Redistricting Plan

This is a good government map, which aims to keep political subdivisions intact and draw compact districts. To that end, this map tries to split as few counties and voting districts as possible. However, in trying to retain existing VRA districts (which is preferable because they have already been upheld by courts), it can be difficult to create compact districts. This tension is clearest in district 33, which contorts itself to barely pass muster as majority-Latino by CVAP. District 33 would likely still defeat a Shaw challenge since it is a slightly modified version of the pre-existing district. Texas gained two seats, and given that 40% of Texas’ growth in the last decade came from Latinos, at least one must probably be Latino-majority to satisfy the Voting Rights Act. This map has nine Latino districts, which is likely one or two more than the enacted Texas plan C2193 (depending on how recent one's CVAP data is). My map is more compact and splits fewer political subdivisions than the enacted Texas map, even despite the fact that my map contains more VRA districts.