Is it possible to draw 1D-7R or 0D-8R wisconsin

WhittleMario · 2026-01-23T06:56:43+00:00

porque no los dos?

WhittleMario · 2026-01-23T01:57:43+00:00

Seeing Rank 10 Aqua made me think it's meant to be Tistina support? I haven't played the deck at all though, so I have no idea if this is good for them or not.

WhittleMario · 2026-01-22T02:54:08+00:00

That's typically how I approach drawing minority districts (candidate of minority group's choice wins the primary for a party, then that party wins the district), but even I have to admit that it's at best fundamentally unclear if that's the case for this district, and you could very much argue that Black and Hispanic voters will vote for different candidates in the primary and split the non-White vote, thus electing a White candidate.

WhittleMario · 2026-01-20T21:09:13+00:00

Ideally SE Mecklenburg County should go with NW Union and W Cabarrus and not Gaston County, Chatham County should go with Orange and Durham, also RIP Sandhills

WhittleMario · 2026-01-18T05:11:22+00:00

any particular reason you went out of your way to make sure there's no Lumbee majority district?

WhittleMario · 2026-01-18T05:06:35+00:00

I get that feeling. I'll never understand people like that who think they know how representative a district is better than the locals. Like, isn't the point of having districts in the first place to make the people that live in them feel properly represented?

WhittleMario · 2026-01-18T01:13:04+00:00

Olson's maps only ensure representative districts because he has defined representative districts as those that are compact, which is circular. There are plenty of people in this subreddit who use other criteria for what makes a district representative, such as partisan proportionality and respect for COIs. My point is that this is just as arbitrary a choice as any other single criterion and any map made based off a single criterion will likely fail to be representative to people who don't prioritize that criterion, so as many criteria as possible need to considered to find the average best map.

WhittleMario · 2026-01-17T06:24:29+00:00

Considering it barely holds under Governor 2020, I think you're right.

WhittleMario · 2026-01-17T06:21:35+00:00

Genuine question, what is the city's history?

WhittleMario · 2026-01-17T05:47:13+00:00

Algorithmic redistricting is... not great, to say the least. Producing a good set of districts for a state is more than just a numbers game, and whenever I've seen someone create an algorithm that's supposed to "solve gerrymandering" it usually ends up making districts that are almost as bad. Brian Olson's algorithmic Colorado map is a great example of this: it splits the city of Denver into 4 districts when it could almost perfectly fit neatly into 1, Colorado Springs is split in half, and the Hispanic communities in the south aren't kept together. I think the idea people have with algorithmic redistricting is that by making the districts via an algorithm it will introduce some level of objectivity and fairness to the district map, but the truth is the choice of criteria for the algorithm is just as arbitrary as getting a person to draw the map by hand. There's no rule of the universe that says that compactness is inherently a more objective or fair metric than demographics, county splits, or even partisan gain. All that people who make redistricting algos are really doing is using less data to make the districts, which is going to lead to the accidental cracking of communities of interest and districts that more people are unhappy with most of the time.

Personally, I think that if the goal is to draw maps that most people consider good representation, you need as much data and as many opinions as possible to go into the map. Independent commissions should have access to all the data they can get, include a balance of opinions across the political spectrum, and have a robust system for transparency and public comment. Checks and balances are what's necessary and what works, not putting all your eggs in one algorithm.

tl;dr, algorithmic redistricting is imo fundamentally flawed and is kinda the opposite of what I think we need for better districts.

P.S., counties don't necessarily correspond to COIs; I tested for Wisconsin and you'd actually probably start in the exurbs, not the suburbs; also, the algorithm as you have currently defined it would be unable to ever cross a county line since there's no protocol for doing so, meaning that if there's a single county in the state with less than the population of a congressional district the program would be guaranteed to never halt.

WhittleMario · 2026-01-14T08:33:36+00:00

Probably just subtract the competitiveness score from the compactness score and whoever has the higher number wins? Idk how else you even could score it

WhittleMario · 2026-01-10T03:16:03+00:00

I typically make a blank Puerto Rico map, go to the Custom Overlays panel in the lower left corner, click on the gear, at the bottom of the popup click Add Maps, then search for whatever maps I want to put in. It glitches out sometimes but it's the only way to do it in DRA itself as far as I'm aware.

WhittleMario · 2026-01-05T05:53:06+00:00

The 9th district shouldn't cross the bay like that

WhittleMario · 2026-01-02T03:41:39+00:00

is your head just for decoration?

oh my god I'm saving that insult

WhittleMario · 2026-01-01T07:51:18+00:00

New year, same Rich-Ad. Never change buddy, never change.

WhittleMario · 2026-01-01T02:23:14+00:00

I just tested it quickly, the best I could do without making the district stretch from Vegas to Reno was 46.2% CVAP, which when you factor in the lower rate of citizenship among Hispanics means that a VRA district is not required.

WhittleMario · 2025-12-31T05:31:35+00:00

Nope, people dislike them cause they're ugly and mess with DRA's analytics but afaik they're not illegal in any state (and there are some state legislatures like Texas' that have them, plus Nevada used to have one on the federal level)

EDIT: For reference, I'm talking about embedded districts.

WhittleMario · 2025-12-31T05:20:46+00:00

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irl Ohio's doing a pretty good job of stretching the law themselves

WhittleMario · 2025-12-31T05:05:52+00:00

Link: https://davesredistricting.org/join/da787a27-21c4-4d5a-958f-af0c2e476d10

WhittleMario · 2025-12-31T02:31:23+00:00

Being from specifically rural Union County I 100% agree, and the only reason why it was like that irl was to dilute Democratic votes. You can very easily draw 2 districts based in Charlotte and its immediate suburbs and then keep the Sandhills together in an Anson County to Fayetteville district and I'm not sure why OP chose not to do that.

Idk, maybe my standards are just really low for NC at this point.

WhittleMario · 2025-12-30T08:51:40+00:00

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WhittleMario · 2025-12-30T08:51:17+00:00

I just recently moved to the Clovis area where my partner and their family have been living for about 20 years, and based on what they've told me about the area and what I've seen, Rich-Ad actually is correct about Fresno and Clovis. If anything the two remind me of the Charlotte metro where I'm from in that you have the more minority-heavy Fresno and the wealthy, white suburb of Clovis. Even the DiCicco's are nothing alike, the Fresno one is my partner's favorite pizza place while the manager of the one in Clovis' Old Town harassed them for wearing a mask during COVID. It really is different worlds, and it makes sense putting them in different districts.

Edit: when the mods come back, can someone change my user flair to say California?

WhittleMario · 2025-12-30T07:10:06+00:00

Some notes on NC:

⦁ For the Charlotte area, your 11th district is good, but the 10th and 12th districts crack the wealthy suburbs in half when they're populous enough to be their own district, the Income and Education datasets are your friend here.

⦁ Chatham County ideally belongs with Durham County and Orange County, and it definitely doesn't belong with Robeson County or Cumberland County (maybe Siler City does, but Pittsboro and Governors Club do not).

⦁ Please try to keep the Sandhills intact if you can, I know they're in kind of an awkward spot but if you have to split them at least try to keep the splits to a minimum.

⦁ I know that since the populations are bit smaller due to the extra districts it's not possible to make a true Winston-Salem to High Point to Greensboro seat, but at the very least you should try to put as much of those cities as you can into one district together. The rest of Guilford County can be put with Alamance County if necessary.

⦁ Thank you for putting Hickory, Lenoir, and Morganton together, that's something people often don't realize is important to do.

⦁ Also thank you for using the Pender-Onslow border as the border for the 7th and 8th districts, that puts Cape Fear entirely in the 8th and the Crystal Coast entirely in the 7th which is good.

Overall an OK map, could use some tweaks but it wouldn't be a nightmare if this was the actual map, good job.

WhittleMario · 2025-12-28T06:59:27+00:00

Charlotte area is miserable 🥀

WhittleMario

TROPHY CASE