Ohio - a celebration of the Muon2 rules

[muon2]

I see you have a pack penalty for both Cincinnati and Cleveland. I guess I should look to see if I have to increase chops beyond your 6 to get that number down.

[muon2]

Based on the 2015 ACS 5-year estimates the Cleveland UCC counties have the following black (alone) populations:
Cuyahoga 375.0K
Lake 8.5K
Lorain 25.4K
Medina 2.5K

The target CD in 2020 is 778K by my projections, so Cuyahoga alone does not trigger a VRA district. However, the UCC as a whole does have a black population that exceeds 50% of a CD, so perhaps one can make the case that one is required. Let's assume that one is required, then the first question becomes what is the BVAP level for the CD to elect the black candidate of choice? The black population is segregated on the east side of Cleveland, so the mapping question becomes it is worth a chop of Cleveland to greatly reduce the erosity?

For example the Cleveland and Akron UCCs minus Lorain can be made into 3 CDs within 0.5% tolerance. Lake and the east side of Cleveland/Cuyahoga would be in the UCC and have a 46% BVAP. Medina and the west side of Cleveland/Cuyahoga would also be in the UCC so there would be no pack penalty. The chop in Geauga would move to Cuyahoga and there would be a cover penalty for the Cleveland UCC. The net result would be an extra chop for Cleveland but a lower erosity with a more clearly performing VRA CD.

If I get time later I'll transfer my spreadsheet to a map.

[muon2]

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. If it is about performance one needs to look at the fraction of the Dem primary electorate that is black. In a heavily Dem city like Cleveland there are lots of white Dems and that can pose a problem for the minority. That happens in Chicago and I would imagine it applies to Cleveland, too.

[muon2]

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.

The flexibility is built in through the Pareto test. If one has to draw bizarre districts to get a minority CD where not required by the VRA then that may not fly with the courts either. And the Cuyahoga wrap-around CD approaches districts found to be bizarrely-shaped in cases from other states. Only if it survives Pareto on chops and equality could I make a case that it is not entirely influenced by race.

[muon2]

Here is what I had in mind. The orange CD is 43% BVAP according to the 2015 ACS 5-year estimates. The other two CDs are both competitive. It preserves the UCC pack, but sacrifices a cover point. The chop of Geauga for the Akron CD is shifted to Cuyahoga. The rest of NE OH is in the Youngstown CD which needs no county chop. Even with the chop of Cleveland I think judges might find this arrangement quite attractive.

[muon2]

I'll be happy to put together some scores. If you could give me the list of munis in the Cleveland CD from your initial offering that would help, since the detail is hard to read.

I assume that an independent body is scoring maps based on some set of approved rules. OH has considered adopting this type of arrangement before, so it isn't completely crazy to think this way. If those rules are the muon2 rules then the legislature can only consider maps on the Pareto frontier. If a map loses on Pareto scoring then it doesn't matter what the legislature or parties like about it.

The independent body will also be charged with enforcing federal law, including the VRA. To that end do we or do we not assume that the VRA requires a performing district in NE OH based on Gingles? An independent body will not be able to require a performing CD in a non-Gingles situation absent a law to that effect.

It is probably safe to assume that a map with a CD that can elect a candidate for the black minority will be a plus. But if it is not required by the VRA or other law, then that advantage only comes into play if a map gets to the Pareto frontier and thus to the decision makers (eg the legislature).

[muon2]

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.

There's a needle to thread here. The type of district at issue here is known as a crossover district - one where the minority relies on some votes from the white majority to "crossover" and vote for their candidate of choice. In Bartlett v Strickland (2009) SCOTUS ruled that the minority must constitute a numerical majority of the VAP to require a district. The case involved the NC requirement for whole counties which in one instance was chopped to create a crossover district. The ruling allows for crossover districts as a means to meet the VRA, but cautions against codification.

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In 2010 after the ruling, IL Dems passed a law with the following text.

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However, though their plan had crossover districts, they never invoked this law in their narrative for the justification of those districts. The feeling among lawyers at the time was that doing so would begin to look like a race-based mechanism that could be found unconstitutional. The courts found that the plan with crossover districts was constitutional but never had to rule on the law quoted above.

The problem here is a set of rules that would be used by an independent commission reviewing and scoring maps. A plan that had crossover districts would be legal, but codifying a rule to prefer their use is tricky given the language of Bartlett. I think the best we've done so far is to define minority county clusters as a measurable community of interest akin to UCCs. I'm not sure even that would pass SCOTUS today. Cuyahoga would require a step further, defining something like a minority subunit cluster, and that seems dangerously close to the entrenched majority-minority districts Kennedy warned about in Bartlett.

What's your thought on how to write the rule for the commission?
 

[muon2]

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.

I think you are saying that Pareto equality is subservient to a map with a crossover district regardless of its need by the VRA. I don't think that flies as a law, though it clearly could as a matter of legislative choice. The problem is that this is about statute to direct a commission. Parties don't figure into this at all.

I think the commission has to say if they determine that a minority district is required by the VRA. Then it it up to the map makers to determine how they will comply, and that can include the use of a crossover district. If the commission doesn't find that the VRA requires a minority district then I think crossovers are welcome, but there is no mechanism to prefer them.

This was basically the mechanism used in the OH competition in 2011. It was known that a contorted CD could be drawn with 50% BVAP (and was by the Pubs linking Cleveland and Akron in the adopted plan). The competition allowed for a 48% BVAP based on discussions with the OH Urban League so we didn't have to actually work out crossover performance.

In the specific case of NE OH for 2020, I've laid out the number of blacks in the UCC and note that it appears that whites are leaving the area faster than blacks based on Census estimates. The black population could be hypothetically drawn into to 50% BVAP district, even more so if Akron is included. So I think that a requirement for VRA district, which could be a crossover, would likely be present in 2020.

[muon2]

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.

[muon2]

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.

[muon2]

I find bipartisan gerrymanders particularly insidious, since they tend to result in few if any districts that can swing and allow the electorate to change the composition of a delegation. I also have observed that bipartisan gerrymanders can be quite popular with legislatures since they tend to protect the maximum number of members from challenges. In my scoring they may do well on SKEW but usually perform poorly on POLARIZATION.

The model I've been promoting (and not just here on Atlas) is similar to the Base Realignment and Closure Act that is used by Congress to determine what military installations get closed. The commission report goes to Congress, but it must be accepted or rejected in its entirety. It has the beauty of stifling vote-trading to protect projects in member districts, and was used five times from 1988 to 2005. As I noted IA has used this same model for adopting or rejecting redistricting plans since 1980.