NC redistricting revisited

[jimrtex]

Well, this thread started in Maryland, it became NC thread and now I'm taking it to TX.

One situation that I thought was comparable to that of NC-11 is TX-01. The difference here is that, for the sake of partisan advantage, Republicans moved an urban area into a rural district, rather than excising an urban area as they did with NC-11.



Before the DeLaymander, TX-01 was almost entirely rural; its largest city was Texarkana, with a population of 37,000.

Wouldn't want the folks to forget what the districts looked like as a result of the Frostrosity.  Note the red and yellow districts are the CLEANED UP versions after Bush v Vera



CD 4 was Sam Rayburn's district (Rayburn was from Bonham in Fannin County.  CD 1 was Wright Patman.   The Democrats refused to redistrict, and forced Joe Pool to run at large because he kept losing Dallas County, which was the most overpopulated district in the country at the time of Wesberry v Sanders.  As the result of Bush v Martin OMOV came to Texas.

The legislature carved up CD-3 based in Tyler-Longview-Marshall because it had nearly elected a Republican in 1962 (he would have been 1 of 2).  That politically motivated split of the East Texas Field between two Red River districts lasted until the Delay reforms of 2003, reaching its nadir in 1991 when Hunt, Smith, Gregg, and Nacogdoches counties were hacked apart by the Frostrosity.

[jimrtex]

jimrtex, thanks for that informative post; I've always found east Texas politics interesting.

At least with respect to the rural distrcits, wasn't a lot of the Frostrosity's ugliness fixed with the 2001 court-drawn map though?



Smith and Gregg were kept whole and put in Hall's district while Sandlin got all of Hunt (except for one or two precincts in the southwest) and all of Nacogdoches-proper.

They eliminated some of the more egregious county splits.

But take a look at 4 and 5.  They had to keep the split of Kaufman because they couldn't figure out how to maintain a district that links Longview to Gainesville and another that links East Dallas to areas to the south.  5 was drawn for John Bryant.

1 and 4 were gerrymandered back in the 1960s.  It is nonsensical to split Smith and Gregg from Harrison, Rusk, and Upshur, unless the population required such a split.

[jimrtex]

My best shot at a court-drawn/nonpartisan NC. I'm open to suggestions

The one thing I don't like about this map is that the Triad is split three ways. I tend to believe that fair maps should try and keep metro areas together as much as possible. In fact, I find metro area integrity to more important than county integrity, to be honest.  Urban and suburban Greensboro-Winston Salem is an area that ought to have its own congressional district, but has been cracked by both parties. 

Myrick's district is ugly, but it's a perfect CoI.

But it's a dangerous ugliness from the perspective of neutral redistricting principles. There was a bit of discussion of this on other threads, and the conclusion, which I now share, is that using a split county to bridge two whole counties in a district opens the door to gerrymandering mischief.

I would outlaw multi-spanning where two or more counties are split between a pair of districts.