Should "touch point" districts be considered continuous?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Nope. If I were a judge and a case about one was presented before me it would be tossed out pretty quickly. I have a feeling this would happen if it was ever challenged and I have no clue why Republicans didn't try in North Carolina in 2001.

[Linus Van Pelt]

I know the phenomenon exists, but did krazen1211 just make up the term on this forum? Googling it (depending on the hyphenation) just gets you some random things about tulips and a weird wikipedia article filled with sort of BS lingo about interfacing with customers, and even adding "math" or "geometry" to the search just gets you a tutoring system where kids physically touch numbers.

[minionofmidas]

Which scenario are we talking, exactly?

Picture the four corners. Is Colorado one district, Arizona one district, and Utah and New Mexico are one district together? That's arguably preferable to splitting a bit of Arizona off just to make it not technically "touch point" (if Arizona is some county, municipality, whatever).
Or is Utah and New Mexico one district, and Arizona and Colorado another, so the two districts cross each other? I would consider that to be not continuous- they can't both include the point at the middle.

[BigSkyBob]

Nope. If I were a judge and a case about one was presented before me it would be tossed out pretty quickly. I have a feeling this would happen if it was ever challenged and I have no clue why Republicans didn't try in North Carolina in 2001.

Previously, North Carolina didn't merely have a "touchpoint" continuity, it had a double-crossover. The banning of double-crossovers was one of the redistricting reforms that create reasonable controls over gerrymandering that I support.


In the absence of any mandate to respect county lines, "touchpoint" is reasonably considered contiguous because you could always add a square inch in the corner of one of the counties to create a fully contiguous district. Doing that is impossible for a double-crossover.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Which scenario are we talking, exactly?

Picture the four corners. Is Colorado one district, Arizona one district, and Utah and New Mexico are one district together? That's arguably preferable to splitting a bit of Arizona off just to make it not technically "touch point" (if Arizona is some county, municipality, whatever).
Or is Utah and New Mexico one district, and Arizona and Colorado another, so the two districts cross each other? I would consider that to be not continuous- they can't both include the point at the middle.

Can be both, but every example I've seen has been along the lines of Utah and New Mexico as one district and Arizona and Colorado as another.

I know the phenomenon exists, but did krazen1211 just make up the term on this forum? Googling it (depending on the hyphenation) just gets you some random things about tulips and a weird wikipedia article filled with sort of BS lingo about interfacing with customers, and even adding "math" or "geometry" to the search just gets you a tutoring system where kids physically touch numbers.

I've seen it on SSP before.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Which scenario are we talking, exactly?

Picture the four corners. Is Colorado one district, Arizona one district, and Utah and New Mexico are one district together? That's arguably preferable to splitting a bit of Arizona off just to make it not technically "touch point" (if Arizona is some county, municipality, whatever).
Or is Utah and New Mexico one district, and Arizona and Colorado another, so the two districts cross each other? I would consider that to be not continuous- they can't both include the point at the middle.

Have a look at the boundary between NC-6 and NC-13 just outside Greensboro. Remarkably, it's the second of your scenarios.

[minionofmidas]

Yeah, I dimly remember being shocked by that before.

[Bacon King]

Nope. If I were a judge and a case about one was presented before me it would be tossed out pretty quickly. I have a feeling this would happen if it was ever challenged and I have no clue why Republicans didn't try in North Carolina in 2001.

Previously, North Carolina didn't merely have a "touchpoint" continuity, it had a double-crossover. The banning of double-crossovers was one of the redistricting reforms that create reasonable controls over gerrymandering that I support.


In the absence of any mandate to respect county lines, "touchpoint" is reasonably considered contiguous because you could always add a square inch in the corner of one of the counties to create a fully contiguous district. Doing that is impossible for a double-crossover.

Well, hypothetically, a double crossover could be contiguous with one district connecting by a square inch in the middle and the other district staying connected with a one-inch wide strand around the edge. I've seen that argument made before, at any rate.

Still an atrocious practice though.

[krazen1211]

Probably shouldn't be, but I don't think contiguity itself should be constitutionally required, federally.

And no, I didn't make up the term.

http://www.ncsl.org/LegislaturesElections/Redistricting/ShiftingSandsofRedistrictingLaw/tabid/16626/Default.aspx

The plans tended to ignore the traditional districting principles used in Georgia in previous decades, such as keeping districts compact, not allowing the use of point contiguity, keeping counties whole, and preserving the cores of prior districts.

[minionofmidas]

Yeah, just search "point contiguity" - with the quotation marks - rather than "touch point contiguity" without, and while there's not many results (a few hundred) all but one of those on the first page are to the point. (And some use phrases like "touch-point contiguity" or "point-to-point contiguity".)

Incidentally, South Carolina redistricting law lays down that "Point-to-point contiguity is acceptable so long as adjacent districts do not use the same vertex as points of transversal" (I think that's from a summary of the legal situation, not actual statute), ie my scenario one good, scenario two bad.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

As Lewis already pointed out (tho how he knew that I don't know) the guidelines South Carolina follows allow for them, but not with a double crossover.  Anyway, here's a little graphic to demonstrate.  (It isn't state law, but the Senate committee that did redistricting last time included it in their list of guidelines for acceptable districts.)

Allowed    |     A | B    |    ---+---    |     B | C    |

Prohibited    |     A | B    |    ---+---    |     B | A    |

[minionofmidas]

It was one of my first page google results.

[jimrtex]

Nope. If I were a judge and a case about one was presented before me it would be tossed out pretty quickly. I have a feeling this would happen if it was ever challenged and I have no clue why Republicans didn't try in North Carolina in 2001.

The term is "touch-point contiguity".  You might want to look at Cox v Larios, which was the case where the Democrats in Georgia deliberately overpopulated Republican legislative districts.  The issue was not strictly the touch-point contiguity but that it was use to maximize the population of Republican districts.

It was also an explicit criteria in the Ohio redistricting contest rules.

[Torie]

No, of course  not.

[jimrtex]

Nope. If I were a judge and a case about one was presented before me it would be tossed out pretty quickly. I have a feeling this would happen if it was ever challenged and I have no clue why Republicans didn't try in North Carolina in 2001.

The term is "touch-point contiguity".  You might want to look at Cox v Larios, which was the case where the Democrats in Georgia deliberately overpopulated Republican legislative districts.  The issue was not strictly the touch-point contiguity but that it was use to maximize the population of Republican districts.

It was also an explicit criteria in the Ohio redistricting contest rules.

It was noted in Cox v Larios that there are 3 counties, that themselves have touch point contiguity, and that it would be OK to have districts with touch-point contiguity in order to maintain those whole counties.

[Kevinstat]

Prohibited    |     A | B    |    ---+---    |     B | A    |

Isn't that what North Carolina has between two district's now?

Is that what BigSkyBob refers to as a "double-crossover"?

Or is that if there are two of the above between the same pair of districts?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Prohibited    |     A | B    |    ---+---    |     B | A    |

Isn't that what North Carolina has between two district's now?

Is that what BigSkyBob refers to as a "double-crossover"?

Or is that if there are two of the above between the same pair of districts?

Yes it's a double crossover, but as far as I know only South Carolina has redistricting guidelines that explicitly ban double-crossovers but explicitly allow touch point districts.

Indeed, SC would allow something like this:

   |   
 A | B
   |   
---+---
   |   
 B | C
   |   
---+---
   |   
 C | D
   |