent case in NC, had a packing element. This is not the case here. And the Cleveland CD is compact, and keeps Cleveland together. The next door CD is erose to avoid county chops, and that is a good reason. Particularly given that the hypo here is that both parties want it, no court in the world is going to nix it in any event.

Of course, policy is not the same as the law. And your rules allow one to have more chops to reduce erosity. I chose not to do so here. I think what you really want to do is chop Cleveland, so that way the BVAP is up, and the erosity down. That's OK, but certainly not what any court would demand, in lieu of what I did. And the Pubs would not agree to that version, so the CD in that scenario would cease to be performing.

For example, just following your rules, if the two parties cannot agree, one would get something like this I would think (the Cleveland CD has a 25.3% BVAP):



Or we could go the other way (it kind of looks like an arm, with a grasping hand), and the CD with Cleveland in it goes up to 31.1% BVAP. The Pubs won't agree to that CD either, and it probably isn't performing. But it might have a better erosity score than the first map.

[Torie]

All the maps in this discussion are legal (this isn't a close case either), so the judges will not be involved. So it gets back to your rules, and the erosity figure (given that the chop count is tied), which means you need to to figure out the communities in Cleveland, since you macro-chopped it. That assumes of course that what you did here, does not generate another chop elsewhere in the state.

Whether the pubs like this map better than the one in my state map, and agree to it on that basis, I guess depends on what happens to the balance of the state (and the precise numbers of the two CD's involved that are competitive - they might not, if they think the Trump trends have staying power, and bourgeoisie areas are that have been, or recently were, safely Pub, cannot be relied upon in the future). If they do like your iteration, then the map could be drawn even if it loses out on scoring, and the Dems like it better than one of the other versions too. They can do it under my rules for this issue, because you up the BVAP (but not over 50%), so the score can go down to get there.

See, I am learning this stuff, oh so slowly, slowly, but I am learning it, so perhaps your batting average in these discussions might fall below 100% at some point.

[Torie]

I will get back to you on the munis. No, the law is clear. The VRA does not require a minority CD. You already knew that. Yes, I understand your rules. As I said above, I would use the codicil that I outlined above, and have done before, regarding a departure with mutual consent. I don't think your rules will be accepted without that codicil. If both parties want more minority CD's, for your rules to just say no, means your rules will not become law. You will have annoyed Pubs, Dems, and minorities. Well done!

Your map is more "artistic" than mine by the way. Well done on that too!

In a way, this debate does not matter. In the real world, if a political body gets interested, they will probably modify them in any event. And this modification does not upset the apple cart, regarding departing from a common set of rules, given the mutual consent aspect.

You say the Youngstown CD has no chops even though it has now absorbed Ashtabula and the balance of Geauga. I assume that you drew it to verify that. It probably is doable, given the small counties to play with in the south. But one thing leads to another, as you shift the whole map, or much of it, counterclockwise.

[Torie]

FWIW, I don't think there is any precedent that a theoretical 50% BVAP CD, that is impossible to draw in practice, or would look ridiculous, triggers Gingles, and I don't think SCOTUS will ever go there. It is going in the opposite direction. I also think 41.5% BVAP is clearly performing. So I don't think there is any case to chop Cleveland, and in particular a macrochop.

Aren't we supposed to balance erosity against chops, so the right course would seem to be to look at both alternatives. If you are saying that there is insufficient black population to trigger Gingles then there is no need to try to draw a performing district - chops and erosity should be the only factors.

Yes, per your rules, you are absolutely correct. But in the real world, such a CD would never be drawn. That is why if I wrote the legislation, I would allow a deviation of the rules to allow drawing performing minority CD's, if both parties agree, and they would in this case, particularly if the NE corner CD is only marginal politically, which it is. If one does not allow this flexibility, I don't think your rules would ever become law, nor adopted by a court.

Doesn't your law violate the 15th Amendment?

Well that never occurred to me. A law that allows the legislature to agree to draw districts so that minorities can have adequate representation where the metrics of the state law in practice otherwise preclude that, violates the 15th amendment? Has anyone made that argument in an analogous context? I would be amazed if that argument ever got any traction.

[Torie]

Well, I have never proposed that such districts be required, but rather only to allow their drawing, even if the ensuing map has a lower score, and for a given minority percentage, the highest scoring map must be used. In all events, where there is a consensus that such a map be drawn, that is really going to slow down court intervention. Thanks for bringing this all to my attention.

I outlined the metric before. One can vote in a lower scoring map, up to a 50% minority voting age percentage, if it is the highest scoring map for that percentage, and both parties agree to it, and it gets the minority closer to their fair share of CD's for a state.

[Torie]

I highly doubt there will be a 50% BVAP CD in play sans Akron (absent something absurd, and even that I doubt), and the VRA won't demand Akron. But if Gingles is triggered so be it. We are just speculating.

Other than that, we are talking past each other. The commission draws say the map immediately below (oh, I see I missed a black line between Garfield Heights and Cuyahoga Heights, and another between Seven Hills and Brooklyn Heights), and then the legislature when picking a map, should be allowed by the law to pick one with a lower score that generates a higher BVAP CD subject to the rules I outlined above (such as the the second map below), and I said, I think it is likely that they will so choose to do so. And based on that assumption, I drew my state map. That is all. Nothing more.

[Torie]

Thanks for the detail. I understand exactly what you want. I am still missing how a higher BVAP map you describe gets into the set the commission sends to the legislature. The whole point of scoring is that the legislature is not free to consider all maps submitted, just those that make the commission's cut. The commission is bound by statutory rules so they can't play games with squishy CoI considerations.

The commission absent Gingles ignores creating a performing minority CD. However, if the legislature with both parties on board wants a CD with a higher minority percentage (I think I said that it needs to get up to at least 30% VAP, and no more than 50%), then the legislature asks the commission to revise the map to generate the highest scoring map that gets to the requested VAP percentage. Or the legislature does it, and the commission checks their work. If after the commission does its thing, the legislature does not like the map, they can then abandon the project, or change the percentage within the 30% to 50% parameter, and try again.

So probably the starting point is to wait until the commission generates the initial map, or maps, and then the legislature will negotiate whether it wants to increase the minority VAP of a CD, and if they do, then one goes through the ensuing steps. In the real world, the legislature will be doing what the commission does, and have a good idea of the end game.

[Torie]

In order to increase minority representation, one reduces non minority representation. It's a zero sum game. The idea is to encourage where reasonable that minorities get representation commensurate with their numbers, and that is the law.

[Torie]

Thanks for the detail. I understand exactly what you want. I am still missing how a higher BVAP map you describe gets into the set the commission sends to the legislature. The whole point of scoring is that the legislature is not free to consider all maps submitted, just those that make the commission's cut. The commission is bound by statutory rules so they can't play games with squishy CoI considerations.

The commission absent Gingles ignores creating a performing minority CD. However, if the legislature with both parties on board wants a CD with a higher minority percentage (I think I said that it needs to get up to at least 30% VAP, and no more than 50%), then the legislature asks the commission to revise the map to generate the highest scoring map that gets to the requested VAP percentage. Or the legislature does it, and the commission checks their work. If after the commission does its thing, the legislature does not like the map, they can then abandon the project, or change the percentage within the 30% to 50% parameter, and try again.

So probably the starting point is to wait until the commission generates the initial map, or maps, and then the legislature will negotiate whether it wants to increase the minority VAP of a CD, and if they do, then one goes through the ensuing steps. In the real world, the legislature will be doing what the commission does, and have a good idea of the end game.

Unfortunately that defeats the essence of the IA system that forms the basis of the procedure to execute my rules. The mapper(s) follow strict rules and all the legislative body can do is give it (or one of a set) an up or down vote with an external arbitrator acting if the legislature can't. A clever legislative leader would use your method to force a favorable gerrymander under the guise of unsatisfactory minority representation.

I thought part of this exercise was to show non-commission states how a neutral process could work. There are states that have moved to commissions, and many others toying with the idea. I want to give those states a different way to use a commission. You seem to have given up on converting more states to an independent process.

One can make up any set of rules as to how the legislature operates. The only gerrymander that could be effected is a bipartisan one (since both parties have to agree), and that is limited by the requirement that for a given increase (one cannot do this to reduce the otherwise obtaining VAP) minority VAP percentage (within the 30% to 50% range), only the highest scoring map that generates such VAP can be used. I don't think that will cause much mischief. As I have said before, and will say again, if you don't provide for some flexibility in the rules, to accommodate certain pressure points (and this is one of them), you rules rather than bending, will break. So on this one, we shall just have to disagree. In the end, it is not for us to decide what the rules are anyway. All we can do is try to persuade. And I have made my case!  

[Torie]

I still don't think there is much room for your angst to be realized given the constraints I outlined, for bipartisan gerrymanders (and such constraints are no accident).  In Cleveland, if either your map (for 43% BVAP), or mine (41.7% BVAP) are used in Ohio, and they are the highest scoring maps for those BVAP's, then we create a performing minority CD in exchange for a Dem CD becoming a swing one. I don't consider that a policy problem.

If you can come up with a hypo where would your posited concerns are realized, that seems like an "attractive" bipartisan gerrymander, that would be interesting.

I don't like bipartisan gerrys either. Who knew?  

[Torie]

Nice map, but you need to show the chops to score it.

[Torie]

Nice map, but you need to show the chops to score it.

It shows the chops, other than Columbus.

Well the Dayton area CD needs a chop for sure, along with a chop into Geauga. You must not be using the 0.5% variance in population constraint. If that is the case, then we are doing an apples to oranges exercise, with you having your own set of rules.

[Torie]

Nice map, but you need to show the chops to score it.

It shows the chops, other than Columbus.

Well the Dayton area CD needs a chop for sure, along with a chop into Geauga. You must not be using the 0.5% variance in population constraint. If that is the case, then we are doing an apples to oranges exercise, with you having your own set of rules.

Is this a requirement in the US Constitution, or federal statute?

I don't want to revive that discussion, which you had with Muon2. Different metrics make different maps.

[Torie]

Nice map, but you need to show the chops to score it.

It shows the chops, other than Columbus.

Well the Dayton area CD needs a chop for sure, along with a chop into Geauga. You must not be using the 0.5% variance in population constraint. If that is the case, then we are doing an apples to oranges exercise, with you having your own set of rules.

Is this a requirement in the US Constitution, or federal statute?

I don't want to revive that discussion, which you had with Muon2. Different metrics make different maps.

What if my map is qualitatively better?

Higher deviations in population tend to make for maps that fit the other constraints better. I have no idea what population constraint you are using. But it doesn't matter. It is going to be enough of a tough sell to push the 0.5% constraint, that seems pretty safe legally, assuming the states agree to it. Anyway, do your thing.  You will anyway.

[Torie]

Why is your division of the Cincinnati UCC acceptable? The concept of UCC is so that you can't have districts stretching outward from major cities. One of yours almost reaches Michigan, and the other reaches West Virginia, yet the majority of the population in each is in the Cincinnati suburbs.

The GOP should place Butler County into the 1st district, and then condense the 2nd district to parts of Hamilton, Claremont, and Warren County. That covers metro Cincinnati. This would then let the 10th district be the Dayton MSA.

Why in the world would you want to chop Hamilton into halves?  Do you also propose to chop the city of Cincinnati as well? 

[Torie]

Why is your division of the Cincinnati UCC acceptable? The concept of UCC is so that you can't have districts stretching outward from major cities. One of yours almost reaches Michigan, and the other reaches West Virginia, yet the majority of the population in each is in the Cincinnati suburbs.

The GOP should place Butler County into the 1st district, and then condense the 2nd district to parts of Hamilton, Claremont, and Warren County. That covers metro Cincinnati. This would then let the 10th district be the Dayton MSA.

Why in the world would you want to chop Hamilton into halves?  Do you also propose to chop the city of Cincinnati as well? 

How is that worse than your division of the UCC?

Could you score your plan on a district by district basis? I think we have identified a defect in Muon's scoring system.

His is a Pub gerrymander. And unlike both of your maps, I don't macro-chop a county in that UCC area. But you have your own metrics. I'm following Muon2's.