Technology allows citizens to be part of redistricting process

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — Political science professor Chad Murphy often sees senior Mike Kappert wandering around the University of Mary Washington campus with his laptop open and a map of Virginia state Senate districts up in his Web browser.

Kappert, working around the clock to meet a tight deadline, is using new software to draw an updated Senate district map — one he hopes will win his team a $2,000 top prize in a statewide competition when the winning maps are announced Tuesday. More important, he hopes the Virginia Legislature will consider his map as it adjusts political boundaries to the 2010 Census.

Across the USA, college students, citizen activists and political junkies are using similar software to break a mapmaking monopoly held for decades by state lawmakers.

"The technology has evolved so much that it's become almost entirely democratized," says Bob Holsworth, chairman of Virginia's bipartisan redistricting commission. "This will be a fact of political life from now on."

Virginia is one of the first states to redistrict because it has odd-year state elections this November, but citizen-drawn maps are popping up in other states, too:

•Law students at Columbia University in New York City are attempting to draw districts for all 435 U.S. House seats at DrawCongress.org. "The educational component is for the students themselves, but also the general public," says their professor, Nate Persily. "When the line drawers say something can't be done, we can say 'Look — we did it.' "

•Dave Bradlee, a 55-year-old Seattle software developer, created DavesRedistricting.com. It's sponsored by the liberal ProgressiveCongress.org, but Bradlee says activists of all stripes use it. "It can put power in people's hands," Bradlee says. "People can see how the process works, so it's a little less mysterious than it was 10 years ago."

•The Michigan Center for Election Law will host a competition open to any state resident. "The goal is to move beyond just having forums with citizens to talk about redistricting, but give citizens the tools to draw their own maps," said Jocelyn Benson, the center's director and a former Democratic candidate for Michigan secretary of State.

'Breakthrough' but no panacea

The Michigan contest — like the one in Virginia — is using software developed by George Mason University and available at Publicmapping.org.

Developers of the software tout it as an antidote to gerrymandering — the drawing of odd-shaped districts to favor the party in power. "Right now, we don't know what all the options are, because we only see a limited number of plans produced by the political process," said George Mason's Michael McDonald, who helped create the software.

"Certainly, this mapping software is a huge breakthrough," says Nancy Tate, executive director of the League of Women Voters of the United States.

But, she said, it's not a panacea: "The challenges now are the same as the challenges have always been: This is really complicated. It's not self-evident what is a perfect plan."

Indeed, even politically blind mapmakers have to balance competing objectives: Districts should be compact and follow natural boundaries, lest they be accused of gerrymandering.

The Voting Rights Act says new boundaries can't diminish the ability of minority voters to elect a candidate of their choice. The Justice Department must preapprove Virginia's maps — and those of eight other states with a history of racial discrimination.

Although districts need to change to reflect shifting populations, predictability is also important so voters don't find themselves voting for unfamiliar candidates. "It turns out that people hate it when that happens," and voter turnout suffers, Murphy tells his students.

Above all, there's "one man, one vote." Districts need to be identical in population. That can take work, Murphy says. "Equal literally means equal."

More than once, Kappert found himself with an unworkable map and had to start over. "The second you move the lines a little bit, the population goes out of whack in other districts," Kappert says. "It's incredible how delicate the balance is. I can't imagine how they did it without software."

Seeking 'pure' process

The University of Mary Washington is one of 16 Virginia colleges competing for $13,500 in prizes funded by individual donors who support redistricting reform, said Quentin Kidd of Christopher Newport University, a co-organizer of the contest. On Tuesday, contest judges will pick winning maps to be submitted to the advisory commission for possible consideration by the Legislature.

Kappert, a 21-year-old business and political science major from Columbia, Md., is working with three classmates — Annie Morris, Mike O'Donnell and Nick Jacobs — to draw the maps.

As one of the smaller schools in the contest, the Mary Washington students are competing with bigger and more prestigious schools such as the College of William and Mary, whose maps McDonald and Holsworth say could influence lawmakers in Richmond.

Kappert is competing for school pride, but also for good government. Gerrymandered maps rig the process by excluding candidates even before they have a chance to run, he says. His districts are 50% more compact than the current map. "We've all heard about redistricting gone wrong," Kappert says. "I'm really trying to make this as pure as possible."