| Title A PROPOSED REDISTRICTING FOR THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA | ||
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Author Matt Goolsby American River College, Geography 350: Data Acquisition in GIS; Fall 2005 Contact Information (mrgoolsby@yahoo.com) | ||
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Abstract This is the summary of the entire paper. All the following sections should be represented by a single sentence or two, with the exception of background and references. Write this last. | ||
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Introduction Article I, Section 2 of the US Constitution established that a census be performed every ten years in order to reapportion representation in the House of Representatives (U.S. Constitution Online, 12/15/2005). Unfortunately, no mechanism was laid out in the Constitution to perform this redistricting and traditionally, the elected officials themselves have overseen the job by means of appointing redistricting boards. This has lead a process called gerrymandering, the redrawing of districts in an effort to increase the power of the incumbents or weaken blocks of voters that are not in power (Common Cause Website, 12/15/2005). | ||
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Background I first became interested in this problem during the fall of 2005 when California Governor Schwartzenegger called a special election to address, amoung other things, the question of redistricting. Proposition 77 was placed by the Governor on the ballot for public approval (University of California at Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, 12/15/2005). The ballot measure proposed to set up a new redistricting board consisting of three retired state judges to oversee the redistricting process. The proposal failed and one of the reasons cited for its failure was that there was no mechanism in the proposal for safeguarding the impartiality of the judge selection process. I became interested what a redistricting map for California would look like if the boundaries were selected by a machine. | ||
| Pictured is the current Congressional district map that was made after the 2000 census. |
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Methods For this map, I attempted to make as simple a redistricting map as possible. My constriants would be that I would follow Census tract boundaries and that I would attempt to minimize the aspect ratio of the districts as much as possible. | ||
| I downloaded Census tract shapefiles from The U.S. Census Bureau for every California county as well as linking tables which contained the actual census data. Once the shapefiles were merged and populated, I performed a guided selection for new districts. Using ArcView 9.1, Beginning at the northwest corner of the state, I let the machine select tracts untill the target population of 669,087 people per district was approached. I then manually adjusted boundaries to decrease the aspect ratio of the district and to zero in on the population goal. Each district was within +/- 1000 people or 0.1% of the goal. | ||
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Results Pictured is the result of my redistricting
attempt. | ||
| I feel that it is pretty good for a first attempt. The districts
are reasonalby compact in the Los Angeles Basin area but I feel that I could have done
a better job with the northern and eastern counties. Difficulties arose in those areas
because those regions are more sparsely populated and their census tracts are
correspondingly big.
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Analysis I think that in order to produce a more elegant
map, I would need to get census data of finer spatial resolution, perhaps at the census
block level. I also feel that any future attempts at this project should follow more
closely guidlines set out by the Census Bureau for redistricting concerning paying attention
to land use divisions (i.e. rural, suburban, and urban districts). Finally, I should definately
increase my ability to program before attempting this project again. This task would greatly
benefit from automation. | ||
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Conclusions In conclusion, I would suggest that a fully or partially
automated approach would be more than adequate for the task of redistricting Congressional boundaries.
Indeed, the more that the process could be automated, the less likely that political bias could creep
into the results. | ||
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References Mount, Steve, 2005. Constitutional Topic: The Census U.S. Constitution Online http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_cens.html Common Cause, 2005. Redistricting Common Cause Website, http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=196481 Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkely, 2005. Proposition 77: Redistricting Institute of Gonvernmental Studies Website, http://www.igs.berkeley.edu/library/htRedistricting.html United States Census Bureau, 2005. U.S. Census Bureau Main Page http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en | ||