Some of you may remember our Gerrymandering Index white paper, which we released in October 2006. In the report we assessed the ‘compactness’ of both congressional and local legislative districts.  Our findings — PA congressional districts rated #2 most gerrymandered in the country and local City Council districts 7 and 5 were among the most gerrymandered in the country — contributed to conversations locally and nationally regarding how the redistricting process might be changed and made fairer.

Now, three years later we have decided to take another crack at our study, this time in the context of the 2010 Census and subsequent 2011 national redistricting process.  How does the new white paper differ from the 2006 Gerrymandering White Paper?  We’ve added more cities, included upper and lower state legislatures, and added several new compactness metrics.  Last but not least, we will make the whole study available as two interactive websites called ‘Redistricting the Nation‘ and ‘Redistricting the Philadelphia Region’.

Redistricting the Nation search page enables users to enter their address and check how compact the legislative districts they live in are (Congress, State and Local).

First, on October 14 Azavea and The Committee of Seventy (a local political watchdog organization whose mission is “to fight for clean and effective government, fair elections and a better informed citizenry in Philadelphia and the region”) will be releasing a regionally-focused website, ‘Redistricting the Philadelphia Region’. A week later, on October 21, Azavea will release its nationally-focused parent site, ‘Redistricting the Nation’.  Both websites are aimed at educating and engaging the public around redistricting issues in the runup to the 2010 Census and the 2011 national redistricting process.

While we are a for-profit company, no one paid us to do this.  So why do it?  The partial answer is “because we can”.  Our Cicero web service plus our experience with geographic analysis mean that we have both the legislative boundary data and the experience to do this kind of analysis.  But we also have a broader, social reason.  Azavea believes that a confluence of the internet, geographic data, and tools for online collaboration have the potential to transform the redistricting process by enabling citizens to participate directly in the effort.  Rather than meetings behind closed doors where incumbent legislators parcel out blocks of voters in order to guarantee they remain in office (the usual process in many cities and states), it should be possible for citizens and community groups to:

• Create their own redistricting plans
• Share those plans with each other
• Assess the fairness of plans
• Vote on their favorites plans
• Submit the best plans to their local and state legislatures
• Have fun doing it!

These two websites are the first step in our effort to promote this idea of public engagement in the redistricting process.

So mark your calendars:

• October 14:  ‘Redistricting the Philadelphia Region” site goes live with lots of valuable information and wacky stories about Philadelphia’s history of redistricting (both good and not so good)!
• October 21: ‘Redistricting the Nation’ site with a new version of the white paper as well as national data on districts, compactness and redistricting.  Find out how your legislative districts measure up to the rest of the country.  You’ll also be able to see a preview of our online, geospatial software tools that enable a collaborative redistricting process.