![]() ![]() In Wisconsin, for example, the People’s Map Commission, chaired by an emergency room doctor, is tasked with drawing 99 assembly districts that meet a list of 10 criteria. MGGG is also creating examples of maps that meet state requirements to help these bodies get their bearings. In some states, maps may be the responsibility of a citizen body that has no prior experience with redistricting. Her team will aggregate these and distill them to a “few dozen” that reflect what matters to a significant number of citizens. For Wisconsin alone, MGGG has collected nearly 1,500 community-drawn maps. “We think this is huge improvement on 10 years ago, to be able to take public testimony in the form of a map,” says Duchin. ![]() Rather than stepping up to a microphone at a meeting, members of the public can use MGGG’s free web-based tool, Districtr, to draw a districting plan that they think is fair, or outline their community of interest on a map. MGGG is helping collect public feedback on redistricting in a number of states, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Missouri, Texas, New Mexico, Alaska, Pennsylvania and Florida. “But for me, there’s a very important public service to be performed in helping the decision-makers make a better decision before they get sued.” “There’s been a lot of attention on litigation, and of course there will be litigation in this cycle as there always is,” she says. Duchin emphasizes that this research-driven work is “scrupulously nonpartisan.” “There’s been a real sea change - people have been dreaming about using computers to do redistricting since the sixties, but the dream really kicked into gear as a reality sometime in the middle of the last cycle,” she says.Īt present, a big priority for the MGGG Redistricting Lab ( ), which she founded at Tufts in 2016, is to support the work of independent commissions and to facilitate a more transparent approach to redistricting. ![]() (MGGG) Electoral GeometryĪt Tufts University, mathematician Moon Duchin leads a team that is exploring how geometry and computing can be used to create better voting maps. This heightened level of public engagement is accompanied by a new generation of powerful, no-cost technology tools developed by a nonpartisan community that includes programmers, mathematicians, data scientists, election law experts and social scientists.Ī state senate plan enacted in the previous Census cycle, as viewed in the MGGG Redistrictr interface. “You're going to see an awful lot of press on this, you're going to see more public involvement than you've ever seen before.” “What we’re seeing now is redistricting under a microscope,” said redistricting veteran Jeff Wice, special counsel to the New York State Assembly, in a webinar for legislators and staff from the National Conference of State Legislatures. That hit up against statutory or constitutional deadlines for redistricting in many states. Due to pandemic delays, the Census Bureau didn’t release the data states need to draw maps until Aug. Moving forward in a lingering atmosphere of suspicion and controversy around last year’s election, the 2020 cycle feels even more consequential. With the arrival of the 2020 Census redistricting data, voting maps have become the latest front in America’s never-ending, two-party battle for control of Congress and statehouses. ![]()
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