Redistricting Louisiana

Since Louisiana has six Republican and only one Democrat Congressmen, when it loses a seat one would assume that it will come at the expense of the Republicans. Analysis shows that this does not have to be the case as a result of the effects of Hurricane Katrina. That caused a lot of damage to homes in New Orleans and resulted in a flight of a lot of people to neighboring states. However, New Orleans is the major Democrat area of the state and the loss of population has come at the expense of the Democrats. You may recall that the Democrat representing the New Orleans area was caught with his hand in the cookie jar or more accurately with the money in his freezer. That allowed a Republican, Congressman Gao, to get elected in 2008 only to be defeated in 2010 when the Democrat candidate was scandal free.

It turns out that ex-Congressman Gao can get his seat back if the Republican controlled state legislature redistricts the state in a certain way. Since there is a Republican governor one can assume he would not veto such a bill. Still when a state loses a seat, unless one incumbent retires, two congressmen have to run against each other, namely the two that live closest to each other. In this case, that turns out to be two Republican congressmen who live in adjoining parishes (that's what they call counties in Louisiana). Perhaps either Congressmen Landry or Boustany would rather retire. Here is how Louisiana can be redistricted to produce six Republican congressmen and freeze the Democrats out:

That blue area below the large white area (Lake Pontchartrain) is New Orleans. The white dots that represent where the various congressmen live and you will see two right together below the lake. That is because Republican Congressman Scalise lives in Metarie which is a suburb of New Orleans where Congressman Richmond lives. By taking the area north of the lake out of Congressman Scalise's district and giving it to Congressman Richmond and giving the area south of New Orleans to Congressman Scalise, the result would be six Republican districts as the following table demonstrates:

New Congressional Districts Figures

Incumbents	2010 Population	Deviation	% Deviation	Dem Votes	Rep Votes
Scalise (R)	752,449	-3,113	-0.4120%	60,733	132,377
Richmond (D)	757,037	+1,475	+0.1952%	90,360	122,405
Landry - Boustany (R)	757,466	+1,904	+0.2520%	85,606	133,742
Fleming (R)	757,130	+1,568	+0.2075%	59,108	128,592
Alexander (R)	756,436	+874	+0.1157%	59,371	148,628
Cassidy (R)	752,854	-2,708	-0.3584%	98,201	178,955
Total/Average	4,533,372	+/-1,940.3	+/-0.2568%	453,379	844,699

We never had to split a parish to get totals close enough to the equal population figure of 755,562. Congressman Boustany had no Democrat opposition so we were forced to use the votes from 2008 in his district. We only plugged those figures into parishes than were not part of any other district since we have no idea of how to prorate the split parishes without a precinct map. Thus the foot totals do not add up to the correct total votes for all of the congressional candidates of both parties since no 2010 results were reported for Congressman Boustany's district. Congressman Alexander had no Democrat opponent but he did have an independent candidate in opposition so we used those results for the Democrat column which no doubt under-reports the Democrat total but would not change who won.

Redistricting New Jersey

New Jersey has lost a house seat so all of the districts in the state will have to be redrawn. When there is a loss of a House seat, unless one Congressman chooses to retire, two incumbents will have to run against each other. Will it be two congressmen from opposite parties or two from the same one and if so, which one? Unless outrageous gerrymandering takes place, where the congressmen live as opposed to where the people now live often dictates the answer. As was the case with Illinois, there are three Republican congressmen who live too close to each other. Both Houses of the state legislature are controlled by the Democrats so they will have to approve the map drawn by an independent commission. Unlike Illinois, New Jersey has a Republican governor, the infamous Governor Christie. Still all he can do is veto any plan that is totally biased in favor of the Democrats. First let's look at what the districts look like now:

As you can tell from the map, these districts have been gerrymandered at some point. The problem is that each district has an incumbent who wants to be protected and in this case, the incumbent Democrats can lean on the Democrats in the state legislature to do just that. Therefore the new map must protect those incumbent Democrats to get passed by the state legislature in the first place. When a congressman lives at one end of such a district, there is no way to cut the pie and not have the result look fairly gerrymandered. Of course, the same is not true for Republican incumbents. However, there is no need to sock it to the Republicans because the geography already dictates that they are going to lose a seat. In the following map, the white dots show where the congressmen currently live:

As you can see the purple and tan districts have three white dots which represent three incumbent congressmen. There is no way without horrible gerrymandering to prevent two of these three from running against each other. Naturally a Democrat controlled legislature has no reason to help these three Republicans out. The fact that each district has to cover more territory is bound to shore up the incumbents of both parties. The Republicans have one incumbent, Congressman Runyan, who is on the endangered list and is in the orange district. The Democrats have two such congressmen, Congressman Pallone in the dark red district and Congressman Holt in the bright green district.

Except for the bright blue district, all of the districts in the lower part of the state are in Republican territory. There is no way to weaken the three Republican incumbents with endangering either Congressman Andrews in the bright blue district or the two already endangered Democrats north of the Republican area. Thus the commission might as well shore up all the congressmen in the six southern districts and let the geography kill off one of the Republicans in the northern part as is suggested in our proposed map. We never split a county subdivision and still got close enough to the required equal population as the following table demonstrates:

New Congressional Districts Figures

Incumbents	2010 Population	Deviation	% Deviation
LoBiondo (R)	732,109	-549	+0.0749%
Andrews (D)	733,581	+923	+0.1260%
Runyan (R)	732,907	+249	+0.0340%
Smith (R)	733,625	+1,057	+0.1443%
Garrett - Felinghausen (R)	731,889	-769	-0.0965%
Pallone (D)	733,275	+707	+0.0061%
Lance (R)	731,305	-1,263	-0.1500%
Pascrell (D)	731,559	-1,099	+0.1384%
Rothman (D)	732,431	-227	-0.0310%
Payne (D)	732,119	-539	-0.0736%
Holt (D)	731,832	-826	-0.1124%
Sires (D)	734,722	+2,064	+0.2817%
Total/Average	8,791,894	+/-856	+/-0.1168%

Redistricting Illinois

One only needs to take a look at the outlines of the current Congressional districts in Illinois to see gerrymandering run wild. This kind of gerrymandering is usually caused by one party that has control of both the state legislature and the governship using their advantage to stack the deck against the other party. In the case of Illinois, both parties collaborated in the gerrymandering since neither party had total control in 2000. This resulted in really weird shaped districts like district 17. It is also a prime example of how gerrymandering can backfire because the whole purprose of district 17 was to give the Democrats control of the district and protect control of neighboring Republican districts. The problem is that redistricting only happens every ten years and a lot can happen in that time like Republicans winning this "Democrat" district in 2010. The following map of the current districts shows what happens when politicians turn into map makers:

No doubt Illinois will again see gerrymandering run wild only this time just for the benefit of the Democrat Party since it controls both houses of the state legislature and the governorship. Actually there is no need for the Democrats to do this because just drawing nice neat districts will cause the Republicans to lose House seats. That last exercise in gerrymandering is what gave the Republicans their current 11 seats compared to only 8 for the Democrats. There is no way the Republicans in a blue state like Illinois should control that many districts and it is only because of gerrymandering that backfired that they do. Illinois has lost a congressional district because of the 2010 Census and all of these districts must be redrawn as a result. The Republicans are going to lose at least two seats and maybe three and at least two Republicans will have to run against each other no matter how much gerrymandering takes place.

That being the case how about a really strange idea? Why not let a geographical area that votes Democrat have a Democrat congressman and an area that votes Republican have a Republican one? That way everyone will get what they are voting for to the maximum extent possible instead of trying to stack the deck in favor of an outcome that will probably change in the next ten years anyway. We have prepared a map that does that as a guide to how playing the game fairly lets the chips fall where they may. Here is our suggestion:

The white dots show the location of the homes of the current congress people from Illinois. As you can see there are four white dots in the area of the purple, brown and dark blue districts. All four are Republican and there is no way they can be separated without more ridiculous gerrymandering. Why should a Democrat controlled state be so kind as to preserve four Republican congressmen? One Republican congressman is history no matter what happens. Two other Republican Congressmen barely got elected in districts 8 and 10 (the two in the upper right hand corner). One of them is in a district that was carried by Obama by 12 points so he is likely history in any case. As to whether Congressman Dold can survive no matter how his 10th district is drawn is questionable but there is no way to insure his defeat without endangering Congresswoman Schakowsky in district 9.

Our plan makes no attempt to draw the 6 districts for Chicago (the bright blue area) since it will come down to what the six Democrat congress people want to do there and it has no partisan political implications in any case. One could gerrymander things so that Congressman Costello (Dem) and Congressman Shimkus (Rep) have to run against each other at the bottom of the state since they live failrly close together but no matter how you drawn the lines, the aqua area will elect a Democrat and the orange area will elect a Republican so why bother? The 2010 Census gave Illinois a population of 12,864,380 and 18 congressional seats so ideally each district should have a population of 714,687.77. Our districts contain whole counties in southern Illinois and whole townships in Northern Illinois. Here is how our districts work out by population:

New Congressional Districts Figures

Incumbents	2010 Population	Deviation	% Deviation
Shimkus (R)	718,581	+3,893	+0.5471%
Schock (R) - Schilling (R)	714,010	-678	-0.0949%
Manzullo (R)	713,052	-1,636	-0.2289%
Johnson (R)	715,793	+1,105	+0.1546%
Hultgren (R)	712,455	-2,233	-0.3124%
Biggert (R)	710,287	-4,401	-0.6158%
Costello (D)	717,910	+3,222	+0.5408%
Kinzinger (R)	709,271	-5,417	-0.7580%
Dold (R)	720,446	+5,758	+0.8057%
Walsh (R)	715,176	+488	+0.0683%
Roskam (R)	712,098	-2,590	-0.3624%
Lipinski (D)	707,888	-6,800	-0.9515%
Total/Average	8,566,967	+/-3,185	+/-0.4534%

Redistricting Iowa

Iowa is one of those states that has lost a congressional seat as a result of the 2010 Census. It had five districts and now it will only have four. In practice, that means that two of the sitting Congressmen will have to run against each other. Right now, Iowa is represented by three Democrats and two Republicans. While both Republicans won handily, all three Democrats won by only from 2 to 5.07%. One way or another, the loss is going to have to cost one of the Democrats his seat unless the redistricting is gerrymandered to favor the Democrats. That is not going to happen because the Democrats only control the State Senate while the Republicans control the State House and the Governorship.

This means that if the Democrat Senate cannot work out a compromise with the Republicans in the House, this whole battle will wind up in court where anything can happen. The court will not care about keeping incumbent Congressmen in separate districts or being opposed to creating a district which has no incumbent in it at all. The Court will only be concerned about making the population in each of the four districts equal to one-fourth of the population of the state, which is 3,053,787. We speak from experience in having designed the first three redistricting plans for the State of Arizona many years ago and then testifying in federal court in behalf of the plans.

The criteria we used was compactness, keeping incumbents separated, equal population and allowing precincts that voted similarly to be clustered together to form districts so as to avoid gerrymandering. The court frowned on any criteria except equal population. Actually the federal courts today would allow the original gerrymander in Massachusetts where all the precincts voting for the Whigs were put into one district so that they would at least be represented by someone who would vote according to their wishes. Gerrymandering today means burning one party at the expense of the other one. You do this by creating districts that have 60% of precincts voting for the party you are helping and 40% of them voting for the other party so that you waste those votes and can create more districts for the favored party.

In practice gerrymandering creates long skinny districts that reach from the part of town that favors one party down into the part that favors the other party but not as deeply in one end as in the other favored end. Neutral redistricting will create districts that are more or less square or at least combine counties that have similar economic and social outlooks. Gerrymandering in Iowa is easy because we have two sets of pairs of incumbents that live quite close to each other. It is easy to dump these two pairs into the same district and then create an open district. It is possible to keep these two pairs separated but there still has to be one district that has two incumbents running against each other.

The Democrats in Iowa will want to have the two Republicans run against each other in hopes of getting three Democrats and only one Republican in 2012. The Republicans will want two of the Democrats to run against each other in hopes of beating the third one and winding up with three Republicans and one Democrat. The fair way to do things would be to have one of the Republicans run against one of the Democrats so that the Democrats and Republicans each get one district and the other two will be up for grabs. Given where the various incumbents live, there is only one way to do this although one can make some agjustments around the edges.

Right now, population data is only available down to the county level but it is still possible to create four districts of just about equal size without crossing any county lines. In the spirit of getting a discussion going we have created a proposed redistricting of Iowa into four districts that the Republicans and Democrats might be able to compromise on to avoid winding up in court where all bets are off.

The above map shows the districts we are suggesting that the Iowa legislature could compromise on at least as a starting point. The five towns shown are where the five incumbents live. The four districts break down with the following figures:

New Congressional Districts Figures

Incumbents	2010 Population	Deviation	% Deviation
Loebsack (D)	765,897	+2,450.25	+0.3209%
Braley (D) - Latham (R)	764,647	+1,200.25	+0.1572%
Boswell (D)	760,819	-2,627.75	-0.3442%
King (R)	762,424	-1,022.75	-0.1340%
Total/Average	3,053,787	+/-1,825.25	+/-0.2391%