Tag Archive:
Politics

Cicero API: Evolving to Greet 2012 and Redistricting

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The Cicero team welcomes 2012 with a new face and a new engine.  We’ve just launched a new Cicero website (www.azavea.com/cicero).  Additionally we are in the process of developing a Cicero REST API to allow for more integration flexibility (Cicero is currently a SOAP-based API), building an online batch stamping tool, and have just released a vital and timely data set.  We’ll talk about the new API in a future newsletter, but I’ll focus on the new data set here.

Following every decennial census, each state goes through the process of redrawing their legislative district boundaries at the congressional and state levels.  As many of you know, we’ve done a significant amount of research and software development related to making the process of drawing and analyzing new legislative districts easily accessible by anyone (e.g. DistrictBuilder, Redistricting The Nation, “Redrawing the Map on Redistricting” whitepaper, etc.).

We’ve also had to consider the significant impact redistricted boundaries will have on our Cicero users.  Many organizations need to match their members or contacts to legislative districts in advance of organizing a call-to-action campaign or lobbying effort on behalf of their organization.  Many Cicero users expressed a desire to match their address databases to both the boundaries currently in place and those that will take effect in the new legislative sessions.

Because our team is continuously accessing legislative boundary and elected official data  we are  in a great position to quickly serve up this data, and are now able to support both:

  • Legislative boundaries currently in use – This includes the district boundaries released after the 2000 Census that are still in effect.  As state elections take place and inaugurations occur (Louisiana, New Jersey, Virginia elections used new boundaries in November), we will incorporate those boundaries that have gone through the final approval process by the state and will be in effect following the elections.
  • Legislative boundary plans that have been officially approved but will not take effect until the next election - This data set will not provide complete coverage of the United States until all states have completed the redistricting process.  New states will be added as we receive and process the data. 

If you have any questions about any of the Cicero team’s recent developments, please feel free to contact Project Manager, Abby Fretz at afretz@azavea.com or via phone at 215.701.7503.

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Azavea Supports Public Redistricting Competition in Philadelphia

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I’m excited to announce that this week we rolled out a new implementation of the DistrictBuilder software for our home town, Philadelphia.  The new web site, FixPhillyDistricts.com, is the result of a collaborative effort between several local organizations:  WHYY NewsWorks, the Philadelphia Daily News, Philly.com , Penn Project for Civic Engagement, and Azavea.  While the DistrictBuilder software has been used to support competitions in Virginia and Arizona, Fix Philly Districts will be the first time it’s being used for a municipal public redistricting competition.

This isn’t a typical Azavea project: there is no funding to support it – all of the partners are doing the work pro bono; and while our Cicero API and the work we’ve done on DistrictBuilder is clearly engaged with the geographic elements of the democratic process, Azavea does not usually wade into the actual scrum of politics.

So, why get involved?  In 2006, using our Cicero database of global legislative districts, Azavea released the results of an internal research project on legislative district compactness in the form of a Gerrymandering White Paper.  In 2010 we released a revised version of the research, this time in the context of the 2010 Census and the 2011 redistricting process.  Both studies revealed that Azavea’s home town, Philadelphia, has some of the most contorted local council districts in the United States.  We want to leverage the DistrictBuilder software we’ve been creating over the past year (in collaboration with leading redistricting experts at the Public Mapping Project) to make a contribution toward changing this poor showing.

In Philadelphia, the redistricting process is controlled by City Council.  We believe that the best government is one in which citizens are engaged in the democratic process, and drawing the lines that determine how our representatives will be elected is a critical part of this process.  We have created FixPhillyDistricts.com to both enable the public to learn about redistricting and to encourage public engagement in the process.  The effort is also meant to demonstrate that an open, public process based upon objective criteria can produce fair, legal council districts in Philadelphia.

How can you help?  Take a few minutes to visit FixPhillyDistricts.com.  From there you can do two things: 1) you can create an account and draw a Philadelphia City Council district plan (even if you don’t live in Philadelphia); and  2) using the social media buttons available on the site, help the Fix Philly Districts partners tell other civic-minded organizations, researchers, and members of the public that web-based, collaborative and public redistricting is a reality that can be implemented in other cities, counties, and states.  Together, we can redraw the map on redistricting.

Key Dates for Fix Philly Districts Competition

  • Wednesday, August 3, 2011 – Competition Opened
  • Thursday, August 11, 2011, 6:30pm (tonight) – DistrictBuilder Training Webinar - Register
  • Monday, August 15, 2011, 6:30pm – DistrictBuilder Training Webinar - Register
  • Sunday, August 28, 2011, 11:59pm – Competition Ends
  • Early September (TBD) – Winners Announced
More about Fix Philly Districts
We are really encouraged by the amount of press coverage the project has already received. You can see a roundup of local coverage in the Azavea News Room.

More about DistrictBuilder
DistrictBuilder – the software that powers the Fix Philly Districts site — was developed in collaboration with leading redistricting experts at the Public Mapping Project.  It is open source, which means that the software is transparent and available to anyone to build their own redistricting web site.  Azavea folks are also available should you be interested in an online redistricting project in your area.  In collaboration with the Public Mapping Project, we will be continuing to add new features and capabilities over the next several months.

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District Builder: Supporting Transparent Redistricting

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For the past year, our elections and advocacy team has been working with George Mason University’s Public Mapping Project to create an open source, web-based redistricting application called District Builder.  Our vision for this product has been to make the redistricting activity that follows each population census, usually carried out behind closed doors, a more transparent and open process with which citizens can be engaged.

The US Census Bureau began releasing demographic profiles and reapportionment data for each state in March and we are excited to see both state-wide and municipal/county implementations of District Builder are popping up across the country.  In some cases, District Builder is being used to support an open, public competition to draw fair and legally compliant legislative maps.  In other cases it is being used by redistricting authorities to publish their proposed plans and provide the public with easy-to-use tools to modify and recommend alternative plans.  Even as some states and cities are implementing District Builder, we continue developing and releasing new features that support the wide range of legal requirements in the United States and around the world.

So, where and how is District Builder being used?

Virginia College and University Legislative Redistricting Competition:
The Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University and the Public Mapping Project sponsored the competition to “help educate students and the public about the process of redistricting.”  55 valid plans were submitted by fifteen student teams.  A total of $13,500 was awarded to 12 winning submissions of Congressional, State Senate, and State House plans.

The Arizona Competitive Districts Coalition’s (ACDC) “Redistrict Arizona” Competition:
ACDC, a “non-partisan coalition of 501(c)3 non-profit organizations and individuals working to promote competitive districts during the 2011 Arizona redistricting process”, launched their competition to the general public at the beginning of May.  Arizona citizens have been encouraged to create new district maps on their own or attend a series of ‘map-a-thon’ days around the state.  Plan submissions are due on June 22nd.  On July 6th ACDC will announce the winners and present the winning maps to Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.

Contra Costa County, California
The 2011 Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors Redistricting Commission is committed to an open and transparent redistricting process. The Commission is hosting community workshops throughout the County, providing all maps and data on-line and supporting an ability for citizens to create redistricting plans on-line.  They launched CCC District Builder on May 2nd.  On June 28 the Board of Supervisors will hold a public hearing to consider redistricting map proposals for County Supervisorial districts based on the 2010 Census and input from citizens.

Midwest Democracy Network
The Midwest Democracy Network member organizations have partnered with the Public Mapping Project to provide District Builder implementations in five state – Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin.  The implementations are part of their Midwest Campaign for Accountable Redistricting and the “Draw The Line Midwest”  campaign.

What’s Next for District Builder?
Each state’s redistricting schedule is different and though a few states, counties and municipalities have completed their redistricting process, many others are just beginning.  District Builder is a new kind of software, designed for an open process, citizen engagement and public participation in this important part of our democratic process.  If you have questions about District Builder or are interested in a demo, contact Abby Fretz at afretz@azavea.com or 215-701-7503.

More on District Builder:

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TechSoup Partnership: Free Cicero API Credits for Nonprofits

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If you work for a nonprofit and you are reading this, you will (we hope) be thrilled to learn that we have just partnered with TechSoup Global – a nonprofit organization dedicated to making technology and technology education available and affordable to other nonprofits worldwide.  We are launching a new Cicero API account offering through the TechSoup’s product donation program, which provides access to 450+ product donations to nonprofits and libraries from more than 40 donor partners, including Microsoft, Esri, Adobe, Intuit and Blackbaud.  Cicero is the first API TechSoup is making available through this program.  For more info, visit: http://azavea.com/techsoupcicero.

The new Cicero API account offering provides nonprofits with 5,000 free credits to be used for any of Cicero API’s address-based district matching or elected official data lookup web services.  Nonprofits can request a donation of Cicero a basic administrative fee of $25.  Each batch of credits is good for one year from date of purchase.  If the organization uses all 5,000 credits before they are eligible for another account through TechSoup, they can purchase additional credits directly from Azavea for the reduced nonprofit rate.

“We couldn’t be more proud to become a TechSoup Global partner, alongside Esri and other prestigious civic-minded companies.  This partnership aligns with Azavea’s mission to apply geographic data and software to promote more dynamic and sustainable communities.  Our B Corporation status is part of this commitment, and our partnership with TechSoup to provide free access to the Cicero API builds on this foundation,” says Robert Cheetham, President and CEO of Azavea.

As a reminder, the Cicero API not only provides easy access to address-based district matching but also to maps of each legislative district, contact information for local, state, and national elected officials in the United States and data for legislative officials and election events around the world.  The service includes coverage in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.  The Cicero team of GIS Analysts and political data researchers continue to add foreign legislatures to the data collection based on client requests.  The database also includes district matching for U.S. police districts, school districts, and watersheds.  All told, the Cicero system now holds over 10,000 legislative boundaries and information on nearly 13,000 elected officials.  The API currently provides data to public and private web applications for newspapers, election watchdog groups, philanthropic foundations, unions, arts organizations and private commercial firms.  Azavea also operates an off-line batch service for organizations that have ad hoc district-matching needs.

For more information about the Cicero API and Azavea’s other political, advocacy, redistricting or elections projects, contact Project Manager Abby Fretz at 215-701-7503 or via email at afretz@azavea.com.

And if you don’t already know what TechSoup could do for your nonprofit, check http://home.techsoup.org/ and take their Check Program Eligibility Quiz!  TechSoup provides other nonprofits and libraries with technology information and products that empower them to fulfill their missions and serve their communities.

All products are available for small administration fees to qualified organizations.  Learning resources, including articles, blogs, webinars, and forums on nonprofit-specific topics led by expert hosts are all free.

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Robert Cheetham Receives Public Service Achievement Award from Common Cause PA

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On December 6, Robert Cheetham received a Public Service Achievement Award from Common Cause Pennsylvania.

Robert Cheetham with Chris Satullo (L), News Director for WHYY Radio, and Barry Kauffman (R), Executive Director of Common Cause Pennsylvania

“A hundred years from now, people will look back on the kinds of things Azavea is doing as the next step in the civil rights movement—giving people the tools to watchdog and fight a government that ignores the public interest,” James Browning, the Associate Director for Development in the Mid-Atlantic Region for Common Cause, told Technically Philly.  “On issues like redistricting reform, which can cause eyes to glaze, Redistricting the Nation makes the issue clear and compelling.” (source: Technically Philly)

We want to share this award with our staff and clients dedicated to making our government and democratic process more transparent.   Projects like Common Cause’s Our Philadelphia; Committee of Seventy’s Online Citizen’s Guide and Election Day Incident Mapping; MAPLight’s Remote Control report; George Mason University’s public District Builder redistricting software; and Redistricting the Nation are reminders that brave organizations are out there fighting to preserve one of our most fundamental civic rights: the right to participate in and protect our democratic system.  Thank you.

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District Builder: Open Source Web-based Redistricting Application

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As a geospatial software development company, we’ve always had an interest in the geography of politics and the role technology plays in analyzing and disseminating political data.  Over the years we have partnered on software development and spatial analysis projects with several organizations dedicated to good government and data accessibility (including Committee of Seventy, Common Cause PA, and MAPLight.org).

A district boundary editing session in District Builder

We are pleased to announce that through a partnership with Dr. Michael P. McDonald, Associate Professor at George Mason University and Director of the U.S. Elections Project, and Dr. Micah Altman, Senior Research Scientist at Harvard University Institute for Quantitative Social Science, we have just wrapped up the first round of development on the beta version of District Builder, “an open source software redistricting application designed to give the public transparent, accessible, and easy-to-use on-line mapping tools” specifically aimed at examining state-level redistricting.  Supported by funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to George Mason University, the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, the software is built using several open source technologies including, django, GeoServer, Celery, jQuery, PostgreSQL, and PostGIS.

In partnership with Dr. McDonald and Dr. Altman, Azavea will continue the development of additional features and improvements to the District Builder software.  Additionally, we are building our own version of the software for use in local municipal and county-level redistricting (look for the release of our local sample in the new year).

Watch a demo of the software on Vimeo

If you’d like to read more about some of our past software development and spatial analysis projects focused on redistricting, please visit:

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Cicero’s Journey to the United Kingdom and Beyond: New Political Data and a Great Partnership

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ciceroCicero, our district matching and elected official lookup API has crossed the ocean before, with the addition of Australia and New Zealand data.  However, this week we are announcing our most recent international journey… to the United Kingdom.  Cicero users can now match any address in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to their corresponding legislative districts and elected officials, including:

UK_Logos

This most recent addition further sets Cicero apart from other services as the only address-based, legislative district web API that offers access to a rich collection of elected official information and legislative boundary data from around the world.

The Cicero API currently provides political data to public and private web applications for newspapers, election watchdog groups, philanthropic foundations, unions, arts organizations, and commercial firms.  Cicero provides address-based district matching, maps of each legislative district, and contact information for local, state and national elected officials in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and now the United Kingdom.  This adds up to a total of 10,700 legislative boundaries and information on over 12,000 elected officials.

We’ve also been actively working on several other developments:

  • With the addition of Nova Scotia, Canada to Cicero, we now have full national and provincial-level coverage of Canada.
  • Through online account administration pages, our clients can now track their credit usage, activity and change their account information .
  • salsaWe are partnering with DemocracyInAction’s Salsa Labs, a web-based suite of tools for organizations, campaigns, and companies to use for online organizing, advocacy, fundraising, and communications.  Using a Cicero-enabled plugin designed specifically for the  Salsa Labs platform,  Salsa customers are now able to accurately match all their member records to the associated legislative districts at the local, state, and national levels.  The plug-in provides them with the ability to stamp each record with a geocoded point, legislative district id’s, and up-to-date elected official contact information.  With this information they are able to better analyze and direct their member database by segmenting the records using a variety of district types, and conduct ‘Call to Action’ email and SMS text campaigns.
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New CiceroLive: Faster Map Generation, New Legislative Data and Redistricting Galore

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"We've been working hard to make [Cicero] better and faster and bigger -- a super-sized government data tool, if you will."
Example of Cicero API generated district map display

All across the blogosphere and tweetscape, people have been crying out for transparency, open government, and easy access to legislative data. The Obama Administration has pledged to create a more transparent and connected democracy. A major part of this initiative involves making government data and research available on the soon-to-be-launched website Data.gov. Legislators and government officials have been preparing for this change by soliciting advice from the tech citizenry on the best (and coolest) ways to distribute bulk data to the public.

Azavea is listening.

And tweeting … and blogging. We’re committed to participating in conversations about open government, and we think we can play a role in helping people make sense of millions of records of government data about to inundate them.

Cicero is our district matching and elected official lookup web API. We’ve been working hard to make it better and faster, and bigger — a supersized government data tool, if you will. Our most recent upgrades to the web service and database include faster map generation (as demonstrated in our newly released, free CiceroLive site), newly redistricted legislative boundaries, the addition of new local city council assemblies (Orlando, Atlantic City, Tulsa, and Berkeley to name just a few), all US governors, as well as national watershed boundaries at the HUC10 and HUC12 levels. We’re also keeping track of the plans local and state governments are making to tweak legislative boundaries after the 2010 Census. Redistricting will be a huge issue in the open government world over the next few years, and we’re ready for the flood of maps and data that will need to be generated.

New release of CiceroLive, loaded with tons of new legislative data

Cicero is part of an exciting new trend in public engagement by online media outlets. As news organizations struggle to survive in a tough economy and compete for dwindling readership, they are finding a wide variety of innovative ways to pull traffic to their online news sites. Political data tools are a big draw.

For example, The New York Times recently released ‘Represent‘, a district and news lookup tool for the five New York boroughs. ‘Represent’ enables New Yorkers to type in their address and receive a list of their elected officials (down to the neighborhood association level) and maps of New York political districts. Users can click on the name of an elected official and read all the Times articles that include a mention of that official.

The Oregonian, a newspaper serving Portland and its suburbs, has also been offering their online readers more innovative ways to follow politics. On November 4, 2008, the day of the national elections, Their Oregon Legislature page used the Cicero API to make election results more local, relevant, and exciting. Readers could enter their address into The Oregonian’s Cicero-driven political web tool and then watch live tallies of votes for key political races in their legislative districts.

What’s next? Want to participate in the conversation?
http://twitter.com/CiceroAPI

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MAPLight.org and Azavea Trace the Geographic Sources of Campaign Contributions to U.S. Representatives. Conclusions are Surprising and Important.

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"Legislators may be getting their votes from inside the districts they represent, but it turns out that the money that supports them quite often originates elsewhere."

One of the first social studies lessons I remember, from elementary school, was about representative democracy. (This was shortly after the lesson where I learned that Philadelphia is shaped like a woman’s head viewed in profile – think large bun and poofy bangs. But I digress.) In a representative democracy, we, the people, elect Representatives, who then represent our interests. This representation is based on geography. And yet, as we recently learned, it turns out that the situation is really not so simple. Legislators may be getting their votes from inside the districts they represent, but it turns out that the money that supports them often originates elsewhere. Why is it important? Because it means that elected officials who raised a majority of their campaign funds from outside their district, might end up having ties to a community that has not elected them. So what time and attention would these Representatives have left to address interests of the voters they represent?

This disparity was brought home quite concretely by our recent collaboration with MAPLight.org analyzing the geographic sources of campaign contributions to members of the U.S. House of Representatives. MAPLight.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that has assembled a vast public database to illuminate the connection between campaign donations and legislative votes (the acronym MAP stands for ‘Money and Politics’). Having heard of Azavea’s work on our Cicero™ legislative district boundary and elected official API, MAPLight.org approached us to assist with the mapping component of a study they were undertaking to analyze the geographic sources of campaign contributions to U.S. Representatives.

Map displaying dispersment of campaign contribution sources to a state
legislator.

Before we could get to the mapping component, we had to first figure out the actual origins of nearly a million campaign contributions by geocoding them and locating them within congressional districts. In an effort to be as precise as possible, we chose to use only contributions that were matched at the address level. For all other contributions, we checked the Zip code for overlap with congressional districts. The creators of district boundaries, of course, do not take Zip codes into account when creating their districts, so this process left many contributions with two or three (and sometimes more) possible districts. Feeling optimistic, MAPLight.org chose to give the legislators the benefit of the doubt – if the ZIP code of the contribution overlapped at all with the congressional district, it was counted as an in-district contribution.

Percentage of funds raised from out-of-District for U.S. House members.

While MAPLight.org did the actual data analysis, the next step for Azavea was to find a way to visualize the results. The vision was to create a map for each Representative showing the relative amounts of contributions originating in each district across the country. But with 421 legislators in the study, creating each map by hand was not an option we were eager to pursue. Our first step was to take advantage of ESRI’s ModelBuilder, creating a model that would quickly update the map based on an input legislator. But while ModelBuilder is a great tool for automating geoprocessing tasks, it was only able to solve half of the problem – we also needed to export each map to an image file. For this, we turned to ESRI’s ArcView‘s built-in scripting capabilities using Visual Basic for Applications. By combining the two features, we were able to rapidly produce 421 maps for the report, and visually back up MAPLight.org’s conclusion that U.S House members raise 79% of their campaign funds from outside their districts!

The maps can now be found alongside the full report on MAPLight.org’s website.

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Cicero: Release of 30-day Free Trial and Canada Legislative Data

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"If you're not convinced... [try] a Cicero API 30-day free trial..."

Quick show of hands: how many of you know for certain which state senate district you live in? The identity of your state representative? The geographic boundaries of your elected officials’ districts or the last time they were redrawn?

For many organizations, this type of information is both invaluable and difficult to get with any degree of reliability. Knowing the geographic boundaries of the districts in which their members live can help to encourage them to express their opinions to the elected officials who represent them. Further, knowing the exact geographic boundaries of their members’ districts can help organizations more directly in their own advocacy roles. Imagine you work for a local non-profit and are scheduled to meet with a group of state representatives from your area. How would you like to be able to tell each of them just how many of the citizens they represent are supporters of your organization? How would you like to be able to tell those members that you spoke directly with their representative?

Cicero is designed to help. It is a web API (Application Programming Interface) that enables users to add legislator and legislative geography lookup capabilities -matching any address with their designated legislative districts and elected officials, including their geographic boundaries- to any website or software application. It is a cost-effective and precise way for organizations to receive legislative information, including contact information for their local (check our list of available local cities), state and federal level representatives, district maps, and school district identification.

If you’re not convinced … We just released a Cicero API 30-day free trial, now giving developers the opportunity to ‘test drive’ the API with their company or organization’s website or software – for free! Each 30-day free trial includes access to one region of your choice and up to 250 web service hits. Visitors to the Cicero site can also experience Cicero first-hand by visiting ‘Cicero Live‘ to get the information about elected officials who represent any address in the U.S.

In October we announced the release of several new, comprehensive sets of data including city council districts for more than 60 cities, and district lookup and legislator contact data for all U.S. state and federal legislative districts. We are thrilled to announce the addition of legislative and legislative geographic boundaries lookups for local, provincial and federal level data for the majority of the lower provinces in Canada (available soon on Cicero Live) – go Canucks!

Coming soon: Australia, New Zealand and France. Visit the Cicero website for more information, as well as an updated list of available data.

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Cicero: Tons of New Data Available

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"Information is the currency of democracy." - Thomas Jefferson

“Information is the currency of democracy. –Thomas Jefferson

Our democratic institutions rely on citizens, businesses, and other organizations that are willing to communicate needs and opinions to their elected officials. But do you know who all of your legislators are or how to reach them? I don’t either. Cicero is designed to help. It is a Web API (application programming interface) that enables you to add legislator lookup capabilities to any web site or software application. It is a cost-effective and precise way to deliver this information, including maps showing the district boundaries. In a nutshell, it is a web-based, easily integratable elected official lookup for local, state, and national information. It simply matches addresses with the elected officials who represent these addresses.

We built Cicero in early 2006 to support local arts advocacy in Pennsylvania. By fall of that year, we offered a national service covering 40 cities. We are thrilled to announce the recent release of several new, comprehensive sets of data: In addition to city council districts for more than 60 cities we now offer district lookup and legislator contact data (district number, address(es), phone number(s), email, party, etc.) for all U.S. state and federal legislative districts. We continue to update Cicero as elections take place, legislators are replaced and regions go through the process of redistricting. You can try Cicero here.

We created Cicero with the intention of giving advocacy groups, non-profits, foundations and politically active individuals access to accurate local, state, and national elected official contact information, quickly and all in one central location vs. through multiple online resources. Organizations can subscribe to a web-service API that seamlessly interfaces with their constituents’ databases for them to provide their own stakeholders with a customizable array of contact information for key political decision-makers across the United States. This information is used to empower citizens to engage with their elected officials and thereby influence the outcome of decisions. Cicero can provide you with the local legislator data that you need to affect policy. And it now has state, national, and school districts information on top of that!

Visit the Cicero website for more information, as well as updated lists of available data.

U.S. school district lookup as well as Canada and Australia legislative districts, coming soon!

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Mapping Citizens’ Voices

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"Turn it around in a little over a week? That was where the fun began."

“Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.” —Winston Churchill

The Citizen’s Compact with City Hall (http://www.reformballot.org/) is a grassroots democracy action born out of the Reformer’s Roundtable, an organization convened by Philadelphia Forward (http://www.philadelphiaforward.org/). We like what these people are trying to do to improve city government in Philadelphia, so we’re lending a hand.

The idea was to get a quick and intuitive representation for the geographic distribution of individuals who sign the Citizen’s Compact with City Hall. When a visitor signs the compact, their contact information and address are saved. The Reformer’s Roundtable wanted to show a map that changed as more and more citizens volunteered to become involved. Not only that, we wanted to protect each individual’s address using some geographic aggregation. Turn it around in a little over a week? That was where the fun began.

Azavea turned to ESRI’s ArcWeb Services, GoogleMaps and Open Source software to achieve this dynamic, interactive map. The addresses are geocoded with ESRI’s ArcWeb Services (http://www.arcwebservices.com/), processed and stored in a PostGIS database, and rendered in OpenLayers via MapServer using the GoogleMaps basemap. All in all, a tidy package that processes visitor information and dynamically generates a map of aggregated citizen distribution.

This is an exciting project for us – it is a good cause and it involves an intriguing constellation of geographic information technologies. As part of our staff’s research, we have developed a bit of expertise in each of these realms, but hadn’t had the opportunity to bring them all together in one project. We are excited to see it in action, and we hope you take a moment to check it out.

And if you live in Philadelphia, please consider signing the Citizen’s Compact. When you sign the compact, you’ll get access to a wiki where you can contribute your own ideas for political reform in the City. In a couple of weeks, you’ll have a chance to rate those ideas. Then, the top-rated ideas will be sent to each of the candidates for City Council and Mayor to see what they are willing to support. The results will all be posted online.

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The Gerrymandering Index

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The shapes in the image above are real legislative district boundaries. Gerrymandering, as described in the last edition of the Azavea Journal, is all about drawing electoral districts for political gain. Gerrymandering has largely gone without any official definition or measurement, more closely following the principle of “I know it when I see it.”  While no standards work without exception, Azavea has used the geography of the legislative districts to calculate the level of gerrymandering across the US. Based on the local and federal districts stored in our Cicero Elected Official Lookup Service, we have created a list of the most gerrymandered districts in the US. To learn more about gerrymandering and to see the list, read our new Gerrymandering white paper.

Our white paper on Gerrymandering is making its rounds in the local and internet media! Read the article The Philadelphia Inquirer published on 11/02/06 on the front page of the Local section, based on our white paper.

The winner of last edition’s contest was Emily Kahoe of The Reinvestment Fund, who correctly identified the pictured city as Philadelphia (which has two districts among the top three most gerrymandered).

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Funny Council Boundaries

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Think those council boundaries look strange? That’s because they are a result of a process called Gerrymandering. The word “gerrymander” is named for the American politician “Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814). The term was coined by combining the politician’s last name with the term “salamander,” to describe the appearance of a new electoral district Gerry created to hinder the electoral aspirations of his political opponents. Think you can name this Gerrymandered city? Be the first to send an email to info@azavea.com, and if you guess the city you will win a copy of “Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History” from ESRI Press or a $25 gift card to Borders.

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