North Carolina Legislative Redistricting

[Kevinstat]

Franklin and Nash have two districts, one of which HD-7 is overturned. Franklin is 27% Black, lower in the suburban areas adjacent to Wake in the south, higher in the rural north. Nash is 41% black, again lower in suburban areas to the southwest, and higher in the north and around Rocky Mount which is on the eastern edge of the county.
...
The current map differentiated the population of the counties so that HD-7 has a BVAP% of 50%, and HD-25 has a BVAP of 16%. The division in Franklin is HD-7 44%, HD-25 17%; and in Nash HD-7 52%, HD-25 15%. The boundary between the two districts is quite intricate as the Nash portion of HD-7 is just barely above a majority BVAP% by avoiding white areas, and overall at 50% by selecting black areas in Franklin that are significantly black.

A district entirely in Nash centered on Rocky Mount would be around 39% BVAP, leaving HD-25 around 26% BVAP. The North Carolina Supreme Court's interpretation of the North Carolina constitution favors fewer boundary crossings.

The 39% BVAP population for the district entirely in Nash is less than the 41% in the county as a whole.  I understand that the eastern part of Rocky Mount is very white, but you also said the southeast of Nash County was quite white and that latter area could probably be connected to Franklin County without doing anything grotesque.  That could potentially push the BVAP of the district entirely in Nash up a point or two from the 41%, or at least not push it down two points.

[Kevinstat]

Franklin and Nash have two districts, one of which HD-7 is overturned. Franklin is 27% Black, lower in the suburban areas adjacent to Wake in the south, higher in the rural north. Nash is 41% black, again lower in suburban areas to the southwest, and higher in the north and around Rocky Mount which is on the eastern edge of the county.
...
The current map differentiated the population of the counties so that HD-7 has a BVAP% of 50%, and HD-25 has a BVAP of 16%. The division in Franklin is HD-7 44%, HD-25 17%; and in Nash HD-7 52%, HD-25 15%. The boundary between the two districts is quite intricate as the Nash portion of HD-7 is just barely above a majority BVAP% by avoiding white areas, and overall at 50% by selecting black areas in Franklin that are significantly black.

A district entirely in Nash centered on Rocky Mount would be around 39% BVAP, leaving HD-25 around 26% BVAP. The North Carolina Supreme Court's interpretation of the North Carolina constitution favors fewer boundary crossings.

The 39% BVAP population for the district entirely in Nash is less than the 41% in the county as a whole.  I understand that the eastern part of Rocky Mount is very white, but you also said the southeast of Nash County was quite white and that latter area could probably be connected to Franklin County without doing anything grotesque.  That could potentially push the BVAP of the district entirely in Nash up a point or two from the 41%, or at least not push it down two points.

I just noticed that the Republican State Rep. in that conglomerate is from Rocky Mount, and the Democrat (a black woman) is from Franklin County.  If the Republican General Assembly gets to try and fix the court's issues with their plan, then they'll want to help their incumbent as much as possible, while the black Democrat is probably just as screwed in a 26% BVAP district as she would be in a district with a lower BVAP.

[Kevinstat]

Franklin and Nash have two districts, one of which HD-7 is overturned. Franklin is 27% Black, lower in the suburban areas adjacent to Wake in the south, higher in the rural north. Nash is 41% black, again lower in suburban areas to the southwest, and higher in the north and around Rocky Mount which is on the eastern edge of the county.
...
The current map differentiated the population of the counties so that HD-7 has a BVAP% of 50%, and HD-25 has a BVAP of 16%. The division in Franklin is HD-7 44%, HD-25 17%; and in Nash HD-7 52%, HD-25 15%. The boundary between the two districts is quite intricate as the Nash portion of HD-7 is just barely above a majority BVAP% by avoiding white areas, and overall at 50% by selecting black areas in Franklin that are significantly black.

A district entirely in Nash centered on Rocky Mount would be around 39% BVAP, leaving HD-25 around 26% BVAP. The North Carolina Supreme Court's interpretation of the North Carolina constitution favors fewer boundary crossings.

The 39% BVAP population for the district entirely in Nash is less than the 41% in the county as a whole.  I understand that the eastern western part of Rocky Mount is very white, but you also said the southeastwest of Nash County was quite white and that latter area could probably be connected to Franklin County without doing anything grotesque.  That could potentially push the BVAP of the district entirely in Nash up a point or two from the 41%, or at least not push it down two points.

Franklin is to the west, Nash to the east. Wake (Raleigh) is the blue county to the south. Rocky Mount is on the Nash-Edgecombe county line (Edgecombe is east of Nash). The Edgecombe portion is about 30% of the city and is 85.5% BVAP. The Nash portion is 70% of the city and 45.5% black. The portion of Rocky Mount closer to the eastern county line is more black, than areas further west or even outside of the city. Growth is to the west. I-95 also passes through that area. Rocky Mount is 60 miles from Raleigh, so you wouldn't pick Rocky Mount if you took a job in Raleigh. You might commute if you were from Rocky Mount, or had a spouse with a job in Rocky Mount.

The areas closer to Raleigh are around 10-15% black. This might be a residual population, as suburban areas are developed in a formerly rural area, or perhaps it is accessible to middle class blacks in 2010. The area west of Rocky Mount is whiter than that. The population has been divided quite carefully. Most precincts in the county were split, except in the extreme southeastwest. This division of precincts was a factor in the district court's decision.

What I did was place all of Franklin in HD-25, and then started filling in the area to the west of Rocky Mount and the spots along the Franklin-Nash county line.

I was thinking west and southwest there even though I wrote east and southeast.  Your enhanced description was helpful though.  I think one thing that threw me off is that your black percentages for Franklin and Nash counties at the beginning of that segment were not necessarily of BVAP.  I would imagine the district entirely in Nash that you describe would have a higher BVAP than Nash as a whole, if you're putting the white suburban area west of Rocky Mount in the Franklin district.  It sounds like the part of Nash along the border with Franklin has both blacker and whiter parts.

[Kevinstat]

These groups are along the South Carolina line. There is a significant Native American (Lumbee) population in the area, particularly in Robeson County.
[...]
County Populations:

Columbus: 30.0% BVAP, 3.0% NAVAP
Robeson: 20.0% BVAP, 37.1% NAVAP
Hoke: 34.1% BVAP, 9.2% NAVAP
Scotland: 36.9% BVAP, 9.8% NAVAP
Richmond: 29.2% BVAP, 2.3% NAVAP

And the quotas of each county are...?

[Kevinstat]

[...]
The use of single-member districts and One Man, One Vote requirements (maximum of 5% deviation requires splitting of some counties.

North Carolina has 9 counties that have multiple representatives, where the districts can be drawn entirely within the county: Mecklenburg (12), Wake (11), Guilford (6), Cumberland (4), Buncombe (3), Davidson (2), Iredell (2), Catawba (2), and Alamaance (2), for a total of 44 of the 120 House districts (36.7%).

North Carolina has 3 counties that can have a single district coincident with the county: Caldwell, Wilson and Lincoln. These could also be considered as part of group of single counties that can have one or more whole districts; or a group of one or more counties that can have one whole district.

North Carolina has 23 counties entitled to more than one district, but can not have all districts contained in the county. Collectively the counties are entitled to 43.93 districts, but only 35 whole districts. The average surplus for these 23 counties is (43.93 - 35)/23 = 0.388. That this is significantly less than 0.500, is due to many of the counties being entitled to one district plus a fraction, with a bias toward the lower end. These counties must be divided, with a fragment attached to adjacent counties in order to comply with One Man, One Vote and the North Carolina constitution. The rest of the county should be formed into as many whole districts as will fit into the county so as to avoid county line traversals.

North Carolina has 65 counties entitled to less than one district. They must be combined with other counties. If the counties in a county group are all small, and the county group is entitled to one district, then that district is entirely legal under OMOV and the North Carolina constitution, regardless of the number of counties. The 65 small counties have a population equivalent to 29.04 districts.

The surplus of the 23 large counties (9 districts) and the 29 districts equivalent to the 65 small counties represent the maximum number of county groups that could be be formed from these counties. Add in the twelve single-county groups, the maximum possible number of groups is 50. My map has 43.

The difference between the maximum and the number of groups in a map represent counties that are divided for reasons other than the population of the county alone.

In my map the seven counties (actually excessive divisions) are:
[...]

Interesting that the number of counties with excessive deviations is equal to the difference between the maximum "ideal" number of whole-county, whole-district conglomerates and that in your map.  The Wilkes conglomerate causes a 2-group reduction, while the fact that Rockingham County has two partial districts rather than one whole and one partial district doesn't cause any reduction in the number of groups.

I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that your calculation of the maximum (or "ideal") number of county groups is equivalent to the following calculation with a very different heuristic: take the size of the body in question, then subtract the number of counties that are too big for one district (so, in the US, those counties with a quota over 1.05), then subtract the number of counties that are too big for two districts (quota over 2.1, and that includes the counties for which you've already subtracted one for), then subtract the number of counties that are too big for three districts (quota over 3.15), and so on.  Or you could also think of it as taking the size of the body, subtracting 1 for counties with quotas between 1.05 and 2.1, subtracting 2 for counties with quotas between 2.1 and 3.15, etc.  My heuristic may be more complicated, but basically counties that are in the "1+1" (Trond-speak) population range have the same effect on the maximum or "ideal" number of county groups) as those that can have an even 2 districts, and 2+1 the same as 3, etc.  And it doesn't matter if you combine two large counties in the same conglomerate, as the loss of one of the two "remainder districts" is made up for by (ideally) another single district consisting of whole counties.

Androscoggin County, Maine increased the size of its Board of Commissioners from three to seven effective for the 2014 primary and general elections (the new commissioners took office in January 2015), in its charter approved by Androscoggin County voters in November 2012.  The quotas for each town in the county (as of and according to the 2010 census) were as follows:

Auburn city 1.4984
Durham town 0.2501
Greene town 0.2827
Leeds town 0.1512
Lewiston city 2.3783
Lisbon town 0.5855
Livermore Falls town 0.2071
Livermore town 0.1362
Mechanic Falls town 0.1970
Minot town 0.1694
Poland town 0.3494
Sabattus town 0.3169
Turner town 0.3727
Wales town 0.1050

The maximum number of groups consisting of whole towns and whole commissioner districts (and not consisting of any smaller such groups; you could call them "minimal whole town groups" or "minimal whole county groups" as applicable) is 7 - 1 (Auburn) - 2 (Lewiston).  Auburn and Lewiston are across the Androscoggin River from each other (the two cities merging has been an on-again, off-again topic for decades, but I've heard there might be a binding referendum on a merger this fall, or maybe it's next fall) and have remainders that add up to less than 1.  So, "ideally", you could have either a 3-district conglomerate including Lewiston, a 2-district conglomerate including Auburn, and two single-district conglomerates of whole towns, OR a 4-district conglomerate including both Lewiston and Auburn and three single-district conglomerates of whole towns.  It turns out only the first was possible.  Lewiston and Auburn would have been within range of four districts either just by themselves (-3.08%) of with Durham (+3.17%), and the reminder of the county would have been within range of three districts in either case (+4.11% or -4.23%), but you wouldn't be able to break down the "rural" 3-district conglomerate even into a contiguous 1-district and 2-district conglomerate (where single districts of whole towns could be formed that were within range, either areas would be cut off of the remaining two-district conglomerate would be over- or underpopulated).  What ended up being done was Lewiston formed a 3-district conglomerate with Durham and Greene (on opposite sides of Lewiston, and Durham only borders Lewiston across a fairly small section of the Androscoggin River with no bridge anywhere near, connecting Durham to Green via eastern Lewiston looked fairly easy though) and Auburn forming a two-district conglomerate with Poland and Mechanic Falls.  Lisbon-Sabattus-Wales (the neatest pairing by far) and Livermore-Livermore Falls-Leeds-Turner-Minot districts rounded out the plan.

[Kevinstat]

As I did the rest of the state, I tried to maintain regional parity, and may have found a better plan because of that. The "optimum" plan from the state's expert, has a seven-county group Lee-to-Greene and tail to Sampson and Duplin Bladen with a population of 7.349 quotas (or 1.04986 quotas per district). This will force redistricting down to the block level.

Correct?  With Duplin instead of Bladen, the math is almost as tight (from simple adding of the thousandths of a quota from your map at the beginning of the thread, I get 7.642 or 8 * ~0.955).  With both Duplin and Bladen, the group is actually a pretty nice ~8.085 or 8 * ~1.011.

[The (or Their)] North [Carolina] Supreme Court appears to have messed up. The constitution says that "No county shall be divided in the formation of a representative district". The correct harmonization should be:

The number of counties that are divided for reasons other than to provide whole districts within a county should be minimized.

But it appears that it has instead stated an algorithm: Form single-county groups; form maximum number of two-county groups; ...

While two-county groups ensure that they have no excessive cuts, it ignore that small counties that form a group of any size are entirely constitutional.

Yeah, a better algorithm would be: form maximum number of groups with no "additional county splits" (which would include the single-county groups but also any multi-county single-district groups), form maximum number of groups with only one "additional county split", form maximum number of groups with only two "additional county splits", ...

By an "additional county split", I mean a county with less than 1.05 quotas being divided into two districts, a county with less than 2.1 quotas being divided into three districts, etc.

It's still probably not as good as your proposal to simply limit the number of "additional county splits," but it would be better than what they have come up with.

[Kevinstat]

Sigh! My plan provides for 121 districts.

The multi-county groups had population for 72.970 districts (just short of 73) and I created groups entitled to 74 districts (an error of -1.4%)

Did you travel to Vermont recently?  (Do you remember what I'm alluding to here?)

Which of the following from your post where you talked about the number of groupings is incorrect?  The 43.93 districts for the "large" counties that aren't within range of an integer number of districts or the 29.04 districts for the "small" counties?  Because those two numbers add up to 73.97, not 72.97.  Okay, I don't know what I was thinking there.  Something about the 9s that made my mind think the decimals added to almost two rather than almost one, even though one of the 9s was not in the fractional portion.

Was a good portion of the error from the districts and groupings you left as is (because the districts or groupings weren't overturned - not that a court would overturn or uphold a grouping per se but where the simplest solution seemed to be to keep the groupings)?

[Kevinstat]

I've corrected my last post and taken a guess as to where I what caused me to mess up the math.

I see your new plan no longer keeps all 53 districts in groups without any overturned districts the same.  I can see why you rearranged the southern coastal area and the area just east of Charlotte, though, as getting rid of the shortages there was doubtless helpful in getting rid of that extra district.  I know earlier you had critiqued others for not keeping the "unchallenged area" as it was.

I was being silly when I mentioned the Vermont thing.  I know you are more careful and methodical than the Vermont LAB was in their State Senate redistricting.  With their large deviations, they were practically begging for something like that to happen.

[Kevinstat]

These are the whole county groups which are unchanged from the 2011 law and which do not contain VRA districts. These districts do not need to be modified. The groups contain a total of 53 districts, 45 Republican and 8 Democrat.

These are unchanged county groups that contain overturned districts. New maps can be drawn for each group and slipped in the statewide map with no ripple effects.

This is an alternative cover with 42 whole county groups, that combines Mecklenburg and Union in a two-county group, which permits rearrangement of the groups in south central North Carolina.



Green Unchanged, no overturned districts: 25 groups with 62 districts.

Blue New Groups, no overturned districts: 1 group with one district.

White New groups, overturned districts: 10 groups with 33 districts.

Yellow Unchanged, overturned districts: 6 groups with 30 districts.

So the only seemingly keepable groups from the existing plan (those from the first two maps in this post I'm making) that aren't kept are the Meklenburg group and the adjacent Union-Anson group.  Plus one could argue that the group around the Albermarle Sound (which loses Currituck and gains Washington before being divided into two single-district groups; unchanged from your original plan that ended up having one too many districts) could have been kept, but perhaps not while avoiding a county split within and the Currituck-Washington trade makes sense to me.  The blue group in your third map includes territory from the gigantic 20-county group that included three overturned districts.

I like that your new groups with more than one district tend to be "non-stringy" (three counties that all border each other or four counties with all but one pair sharing a border, or a four-corners situation - am I right that that is the case with Stanly, Montgomery, Anson and Richmond?).  I think I prefer this plan to your other plan (that has the correct number of districts).

[Kevinstat]

Jimrtex, can you map the following cover for me (in your color format)?

Lamoreau 1:

Mecklenburg 11
Union and Anson 3
Stanley, Montgomery, Richmond, Scotland, Hoke, Robeson and Columbus 5
Bladen, Sampson and Duplin 2
Johnson, Wayne and Greene 4
Lenoir and Pitt 3
Craven and Beaufort 2

everything else the same as Riley 2.  11 + 3 + 5 + 2 + 4 + 3 + 2 = 14 + 2 + 1 + 3 + 5 + 1 + 4 = 30

Is Moore, Hoke, Scotland and Richmond another quartet of counties whose borders all meet at the same point (along with the two such quartets including Stanley and Montgomery)?

[Kevinstat]

I enjoyed reading your history of county lines in modern-day south-central North Carolina.

In the northern part of the state, Alamance-Rockingham are adjacent, Guilford-Caswell are not.

Fortsyth-Surry are adjacent, Yadkin-Stokes are not,

but Stokes-Rockingham-Gulford-Forsyth meet at a point, as do Warren-Halifax-Nash-Franklin.

In western North Carolina, Haywood-Buncombe-Henderson-Transylvania are a four corners. Burke-Lincoln are adjacent, but Catwaba-Cleveland are not.

I hadn't looked at all the "near-four-corner" situations.  One other one I see that I'm not 100% certain of (Franklin-Nash-Johnson-Wake), although it may not be as close to being a four-corner situation.  Let me guess: Wake-Nash are adjacent, but Franklin-Johnson are not.  Correct?

ps I'll do your map.

Thanks

[Kevinstat]

It occurred to me recently that one could argue that Mecklenburg County should be colored white in those covers (including my Lamoreau 1 cover and your most recent one) that keep it in its own group but change the number of representatives in that group.  In terms of whether things are changing in a group other than the internal division of a group into districts, a change in the number of districts within that group is definitely a change.  That would help the change in Mecklenburg County stand out, as otherwise it just looks like Wake, Cumberland, Durham-Orange, etc.  Of course I'm not sure how many people are looking at this thread.  They're your maps, of course, so you can decide how to color in an 11-member Mecklenburg group.  Having an off-white shading (something kind of halfway between white and yellow) occurred to me, although to be consistent you'd want to do a midway between shading for the current overturned districts in that group also.  A lot of work for a single county.

I can visualize it in my head, but I'd be interested to see a map of the current cover (where everything is in yellow, gold (or whatever that color is) and green).

[Kevinstat]

Special master appointed to (possibly) help revise 3 Senate districts and 7 House districts in the new maps

http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Special-master.pdf

Rules are rules, but this happening seemed pretty obvious. Would be nice if they could just do this from the get-go. It is not reasonable to think that the same people (more or less) who gerrymandered the first maps are not going to try and do it again.

Two senate districts.

Five of the House Districts are based on an interpretation of the North Carolina Constitution against mid-decade redistricting.

HD-36, 37, 40, and 41 are in outer Wake County, and HD-105 is in far southern Mecklenburg County. The claim is apparently that these districts did not have to be modified in order to remedy the districts more central to Raleigh and Charlotte.

If you take the four Wake districts back to the 2011 districts, then the 2017 versions of HD-34 and HD-49 will be underpopulated.

HD-38 and HD-39 would not have to be changed. There would be a block of unassigned precincts in north Raleigh, and a smaller block on the eastern Wake County line. HD-45 needs a few minor tweaks.

So HD-33 slides east a bit, followed by HD-11. HD-34 moves north, as does HD-49.

This might flip HD-34, and might possibly knock off the House minority leader in a primary.

"Please Federal District Court judges, and Special Master, Please don't throw me into that dummymander patch", pleaded the Republican legislators.

The legislature redid Wake County, eliminating split precincts and making the districts more compact, while not using race, curing the problem with HD-33 and HD-38. Maybe the court will require the restoration of HD-34 and HD-49.

The court had originally found problems with 28 districts, that is now reduced to four:

(1) HD-57 in Guilford County. The current map had three districts (HD-57, HD-58, HD-60) at just above 50% BVAP. It was understood that was a requirement of the VRA and the North Carolina Constitution. To get all three districts to 50% meant to balance the BVAP population between the three districts, including that hideous connector to High Point.

The districts are now 58.9%, 41.1%, and 38.9% BVAP. HD-57 is compact and follows the Greensboro city limits. The court apparently believes voters should be assigned to districts based on race.

(2) HD-21 Wayne/Sampson. It is not really clear what the concern is with this district.

(3) SD-21 Cumberland. This will be meaningless.

(4) SD-28 in Guilford County. See HD-57 above.

The district court is still smarting from being slapped down by the SCOTUS and is acting out.

How were they slapped down by SCOTUS?  Are you referring to the 2017 special elections in the redrawn districts being scrapped, or something else?

[Kevinstat]

Special Master Nate Persily releases new maps for districts ordered redrawn under NC redistricting lawsuit

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p5bEpSqEL1DXmip1HmIm18iRNNwjdJG2/view
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JKzvR3v-d-G5fHMnQXXKXXJY0Zy0GlxK/view

The federal court has not ordered any districts redrawn.

They're really skating on thin ice with violations of due process and state sovereignty, and appointing a special master who apparently has links to the plaintiffs.

I remember reading somewhere back shortly after the Republicans captured the North Carolina Legisalture that "We'll take 10 years of revenge" and then get a non-partisan commission or something, which is something they advocated for before 2010 (although to be fair the Democats were opposed to it when they had a majority).  There seems to be a lot of legal wrangling for just a few years of gerrymandered vs. less gerrymandered districts, which suggests to me that Republicans are no longer planning on ever giving up their ability to draw lines to benefit them, as long as they continue to hold the Legislature, which is likely if they get to draw the lines.  Does anyone here have any insight as to what the long-term plans of the Republican majority in the North Carolina Legislature are regarding redistricting?

Not that any of this excuses violations of due process and state sovereignty on a court's part, but it's tough to feel too bad about that if NC Republicans are trying to cement themselves in power forever.