Tag Archives: Cicero

Dec 25, 2011

Cicero is Tracking Legislative Boundary Data and Schedules FOR You

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As newly approved redistricted legislative district boundary plans are released our spatial analysis team has been running compactness analysis on each one (see Daniel McGlone’s recent blog on his analysis of the approved PA congressional boundaries – http://www.azavea.com/blogs/atlas/2011/12/pennsylvania-congressional-redistricting-we-have-a-plan/). Our growing collection of official, state-approved legislative district boundaries is not just tickling our intellectual fancy – We are also methodically adding the new boundary files to our Cicero API data collection and making it available through a new call we’ve recently added to the API.

This new call has proven to be a big hit with organizations wanting to preemptively match their constituents to the districts they will belong to when the new district boundaries take effect.  This enables organizations to prepare their constituent databases for rapid call-to-action campaigns directed at new legislatures, analyze their constituents by districts for the next election cycle, and more.

To use the GeocodingService or MapGeneration service to access newly drawn districts based on the 2010 census:

  • Simply append the suffix “_2010″ to the DistrictType parameter in any method (for example, you would use the DistrictType NATIONAL_LOWER_2010 to see the new House districts and STATE_UPPER_2010 to see new State Senate districts).
  • ALL_2010 will return all the new districts available for any given location.
  • If new districts are not yet available for a given location, the SOAP response will not return district responses for the location.

We are tracking when each state’s new legislature officially takes office (in the majority of cases, this is when the new boundaries take effect). As each state takes office, we will be moving the 2010 boundaries to the current boundary dataset.  In other words, keep using the DistrictType calls the way you are using them now and we will do the updating work for you!

New states will continue to be added as we receive and process the data.

Questions?  Feel free to contact us: http://www.azavea.com/products/cicero/contact/

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Dec 14, 2011

Pennsylvania Congressional Redistricting: We Have a Plan!

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After months of only rumors leaking out of the Pennsylvania Capitol about the redrawing of the state’s congressional districts, a map was finally released yesterday. It was supposed to be released last week. Then it was delayed until Monday. Then Tuesday. Then a PDF came out yesterday and the shapefile, which allows us to do a geographic analysis, early this morning. The Cicero team couldn’t wait to get our hands on it!

At first glance we were taken aback, most notably by District 7, which got more “Wow what is that?” remarks in the office than the earthquake. There is a lot to say about this monstrosity, certain to be a poster child for future gerrymandering studies. We’ve been able to perform some basic GIS analysis on the new districts today and will present some findings below. Next week, we’ll write about some of the methods used to create the numbers we are presenting.

First off, here’s the numbers you have been waiting for: compactness, demographics and voting tendency for the current and proposed congressional districts:

UPDATE 12/19/2011: We have added statistics for the Democratic congressional redistricting proposal:

As you can see, using both the Polsby-Popper and Schwartzberg methods of calculating district compactness (read up about how those are calculated by taking a look at our gerrymandering white paper), the proposed congressional districts are slightly less compact than the districts currently in effect. While that may not seem like a lot, keep in mind that Pennsylvania’s current districts are already some of the least compact in the nation, according to our study. District 7, represented by Patrick Meehan (R), takes the honor of having the eighth least compact congressional district in the nation. Of all the newly drawn congressional districts, it is the fifth least compact in the nation. Have a look for yourself:

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Sep 19, 2011

Crunching the Numbers on Ohio’s Redistricting Proposal

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Ohio’s General Assembly recently released its redistricting proposal for the state’s 16 congressional districts. Due to its sluggish population growth over the past decade, the state lost two seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. This has made the task of redrawing the state’s congressional boundaries – minus two seats – extra contentious. In 2010, Republicans took control of all three branches of state government in Ohio. Because the state’s constitution requires the legislature draw up and Governor approve new districts, the Republican party controls the entire process from start to finish.

The proposal has met with marked controversy from some groups in Ohio. Here’s a look at how the districts shape up using two measures of compactness, Polsby-Popper and Schwartzberg. For more detailed information on how each is calculated and why compactness is important for legislative districts, see Azavea’s Redistricting 2010 White Paper.

 Congressional  District

 Polsby-Popper  (current)

 Polsby-Popper  (proposed)

 Schwartzberg  (current)

 Schwartzberg  (proposed)
 1  33.3  15.7  57.7  39.6
 2  24  15.9  48.9  39.8
 3  21.4  42  46.3  20.5
 4  29  16.9  53.9  41.2
 5  25.6  37.8  50.6  61.5
 6  11.2  14.7  33.5  38.4
 7  20  11.6  44.8  34
 8  22.4  29.3  47.4  54.1
 9  20.2  3.7  47.6  19.3
 10  26.5  21.8  51.4  46.7
 11  31.9  7  56.4  26.4
 12  27.3  21.4  52.2  46.2
 13  10.4  8.4  32.3  28.9
 14  37.1  26.2  60.9  51.2
 15  21.4  7.3  46.3  26.9
 16  34.2  11.1  58.5  33.3
 17  20.9  N/A  45.7  N/A
 18  16.4  N/A  40.5  N/A
 Statewide  Average  24.1  15.8  48.6  38

First, it’s important to note that in the proposed plan the target population is met for each of the districts to within one person. However, this is not without its drawbacks when it comes to compactness. It appears that the redrawing has resulted in much less compact districts overall. Note that the statewide average is now considerably lower using the Polsby-Popper and Schwartzberg methods of measuring compactness. If these districts went into effect today, Ohio on average would have some of the least compact congressional districts in the nation. The Midwest Democracy Network, which recently held a redistricting competition in Ohio, said that the proposed plan scores lower than any of their user submitted plans.

A Closer Look: District 15

Perhaps one of the most interesting changes comes in the form of District 15 in Central Ohio, represented by freshmen Representative Steven Strivers. The district is transformed from a compact area representing much of Columbus city and its western suburbs to a meandering one that snakes from northeast of Dayton to over 100 miles east before reversing direction and heading back west.

How does the district expand to all this new geographic territory? By removing much of the densely populated areas of Columbus. But the district still does include certain slivers of the city, such as a finger that extends into downtown. The district is also barely contiguous as its boundaries weave in and out of the city limits. In one part of Southwest Columbus, a sliver of the district is only as wide as a major roadway, skipping over a shopping center to include a car dealership on the other side.

What do you think? Join the conversation by following the Cicero Twitter account. Throughout the next several weeks we’ll be following up with redistricting across the U.S. on this blog and our Twitter.

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Sep 12, 2011

Tyreek Elam’s Account of His Summer Internship with Azavea

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Project H.O.M.E‘s mission is to empower people to break the cycle of homelessness.  As part of their numerous educational and professional development programs is the John and Sheila Connors Youth Employment Program.  Every summer, along with offering academic workshops and professional development classes, Project H.O.M.E places students into local businesses and city agencies for six-week, 20-hour per week internships.  At these positions, students are exposed to business practices and professional activities they might not have otherwise.  It is in this context that Azavea welcomed Tyreek Elam into our Philadelphia office this summer.

Why?  One of our core principles is to do work that is meaningful and encourages positive changes in the communities our clients serve.  Welcoming Tyreek amongst us seemed like a tangible and meaningful, albeit small, way to make a positive impact in the life of someone from our community.  During one of our Management Team meetings, I presented the idea and we all voted unanimously that Tyreek should join us for his internship.  This is his account of his stay with us.  It is my hope Tyreek will remain in touch with us.  We all wish him the best as he prepares to apply to college and develops his professional career.

“Though I was only here for six weeks, these six weeks were some of the most wonderful six weeks, I have had in my entire life.  My internship with Azavea was amazing, everyone in the office was kind, helping, and just plain, awesome.  I have never seen a place so vibrant, everyone is almost always busy working with something but when you go and ask them something there is never a bad atmosphere about them.  Each week I was assigned a different team and a different assignment, and as a result more insight on what Azavea had to offer.

The first week I worked with the Law Enforcement team, consisting of Bennet, Jeremy, and Kenny, as a beta tester, using a demo of their HunchLab product to find any problems or bugs in the software.  I greatly enjoyed the application as well as the way they explained things to me.  HunchLab is a web-based geographic crime visualization, early warning, and risk forecasting software.  HunchLab and the team developing it were so great that at the end of the week I reluctantly had to go.

But the fun did not stop there, the next week was the Cicero team, with Abby, Andrew, and Daniel.  During my week with Cicero, which is an address-based legislative district matching and elected official look up web API, I gathered and entered data about previous elections for various countries.  That was definitely a challenge, an interesting challenge, considering how little is known about a lot of old elections for a lot of countries.

The next week I was placed with the PhillyHistory / Sajara team, which consists of Deborah and Carissa.  PhillyHistory.org offers a geographic search, mapping and display of historic assets in Philadelphia.  This was also one of my favorite weeks because I really enjoyed surfing through all the historic photos they had of the city I live in.  The entire week was spent with me going through the pictures and recording data, but the pictures I saw made me feel closer to Philadelphia.

The next week I worked with the DecisionTree team helping them install Ubuntu, which was awesome and gave me a feel for Ubuntu and an OS other than the Windows or Mac OS X.   I really enjoyed how Tamara,  Josh and Erik, let me get a feel for the software and the OS on my own but were there to help me when I stumbled or, was stuck.

My last week, I was with the Land Records team and worked on their PWD Stormwater Billing Application.  Though I knew very little about the application it was still fun.  I was assigned with the task to find ways to break or hack the web app so they could fix it.  Matthew and Justin were extremely helpful when it came to parts of software that I found that did not work or had some bugs.

Overall my time here at Azavea was a great one and I wish I could do it again.  Everyone was approachable and reasonable, but I would like to personally thank Ms. Rachel, because my stay there was twice as wonderful because of her.  She always made sure I had what I needed, if I needed more of anything, if I was making out okay, and if there was ever anything that she herself could not help me with she tried hard to find someone that could.” – Tyreek Elam

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Jan 26, 2010

Common Cause/PA Launches Our Philadelphia web site

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Pennsylvania_logoCommon Cause of Pennsylvania has launched a new web site and blog, Our Philadelphia, to educate the public about elected officials.  Unlike many states, Pennsylvania has no limits on campaign contributions, and the online contribution databases maintained by the state and by the City of Philadelphia are barely usable with much of the data not available at all.  A search for contributions that would take minutes in a more transparent state, like Maryland, would take hundreds of hours in Pennsylvania.  So Common Cause is building its own web site and database to make this data available.  But wait, there’s more.  The site will include several features: 

  • Elected Officials lookups – enter an address and find your representatives as well as a list of their top contributors [we’re excited that this lookup service is powered by our Cicero API
  • Campaign Contribution database
  • Election Reform advocacy – including redistricting, campaign finance and ethics
  • Open Government and Transparency advocacy
  • City and State Government watchdog – with a diminished print media, there is an increasing need for other organizations to supplement the normal role of newspapers

our_phila_clip
Over the next year, Common Cause/PA hopes to add additional information for Pittsburgh as well as extend the contribution databases as well as its ability to report on government activities.

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Oct 21, 2009

RedistrictingTheNation.com is Live — Political Gerrymandering Research

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I wanted to share a quick note that we launched RedistrictingTheNation.com today.

Redistricting the Nation allows the public to:

  • Enter their address (nation-wide) and view the “shape” of their federal, state, and local election districts.
  • Learn who is in charge of drawing the boundaries of their election districts (e.g., independent commissions or elected representatives).
  • Compare the “compactness” scores of their election district to other, similar districts (less compact and unusually shaped districts are more likely to be gerrymandered).
  • Draw new district boundaries on a map and generate compactness scores for the new district.
2009-10-21_1647-RTNscreenshot

RedistrictingTheNation.com Screenshot

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Sep 10, 2009

A Tale of Two Ciceros

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With the 2010 Census and subsequent reapportionment and redistricting fast approaching, the Cicero team has been plugging away on an updated version of the Gerrymandering white paper and a companion website (keep your eyes peeled for more news). A key part of this process has been an expansion of the metrics used to measure district compactness, which is often used as a proxy to assess the extent of gerrymandering.

As we’ve run the calculations over the past few months, the members of the team have cultivated a sense of mixed horror and wonderment at the feats of contorted district drawing achieved at every legislative level. We’ll frequently send images or call colleagues over as we come across particularly astonishing examples. Most of our analysis has been conducted in ArcMap, supplemented with some of the great tools in the ET GeoWizards plugin. Once we have identified polygons of geometrically low compactness, we overlay the district boundaries on a base map to see how they correspond to the physical geography of the area.

One of my personal favorites has long been U.S. House District 4 in Illinois, based on the shape of the area alone. Imagine my surprise when I took a look at the district in context and discovered that the town of Cicero lies smack dab in the heart of the district. What a strange coincidence and incongruity that the Roman statesman who serves as the namesake of our elected official lookup application has also lent his name to a city in one of the strangest-looking legislative districts in the country.

IL04_110

We’ve decided to take this as a sign that fates of the two Ciceros are set to coincide: we hope that the tools provided by Azavea’s Cicero API and on our forthcoming Redistricting the Nation website can facilitate public engagement through a transparent and open process that brings fair districting to every part of the country.

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