CA CD Wine Country Map Quest poll

[jimrtex]

I might add that in general, counties have less psychological importance in CA than most places - perhaps in part due to geography and ethnic diversity, and perhaps  in part due anomie and rootlessness, which characterizes CA in a way not as present elsewhere perhaps. But counties are useful, because of course they have some importance, and it is a good leashing mechanism. Splitting cities is less acceptable.

And isn't class a communities of interest factor? Sure it should not trump more important considerations, but at the margins, it is certainly an appropriate metric no? I guess where I am going is some kind of hierarchy of "needs" as it were. In the Silicon Valley, after respecting town boundaries, either going Asian, or going by class seems OK with me. I see no reason why one should trump the other.

And for you uber class warriors, you know the "slums" need to go somewhere. Since Oakland has its own CD, Richmond needs to be appended to middle class areas, or tied to more rural Solano. The SF metro area is rather light on slums - it is just too expensive.

I don't think the constitution sets a hierarchy among counties, cities, and "communities of interest".

The opponent to the initiative said that "communities of interest" was a code word for "Jim Crow", but he was making some pretty outlandish claims.   I think it is hard to make the case that if voters didn't like the districts the legislators had created for themselves you could vote them out of office.

For example, he noted that the last time "appointed" persons had redistricted they had made wholesale cuts of cities.   The last time appointed persons had redistricted was following an legislative impasse, and the appointees were the special masters appointed by the Supreme Court, who were retired appellate judges, who had quickly put together a map using census tracts.  In older cities, census tracts do conform to city boundaries, because their purpose was to provide census data for smaller areas within cities that was equivalent to that available for townships and towns throughout rural America.  In later developing areas, the census tracts were defined first, and then new road networks and cities were added without regard to the census tracts.

He also suggested that an appointed commission might create SBOE districts with 10% deviation, which is close to 1 million persons (there are 4 districts).   These would be "rotten boroughs".

He also claimed that his alternative would preserve the right of referendum "even for congressional districts".   The initial initiative, which set up the redistricting commission for legislative and SBOE boundaries, includes a referendum procedure (and there will be a referendum on the senate boundaries in June), but left congressional districting in the hands of the legislature.  The last time there had been a referendum on district boundaries, Chief Justice Liberal Rose Bird had written an opinion that ordered the use of the districts drawn by the legislature (ordinarily a law passed by the legislature is suspended, but the plan drawn by the legislature was the only one available with equal population districts).  The voters vetoed the districts, but the legislators elected based on the overturned districts, then simply re-passed them with an urgency clause (2/3 vote) that made them referendum-proof and governor Jerry Brown, the Younger signed it.   The counter-proposal was to make it so redistricting laws could not have an urgency clause.   In the 1980s, the voters could have vetoed the plan a second time, and then have it passed again.

[jimrtex]

I have been meaning to ask my "source" about just how it came about that the SLO/Monterey wall was decided upon, which makes such a hash out of everything.

I think that the central coast is really close to two representatives, and also 1 and 1 uf you split at the county line.  But since you can't be exact, you could try to set the northern line at Sta Clara-Sta Cruz, be a little bit off at Monterey-SLO, and a lot off at Sta Barbara-Ventura, or reverse it.

If you start at Monterey-SLO, then you can be a little bit off at both ends.   Monterey is not easy to split on a north-south basis.  Not a lot of people live around Big Sur, and you probably don't want to be chopping the Salinas Valley - which may raise VRA concerns.

They might have been conscious of how ugly the Sta Barbara coastal district is (at least on a political map).  It could even be considered a poster child for why the commission exist.

And since the commissioners were classified by region during their selection process, they might have done an initial apportionment based on that.

[jimrtex]

Yes, but if a wall location ends up creating a nasty Lancaster chop, or forces stuff to go where it should not go, that is a problem.  And there may be crossings that should be "disfavored."  Having some statistical limits like you suggested might work, which can be violated under certain circumstances. Or maybe we have defined regions, in which there may be only one chop out unless the VRA demands otherwise, or to unite a city that is already mostly in one CD. And Sacto taking W. Sacto, or uniting Yuba City and Marysville, perhaps should not count as a chop for example. 

Muon's rule works better in states where you have small square counties filled with cornfields, and regions can be pretty arbitrary.   This is less true in California where there are pretty distinct regions often separated by mountain ranges.

You are better off determining the regions first, and then doing an apportionment.   And then playing around a bit to get to population equality.

I would define the regions as:

Bay Area: Marin, SF, SM, SC, Alameda, Contra Costa,
North Bay: Solano, Napa, Sonoma (this is mainly to provide flexibility for the Bay Area going north rather than east or south if a few 100,000 more voters are needed).
North Coast
North Valley (Begins at Sacramento - it doesn't matter that Sacramento isn't like Redding, that will be handled when you start drawing districts).
Mountains
Central Coast (Sta Cruz to Sta Barbara, plus San Benito),
South Valley (begins at San Joaquin)
Trans-Mountain (they're going to stuck with somebody no matter what)
Southern California (includes Ventura and Los Angeles).   Even though LA could be apportioned separately, there is no need for it, and it really isn't a problem if districts cross into Orange, San Bernadino, Kern, and Ventura counties.

I suspect that if you don't include part of LA County with Kern, you would be forcing a district to cross over from Santa Clara into Santa Cruz.