Category Archives: Politics of Redistricting

From Idea to Advocacy

Posted on January 22, 2014 by irmabob

I am happy to accept Noah Kennedy’s invitation to contribute to his blog in spite of the fact that I have no credentials in math, cartography, or computer software. What I can offer readers is a passionate interest in seeing … Continue reading →

Posted in Brennan Center, Politics of Redistricting, Roll Call | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Keystone State Gerrymandering

Posted on December 23, 2013 by NoahKennedy

Really funny example I ran across this morning: take a look at this Keystone Politics post from last week. The writer lifts Pennsylvania’s State Senator Daylin Leach‘s Facebook page entry on a real-world experiment Leach made about redistricting. (I confirmed with … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics of Redistricting | Tagged | Leave a comment

LLoyd Doggett and the Winnebago District

Posted on December 8, 2013 by NoahKennedy

In a recent post I related the four primary tools in the gerrymanderer’s toolkit, as defined in an informative Propublica piece: Kidnapping, Cracking, Packing and Hijacking. Astonishingly, all four of these tactics have been employed against a single congressman, Lloyd … Continue reading →

Posted in minority rights, Politics of Redistricting, Texas, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

What can I do? Here's something that takes 10 minutes!

Posted on November 28, 2013 by NoahKennedy

Gerrymandering is obviously an obstacle to getting reasonable representative government. It’s going to take a long time and a lot of work to fix, and the special interests will not go quietly. It can be daunting to even think about … Continue reading →

Posted in Ohio, Politics of Redistricting | 3 Comments

Gerrymandering: Best Practices

Posted on November 22, 2013 by NoahKennedy

Though admittedly not a very recent article, Redistricting: A Devil’s Dictionary by Olga Pierce, Jeff Larson and Lois Beckett in Propublica gives an interesting summary of the insiders’ terms for tactics for manipulating Congressional District boundaries for partisan purposes. One gets the impression that anyone … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics of Redistricting, Propublica | 2 Comments

Is Gerrymandering getting worse?

Posted on November 18, 2013 by NoahKennedy

As I was doing research for a future post, I came across this project website by Jeffrey B. Lewis, Brandon DeVine, Lincoln Pitcher, and Kenneth C. Martis, researchers at UCLA, that is a great source for historical Congressional District boundaries. What … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics of Redistricting, Texas | 2 Comments

Rolling Stone on the Republicans

Posted on November 15, 2013 by NoahKennedy

There’s a searing article in Rolling Stone this week by Tim Dickinson, detailing the long list of Republican party efforts to frustrate the will of the American voter, featuring (you guessed it) their extensive, well-funded hi-tech efforts to rig redistricting. … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics of Redistricting, Rolling Stone, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Hands-Off Redistricting and Minority Voices

Posted on November 2, 2013 by NoahKennedy

One of the most common responses I get to the idea of Hands-Off Redistricting is that – though people are uniformly disgusted with gerrymandering – they are concerned that automated approaches might lead to their own set of unintentional injustices. … Continue reading →

Posted in Boundary mathematics, Brian Olson, Gay rights, minority rights, OPRA, Politics of Redistricting, Texas | 3 Comments

A GIS analysis of Gerrymandering compared to OPRA

Posted on October 26, 2013 by NoahKennedy

I ran across a very interesting blog post by a creative GIS specialist named Blake Harvey, on his Geo Ideas blog. In it, he proposed a formula for measuring gerrymandering, and he proposed this ranking for states based on his … Continue reading →

Posted in Boundary mathematics, north carolina, Politics of Redistricting | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

North Carolina gerrymandering and the government shutdown

Posted on October 20, 2013 by NoahKennedy

If you’re visual like me, and focused on the pernicious politics of gerrymandering as I am, you will be drawn to this map North Carolina’s eastern Congressional Districts: Google map scraped from www.govtrack.us, a great site for browsing

Posted in Politics of Redistricting | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments