New motto for a state-splitting initiative: "Six Californias? Everything's bigger in SEVEN TEXASES" (I'm thinking new states of DFW, Austin, Houston, West Texas, North Texas, East Texas, South Texas.)
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Related: is there a site that lets you "color" a county map and see what the population of each color is? I don't *super* want to design this myself, because it seems fiddly, but I could.
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I found a site that would do this, except it's broken. :(
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It's not broken, it's just that the initial user-flow is a little confusing and if you do something wrong it *will* break! But do it right and it looks like everything's fine! davesredistricting.org/
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All right, preliminary DON'T MESS WITH SEVEN TEXASES lines redrawn. The new states of East Texas, North Texas, Rio Grande, Gulf Coast, Houston, Dallas, and Lone Star all have 3M-4M people, and have pretty reasonable Dem/Rep splits.
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Dallas, Houston, and Rio Grande are all strong Democrat; Austin is solid Democrat but not quite as strong (due to me grabbing some more rural areas nearby to pull its population up). East Texas, North Texas, and Gulf Coast are all strong Republican. Each state gets 6-8 Reps.
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Replying to @tabatkins
FWIW, this map (made from misuse of kevinhayeswilson.com/redraw/) shows a 2-way split of texas in which North Texas has 16 electoral votes and is solid Republican, and South Texas has 24 electoral votes and would have gone barely democratic using 2016 county results.

Feb 8, 2020 · 5:14 AM UTC

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Replying to @davidbaron @tabatkins
It's pretty easy to draw other similar maps with slightly different lines and the same 16/24 distribution, like this one.
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And then you could do a real gerrymander like this 32/8 one if you're willing to have twistier lines.
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