US House Redistricting: Michigan

[muon2]

I looked this up, and the relevant text is as follows - all emphasis mine. Note that the word "reasonably" appears in the line about county splits, so there's a bit of wiggle room. Also, I don't understand the bolded (iii). Does it mean that if you have to split a county, you have to split the part of the country that's left over from the districts entirely within the county into even fractions?

(link: www.legislature.mi.gov/.../documents/.../mcl-Act-221-of-1999.pdf)

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The simple meaning of the section you highlighted is to only split counties between two districts when balancing population. I believe the wording is to permit multiple fractional districts in the large counties like Wayne and Oakland, where the split is not simply to make final adjustments in population between two districts.

In September I posted a neutral version of MI using the statutory rules you cited in a thread about deceptive gerrymanders.

They're not really reasonable, though. They're drawn to dilute Democratic strength.

- MI-03 puts Grand Rapids in the very western corner. A fair district would have Grand Rapids as the center of population.

- MI-04 is specifically drawn to exclude Saginaw, and stretches 2/3rds of the way across the state.

- MI-07 and MI-08 each stretch from the middle of the state to the suburbs of Detroit. Battle Creek and Lansing would more logically be put in the same district, but they're split between the two.

- MI-11 is a bizarre L-shaped district that also attempts to dilute Dem strength as much as possible.

What is interesting about this observation is that MI used fairly rigorous standards to draw districts in 2001. They were based on the standards used by the court-appointed master in 1981 and 1991 and codified into law in the late '90s. The standards rest heavily on minimizing the splitting of counties, townships and municipalities, and the law describes the types of splits that are permissible.

An analysis for the Midwest Democracy Network by Michael McDonald of George Mason U last year showed that the partisan composition of the districts had 5 strong D, 2 strong R and 8 lean R. The fact that the GOP was able to stay within these standards to get an such effective advantage perhaps does rank MI as the most deceptive gerrymander.

To satisfy my own curiosity, I tested the MI standards with the estimated data set. All districts are with 100 persons of the ideal size, and two black-majority districts (58% and 56%) are maintained. The districts were drawn to conform with MI state law as regards to minimization of county, township and municipality splits. Using 2004 presidential votes, I get 5 strong D districts, 4 strong R, 2 lean D and 3 lean R. Based on this I would conclude that the standards were fine, but not tight enough to prevent partisan gerrymandering.


 

[muon2]

Calm down. If you read my post, you'll see it was an attempt to defend the Apol rules that were used for the 1980 and 1990 cycle handled by the court, then ensconsed in statute before the 2000 cycle. I took a blind approach in the map above to show that the rules were not inherently biased, but still left a lot of wiggle room for one party as seen by the map enacted 10 years ago. Needless to say, I assumed that a party in control would act as before, and bend the map within the rules to improve their chances.

[muon2]

Well in my defense, that post was kind of hard to read the way it was formatted.  Anyway, I am pleased that you don't think the law dictates this horrible map. If it does, well the law needs to be changed.   Is there some supra majority requirement to change it, because it is in the Michigan Constitution or something?  

It's just state law. The constitution provides no guidance on congressional districts.

[muon2]

Well this is about as nasty a gerrymander of Oakland County as I could manage, and it is probably illegal, but I leave that to Muon2 to tell me. My aim is to try to equalize the PVI's for the pink, turquoise, green and purple districts, with the purple having a bit more, since the Obama swing was more in the purple zone, as far as I can tell, but maybe not given what I have put in it. The goal is to get the PVI's four all four districts to about GOP +3, with the purple district a bit more. I am not sure I have done that (probably not for McCotter's Green district , but I packed as many GOP districts into it as possible in Oakland, while leaving what it has in Wayne County alone), but I did the best I can and it should hopefully get up to about an GOP plus 1-2% PVI anyway. If the turquoise CD  jut down to the Wayne County line is illegal, and the Green district has to fill much of it in, then the green CD's PVI of 0% will not change much, and might even drop a tad.

Leips' application does not have the partisan data for Michigan yet, but looking at the township and city returns, and the black percentages in Oakland, I am pretty sure I have corralled all, or almost all,  of the most GOP precincts for the Pubbies in Oakland, after dumping most if not all of the most Dem precincts in Oakland as possible into the black district. So,  it is just a matter of divvying the more GOP oriented districts in Oakland between the green, turquoise and purple districts. I wanted to chew up Saginaw and Bay City, because I don't think the northern CD's can afford to include either city, and thus they need to be neutralized from the south (and were by the turquoise district), since the Flint district instead of neutralizing Bay City and Saginaw as it did before, now neutralizes Lansing. The turquoise district also has a long thin jut down into south Oakland, which is about even territory for Bush 2004 (maybe a slight Bush 2004 lean of plus 1-2% or so, since I chopped up the townships in the jut area between what appears to be the more Dem and GOP pieces, so it has a somewhat Dem PVI - maybe a Dem PVI +2% or so.  I did that to try to get the GOP PVI for the Green district up as much as possible; the green district  is now  PVI 0%, and it needs as much beefing up as possible. So its expansion was into new more heavily GOP Oakland territory, with a GOP PVI of maybe plus 4% or so, although I am not sure. If the turquoise CD jut down south to the Wayne County border is illegal, then the green CD's PVI of 0% will not change much, and probably go down a fraction to maybe Dem +0.5% or so.

In any event, as long as McCotter, Miller, and Rodgers hang around, Levin and Peters face a near hopeless task of getting elected anywhere, at least absent a big Dem shift in this area, and some new Pubbie has in the purple district pretty ripe hanging fruit to pick up.

The simple application of the Michigan law is that within a split county there can be only one split city or township between a pair of districts. All the districts in your Oakland map seem to share multiple split municipalities. So I'm afraid to advise you that it would be an illegal gerrymander.

For instance, I think that if you are going to have a narrow finger linking Pontiac through West Bloomfield, then you would have to have all of Farmington Hills in the Pontiac - Detroit district. Waterford would have to be out, and Auburn Hills would have to be all in or all out since it looks like it is split three ways.

[muon2]

This is my next iteration. My goal was to give all the GOP incumbents at least at 54.5% Bush 2004 CD (GOP PVI +3% per Bush 2004 numbers), but better is 55% (GOP PVI per Bush 2004 numbers 3.5%). I wanted to pad CD-07's GOP lean, which has a weak GOP just now elected incumbent, and that meant excluding Battle Creek from CD-07 (a marginally Dem town), which weakened a bit CD-04, which absorbed Battle Creek, and so I scrubbed, and scrubbed again, every precinct, to get CD-04 to as close to 55% Bush 2004 as possible. No precincts are left to play with, as to that aspect of the game - none.

I am very sure the map is legal. That was carefully scrubbed too, as to every detail I think.

So Rogers moves out of his home in Livingston County, to Oakland County (where about a third of his existing CD is), to CD-09, which is heavily GOP now, to take out Peters. And in order to take out Peters for sure, I padded CD-09, so that it is Bush 2004 57.02%, which particularly against Rogers, means that Peters is done). Levin has a district now all in Southern Macomb, plus the Gross Pointes, very carefully gerrymandered, although it does not look that way, that Bush 2004 carried by a hair. The incumbent in CD-10, Candice Miller,  lives in Harrison Township in Macomb, and although she lives in safe CD-10 in this plan (largely her existing district) without changing the partisan balance much at all, her home can be drawn into either CD-12, if she is adventurous, and wants to run in CD-12. In the new CD-12, she would be the favorite to beat Levin in this now even district from a partisan perspective. Her old district had Shelby Township and the northern third of Sterling Heights, plus five precincts in Macomb township that are now in CD-12 now, so she has an "excuse," if she wants to run in CD-12, rather than CD-10. But she takes more risk running in CD-12 - for sure.

So the bottom line, is that the GOP incumbents in the more marginal seats are all made safer,  and CD-02 and CD-03, which dropped a bit in Bush 2004 percentages, but are still the most GOP Bush 2004 CD's in Michigan. The bottom line, is that the Dems lose one safe seat (old CD-12), and one marginally Dem seat (old CD-09), in exchange for one toss up seat (new CD-12), and the GOP incumbents all made pretty much invulnerable (GOP + 3% PVI or better), absent a Dem wave.  So, the Dems in this plan get 4.5 seats, as it were, rather than 5 seats, and lose much hope of taking out any GOP incumbents.

If anyone has any ideas how to improve this plan, let me know. Thanks.






 

The numbers look sweet, but I'm not sure about the Ann Arbor area. It looks like there is a three-way split of Washtenaw. That would probably be disallowed under the statute.

[muon2]

Torie, now you're cooking with gas.

I think it's fascinating to compare your ingenious work using the MI standards to the neutral application I prepared a few months ago. Here we used the same data and same standards but reached radically different results. I think it conclusively shows how geographic requirements alone are insufficient to suppress partisan gerrymandering.

They're not really reasonable, though. They're drawn to dilute Democratic strength.

- MI-03 puts Grand Rapids in the very western corner. A fair district would have Grand Rapids as the center of population.

- MI-04 is specifically drawn to exclude Saginaw, and stretches 2/3rds of the way across the state.

- MI-07 and MI-08 each stretch from the middle of the state to the suburbs of Detroit. Battle Creek and Lansing would more logically be put in the same district, but they're split between the two.

- MI-11 is a bizarre L-shaped district that also attempts to dilute Dem strength as much as possible.

What is interesting about this observation is that MI used fairly rigorous standards to draw districts in 2001. They were based on the standards used by the court-appointed master in 1981 and 1991 and codified into law in the late '90s. The standards rest heavily on minimizing the splitting of counties, townships and municipalities, and the law describes the types of splits that are permissible.

An analysis for the Midwest Democracy Network by Michael McDonald of George Mason U last year showed that the partisan composition of the districts had 5 strong D, 2 strong R and 8 lean R. The fact that the GOP was able to stay within these standards to get an such effective advantage perhaps does rank MI as the most deceptive gerrymander.

To satisfy my own curiosity, I tested the MI standards with the estimated data set. All districts are with 100 persons of the ideal size, and two black-majority districts (58% and 56%) are maintained. The districts were drawn to conform with MI state law as regards to minimization of county, township and municipality splits. Using 2004 presidential votes, I get 5 strong D districts, 4 strong R, 2 lean D and 3 lean R. Based on this I would conclude that the standards were fine, but not tight enough to prevent partisan gerrymandering.


 

[muon2]

Oh God, I am getting an orgasm over that map. Perfecto! That is just what I wanted to see.

If the pubbies can cross 1 black district into Oakland, and 1 into Macomb, this becomes very easy. If you can cross into 1 or the other, better to cross into Macomb, and plop a full CD in Oakland.

What kind of 2 district plan in Wayne alone has 50% black VAP on both districts? Please post! Like Torie said better an additional county crossing than a slash and burn.

I just checked, and I was able to make two 50% Black VAP districts in Wayne alone. They are both just barely over 50% and follow city lines as needed. However, I like the idea of reaching the two districts separately into Macomb and Oakland as I suggested last Sep.

[muon2]

Oh God, I am getting an orgasm over that map. Perfecto! That is just what I wanted to see.

If the pubbies can cross 1 black district into Oakland, and 1 into Macomb, this becomes very easy. If you can cross into 1 or the other, better to cross into Macomb, and plop a full CD in Oakland.

What kind of 2 district plan in Wayne alone has 50% black VAP on both districts? Please post! Like Torie said better an additional county crossing than a slash and burn.

I just checked, and I was able to make two 50% Black VAP districts in Wayne alone. They are both just barely over 50% and follow city lines as needed. However, I like the idea of reaching the two districts separately into Macomb and Oakland as I suggested last Sep.

Yes, but is it legal? Of course, that will facilitate a better Pubbie Gerry - if it is legal. What you just posted worries me. What does the map look like?

Which statement worries you? If it is the first - then here's the map I drew for Wayne.



On the second point, to make the map legal depends on the value of putting parts of Macomb with Wayne vs reaching the Macomb district into the Grosse Pointes. It looked to me last fall that the former was better, but you have better precinct numbers now.

[muon2]

Muon2, with that map, if the Dingell CD took all the rest of Wayne except the points, still have a shortage of population after taking all of Wastenaw? 

A complete district that linked the Livonia corner to the south Wayne area would use the eastern 3/5 of Washtenaw and the northern tier of townships in Monroe. One could swap some of Washtenaw's rural townships out and extend into the city of Monroe.

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Combining enough precincts to make two districts in Wayne cannot exceed 50.1% black VAP. Thus there's no wiggle room to add the Pointes without dropping a district below 50%. The splits of towns within Wayne was the minimum I could find that kept both above 50%. It's extremely tight.

[muon2]

Here's the map I think Torie has in mind for SE MI. This map has each district within 100 of the ideal population. It's what I've expected for some time with CD 13 (54.2% black VAP) and 14 (56.8% black VAP) each splitting into Oakland and Macomb to allow a district wholly contained in each of those counties. I use CD 8 from Livingston as the balancer per Torie's suggestion. I'll let him check this against his precinct tables for PVI.

[muon2]

 



Here's the larger picture.  3 county splits in Wayne, 1 each in Oakland, Macomb, Monroe, Ingham, Eaton, Saginaw, Isabella, and one not seen in Traverse between CDs 1 and 2.  

It looks like you are relying on the near equality of population for your CD 6. I get a value that is over by 299 persons. That isn't going to be exact enough for MI, so you will need at least one additional county split somewhere.

[muon2]

Here's Detroit:



I gave Rogers his area around Lansing back, since they love him there.  Also, I figured the light blue district could stand to come in a little bit more from the thumb.  I don't know what the partisan balance is but you can swap towns between the two if Rogers is too strong, for instance.  McCotter has options within Wayne County, depending on whether he'd prefer Westland/Garden City from his old district, or some slightly less Dem towns in SE Wayne County.  ETA: Ah, he definitely wants Grosse Ile!  So swap that in for more of Westland...

Tan district is 51% black VAP, bronze is 52.2%.  Neither of them ventures into Wayne County outside of Detroit (with one small exception of Northville, which might be necessary in order to not split the town; if it's not, McCotter gets a few hundredths of a percent back).  

This has a three-way split of Detroit. That's unnecessary, so it won't work.

[muon2]

Wait... does this still fulfill all the other requirements?

7 districts down, 7 splits made.  I'm fine there.  The black percentages are over 50.  You can't see the township lines but I've only split one town between each pair of districts (Detroit between the two black districts and Dingell's, Westland between Dingell and the 11th, one in Macomb, and Farmington Hills and Novi between the bronze district and the other two Oakland districts, respectively.  

The only question is, now that I've used the thumb plus Hillsdale and Lenawee to gain an extra district in the Detroit area, is there enough left to deal with whatever is leftover from the Flint pack?  I'm not sure; I think one of them might have to be swingy.  But I think I'm done for the time being.  Someone can take over from here.  

Yes, I would like to see the northern part of your map please. Great job! You figured out the larger formula first, which is necessary to really know what you are doing. There are still legal arguments to be made (in part because of this from the statute: "(ii) Congressional district lines shall break as few county boundaries as is reasonably possible".), but one part of the game is surely to see what is possible if you meet your # of CD-s - 1 chop formula.

I'm not sure if the CD's -1 is the right formula. The redistricting statutes say

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That's different than saying split the fewest number of counties.

A district wholly contained within one county does not split a county boundary.

The current map has 4 districts in Wayne and Oakland (3 chops each) plus 1 chop in each of Macomb, Washtenaw, Saginaw, Bay, Shiawasee, Allegan, Calhoun, and Kent, for a total of 14, for 15 districts.  This is normal - in general with x districts, one will need x-1 chops unless a numerical miracle occurs.   So with one fewer district this go-round, the norm should be 13 chops. 

According to the legislation that enacted the 2001 map, there were 11 county splits. Here's the language from within that statute:

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Counting county splits in that map according to the above rules I get single splits in Bay, Saginaw, Kent, Allegan, Shiawassee, Calhoun, Washtenaw, and Macomb. That leaves three splits to get to 11, so the interpretation is that the current map counts two splits in Oakland and one in Wayne. Thus the the whole districts in those counties do not count as splits.

More importantly, this all may be moot for the current cycle, as may be the 1999 redistricting rules that are in my earlier link. The Michigan Supreme Court ruled in Leroux v Secretary of State (2002) that the statutory provisions for congressional districts cannot bind a future legislature.

Following that decision, the current legislature could adopt any interpretation of the Apol standards they wished. They could even replace them with new standards that defined their map. I suspect that tradition would tend to hold them to some interpretation of the Apol standards, but as we see in AR, tradition can go away quickly in the face of political reality.

[muon2]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but this seems like an odd way to count splits.  If there are 3 counties in a state that go in a line, A next to B next to C, with populations 20-110-20 in that order, and there are to be three districts, you can do it two ways:

PLAN 1: 20 from A, 30 from B; 50 from B; 30 from B, 20 from C
PLAN 2: two districts entirely within B, one containing A, C, and a 10-person bridge from B

Are you telling me that PLAN 2 has no splits, whereas PLAN 1 does?  My method of counting splits makes much more sense.  

No, Plan 2 would still have 2 splits.

The difference comes up in the context of somewhere like Macomb County. You could have one district wholly in Macomb County and another district partly in Macomb County, or you could have two districts partly in Macomb County (or more than two, but let's assume those are the only options).

Under the county-splits interpretation, both maps have one county split, as Macomb County is split across two districts on both maps. However, under the county-line-crosses interpretation, as mandated by the statute, the first map has one county line cross while the second map has two county line crosses. (Of course, you might avoid a county line cross elsewhere on the second map, so it's not so simple, but you get the idea.)

The way I read their description and see how it is applied, both plans have one split.

In plan 1 there is a whole district within the county, which is like the current example of Oakland. The wholly contained district doesn't count in their total, and in plan 1 the remainder is split once. That equals one split.

In plan 2 there are two whole districts within the county, which is like the current example of Wayne. The current example of Wayne does have one split of the remainder, so I can't apply it's example too far, but I can note that if the remainder didn't count as one split, the current map could have been improved. For example, there is a split formed between CD 10 and 12 in Macomb. It would have been possible to place a whole district within Macomb and use the remainder for just one district. If that remainder did not count as a split, then the map could have been reduced to 10 county splits. Since this was not done, I conclude that the mappers would have counted Macomb as one split either way. Thus, the single fragment in plan 2 county B counts as one split.

This method of counting favors putting whole districts in counties that need to be split more than once, but does not favor a whole district in a county where the other fragment remains intact. It also does not provide any advantage to a three-way split over two two-way splits which occurs in some methods of counting fragments.

[muon2]

OK, I guess you're saying that
"(i) Breaking a county line means assigning part of the population of a county to 1 or more counties in the formation of a district."
means, putting part of a county with a district that contains other counties.  (I couldn't figure out what it meant to "assign part of a county to other counties"...)

But if that's so, doesn't Oakland currently have 3 breaks, and Wayne 2?  

I still don't know what "including a district from 2 geographically-separate areas" means, though.  

I also don't understand how dividing Wayne into 2 whole districts plus two partial districts can constitute the same number of splits (1) as dividing Wayne into 2 whole districts plus one partial would. 

What I'm saying is that after reading the text that was part of the passed map, I looked at the splits and compared it to the reported number. From that comparison I can deduce the algorithm they used. I'll summarize how it apparently worked in 2001.

A county that is split in two counted as one split.

A county that is split in three would have counted as two splits. Think of the county as having been split twice from its original intact form.

A county split into n pieces would have counted as n-1 splits.

A county with one or more districts wholly contained and one other piece attached to other counties would have counted as one split. The lesser part crossed the county line to form that one split.

A county with one or more districts wholly contained and two other pieces attached to other districts counted as one split. This is somewhat counter-intuitive, but it compares to the case where a single county is split in two. The remainder fragment is treated as a county for splits, except that it would be one split even by itself.

A county with one or more districts wholly contained and three other pieces attached to other districts counted as two splits. This parallels the three-split case for a single county.

In general a county with N districts wholly contained and n pieces attached to other districts outside the county would have counted as n-1 splits, except when n = 1 and then it counts as 1 split.

[muon2]

What I'm saying is that after reading the text that was part of the passed map, I looked at the splits and compared it to the reported number. From that comparison I can deduce the algorithm they used. I'll summarize how it apparently worked in 2001.

A county that is split in two counted as one split.

A county that is split in three would have counted as two splits. Think of the county as having been split twice from its original intact form.

A county split into n pieces would have counted as n-1 splits.

A county with one or more districts wholly contained and one other piece attached to other counties would have counted as one split. The lesser part crossed the county line to form that one split.

A county with one or more districts wholly contained and two other pieces attached to other districts counted as one split. This is somewhat counter-intuitive, but it compares to the case where a single county is split in two. The remainder fragment is treated as a county for splits, except that it would be one split even by itself.

A county with one or more districts wholly contained and three other pieces attached to other districts counted as two splits. This parallels the three-split case for a single county.

In general a county with N districts wholly contained and n pieces attached to other districts outside the county would have counted as n-1 splits, except when n = 1 and then it counts as 1 split.

Well, I guess I believe you.  But if so, that's a ridiculously stupid way of counting.  

Consider the scenario where one big county A (pop. 63) in the middle is attached to 3 smaller counties B/C/D (20 each) which are not adjacent to one another.  Dividing into three districts of 21-20 seems reasonable, but that has two splits.  

A different plan would have one whole district in A, 21 from A + all of B, and a district of D+C+a bridge via A.  This technically has one split, but I can't see any reason why this is preferable.  

Here's a different scenario.  Consider the following plans:

Plan 1:
51 from A;
10 from A, 20 from B, 21 from C;
10 from A, 20 from D, 21 from C.  

Plan 2:
51 from A;
20 from A, 20 from B, 11 from C;
20 from D, 31 from C.  

Which is superior?  Clearly plan 2 is, but according to the formula you just laid out, both have exactly 2 splits.  

So the counting formula mandates an inferior (or at least, non-superior) plan in my first scenario, and fails to distinguish a superior plan in my second scenario.  Boo!

****************

Finally, what is the minimum number of splits according to the formula?  Ignoring VRA for a moment, I think the best you can do is the following:
2 whole districts in Wayne
1 whole in Oakland
1 whole in Macomb
1 with the leftovers from Wayne, Macomb, and some of the leftovers from Oakland

... leaving 9 to go, which will split 8 other counties between them.  Add in 1 split in Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne, and we're at 11.  Am I missing something?  

Let's say I shove the light blue district entirely into Oakland in my scenario.  Then Oakland has one split, Macomb has 1 split, and Wayne 2.  Washtenaw, Kent, Calhoun, Ingham, Saginaw, Isabella, and one between CD-1 and CD-4 are the others.  That's 11!  Ding ding ding, we have a winner!

I get that the lowest theoretical count comes from putting as many whole districts into counties that one can, and then use at least a two-way split for the remainder of those counties. In this case 4 districts would be entirely within one county, leaving 10 CDs. Those 10 require 9 county splits (n-1) at a minimum so 9 splits is the ideal.

[muon2]

I decided to follow up on my earlier observation that two black-majority seats could be drawn in Wayne. To that map I applied the definition of county splits as applied in 2001 to draw a GOP-oriented map that achieves the ideal number of 9 county splits. I did not use incumbent data, and estimated partisan strength based on previous posts and Atlas maps.

Placing two black-majority seats (CD 13, 14) in Wayne leaves 3 fragments: in the Pointes, Livonia, and the south suburbs. To keep Wayne to one split requires that two be joined together. The political goal requires that Ann Arbor and the southern end of Oakland be drawn together in CD 11. These were linked through the Livonia fragment and then across southern Macomb to the Pointes fragment.

Enough population was left to create a whole CD in each of Oakland (9) and Macomb (12). To minimize county splits remainders of those two counties had to be linked to a whole number of counties. In this case CD 10 uses a small part of Macomb to achieve population equality. CD 5 links all of Genesee to Pontiac and Auburn Hills in Oakland.



The rest of the state is completed with a minimum number of splits. Of note is pulling East Lansing out of CD 8 which is stuck with Ypsilanti. East Lansing and Saginaw are now both in CD 4.



For those of a mathematical bent, the county minimization was solved with graph theory. Each node is a district and each link is a split county. There are 10 nodes since 4 districts are entirely within one county. The minimum of 9 links occurs when the graph has no loops. The graph for my map is the following.

            [1]                [5]        [10]
            /                             /
           /                             /
        [2]----[4]----[8]----[11]
          |                           |
          |                           |
        [6]         [3]             [7]

[muon2]

MI-07, MI-08 and MI-12 are all marginal, with MI-08 looking even lean Dem in Muon2's map.  If that is what Michigan law dictates, the law is going to be changed. What I am trying to figure out is whether the minimum number of splits were done in 2000.  I don't think that was the case.

The 2000 map has the minimum number of splits given only three districts are wholly inside a single county. I see that the 2000 map did not place a district wholly inside Macomb as I did. If I assume that they did minimize county splits according to some rule, and did not make a Macomb district as I did, then I would have to revise my assessment of their counting rules.

I would now conclude that if two discontiguous parts of a county are attached to other counties, but not to the same district then that counts as two county breaks. That is still consistent with the current map in Oakland where one split is divided between CDs 8 and 11, and a separate split has the piece of CD 12.

With this interpretation, which is the only way to legally justify the 2000 map, my map would now count as 11 splits not 9. To get to 10 splits I need to have the pieces of CDs 10 and 11 adjoin in Macomb. That would require running a thin line of CD 11 across Warren and another thin line up to New Baltimore. Since that would split two towns it fails. I suspect that is why a Macomb-only district didn't appear in 2000. Even so it still leaves my map with the two-split of Wayne that cannot be eliminated if two majority-black districts are both in Wayne.