Highlights

Over the 2020 cycle, the open redistricting community had a significant impact on the redistricting process. For example:

• Michael McDonald’s VEST team joined precinct boundaries with precinct-level election results – Most states don’t do the work to collect and publish accurate precinct boundaries matched with precinct-level election results. That’s what VEST does. These up-to-date election results are the oxygen that sustains the rest of the ecosystem.
• Dave’s Redistricting (DRA) delivered a free, easy-to-use tool for drawing, evaluating, & sharing redistricting plans – At the peak of redistricting at the end of 2022, nearly 24K people created ~1.5M maps. Now two years on 15K people averaging ~2K unique visitors per day still use the site and have created ~660K maps. Since 2020, people have created almost 3.9 million maps–the largest public collection of redistricting maps ever assembled.
• Districtr helped make respect for “communities of interest” (COI) an actionable districting principle – Over 150 localities, from small communities like Grand County, Utah, to some of America’s largest cities, like Los Angeles, Minneapolis, San Diego, and New York, used Districtr for public redistricting feedback on maps. At the state level, the Redistricting Board of Alaska, the People’s Map Commission in Wisconsin, and the Michigan Department of State used it to enable people to draw their COI and give feedback on official plans.
• PlanScore made litigator-quality evaluation of redistricting plans broadly available – ~60K maps uploaded and scored; cited in ~1K media reports, ~15 briefs, and two court decisions
• Researchers, experts, & analysts analyzed proposed and adopted redistricting plans – e.g., Sam Wang (Princeton Gerrymandering Project), Moon Duchin (MGGG Redistricting Lab), Dave Wasserman (The Atlas of Redistricting, The Cook Political Report)
• Curators aggregated news about redistricting, litigation, & ballot initiatives – e.g., The Redistrict Network (13.5K followers), The Daily Kos Elections (57.1K)
• Redistricting Data Hub (RDH) published data, resources, & knowledge so people & groups could participate effectively in the redistricting process – ~20K datasets downloaded ~60K times by ~7K people & used lawsuits in 15 states, e.g., AL (Caster v Merrill), LA (Robinson v Ardoin; Galmon v Ardoin; Nairne v. Ardoin), NY (Harkenrider v Hochul), OH (LWV-Ohio v Ohio Redistricting Commission), WI (Wisconsin Legislature v Bostlemann, Johnson v Wisconsin Election Commission, Clarke et al. v. Election Commission)
• Journalists wrote countless articles about redistricting
• State commissions solicited maps & community comments on preliminary plans – e.g., AZ, CO, PA, TX, WA, DE, OK as did local governments – e.g., Miami-Dade School Board, Navajo County, Porterville, CA, Seattle, WA, South Pasadena, CA, Spokane County, WA, Visalia, CA
• Citizen advocacy groups were highly engaged – e.g., Fair Districts PA, Fair Districts Ohio
  as were minority advocacy groups – e.g., Power on the Line(s): Making Redistricting Work for Us (LDF, MALDEF, AAJC), Making Native Voters Count in Redistricting (NARF)
• Even court-appointed special masters drew maps using DRA & VEST election data – e.g., Jonathan Cervas, Bernie Grofman, and Sean Trende in NC, NY, PA, and VA
• Several litigation successes at the federal, state, & local level relied on DRA, PlanScore, and VEST election data – e.g., Allen v. Milligan (AL), Harkenrider v Hochul (NY), Carter v. Chapman (PA), Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission (WI), as did researchers who studied and published papers about vote dilution and voting rights – too many to name