Next year, State Legislatures around the country will be dealing with redistricting. Many people don't spend a lot of time thinking about the political districts they are in, but for some insiders, this is a crucial issue. Political districts can be drawn to support the party or parties in power. Insider partisan operatives seek to gain the upper hand in state elections in preparation for redistricting battles.

It is an important issue that I admit I don't know as much about as I would like. I understand the desire of incumbent parties to try and use redistricting to hold onto or strengthen their incumbency. I understand the basic rules of population equality, contiguity, and compactness, but there is a lot more that is worth exploring.

One starting point is The Redistricting Game, the created at the USC Game Innovation Lab for the USC Annenberg Center for Communications. The game takes you through several different redistricting scenarios, starting with the fundamentals of redistricting, going through partisan gerrymandering, bipartisan gerrymandering, looking at the voting rights act and looking at potential reforms, such as the Tanner proposal. The game is fun to play, but you have to be careful about your browser blocking it as a popup.

What is especially nice about the game is that it provides valuable links to articles and resources about redistricting. Included in this are links to Common Cause's Redistricting page,(Note: My wife is a senior organizer for Common Cause in Connecticut), FairVote's Redistricting page, as well as a link to an algorithmic approach, Splitline districtings of all 50 states + DC + PR.

While I like the idea of a shortest splitline algorithm, I am concerned that it may not take into consideration historical or geographical considerations of why a district should be drawn one way or another.

The game simplifies the process by using a state with four congressional districts and not delving into the issues of 151 assembly districts, such as we have in Connecticut.

For people more interested in redistricting issues, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) is holding a National Redistricting Seminar in Providence, Rhode Island starting Saturday afternoon. Saturday is day in which various redistricting software providers. This includes big players like ESRI, ARCBridge's DISTRICTSolv, Caliper's Maptitude, and Citygate. Citygate's website states that they have been awared the "State of Connecticut Redistricting Software, Support and Training Contract".

Also listed is The Public Mapping Project. This is an open source mapping system which I hope to install and write more about later.

Various people have written various efforts at algorithmic redisticting, such as the shortest spline algorithm mentioned above. "A Programmer and Citizen" from Boston has B-Districting, a website with a blog, as well as various redistricting solutions. Check their Connecticut Congressional Redistricting map. It has some interesting similarities to the Splitline CT Map.

So, I'm off to play more of the redistricting game, try to set up the Public Mapping Project on one of my servers and then try to catch some of the NCSL National Redistricting Seminar. I hope to have lots of interesting things to follow up with soon.

Are you following redistricting issues where you live? Do you have helpful links? Know about other interesting conferences? Tried any interesting software? Share your experiences.