US House Redistricting: West Virginia

[Kevinstat]

Nobody seems to have presented a north/east/southwest type map yet.



We've seen better balanced seats though, this one is -711/+1502/-792.

I get -711/+2702/-1992 (or rather -710.67/+2702.33/-1991.67 the way I calculate it - I'm a mathematical purist).  And I double checked districts 2 and 3.

Damn contiguity requirement.

Give Rahall McDowell, Mingo, Wyoming and Logan in comparison to here, shed Grant, Randolph, Barbour, Upshur, Webster and Nicholas to blue, and give Capito Wood, Ritchie and (from purple) Clay, and you have a noticeably more Democratic seat for Rahall in the same basic setup and the lowest population deviation I've seen so far: +29/+2/-32. But no contiguity. Tucker's still in Rahall's district.

Upshur and Barbour counties are already in blue in the above map that you seemed to be referring to.  And with the other changes, I get -33323.67/+2.33/+33321.33 .  Moving Tucker to blue and making all three districts contiguous yeilds -26182.67/+2.33/+26180.33 .

[Kevinstat]

Perhaps West Virginia should do what Arkansas did in 2001 (although they could have split counties in they're main plan then):  Adopt a map splitting no counties to satisfy the state constitutional requirement, but enact a backup plan moving territory in a couple counties between districts in case of a successful federal court challenge alleging vote dillution.

[Kevinstat]

Doesn't a 1.0% deviation save the map?

If that were the de minimis standard it would, but the deviation in Maine (the difference in population between the largest and smallest existing congressional district in Maine as a percentage of the ideal Maine congressional district population) was only 0.65% (8,669 people) and the three-judge court trashed the Democrats in their opinion when the Democrats argued that the existing districts could be used for the 2012 elections.

What is the absolute and percentage deviations in the congressional plan the West Virginia state government adopted again?

[Kevinstat]

Because they need to take it if they want to overrule the lower court (which did find a pressing need, for whatever bizarro reasons)? They can't just stay the lower court's decision indefinitely, can they?

Oh SCOTUS stayed the appellate court decision?

Yes, indeed it did. So I guess that is the equivalent of granting cert. I very much doubt SCOTUS is going to fly speck the state law, or try to decide if a lower population deviance is appropriate given the alternatives, etc. They may just hold that deviations of less than 0.5% or whatever are Constitutional if there is some reasonable reason for it under state law, like not splitting counties, or precincts, or whatever, and defer to the state courts as to whether the map comported with state law. I just can't see them evaluating a bunch of maps.  So I suspect the map the legislature drew will be upheld, since the grounds it was bounced was only based on the equality of population issue. My guess is that SCOTUS will hardly even look at the maps.

The WV Supreme Court itself deferred to the state legislature on the legislative districts, refusing to involve itself as to whether other maps better implemented the state law.

One question they may engage in is whether a whole county plan with a range of 0.79% should stand when there are many alternative plans with whole counties and significantly less deviation (like 0.04% in Cooper 3). The state will argue that their plan also preserved the maximum number of counties because it shifted only one county. Does that state interest justify the larger deviation?

Who knows, but I really doubt SCOTUS wants to micromanage that way. If it were me, I would just set a bright line limit of 1.0% deviation, or 0.5% (maybe using your statistical approach of say what is the one or two standard deviation variance in population change between the census date and the election date in 95% of the cases, as to what that percentage is).  It is next to pointless to do case by case litigation over such small percentage variations. The Courts have better things to do, and SCOTUS doesn't like Courts being involved in redistricting anyway if it can reasonably be avoided. Somehow I suspect 1.0% might be it because it 1) is a whole integer, and 2) saves the WV map.

If they do it will be a departure from precedent. They have been willing to say how much is too much, but never how little is close enough. I'd like it if they did, but for now I'm a skeptic. I think they will have to find that the additional state goals justified the additional deviation, since it seems like they would rather leave the map in place.

The Supreme Court has unanimously approved the population deviation present in the WV remapping plan.

Here's the text of the decision. This is a big win for states that wish to apply neutral criteria and avoid arbitrary splits or groupings solely to minimize population deviation. It reverses the trend towards the need for computers to minimize population deviations. In principle, a commission like in CA could have avoided a number of municipal splits that were needed for exact equality.

So, for you (Muon2) and also others (chiefly jimrtex), has the Supreme Court "departed from precedent" at all in this case.  There's still no defined always acceptable range of deviation (or a range within which the burden of proof would be 100% on the plaintiffs; the so-called de minimis range or something like that), right?  Was this a broader decision than you expected?  How much guidance that wasn't already there do district courts now have in malapportionment lawsuits?  I know this was a per curiam opinion, which sometimes are kind of like "duh" when one considers Supreme Court opinions that have already been given (like the recent Montana "mini-Citizens United" case, maybe).