[EL] NY Reform Redistricting Maps

[Michael McDonald]

Thanks for sharing, Susan. I’ve uploaded the Common Cause plans into the New
York instance of our DistrictBuilder open-source redistricting software,
which is open to the public to use via the internet. The website is:
https://districtbuilder.redistrictny.org/. Our vision is to encourage crowd
sourcing for redistricting, so we enthusiastically welcome Common Cause's
plans. We also have the Unity state legislative plans and student plans from
our competition available for viewing and editing, if one wishes. We welcome
other contributions. You can even mash up plans by cutting and pasting
districts from one plan to another, which might be useful to merge together
the Common Cause plans with the Unity plans, which only contain districts in
the NYC area. Plus, we have more statistics, such as split geography reports
and compactness measures and one can see how verified plans rank against one
another. 

Perhaps most importantly, our software works at the census block level, not
at the VTD level, which is the lowest editing level the Common Cause/Newsday
sponsored site permits. Editing at the census block level may be useful to
better equalize district populations or to further enhance minority
representation. I’d encourage a Common Cause person to further improve their
congressional map so that district populations are equalized. For the
evaluation of state legislative plans, we have worked with Peter Wagner to
make available a half-adjustment for the prison populations by subtracting
prison populations. We are still waiting for LATFOR to release the prisoner
reallocation statistics.

The Common Cause plans can be directly accessed through our website as an
anonymous user at:

Congress:
https://districtbuilder.redistrictny.org/districtmapping/plan/1182/view/ 
Senate:
https://districtbuilder.redistrictny.org/districtmapping/plan/1187/view/   
Assembly:
https://districtbuilder.redistrictny.org/districtmapping/plan/1183/view/  

If you wish to edit your own redistricting plan, we require that you create
an account, which is free to the public.

More information about our project, the source code for our software, and
the data is available at: www.publicmapping.org 

============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor, George Mason University
Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

                             Mailing address:
(o) 703-993-4191             George Mason University
(f) 703-993-1399             Dept. of Public and International Affairs
mmcdon at gmu.edu               4400 University Drive - 3F4
http://elections.gmu.edu     Fairfax, VA 22030-4444

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Susan
Lerner
Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 12:33 PM
To: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: [EL] NY Reform Redistricting Maps

We have just released the Common Cause Reform Maps, the only set of
statewide reform maps for both houses of the NY state legislature and the NY
Congressional delegation. Thanks to our partner Newsday, as of  Monday
morning, these fair, non-partisan district maps are available in a fully
interactive format on the UMapNY.com website.  
We are looking forward to feedback from the public on our suggested district
lines. 
Susan Lerner
**********************************************
Susan Lerner
Executive Director
Common Cause NY
74 Trinity Place, Suite 901
New York, NY  10006
T:    1-212-691-6421
M:  1-917-670-5670
www.commoncause.org/newyork
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Click here for information about our redistricting efforts in NYS. 
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it to account. Citizen involvement comes first. It is not a liberal or a
conservative issue. It is not Democrats vs. Republicans. It is a question of
whether we are going to settle into a permanent state of alienated
self-absorption or show the vigor and purpose that becomes us.”