US: House Redistricting Massachusetts

[jimrtex]

Just for show... I can draw the state too. This is supposed to be a makes-sense-on-the-ground, good governance map.



I think these seats - barring the yellow one, obviously - make a lot of sense while still being broadly based on the current ones (the old third abolished); I'd like to have pointers for any obvious mistakes. And for who'd probably run where in the entirely hypothetical scenario of a similar map being enacted.
Three towns split - Boston, Holyoke, I forget what north Middlesex suburb.

I think you need to get rid of the southern tail of Middlesex North.  Bring Worcester City-Springfield a bit further east.  Is Massachusetts West (Berkshires-Connecticut Valley-Worcester) all the way to the Connecticut River.  Then bring Norfolk further west, and Middlesex North further south.  Rotate New Bedford-Fall River-Brockton; Plymouth, Cape Cod, and Islands; and Norfolk counter-clockwise.  If you are going to take part of Boston into Norfolk, why not Brookline?

[jimrtex]

Ah, comment!

Just for show... I can draw the state too. This is supposed to be a makes-sense-on-the-ground, good governance map.



I think these seats - barring the yellow one, obviously - make a lot of sense while still being broadly based on the current ones (the old third abolished); I'd like to have pointers for any obvious mistakes. And for who'd probably run where in the entirely hypothetical scenario of a similar map being enacted.
Three towns split - Boston, Holyoke, I forget what north Middlesex suburb.

I think you need to get rid of the southern tail of Middlesex North.  Bring Worcester City-Springfield a bit further east.  Is Massachusetts West (Berkshires-Connecticut Valley-Worcester) all the way to the Connecticut River.  Then bring Norfolk further west, and Middlesex North further south.  Rotate New Bedford-Fall River-Brockton; Plymouth, Cape Cod, and Islands; and Norfolk counter-clockwise.  If you are going to take part of Boston into Norfolk, why not Brookline?

Can't very well bring Worcester-Springfield further east. Well, you can, splitting near suburbs of Springfield off to bring somewhat further removed suburbs of Worcester in, but I don't see the sense behind that (Though the current second begins at Springfield proper and ends just west of Worcester proper. ) - not that I can't be convinced otherwise. You'd need to state your case.
What you could very easily do, obviously, is split the 1st and 2nd here east-west, and then exchange that ugly tail for Leominster. And, yeah, alternatively you could easily get that tail  into the Norfolk district (and I assume the rotate part was about getting the 4th out of Norfolk County? Also possible.) in exchange for areas in southern Middlesex County - the reason I didn't is basically that I didn't think the area belongs with a Boston district either.
Re Brookline... because it would mean an additional split town? (Or, even if you put all of it in the Norfolk seat again, and add, say, Cambridge to the Boston seat, then you're pushing the grey seat out.)

I don't know the district numbers.  That is why I used the names of the district.  Worcester City-Springfield is going to be extremely tightly drawn, so I have no problem excluding towns adjacent to Springfield, especially west of the river.  I wasn't proposing going all the way to the Worcester-Norfolk line, but just another layer of towns due south of Worcester city.  I can also rationalize it on the basis of including more of the Mass Pike which passes south of Worcester.

I am suggesting that New Bedford-Fall River-Brockton include more of inland Plymouth County, rather than slopping over into Norfolk County.  By including the ocean areas the maps make the districts appear more compact.  The Elizabeth Islands have a really tiny population, but including the waters on either side make it look fairly substantial.  So Plymouth, Cape Cod, and the Islands is really a long district following the coast and jumping to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.  So it is no problem to bring it a bit west.  Does it include Quincy?

Why does Boston have to be split?  Couldn't Chelsea or Revere be moved into Essex if necessary?

[jimrtex]

I am suggesting that New Bedford-Fall River-Brockton include more of inland Plymouth County, rather than slopping over into Norfolk County.  By including the ocean areas the maps make the districts appear more compact.  The Elizabeth Islands have a really tiny population, but including the waters on either side make it look fairly substantial.  So Plymouth, Cape Cod, and the Islands is really a long district following the coast and jumping to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.  So it is no problem to bring it a bit west.  Does it include Quincy?

Not in my map, and it should not. (The current district there does, though, for which Bill Keating is quite thankful.) It includes Braintree in my map, which is really one suburb too close already. If you want to push the red seat south, you need to push the purple seat north. And vice versa.

I think that shifting the purple district north is preferable.  You are already into the suburbs, and I don't think there is much Norfolk identity to worry about.  People who grew up in Quincy will tend to move south, while those from Dedham and Newton will move west.  Cape Cod and the islands can be considered hyperburbs of Boston, rather than fishing towns.  The rose district has a pretty clear identity, and I think it would be better to go east than north to get it up to the ideal population.

[jimrtex]

There's more people in Quincy than in the entire red share of Norfolk. It took me a moment to find an alignment of towns to prevent a split. Quincy and Milton to purple, Holbrook to teal; the red parts north of the Bristol line, Mansfield and North Attleboro to teal, Avon to red; Abington, Hanson, Halifax, Plympton, Bridgewater, East Bridgewater, West Bridgewater, Middleborough to red, Mattapoisett to purple. I don't like it very much...

Aren't the Bridgewater's Brockton suburbs?  If you leave Milton in the teal, how much north of Plymouth/Bay Colony boundary would you need to go with the red, with towns adjacent to Attleboro and Brockton preferred. 

[jimrtex]

Avon is part of the Brockton NETMA division so that is fine.

[jimrtex]

Avon is part of the Brockton NETMA division so that is fine.

Yah, the nonpretty issue is with Quincy and Braintree. I think that's just barely not land-contiguous, actually.

The Quincy (Fore River) Shipyard is on the the Quincy-Weymouth line.  There is a bridge between Quincy and Weymouth on 3A which is the more coastal route to Cape Cod.

I bet most of the population of the district is north of Kingston and Duxbury.

[jimrtex]

They only do that because most of the incumbents live near Boston.

The incumbents live near Boston because of the way the districts are drawn.

[jimrtex]

They only do that because most of the incumbents live near Boston.

The incumbents live near Boston because of the way the districts are drawn.

What does that mean?

Because politicians don't tend to like to live in areas where their constituents live, and their constituents are too busy with ordinary lives to run for office, districts divvy up the more politically active areas.  When reapportionment is done, rather than combining areas where the politicians live, the districts are extended like toothpaste.

In 2000, in Houston, the area inside the I-610 loop was entitled to a little over 4 representatives.  There were 13 districts in the area, and 9 representatives living there.

I don't need to tell you where the last district eliminated in Massachusetts was, I believe.

Wasn't it Margaret Heckler's district?

Which is now partially included in a district stretching from Brookline to New Bedford, somehow avoiding both Brockton and Fall River (which are in districts based in Boston and Worcester), and has little more than touchpoint connectivity in two places (Wellesley-Dover and Norfolk-Foxborough).

[jimrtex]

BTW, of course the 4th district is ridiculous, it's just that people offended by it usually guess wrong as to why and how it came to be.

It would be better to merge the two adjacent districts with the smallest total population and let voters in districts with more population switch to a less populous adjacent district if they thought that would make their vote more effective.

[jimrtex]

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Wasn't it Margaret Heckler's district?

No, that was in 1982. (Also, her merger with Frank's district was a fair fight; the old 4th stretched out northwest to Fitchburg.) Another district was eliminated in 1992. That district's representative decided to retire from office rather than compete in a primary. Guess where he lived?

Jim, are you still working on this? Have you tried sources on redistricting history?
[/quote]

Must be Donnelly, since Atkins lost in the primary. Early and Mavroule's lost in the general, and O'Conte didn't exactly retire.  Boston?

Still working on the Gonzales-Gorman figures?

[jimrtex]

The Cape Cod CD has that little appendage all by itself near Boston on your map Muon2.  What is all of that about? What is the Obama percentage of that CD?  I assume that is the most GOP CD in your map.  Is that the case?

If you want to create a Brockton-Fall River-New Bedford district and keep it reasonably out of the Boston suburbs, the Plymouth-Cape-Islands district has to come that far north,  It really has a substantial suburban component.  Quincy has a population of 92,000 and since Muon was avoiding town splits, it may be the only choice.   If you drop that you have to go further west, which gets you off the coast, and you can't get that much going west from Plymouth without running into Brockton or New Bedford.