District 1
Berkshire County
Hampshire County, excluding
– Ware
Hampden County, excluding
– Palmer
– Monson
– Wales
– Holland
– Brimfield
I wanted to include Franklin County in this district, but it would have made the population too large and I would have needed to split off the Springfield’s Eastern Suburbs from the City proper.
District 2
Franklin County
In Hampshire County
– Ware
In Hampden County
– Palmer
– Molson
– Holland
– Wales
– Brimfield
Worcester County, excluding
– Fitchberg
– Leominster
– Lunenberg
– Southborough
– Milford
– Bolton
– Harvard
– Lancaster
– Blackstone
– Millville
Worcester County was just slightly larger than a district, but because I had to shift the district further west, I removed the Fitchberg – Leominster area and some other cities on the Eastern end of the county.
District 3
In Worcester County
– Fitchberg
– Leominster
– Lunenberg
– Bolton
– Harvard
– Lancaster
In Middlesex County
– Ashby
– Townsend
– Shirley
– Ayer
– Groton
– Pepperell
– Dunstable
– Littleton
– Westford
– Tyngsborough
– Chelmsford
– Lowell
– Dracut
– Boxborough
– Stow
– Hudson
– Marlborough, excluding Ward 2 Precinct 2
– Framingham
– Sudbury
– Maynard
– Acton
– Concord
– Carlisle
– Billerica
– Tewksbury
– Bedford
– Wilmington
– North Reading
– Burlington
This district is not that dissimilar from the current 5th district, though shifted South and West. Because of respect for the Middlesex – Essex line, I split the Merrimack valley, which perhaps is an error, but that’s the rubric I followed.
District 4
In Middlesex County
– Cambridge
– Somerville
– Medford
– Arlington
– Belmont
– Watertown
– Waltham
– Weston
– Wayland
– Lincoln
– Lexington
– Woburn
– Winchester
– Reading
– Wakefield
– Stoneham
– Malden
– Melrose
– Everett
Nice and clean Southeast Middlesex District.
District 5
Essex County, excluding Saugus precincts 2,3,4,6,8,10
District 6
Suffolk County, plus Saugus precincts 2,3,4,6,8,10
Suffolk County and Essex County are both very close to a 9th of the state’s population. I transfered Southern Saugus into the 6th District to correct the population difference.
District 7
Norfolk County, excluding
– Cohasset
– Plainville
– Wrentham
– Foxborough
– Franklin
– Norfolk
– Bellingham
– Mills
– Medway
In Middlesex County
– Newton
– Natick
– Sherborn
– Holliston
– Hopkinton
– Ashland
– Marlborough Ward 2 Pct 2
In Worcester County
– Southborough
This was suppose to be the Norfolk County district, but Bristol County needed more population, so it took the southwest corner of the county and I needed to make it up from Southwest Middlesex County. It’s still a fairly culturally consistent suburban district though.
District 8
Bristol County
In Plymouth County
– Lakeville
– Mattapoisett
– Marion
In Norfolk County
– Plainville
– Wrentham
– Foxborough
– Franklin
– Norfolk
– Bellingham
– Mills
– Medway
In Worcester County
– Blackstone
– Millville
– Milford
Bristol County plus some neighboring turf. The sort of district that the GOP imagines should exist, per AmberPaw’s diary, Frank’s Newton residency notwithstanding.
District 9
Barnstable County
Dukes County
Nantucket County
Plymouth County, excluding
– Lakeville
– Mattapoisett
– Marion
In Norfolk County
– Cohasset
Basically the current 10th district, but with more of Plymouth County and not Weymouth or Quincy.
Political Consequences
I suspect that none of these districts are significantly better for the GOP than the current crop of districts, though I haven’t calculated PVIs or anything like that. As I argued in this comment, drawing a district that is favorable is very difficult. The interesting thing would be the primary battles:
Oliver verses Neal in the First
Markey verses Capuano in the Fourth
Frank verses Delahunt in the Seventh
The Eighth and Ninth currently have no congressmen that live within their boundaries.
I suspect that Delahunt would pack up and move to Hingham, rather than fight Frank, since he represents most of the territory of the new 9th anyway. Oliver will be 76 by 2012 and may retire. The Capuano – Markey could not be so easily defused. I would give Markey the edge, since he represents more the district currently. Capuano could always move to Boston and fight Lynch there, since he represents more of Suffolk County than Lynch does, though that would deprive him of his Somerville base and Lynch may portray him as carpetbagger. Either way, I’d expect to see sparks fly.
Yes, Bob! Statewide PR would be the best.
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p>The New America Foundation released a 20-page plan for bringing proportional representation to the California state legislature. Given the glacial pace at which electoral reform moves in this country, I doubt PR will be politically feasible at the state level, without a significant increase in the use of Instant Runoff Voting first.
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p>Our electoral dreams aside, nice work, Marcus.
but do you have a backup plan for 8?
As was pointed out in the other redistricting thread, they’re much less Gerrymandered than the Congressional Districts are.
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p>I don’t think 8 is likely at this point though, We’d have to lose a lot of population quickly and at least thus far the recession seems more mild here than elsewhere.
. . . having multiple Suffolk County (Boston) members of Congress, and Capuano and Markey.
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p>If only it were this easy. Delahunt shouldn’t have suffer the indignity of having to move. Doesn’t he get a state pension, as former DA, and now a federal one once he retires from Congress? Golden parachutes all atound?
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p>What a way to break the bank!
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but ultimately, the seats will be drawn to make current folks safe. There’s going to be someone left behind, though there’s a fair chance that a few seats will change hand between now and then anyway, so it wouldn’t make sense to handicap any potential battles.
I’d point out that counties make a lousy basis for districts. After all, they were drawn about 400 years ago, and the population has shifted substantially since then, not just in number but in character. It’s not as if there’s substantial county government in MA influencing gov’t and culture either.
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p>Now, it may be that counties as a basis is short hand for “fairly compact blobs” but I confess that I’m not able to look at that list and make it make sense geographically in my head. I need a colored map.
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p>I might point out that it might be able to take a map like yours as a goal and not get there all at once; move toward it every 10 years as there are new Congressmen. In this way the map could move toward fairness without sacrificing seniority in the House, either because of the immediate placing of two Congressmen in the same district or because a Congressman might have so many new parts of his district that he’s suddenly “out of touch” with his new peeps. Again, without seeing a map [and the home location of each Congressman], I don’t know how reasonable that would be…
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p>P.S. Why should we de-gerrymander if Texas or Florida don’t de-gerrymander theirs? Sure part of being a Congressman is representing your district, but part of it is representing all Americans, and if the GOP is going to twist the rules to their favor, should we just take the loss in the name of purity? Will the majority of voters of MA [who clearly lean Democrat] benefit from that? Just food for thought.
Yes, counties are so meaningless politically in MA that there’s no identification with them from the public. Your idea of using some basis for districts other than the interests of the current incumbents is a good one, but in the western districts I don’t like how it’s come out. Hampshire and Franklin counties, more or less, form a single social unit called “the Valley” which is pretty distinct from Springfield. Yet you’ve put Hampshire in with Springfield and Franklin in with Worcester — ever tried driving from Greenfield to Worcester?
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p>Olver’s district is a pretty logical one, mostly because the borders make a lot of the decisions for you. It has the Berkshires, the Valley, and enough rural areas of adjacent regions to fill out the numbers. (Olver ran a nice TV ad this last cycle, adapting Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere” song to include the over 100 cities and towns in the district.) The one anomaly is that the Valley’s “capital” of Northampton is in Neal’s district along with Hadley. I think the idea was to give Neal only as many Valley liberals as he could afford — since he is anti-choice there was thought of a serious liberal challenge to him earlier in his career.
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p>Here’s a link to another division of MA into ten equal-sized (but not contiguous) regions based on similarities in voting patterns:
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p>http://www.massinc.org/index.p…
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p>This has the Berkshires and Valley joined with Cambridge, Arlington, Somerville, Provincetown, the Islands, and a couple other places on the Cape as the most reliably liberal parts of the state.
as my note on District one indicated, but the alternatives are not much better. If we move Springfield out of the first district it loses too much population, but if we keep it it has too much. This is why the current First first stretches all the way to Fitchberg, which many commentators felt was inappropriate as well. (It would need to include even more Greater Boston exurbs with 9 districts.) It also leaves the problem of the second district, which already encroaches on the suburbs of Worcester, causing the Worcester based third to swoop all the way down to Fall River. One possibility would be to put Springfield and Worcester in a single district, with a thin strip connecting them, with all the rural areas in Central and Western Mass in the remaining district, but that would look rather ugly and I don’t think the residents of the Second and Third city of Massachusetts would appreciate being artificially merged.
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p>The ten regions in your link are interesting for analysis, but they aren’t equal population, not remotely.
Their table for the 2006 general splits the vote pretty well ten ways, though this is not necessarily the same as splitting population because of differential turnout:
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p>http://www.massinc.org/index.p…
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p>Total vote (rounded):
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p>Bigger Boston 217K
Brink Cities 221K
Cranberry Country 231K
Left Fields 227K
MidMass 214K
Offramps 217K
Ponkapoag 220K
Post Industrial 219K
Shopper’s World 212K
Stables and Subdivisions 225K
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p>All within 10%, anyway — I realize that won’t do for districts but it gives you a pretty good idea of where the population is.
I though “Bigger Boston”, “Shoppers world” and Cambridge-Somerville were all “Bigger Boston”, hence my earlier comment.
Essex County is basically northeastern MMA.
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p>Suffolk is Boston.
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p>Middlesex can be north and south.
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p>Norfolk is sort of a hybrid.
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p>Plymouth is Brockton.
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p>Bristol is southeastern MA, including New Bedford and Fall River.
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p>Barnstable, Dukes, and Nantucket is Cape and Islands.
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p>Worcester is Worcester and Black Stone River Valley.
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p>Franklin is there.
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p>Hampden is Sprngfield.
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p>Hampshire is Northhampton, Amherst, Hadley, and environs.
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p>Berkshire is Pittsfield and the Berkshires.
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p>After 400 years it still makes sense!
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p>To conform to the Voting Rights Act, possibly East Boston, Revere, Roxbury, JP, Dorchester, Mattapan, Cambridge,Somerville and Medford could be hobled together? But then Markey (should retire soon) and Capuano might have a contest.
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For Congress at least, it demands a national solution. No way should we potentially give up our D seats for nothing in return. And your proposed districts 3 (splitting Lawrence and Lowell?) and 8 look very amenable to a R challenge. We don’t necessarily gerrymander the districts to achieve all Ds: we should avoid splitting up towns and New Bedford and Fall River should probably be in the same district. But we don’t need to pay creedence to county lines that have NO applicability to modern life and residence patterns. Does Lynn really have more in common with Newburyport than Revere?
Did I miss it or did you leave the City of Worcester out completely?
My notation is
Worcester County, excluding
< list of cities >
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p>means every city in Worcester except for those on the list.
one important thing. The current 8th district was drawn as a “majority minority” district, designed to maximize the possibility of a minority candidate holding that seat. Without looking at the census data, your proposed 6th district is probably the closest to maintaining a majority minority population, but with Revere and Winthrop, plus all of the neighborhoods of Boston now in the 9th, you still might not make it. None of the other ones are even close.
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p>You can be sure that there would be a civil rights lawsuit if districts were redrawn this way.
why can’t we have one for Republicans (clearly a minority in this state)?
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p>And oh by the way, have we ever considered changing our ancient county lines to reflect modern population demographics in MA?
That’s the problem with having single-member districts. Only geographically-concentrated minorities have a hope of getting representation. Minorities who are spread out (depending on the state, those could be Republicans, third parties, youth, feminists, evangelicals, atheists, Latinos, etc) can often be poorly represented in proportion to their share of the electorate. We should instead have larger districts where multiple candidates are elected at once, using a method of proportional representation. That would ensure every constituency is represented in proportion to their size in the electorate.
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p>With single-member districts, the best we can do is redraw boundaries in an effort to represent everyone, and even doing that requires overcoming the tendency to gerrymandering. With multi-member PR districts, gerrymandering becomes effectively a non-issue. Everyone deserves to be represented.
I don’t want “every constituency to be represented”. I want PEOPLE to be represented without regard to identifying labels whether partisan or demographic. There are practical reasons for not dividing cities and towns, but otherwise all that should matter is the right number of people. Multi-member districts have the potential of all members coming from one part of the district. The straight one-person, one-vote formula seems to be best. We should never assume that people can only be represented by people just like them. I never want to go to party-based PR. I want to elect my own representative thank you very much, not rely on the party to choose a slate, especially since there is no guarantee that representatives’ views match what you might expect from the party.
Regardless of the rational or realities or results of it’s concoction?
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p>Even if it’s been drawn to isolate conservative voters so they never have enough influence in our first past the post system? Even if it’s been drawn to isolate black voters so they never have enough influence in our first past the post system?
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p>Want what you like, but American history shows that what you want is not only never going to happen, but it’s actually illegal in the sense that particular congressional district layouts conform to what you want but don’t pass muster with assorted SCOTUS decisions.
I don’t like the gerrymandering, but SMD is just fine. I would also be open to some kind of runoff, either regular or IRV, to acheive a majority. I don’t buy your premises regarding isolating voters. As long as the numbers are equal my vote counts the same whether in my current district or if my residence gets redrawn into a neighboring district.
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p>I never called for party-based PR. I’ve called specifically and repeatedly for Choice Voting (aka the Single Transferable Vote) version of Proportional Representation. I know of very few advocates of party-based PR in the U.S. — that is certainly not what the leading electoral reform organizations advocate. The consensus is behind Choice Voting.
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p>As its name implies, the Single Transferable Vote does ultimately give every voter one vote. It’s algorithm determines to whom your vote is given, in a way that ensures proportional representation.
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p>Unlikely, but possible. Single-member districts have the potential of 100% the members supporting party/idea ‘A’, even if ‘A’ has only 51% support. Ideally, 51% of those elected would support ‘A’. PR can represent whatever constituencies the electorate deems important — be they geographic, ideological, racial, religious, whatever — and the constituencies can overlap and dynamically change over time without redistricting. Single-member districts is a severe restriction that says that geography is the only criteria by which constituencies may be represented.
The current district is 49% non-Hispanic white, so while it is technically “majority-minority” it whites are still by far the largest race. Because MA will be losing the district, we will need to add more population to the district from somewhere and there’s not really any surrounding town that has a large minority population to add. You could somewhat better by removing some of the whiter parts of Suffolk County and replacing it with the minority parts of Cambridge and Somerville, but I am almost certain that you will exceed 50% non-Hispanic White regardless of what you do.
that it will be hard to maintain it, but I think your proposal moves pretty far away from it too. Cambridge and Somerville provide some of the minority population to meet the goal with the current 8th, and moving them to a very white, Middlesex district would really dilute those votes.
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p>From a geographic standpoint, I think both Cambridge and Somerville have a lot more common interests with Boston than Saugus (or Revere or Winthrop) does — similar industries, more urban, etc.
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p>Politically, it will also be hard to say that Boston should be in 1 district. From a purely parochial standpoint, the city would lose the additional influence of having two members and I can’t see local elected officials embracing that move. Many, if not most large and medium-sized cities are split, look at Cleveland, Baltimore, etc. As a Boston resident, I certainly wouldn’t support a plan that disadvantaged us vs. other municipalities.
So much for “majority minority” districts.
not a minority. A majority-minority district doesn’t guarantee that someone from a minority group gets elected, just that minority votes aren’t diluted.
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p>Capuano also won the seat in a 10-way election, so everyone’s votes were diluted. Could be very different somewhere down the road.
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p>I don’t really care one way or the other, but there are those out there that will. Remember, this is the major reason why Finneran is on the radio and no longer in the state house.
Seriously.
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p>This is hard. To put your plan out first and then face the [well meaning] firing squad around here is tough. So, kudos to you.
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p>I printed out a pdf and drew in the districts so I could see them. Then, I realized that I don’t know enough about communities outside of inner-Boston-metro to have any sense how much sense these lines made. Also, to ignore physical geography is also a mistake, since physical geography often shapes local culture, custom, and demographics. As do roads and bridges.
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p>The 9 districts created are compact (though not compact of course). It’s not obvious that compact is good though, as FairVote points out in District Shapes and Interest Representation.
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p>Now, here’s food for thought… what if, according to your breakdown:
Voters in 1 and 2 selected 2 Congressmen [WeMa]
Voters in 3 and 5 selected 2 Congressmen [NoBo]
Voters in 4, 6, 7 selected 3 Congressmen [BoMet]
Voters in 8 and 9 selected 2 Congressmen [SoBo]
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p>Those are fairly natural geographic/cultural breakdowns. You might require a bit of retinkering, but the basic idea is there. IRV, top 2 [or 3 in BoMet] win.
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p>This doesn’t take into account where the current Congressmen live of course, nor does it take into account the incredible political will required to make Congressional races IRV.
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p>It’s merely food for thought. I expect that if this were the plan, that WeMa and BoMet might elect pretty dang liberal Democrats, but NoBo and SoBo would elect conservative Dems or even GOoPers. After all, the 10th (Delahunt) includes Quincy and P-Town, but everything in between. Likewise, the 4th (Frank) includes Brookline and Newton and Wellsley, but all the way down to the New Bedford area. Without the liberal anchors near Boston, would the south trend red?
While there is a conservative belt in interior Plymouth County and the upper arm of the Cape, it is countered by the more liberal Bristol County, Brockton and the Outer Cape and Islands. The region is slightly more more conservative than the states as a whole, but probably would continue to send Center-left to Liberal Dems to congress.
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p>The article about compactness is very interesting, it reminds me of some of the discussion regarding the California 23rd.
Here’s the district in Question:
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p>Anti-Gerrymandering activists call it “The Ribbon of Shame” since it snakes it’s way along the coast in very non compact fashion in a way to benefit the Democratic incumbent Lois Capps. However, Santa Barbara County (the Central part of the district) is rife with conflict between the liberal urban coastal dwellers and the conservative rural interior to the point where some have argued that the county be split in two. The same cultural divide is present throughout the region, so while it makes things uncompact and messy, having this “ugly” district ensures that more like minded people have representation that suits them and keeps cultural regions intact.
The five Islands in the district comprise Channel Islands National Park. Some of the Southern islands are inhabited, most notably Catalina Island, which is the one closes to Los Angeles.
Let me throw out something that has intrigued me for a while.
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p>Increase the size of the House of Representatives.
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p>There is a website devoted to this idea. The logic is that until 1913, the number of representatives used to rise every so often to correspond with the increase in population.
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p>It is hard to divide Massachusetts into 10 (or nine!) areas because we are more diverse than that. Berkshire county is totally different from Hampden county, and not quite the same as Hampshire County. Putting all three areas into one pot almost guarantees that a lot of people will not have their views represented.
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p>How can a US Representative represent 600,000 constituents? Or more? Let me put it to the extreme — why don’t we elect just 1 representative per state? Why the current number? Answer: because more representatives equates to finer granularity.
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p>Here’s another bonus: more representatives equates to more bodies to lobby. At some point lobbying becomes prohibitively expensive, doesn’t it?
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p>The website I linked to advocates 6,300 Representatives to get proper representation. Yes, it sounds radical. Read it though — they make a compelling case.
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p>And remember, it is the House of Representatives. Their mission is to represent the common person. By having districts that are so large, these positions become elite, and the persons filling them just can’t represent 600,000 people very effectively.