The Line Must be Drawn Here--Redistricting for the New Millenium
By Jane Goodman
What is Redistricting?
Redistricting, a "wonderful mix of politics, law, cartography, demography and computer science" will soon be underway for the 2002 Congressional elections. At least once every ten years, in conjunction with the decennial national census conducted in years ending in "0", each state must reexamine the distribution of its population within existing congressional and legislative districts. Population shifts over the past ten years may have resulted in loss or gain of U.S. House seats or in imbalances developing in district population sizes. In keeping with the "one map, one vote" principle that each citizen''s vote should carry equal weight, new districts of nearly equal population must be devised. This decade, the work will be aided for the first time by high speed personal computers, internet access to data, and specialized GIS software that has migrated to the desktop.
Developing an acceptable plan requires careful analysis of demographic data. GIS can make drafting and finalizing the districts much easier but political and legal constraints dominate the process. To satisfy the 1965 Voting Rights Act and subsequent court cases, the districts must not dilute minority voting strength. To avoid lawsuits, there must be no impermissible consideration of race during the process. Traditional redistricting principles such as compactness, contiguity, and respect for existing political subdivisions or interest groups must not be ignored. Additionally, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires that in all or part of sixteen states, the U.S. Department of Justice must approve the redistricting plan before it becomes law.
Redistricting is the responsibility of each state legislature. The party in power in the state controls the redistricting process and the districts must be approved by legislators whose chance for reelection will be directly effected by the newly drawn districts. The Center for Voting and Democracy, a non-profit organization that studies how voting systems affect participation, representation and governance provides information about redistricting for each state. Included are redistricting deadlines, who is in charge, legal and political issues and districting principles followed.
Census Bureau Role in Redistricting Process
The US Census Bureau, created in 1902 as a part of the U.S. Department of Commerce is responsible for both the Census and for the process of congressional apportionment. In the last 25 years, it has also played a very important role in the redistricting. During Phases 1 and 2 before the Census, it solicits input from the states to suggest boundaries for census blocks and lets the states group blocks into voting districts. After the census it provides detailed racial breakdown 100% population counts at different levels of aggregation that can easily be allocated to voting district boundaries. A Guide to Census 2000 Redistricting Data describes in detail both the maps and statistical data the Bureau provides to aid in the redistricting process.
TIGER/Line Mapping Data
In preparation for its mapping needs to conduct the census, the Bureau maintains TIGER/Line files. This 30 gigabyte digital map of the United States was first developed with the USGS in the 1980''s. Organized by county and by 17 different record types, it includes geographic features such as roads, railroads, rivers, lakes, political boundaries, and census statistical boundaries. TIGER is continually updated with information received from local and tribal governments, the U.S. Postal Service and Census Bureau field staff. The data base contains information about these features such as their location in latitude and longitude, the name, the type of feature, address ranges for most streets, the geographic relationship to other features, and other related information. The TIGER/Line data is provided in zipped ASCII text format and must be processed by a translation program to be utilized within a GIS. A detailed description of the record format is available. County files can be downloaded over the internet from the Census Bureau web site as they successfully complete the production and quality check process. As of mid January 2001, TIGER/Line Redistricting 2000 data for 23 states are available.
Public Law 94-171 Population Data
In order to draw district boundaries, small area population counts are
required. Public Law 94-171 passed in 1975, requires the Census Bureau to inform state governors and legislative leaders at least four years before each census of the technical guidelines they must follow to obtain population totals for their locally defined voting districts. States and governments who want to participate submit boundaries for their voting districts. Within one year of Census Day, the Bureau must send each state the data it will need to draw its districts for the state legislature. Small-area population totals for the voting areas requested are provided to the legislature and governor of each state. The planned release date for PL 94-171 data is April 1, 2001 via Internet, CD-ROM and DVD.
Public Law statistical summaries provide population totals by race, Hispanic or Latino, and voting age for all appropriate geographic entity areas delimited on the maps; states, counties, voting districts, county subdivisions, places, American Indian/Alaska Native/Native Hawaiian areas, census tracts, block groups and blocks. New for Census 2000 will be population counts by existing legislative districts for states who have provided these boundaries and additional racial and ethnic questions. Most significantly, respondents can mark one or more race categories from the list of six provided. This means that the number of columns of racial data will increase from 12 in the 1990 Census to 288 in the 2000. Redistricting agents will also have to deal with an issue that Congress and the Supreme Court failed to resolve in the 1990s - whether the bureau should use statistical sampling to help reduce the traditional undercount of minorities. Consequently, each state will receive two sets of data - one using sampling, one using more traditional counting methods.
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