US House Redistricting: Michigan

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

If they actually do put part of the 5th in Wayne County, that's gonna make for some interesting happenings during the county meetings back home... especially since the county has never really interacted with the 5th.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

If they actually do put part of the 5th in Wayne County, that's gonna make for some interesting happenings during the county meetings back home... especially since the county has never really interacted with the 5th.

The 5th never hits Wayne in any of the 3 plans, just Oakland in one of them, to take in Pontiac. By the way, who is the Pubbie point man in the legislature for redistricting?  Would you happen to know, or could you find out?  I am not getting much cooperation so far when I call.

I was referring to muon's original map.

As for the point man in the legislature for redistricting... I'll see if I can find that out.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Here's what I drew up.  I know it sucks, and probably isn't very legal.  But I spent a good 4 hours on it one night, and I've tried fixing it and after 2 hours of fiddling, it was just worse.  So, here's my map, for what it's worth

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

I made 9 heavily Democratic since it basically ate up a large portion of the 12th, that way since the Dems lose Levin (assuming Peters would stay over Levin), they'd be happier they have a strong hold.

As for the 11th, I thought I was careful enough to keep it Republican enough to stay favorable for McCotter.

As for the 4th, yeah... I know... that whole thing with Bay City and Saginaw is just weird... I gave him Bay City over Saginaw because Saginaw would be way too Democratic heavy.  But then it got weird trying to connect that to the thumb, otherwise the 5th got too many people.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Alright... this edition is a lot more GOP friendly, and it's gerrymander-licious ... (also... made a mistake the first time and missed one slice of a 5th district inside the 4th, so add 6 voters to the 4th that come from the 5th.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Inks your new map is illegal unfortunately it looks like because for starters it has too many gratuitous county splits. Isn't this fun? 

Yeah... I figured it was illegal (anything I describe as gerrymander-licious probably isn't exactly legally ideal, you know ).

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

While it's not legal, I'm proud of my last one... especially CD 10.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

So, I didn't realize I could see info for the whole district (which, I thought that was incredibly stupid not being able to see demographic stuff by the entire district instead of just by "voting district"), so to answer your question about my initial map, regarding the legality of CD 12, it is 51% black.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

So, I didn't realize I could see info for the whole district (which, I thought that was incredibly stupid not being able to see demographic stuff by the entire district instead of just by "voting district"), so to answer your question about my initial map, regarding the legality of CD 12, it is 51% black.

That might not work, because the Dave Bradlee numbers are population numbers, and not VAP numbers, and although the gap is much narrower than it used to be, blacks still have a higher percentage of minors in their population, than whites do. You need to get up to about 53% or so to be in the safe zone, unless you can persuade a court, that enough whites will vote for a black, that you can go lower. That won't fly very well in a state like Michigan, unless you are talking about Oakland County. Macomb is a different breed of cat. The Pubbies will have zero interest in litigating that issue in Michigan.

Well, it's close enough that if that were the map, it could be fiddled with to add a few Detroit areas and take out some of the metro areas and move it all around.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

I can't see them either...

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

There was a group doing a competition here in Michigan.  I based this one roughly off of my original map here, but edited it a bit to make District 8 more competitive, and to make everything more compact, and have less county splits: https://districtbuilder.michiganredistricting.org/districtmapping/plan/313/view/

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Zoomed in for Wayne/Oakland County is available here: http://download.gannett.edgesuite.net/detnews/2011/pdf/0617congressmap.pdf

I have to admit... that map makes even me cringe, especially with the 14th District.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Got a zoomin for the rape of Grand Rapids? We all know what line Lansing is being raped on.

The Detroit News map appears to show the city of Grand Rapids intact in proposed MI-03, with most of its immediate southern and western suburbs in proposed MI-02.

The city of Lansing proper isn't being raped.  The city is divided along county lines - as under the current map.   The overwhelming majority of the city's population and land is in Ingham County, anyway, not Eaton County.  Not dividing a county seems to trump not dividing a municipality under Michigan law.  The city of Grosse Pointe Shores appears to be split into two CDs, too, with the larger portion of that city in with Detroit and proposed MI-14 and the small portion in Macomb County in a Macomb-based district.

He's right about Lansing - that split makes sense, and is probably more legally sound than keeping the city together.  As for Grand Rapids, I don't know city boundaries, but it appears to keep the city all together from my estimation of the city lines.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Thought it'd be relevant to post here: Inks won the Michigan Citizens Redistricting Competition with this map.

Here's some pictures of that map (unfortunately their software  doesn't automatically color each district, so it's a bit harder to tell them apart):



And a zoomed in view of the Metro-Detroit area:

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

And a zoomed in view of the Metro-Detroit area:

What on earth is going on with the 13th?  From Southfield to west Detroit and Inkster, but then bypassing Farmington Hills, Romulus and Westland to drop all the way down to Grosse Ile and northeast Monroe County?!

In order to minimize the county splits further west, I had to fiddle with Wayne County from my original design, but this decreased one of my districts to around 40% for African American VAP, so I had to do a little bit of odd-shaping to get 2 majority black VAP districts.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

And a zoomed in view of the Metro-Detroit area:

What on earth is going on with the 13th?  From Southfield to west Detroit and Inkster, but then bypassing Farmington Hills, Romulus and Westland to drop all the way down to Grosse Ile and northeast Monroe County?!

I'm sure the contest defined the "winner" as the map with the shortest net boundries, or such.

There were several categories: compactness, encouraging competitive districts, not giving one party a huge number of probable districts, minimizing county and municipal splits.  But after those categories, the judgets picked one that they thought evenly excelled at multiple categories.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

A "fair" map doesn't "give" either party seats.  A fair map would make as compact of districts as possible, minimizing county and municipality splits (in that order of importance) and let the chips fall where they do.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

If anybody cares, this press release has a few more details on my plan (how it did compared to the others, and the following demographic breakdowns): http://drawthelinemidwest.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/MCRC-competition-winner-release-final.pdf

Dist. Tot Pop Compactness Black VAP His. VAP Dem PI Rep PI
1 706,811 62.53% 1.56% 1.02% 43.66% 56.34%
2 706,217 80.45% 4.67% 4.49% 37.97% 62.03%
3 705,620 77.74% 8.89% 6.93% 38.66% 61.34%
4 706,965 67.13% 6.50% 3.55% 45.91% 54.09%
5 708,837 73.66% 12.13% 2.43% 51.20% 48.80%
6 708,398 84.40% 8.25% 4.10% 44.28% 55.72%
7 704,209 72.64% 8.12% 4.09% 45.78% 54.22%
8 707,807 71.89% 3.54% 2.54% 36.93% 63.07%
9 707,014 67.76% 9.83% 2.86% 45.99% 54.01%
10 703,039 71.38% 7.07% 1.94% 45.75% 54.25%
11 705,564 59.55% 12.53% 2.52% 47.64% 52.36%
12 704,073 56.68% 51.92% 6.85% 73.87% 26.13%
13 705,391 41.23% 53.04% 2.66% 70.94% 29.06%
14 703,695 73.57% 8.93% 3.51% 52.30% 47.70%

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

There is no question Michigan's current map is gerrymandered. Under the 1990s plan, Gore won 9 CD's to Bush's 7. Under the 2000s plan, Gore would have won 5 CD's to Bush's 10.

Anyone have the Kerry-Bush numbers for the new CD's? Obama-McCain isn't really a good measure in Michigan.

Alternately, those same facts suggest that the apportionment in the 1990's was gerrymandered to favor the Democrats, while the current map accurately reflects the fact that most of Michigan leans slightly Republican.

Yes, the Republican-controlled Senate and John Engler gerrymandered in favor of the Democrats...

And until 2010, the state didn't really lean Republican.  We elect Republicans to some offices, but as a whole, the state tends to lean Democratic.  This does change from district to district though.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

So, I've done a Republican gerrymander in the past.  I decided to do a Democratic gerrymander:

It would've been easier if I didn't have to obey the VRA - I probably could've made 9 Democratic districts instead of just 8.















That was a cleaned up version.  Originally, I had District 6 wrapping around District 3, but realized that I could just cut them off near Grand Rapids.  So this one is from my original map:

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

District      Obama   McCain   Dem   Rep
1      56.1%   42.2%   50.7%   49.3%
2      49.6%   48.8%   40.9%   59.1%
3      41.5%   56.8%   31.8%   68.2%
4      63.7%   34.8%   52.4%   47.6%
5      51.8%   46.4%   43.0%   56.1%
6      45.6%   52.7%   36.3%   63.7%
7      60.7%   37.7%   50.8%   49.2%
8      48.9%   49.3%   41.5%   58.5%
9      60.6%   37.7%   52.1%   47.9%
10      47.8%   50.6%   38.2%   61.8%
11      61.6%   36.8%   50.9%   49.1%
12      60.8%   37.4%   53.3%   46.7%
13      76.5%   22.6%   65.3%   34.7%   50.1% VAP
14      73.9%   24.9%   64.5%   35.5%   50.6% VAP

*Dem/Rep calcualted as an average of the Gubernatorial, AG, and SoS 2006 results (Dave's Index, not my own).  They're probably slightly Republican biased, as the AG and SoS have been good races for Republicans in recent years.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

District 8 is very far from continuous.

All of the districts are contiguous.  Obviously it's not a legal map, but I did obey contiguity and VRA laws.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

There is no question Michigan's current map is gerrymandered. Under the 1990s plan, Gore won 9 CD's to Bush's 7. Under the 2000s plan, Gore would have won 5 CD's to Bush's 10.

Anyone have the Kerry-Bush numbers for the new CD's? Obama-McCain isn't really a good measure in Michigan.

Alternately, those same facts suggest that the apportionment in the 1990's was gerrymandered to favor the Democrats, while the current map accurately reflects the fact that most of Michigan leans slightly Republican.

Yes, the Republican-controlled Senate and John Engler gerrymandered in favor of the Democrats...

And until 2010, the state didn't really lean Republican.  We elect Republicans to some offices, but as a whole, the state tends to lean Democratic.  This does change from district to district though.

Again, my claim isn't that Michigan, as a whole, leans Republican. The claim I made is that Michigan consists of the few areas with heavy concentration of Democrats, and the rest that leans Republican. That is, Democrats are "packed," while Republicans aren't.

That's how most states are though.  Just because the Republican-leaning land mass is greater than the land mass of the Democrat-leaning areas doesn't mean you can gerrymander the crap out of the state to "reflect" this.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

How is it continuous? It's the non-coastal upper half of the lower peninsula plus a chunk of the thumb which is surrounded by District 5.

Oops!  I was thinking those were 2 separate districts.  I'm surprised the softwre didn't catch that.  Fixing those now!

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

All fied - although you may have to refresh to get rid of any cached images.  Now that that's fixed, District 5 doesn't look quite so bad wacky either.  Thanks for cathching that, BRTD!