Author: bolson

Hello redistricting fans. I have an open source project that is making the opposite of gerrymandered districts: optimally compact districts.

The results are starting to come in for the states that have had data released.

http://bdistricting.com/2010/

I could use help with a couple things:

1. Publicity

2. Spare computing

Who needs to know about this? Media? People involved in various state redistricting efforts? Academics? Politicians? Activists?

And if you have a spare x86_64 Mac or Linux machine, you can download a client to run and help solve for optimally compact districts. If you want to tinker with the code you can download the source.

Why focus on optimally compact districts?

Is anyone going to just run with these maps? Probably not. But I want these maps to be available and known as something to compare to. I want to imagine starting from these maps and making changes towards keeping together actual communities or making districts easier to administer by following town and county lines. So I want to have an optimal map so that any deviation from that has to be justified.

Also, if anyone wants to tinker with these maps in another program, please point me to it and what the interchange format is. I’ll write the export code.

I’m starting a new blog on Redistricting in general and my work on compactness based redistricting in specific. This is a crosspost of a redistricting news recap over there.

Illinois, Prison Gerrymandering, Party vs Party…

Illinois

03-08, Rose Report, 03-19 Progress Illinois blog, 03-21 OpEd citing League of Women Voters efforts and IL Fair Map (I like that they have an ordered list of critera, and it is the same as mine.)

Prison Gerrymandering

03-09 Minnesota takes note of prison based gerrymandering

Party vs Party

03-15 AP Article parties wrangle to controle state legislatures and thus redistricting.

03-16, Huffington Post, DLCC to sepend $20e6 on state legislature races with eye toward redistricting.

In this 03-04 Wall Street Journal OpEd, Karl Rove wants to prove the supremacy of the Republican party by gerrymandering Democrats out of seats. (Noted 03-16 at the Rose Report)

03-19 WSJ OpEd seeks “permanent benefit” from redistricting power grab, no shame, greed is good:

“While the election of 1994 did signal a political realignment, none of that alignment translated into the much more permanent benefit that redistricting could provide in 2010 if the GOP takes over state legislatures across the country.” — Michael Solon, former advisor to Sen. McConnel (R-KY)