US House Redistricting: Maryland

[Linus Van Pelt]

I don't imagine Elijah Cummings loves the look of that 7th in plan 2.

[Linus Van Pelt]

What a gong show.

Anyway, assuming that 8-0 is not happening and that the real issue for the minorities is just the dilution of 4 and 7 (three black districts being mentioned only on the forum and not at all in any of krazen's links), the solution to all this mess is just for Cummings to take a little snake to PG, where there is, as it were, excess capacity. As a bonus, there are enough Dems left over in Baltimore to give Sarbanes and Ruppersberger vaguely normal-shaped districts.



1. eastern shore - 58.4 McCain
2. east Baltimore - 59.2 Obama
3. west Baltimore suburbs - 58.3 Obama. Probably could be made a little safer with weirder lines, or by slightly reducing the BVAP in 7.
4. inner PG - 57.7 BVAP, 83.6 Obama. No Anne Arundel here!
5. southern mainland - 61.2 Obama
6. new Monto-to-Appalachia district - 57.9 Obama
7. Baltimore southward - 55.5 BVAP, 77.1 Obama. Still with a majority clearly in the Baltimore metro.
8. DC suburbs northward - 60.3 Obama

[Linus Van Pelt]

It requires some gerrymandering to be sure, but nothing nearly as crazy as what they have now. If there's going to be two white D districts in the Baltimore area, there's no good reason why one of them shouldn't be just in the east of the metro and one just in the west.

Just for the sake of showing the formal possibility of this - on the map following, grey is 50.8% black by VAP, both other districts are right on 60.0% Obama, and the area right north of the city line is drawn so that Sarbanes's house in Towson is in the western (purple) district and Ruppersberger's house in Cockeysville is in the eastern (green) one. In reality, if you thought (probably rightly) that Cummings would like a couple more % black and Ruppersberger could handle going down to 57/58 or so, you could switch some black areas in E Baltimore City, but this doesn't really affect the basic principle.

Why both of the two white districts have to be both in the east and the west of the metro area, and thus snaking all over the place like mad, is really one of the most baffling things in the whole country. I understand it less than Stivers' loop-the-loop job in south-central Ohio.

(I'd also second Lewis's request that the 1990's map would be interesting).

[Linus Van Pelt]

The other interesting thing from JohnnyLongtorso's link is that MD-7 in 1990 was 70+% Black, which would obviously not happen with the kind of "unpacking" in vogue today.