Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jan 17 2022 08:48pm)

Quality thread, much appreciated! :thumbsup:
Three remarks:

1. After seeing this absolute abomination of a map from Illinois, I don't want to hear complaints from Democrats about gerrymandering ever again.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f2c2be8d4d46129d2c862cb/1633543710742-R2RLTNSKMKB88WN6OSME/10.6+wasserman.jpg

2. The governor's office in Florida has released DeSantis' proposal for the new Florida map and it's a clean-looking but extremely efficient, brutal gerrymander:
https://i.imgur.com/mXAfjhV.png
https://twitter.com/redistrictnet/status/1482870530080485390?s=21

3.
This reasoning contradicts itself. Either what we consider a "fair" map has to take the actual political geography of a state into account beyond the topline, statewide vote share each party is getting, or it doesn't.

Based on pure vote share, Republicans would definitely be "entitled" to at least one, possibly even two seats out of MA. But the Demcoratic vote is so efficiently distributed in MA that it would actually take an insane gerrymander to draw even just one R-leaning seat in the state. Republicans just happen to be disadvantaged by political geography in that state. Likewise, political geography in Alabama (and pretty much the entire South) disadvantages Democrats because the black vote suffers from high degrees of "self-packing".

I obviously cannot comment on the legal arguments pertaining to the VRA and these maps, but from a moral/ethical standpoint, it seems impossible to me to argue that a piece of legislation would require states to actively counteract the natural geographic disadvantage of certain groups in some states, but not in other states. And from a practical point of view, I cannot imagine the current SCOTUS to follow any such arguments. Even before we got to the current 6-3 conservative supermajority, the Roberts court has already hollowed out the VRA in 2013 or 2014. Seems extremely unlikely that a significantly more conservative court would be sympathetic to such arguments.

It should also be noted that Democrats have cracked a Hispanic-majority seat in New Mexico to create two likely Dem seats instead of one safe D and one lean R seat. It appears absurd to me that the Democratic party could crack majority-minority seats in one case yet argue in a different case (AL) that the VRA should be interpreted as requiring states to draw as many majority-minority seats as they can possibly fit.

Quote (theCrossbones @ 18 Jan 2022 06:10)

I think gerrymandering should just be ended completely

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jan 17 2022 09:40pm)

Agreed, but a system of congressional districts with first past the post winners naturally lends itself to gerrymandering. To end it without going to an entirely different voting system for Congress, one would need to find suitable and court-proof definitions of what constitutes illegal gerrymandering and what are fair maps. This is far from trivial. Like the example of Massachusetts shows, even measures like the 'lean of the median seat relative to the state as a whole' or the 'efficiency gap' cannot capture the whole picture on their own.




My proposal has been for a long time to use the following approach: let a computer draw 10k or 100k random maps for a state (ofc adhering to certain criteria like compactness, VRA and such) and look at the resulting empirical distribution of the efficiency gap in the state. This gives us an idea about how much of a state map's partisan lean can be traced back to political geography versus intentional effort/manipulation. Then require any map drawn by the state legislature or redistricting commissions to have an efficiency gap below the Xth percentile of this empirical distribution, for example the 75th percentile or so.

This way, we could tell that an efficiency gap of 20% in states like Massachusetts or Alabama still represents a reasonably "fair map", given the makeup of the state, while a similar-sized efficiency gap in Texas or Illinois does not.

Quote (theCrossbones @ 18 Jan 2022 06:48)

I'm ok with some sensible shit I "guess" end goal would like it to go away.. but some of these maps.. jesus christ

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jan 17 2022 10:31pm)

My all time fav is probably NC's map from 93 to 98:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/United_States_Congressional_Districts_in_North_Carolina,_1993_%E2%80%93_1998.tif/lossless-page1-1367px-United_States_Congressional_Districts_in_North_Carolina,_1993_%E2%80%93_1998.tif.png

First of all, what in the actual fuck?!
Second, note how the red brown and dark brown as well as the light green and violet seats are crossing each other at some sort of "point of singularity".

Quote (theCrossbones @ 18 Jan 2022 15:28)

District12 is by far my fave running hundreds of miles to catch those 300 votes.
Do you have this version for my communist WA.. would be interesting on a division that I could wrap my head around

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jan 18 2022 01:31am)

My all time fav is probably NC's map from 93 to 98:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/United_States_Congressional_Districts_in_North_Carolina,_1993_%E2%80%93_1998.tif/lossless-page1-1367px-United_States_Congressional_Districts_in_North_Carolina,_1993_%E2%80%93_1998.tif.png

First of all, what in the actual fuck?!
Second, note how the red brown and dark brown as well as the light green and violet seats are crossing each other at some sort of "point of singularity".

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jan 18 2022 12:31am)

My all time fav is probably NC's map from 93 to 98:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/United_States_Congressional_Districts_in_North_Carolina,_1993_%E2%80%93_1998.tif/lossless-page1-1367px-United_States_Congressional_Districts_in_North_Carolina,_1993_%E2%80%93_1998.tif.png

First of all, what in the actual fuck?!
Second, note how the red brown and dark brown as well as the light green and violet seats are crossing each other at some sort of "point of singularity".