Earlier this month, after years of litigation, a federal judge in Alabama ordered a new state senate map. In a surprising decision, the map she chose wasn’t one drafted by a court-appointed special master and his expert cartographer, but rather one that had been submitted by an anonymous member of the public, known only by their initials, “DD”.
The decision stunned “DD” – an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Alabama named Daniel DiDonato – who learned his map had been selected as he was preparing to leave for his 9.30am introduction to political science class.
“I was absolutely surprised,” he said in an interview. “Now, nearly 300,000 Alabamians will be voting under new district lines that I drew up at two in the morning in a dorm, a cramped dorm study room.”
Alternate story: Trump judge said the previous lines were too egregious to be legal, but then chose the most conservative map presented by the Special Master.
The kid based his map on the racially gerrymandered map and turned off racial considerations in the redesign. The map minimally tweaked a racial gerrymander, but because he didn’t use racism in his tweak he thinks it’s not racially gerrymandered. Garbage in, garbage out.
While it would be better if his map had resulted in even stronger Black representation, he appears to have been the only one who followed the assignment, which was to remedy the original racism with the fewest changes to the districts. And he paid attention to proportions so that a voter in any district has an equal fraction of representation.
Kind of burying the lede, but really glad you posted this:
The widespread availability of political data tools has created an online community – Election Twitter – where political, data and mapmaking junkies will create and share maps and forecasts. DiDonato said he “definitely” considered himself a member.
“You have a whole bunch of these kids who are snippy and savvy and know about the Voting Rights Act, Section 2 of the VRA,” said Chaz Nuttycombe, 26, who developed an impressive record forecasting state legislative races while a student at Virginia Tech and has since founded State Navigate, a non-profit focused on state legislatures. “I’ve seen maps put together by special masters that I disagree with, and I’ve seen kids on Election Twitter put forward better maps for equivalent states and districts than those special masters.”
He used a free online software, Dave’s Redistricting App, to draw the lines. He had begun playing around with it about a year ago, amid a budding fascination with redistricting. As he drew the maps late into the night fueled by soda but no caffeine, he turned off racial and partisan data, seeking to ensure that the new districts he drew were equal in population and made as few changes as possible to the one Republicans had adopted.
made as few changes as possible to the one Republicans had adopted.
As I said in another comment, even small changes could have a huge impact. I would like to know how the racism was changed or stayed the same.
It sounds like they just turned off the population by race indicators. So, while it may have been drawn with respect to just population density, that still doesn’t mean that it’s not discriminatory.
This is ignorant at best and exactly what these racists were wanting at worst.
that still doesn’t mean that it’s not discriminatory
It doesn’t mean it is though either. I was hoping someone who knows more about this stuff could check.
… one that had been submitted by an anonymous member of the public, known only by their initials, “DD”.
The decision stunned “DD” – an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Alabama named Daniel DiDonato …
“Anonymous”?
Doesn’t matter, our only choices are BlueMAGA or RedMAGA
For fuck’s sake.
Can we please defederate from ml?
Why? OH
.world
Another .world liberal that just wants an echo chamber, cant be havin that wall of empire propaganda getting a crack in it now can we LMBO!
