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Redistricting and You

By 2013, New York State will have redrawn its Senate, Assembly, and Congressional district lines.  Will you still be represented by the same State Senate or Assembly district you live in now?  Will you live in the newly proposed (and controversial) 63rd Senate district?  Is your neighborhood, town, or county going to be "carved up" by a new legislative seat?  Will your community's historical voting power be diluted by the new districts?

The new interactive redistricting map of New York State can help you answer these questions.

The Center for Urban Research launched the map to make it easy for anyone to find out which Senate or Assembly district represents them now, compared to the proposed districts just announced by the state's redistricting task force (commonly known as LATFOR). 

The map was developed in collaboration with The New York World in order to easily examine the proposed district changes.  See their news story accompanying the map, highlighting some of the most striking proposed district changes.

We've posted some other examples using the interactive map to visualize egregious gerrymandering.  For more details about how we created the interactive, visit spatialityblog.com.

Next steps will include:

• adding Congressional district boundaries when they are proposed by LATFOR;
• integrating recent voting patterns by election district, to visualize how the patterns might shift if the new districts are approved.
• Please let us know what you think!
  

Funding support for this and other mapping and data analysis efforts to improve civic engagement -- especially on Long Island -- was provided by the Hagedorn Foundation.  Mapping data for the redistricting map is hosted by cartoDB.