Part of one of the "What If" Maps

It’s been a quiet summer at the IRC, punctuated by partisan posturing about investigations, complaints and lawsuits.

However, we are seeing the early outlines of maps, even now. The commission is in the stage of the process where they are considering “what if” ideas about what the first draft maps will look like.

While it seems very early in the process, it really is not. What happens in the next two weeks will directly inform the final maps.

The first draft maps will set the agenda. They will be the benchmark from which all parties will engage in the tough debates. If you’ve ever been involved in negotiations, you know that where you start the debate dramatically influences the outcome.

We are not exaggerating when we say things are going to happen very quickly from here on.

We have spent the last year building awareness through Gerrymandering, the movie, then speaking all over the state and finally hosting a contest to demonstrate just how much power you can have in this process.

All of that work will culminate in the next few weeks.

Its now or never for truly competitive districts!

So, we need you to get involved today in three ways:

1) Advocate for “competition first”.

Ten years ago, the commission waited until the very end of the process to consider competition. They did not pay attention to the many objective measurement tools for competition that are available. The result was disastrous.

We can’t make that mistake again. We are asking you to attend any of the upcoming commission hearings and specifically request that the commission:

a. prioritize competitive districts at the beginning of the process and not to wait until the end.

b. use objective measurement tools, such as Judge-It*, to allow all of us to scrutinize whether each district is competitive.

As an aside, partisan activists are running around saying that we have had competitive districts over the last decade “because they changed hands between the political parties.” They point to the fact that a couple districts changed party control in 2006 and 2010. This is a last-ditch argument to maintain the status quo. Help us fight this myth. In reality, the data does not support that these districts are competitive in terms of party registration or performance.

The definition of a competitive districts is simple: the registration percentage between both parties must be close enough such that the district could change hands in any given election –not just when there is a political tidal wave one way or another, as there was in 2006 and 2010.

2) Scrutinize the Maps

Partisans did not want the commission to use Redistrict Arizona, which many of you became familiar with during our contest, because they don’t want public scrutiny.

However, we can’t be stopped so easily. The Commission has provided a free on-line mapping tool for your use. Please, please use it to scrutinize every map that comes out!

This is where your power lies. The on-line mapping tool will show you the data behind the maps: Are they competitive? Are they compact? Do they protect voting rights? Are partisans or incumbents playing games with the districts?

As the draft and pre-draft maps are created, they should are put on line for you to analyze.

Go to this link to use the mapping tool.

The Commission is having a free on-line training session on how to use the mapping software on September 20th. There are only 600 spaces available. So, please register here today.

Frankly, we don’t think they did enough outreach to let the public know about this webinar. Please help us ask for another one. This process belongs to you and they should honor your need for training on the software.

3) Make a contribution

All of this organizing, analysis and work costs money. We are all volunteers, but we do have overhead costs. Please make a contribution at our website.

*”Judge-It” is one of many tools that is used to measure whether a district is likely to be competitive. It have been used in previous decades and in many states. The commission cannot simply rely on previous election outcomes. They must consider competitiveness at the very smallest census block and trace level, using sophisticated measurement tools.

We were, frankly, shocked to hear this. We don’t know where it is coming from and it holds no water.

We have offered to hand over Redistrict Arizona to the Commission so that the 450 (or so) people who are using it now can continue to use it as a convenient way to express their redistricting needs to the Commission –regardless of political persuasion.

Perhaps these detractors believe that somehow the very programming of the public mapping tool will infect the process in a mysterious way.

There are two important things to know. First, Redistrict Arizona is based on Open Source programming. Such as to say, there are no proprietary programs in the system. Anybody can break it open and check under the hood. Second, were the Commission to take over ownership of Redistrict Arizona, they would re-program it to represent their own definitions for criteria such as competition, compactness and equal population.

We designed Redistrict Arizona to improve participation and public access to a process. In 2001 those who could afford $2,500 for mapping software and training had an unfair advantage over the public.

So, we need your help. If you have enjoyed using Redistrict Arizona and believe that it is useful tool in this mapping process, please contact the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission at (602) 542-5221 and let them know.

If you have any questions please contact us at azcompetitivedistricts@gmail.com

Winner Sam Almy. Photo by Steve Muratore

We are very proud to announce the winners of Arizona’s first ever public mapping contest.

Yes, we are aware that our press conference was last week, but, hey, we are all volunteers over here! So, we are just now sending out the e-blast. Our apologies for the delay.

First, we want to thank the judges, Jose Penalosa (Rep.), Tricia Gerrodette (Ind.) and D. Jay Stanforth (Dem.), as well as our amazing contest director, Dr. Barbara Klein of the League of Women Voters of Arizona.

This was not an easy process and it took many hours of volunteer time to make happen.

Winner Glenn Jacques. Photo by Steve Muratore

The Best Congressional Maps category was won by Glenn Jacques of Phoenix and Stuart Wright of Ohio, with honorable mention going to Marcia Busching.

The Best Legislative Maps category was won by Sam Almy of Tucson and Glenn Jacques of Phoenix, with honorable mention going to Stuart Wright of Ohio.

You can download the entire report here.

Please remember that we had two best legislative and two best congressional maps because we are not trying to push any particular map. We just wanted to see who could do the best!

If you want to see all of the entries and all of the maps, you can visit  and look at the shared maps. The maps from the contest are the ones with the Disney character names. We named them as such so that they would be anonymous to the judges.

Congratulations, everyone!

Our Judges!. Photo by Steve Muratore

<See Below for Maps. All Contestant Maps will be made live on Redistrict Arizona for download and further development. Look under Shared Plans” for maps with the names of Disney Characters.>

Phoenix, Arizona August 2, 2011 –

A judging panel created by the Arizona Competitive Districts Coalition and overseen by the Arizona League of Women Voters has selected 2 winners in each category of Legislative and Congressional maps, as well as a special Honorable Mention for each.

According to Competitive Districts Coalition Co-Chair, Ken Clark, “our goal was to demonstrate that a public mapping tool like Redistrict Arizona can focus the creative ideas of the public in a constructive way to support the redistricting process.”

ACDC Co-Chair, Roberta Voss said “putting the mapping more in the hands of communities means more relevant mapping and a greater competition of ideas.”

Winners and judges comments to follow.

Best Congressional Maps:
Stuart Wright of Ohio
Glenn Jacques of Phoenix, Arizona

Judges said the following of Mr. Wright’s map:

“While the software lists this map as having 5 competitive districts there is another district at 56.8%.  This is very impressive for 9 total districts.

There was unconventional drawing of southern districts in this map, which can (at first glance) be startling. However, this takes the entire Arizona/Mexican border as one community of Interest, which may very well be a useful approach.

“Compactness was good, and all districts were within a 1% deviation for equal population.  Voting Rights Act (VRA) requirements were met with district 1 at 53.17% and district 8 at 50.12% Hispanic minority /majority districts.”

Judges said the following of Mr. Glenn’s map:

“This map also did very well in regard to competitiveness.  It is listed as 4 out of 9 districts being competitive, but also has another district at 55.36%, which borders on being a competitive district as well. This map approached Tucson in a less divisive manner than some other congressional maps.”

“While district 3 may seem to leave Fountain Hills out in a rural area at first appearance, it is partnered with much of Paradise Valley and northern Scottsdale. So while not a competitive district, it does not appear unreasonably matched with the contiguous rural areas that are also in the district.”

“The judges felt that there was reasonable handling of clear communities of interest.”

“Voting Right Act requirements were met with district 4 at 53.32% and district 8 at 45.55% Hispanic minority /majority districts.”

Best Legislative Maps:
Sam Almy of Tucson, Arizona
Glenn Jacques of Phoenix, Arizona

Judges said of Mr. Almy’s map:

“This map has developed an excellent level of competitive districts at 9 out of 30, with a 10^th close at 53.7%.

Tucson is split but in reasonable ways according to the judges.”

Judges said of Mr. Glenn’s map:

“This map has developed a very good level of competitive districts at a recorded 7 out of 30, with two other districts around 44%.”

“This map had a better split for Sierra Vista than many.  It includes affluent areas of rural Tucson and Sierra Vista.”

“One district covers more than half the Arizona/Mexican border, and another completes that border.  The judges saw this as a way to concentrate border issues and that these districts can be seen as a community of interest in that way.”

“The judges gave honorable mention to Marcia Busching for her congressional map, that created 3 out of 9 competitive districts. They recognized Stuart Wright for his legislative map, which 6 competitive districts, technically, but which had three more districts that were very close to the competitive measure set out by the contest.”

________________

An awards-ceremony and press conference took place on August 2^nd at 3pm at the Arizona Capitol Museum in the Parlor room. The maps will be presented to the Independent Redistricting Commission on August 3rd.  A report of the judges on the winning maps will be available on August 2^nd at the press conference and on line at www.azredistricting.com. The winning maps will be available on the Redistrict Arizona mapping tool, found through www.azredistricting.com.

Dr. Barbara Klein of the Arizona League of Women Voters said “Our judges did an outstanding job on a process that is highly technical and which requires a great time commitment. We are very grateful.”

The panel members included:

Jose Penalosa (Republican, Maricopa County, Attorney-state bar member in Arizona and Colorado.  He is a member of “Somos Republicans,” where he serves as the national Spanish spokesperson.  Long time AZ resident, he has served as a volunteer attorney at Proyecto San Pablo -”American Beginnings”- located in Yuma and with “Mi Familia Vota” a U.S. citizenship project.  He is currently in private practice in Phoenix.

D. Jay Stanforth (Democrat, Pima County, retired after 30 years in teaching.  He is a former Arizona Educational Foundation Teacher of the Year-Ambassador of Excellence, recipient of AEA’s Christa McAuliffe “I Touch the Future I Teach” award.  He was also the first AZ teacher to be recognized with the National Education Association Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence. He has served as president of the Flowing Wells Education Association and on the Board of Directors of the Arizona Education Association.

Tricia Gerrodette (Independent, Cochise County, Activist, she has run for Sierra Vista city council twice and won a seat on the board of directors for the Upper San Pedro Water District, although the district itself was not established.  She is currently president of Huachuca Audubon Society and of the Arizona Council of Audubon Chapters.  For more than a decade, she has been active in the League of Women Voters serving on the board of directors at the local and state level.

Sam Almy's Legislative Map, State Wide

Sam Almy's Legislative Map, Tucson Area

Sam Almy's Legislative Map, Phoenix Area

Glenn Jacque's Legislative Map, State Wide

Glenn Jacque's Legislative Map, North

Glenn Jacque's Legislative Map, Tucson

Glenn Jacque's Legislative Map, Phoenix Area

Glenn Jacque's Congressional Map, Phoenix Area

Glenn Jacque's Congressional Map

Stuart Wright's Congressional Map, State Wide

Stuart Wright's Congressional Map, Tucson

Stuart Wright's Congressional Map, Phoenix Area

Regarding whether the commission is on schedule, behind schedule or ahead of schedule, we are certain of one thing: If you use Redistrict Arizona as your platform to speak with the commission –regardless of your agenda– we believe you will have better luck getting your point across.

We also want to take this opportunity to share our thoughts on the current debates around recent commission decisions on mapping consultants. The following is taken from our newsletter, which you can sign up for here.

—————-Our Opinion on the Hullabaloo——-

So, you’ve certainly seen all of the controversy over mapping consultants, commissioner disclosures and all the rest.

Yes, we at the ACDC have an opinion on that: we have seen this before. It’s good old fashioned posturing.

Ten years ago, the Democrats were upset that the IRC chose NDC, a mapping firm with ties to Republican candidates. This year, Republicans are upset at the choice of Strategic Telemetry, a firm with ties to the Democratic party.

Both parties are trying to “play to the refs.” They are trying to influence public opinion in their direction because they feel any little thing could lose them “the advantage.”

Our suggestion: get in the game and get constructive. We believe that the best way to draw maps that are respectful of voters is for you, yes you, to submit serious maps.

Amid calls that the Commission step up its meeting schedule, they are putting together a state-wide tour of public meetings. We will post on our blog once we get the final list, too. Please attend or watch on line.

Further, regardless of your political opinion, use Redistrict Arizona. Please pull together community leaders and make your arguments constructively through the maps that you submit.

After all, once you get away from the prepared talking points and the blog-driven “news”, what you have are real communities and real people who are sick and tired of political games.

They are the local business owners, the city leaders, the teachers and the families who want politicians to produce solutions, not theater. Hey, 33% of them don’t even belong to the two major parties.

When you ask them what they want to see in districts, we think they will say one thing: Choice.

Redistrict Arizona allows you to build, share and submit your suggestions in ways you never could before. You have instant feedback on issues such as equal population, the Voting Rights Act and competition.

Hullabaloo only goes so far. Constructive suggestions get the job done.

Well, we set our contest requirement at a maximum of +/- 1% population deviation. For congressional, this mean you can be off 7,102 voters. For legislative, you can be off by as much as 2,136 voters. Seems crazy, yes?

Clearly we allow too much of a deviation for congressional and too little for legislative, it seems.

Well, in digging further, and speaking with experts around the country, we know that, even though some states allow 10% deviation, there is a court case (Larios v. Cox) that indicates that your plan would probably invite a court challenge if you had such a large deviation.

As for the Congressional deviation, we are going to leave it as is. There is not enough time to make folks change their maps to make them exactly equal, and we believe that would be unfair.

However, we are going to leave it up to the judges in the case of legislative maps. We are briefing the judges about the court precedence on this issue as regards to legislative districts and we will let them choose the best course. We think you should assume, however, that the closer you get to equal population, the better your chance of winning.

Happy mapping!

If you count up voters who live in districts that are overwhelmingly controlled by the opposing party:

Republicans in Dem. controlled districts and Democrats in Rep. controlled districts: 660,348 registered voters.

If you count up all of the Independents and Others who live in districts in which the Independents and Others cannot bridge the difference between the two parties you will see 775,639 registered voters

Combined thats 1,435,987 registered voters out of a total of 3,102,876 registered voters.

In other words, 46% of all voters!

...NOT our judges...

Our panel of judges met this week, poured over the contest entries and decided that they wanted to give contestants two more weeks to submit, or re-submit maps.

The new contest deadline will be midnight on July 15th.

Please see this blog post for instructions on how to submit your entry.

Also, please remember that there are two $500 first prizes for best congressional maps and two $500 first prizes for best legislative maps. There are also two $300 prizes for best student maps.

Now, here is why the judges chose to extend the deadline.

1) Voting Right Act Minimum Requirements. While there were many plans met the basic VRA requirements, some did not but were very close. To learn more about those requirements, see this blog post and the Contest Guidelines.

2) Equal Population. There were many plans that did not meet the requirements for equal population. Please see the contest guidelines for those requirements.

3) While many plans met these two important basic requirements, the judges concluded that they wanted to see plans that were more respectful of communities of interest. While we all know that “communities of interest” is a highly subjective term, the judges felt that too many times very obvious communities were divided, such as small cities and neighborhoods.

NOTE: We promise that this contest will not be extended again. If we do not have maps that meet the judges requirements, we will not award prizes.

Maps will only be considered if they meet the basic criteria set out in the Contest Guidelines. If you have any questions please contact us at azcompetitivedistricts@gmail.com.

We indicated the exact percentage of voting age population Hispanic voters were in each of the Hispanic legislative districts in 2001, but we failed to give you the exact percentages that were in the congressional districts. Our apologies.

As we have mentioned previously, four our contest purposes, you need to do at least as well as the 2001 maps in creating voting age population density in order to be considered for the contest.

The revision is on the contest definitions page, as well as copied below:

To be more specific about what happened in 2001, please consider the following in regards to the congressional maps:

In 2001, we created district that had a 51.51% Hispanic voting age population (VAP) and one that had 44.47% Hispanic VAP. For our purposes, we will accept at least one district of at least 51.51% and one of at least 44.47% or two of at least 50% Hispanic VAP.

Please note that if you run your maps through the validation process on Redistrict Arizona it might not recognize two districts at 50%, but you can still submit your maps to the contest.

Please consider the following in regards to the legislative maps:

In 2001, there was at least 1 district be greater than 60% Native American VAP.

There were at least 3 districts be greater than 55% Hispanic VAP.

There were at least 4 districts be between 40% and 55% Hispanic VAP.

There were at least 2 districts be between 30% and 40% Hispanic VAP.*

*These 30-40% districts were specifically cited as being Hispanic influence districts by the commission in their submission to DOJ and were cited by DOJ in their objection as requiring greater Hispanic populations. So, while 30%-40% VAP is not a majority, it is recognized as a significant level.

We know from current census data that some of the districts that previously met this 30%-40% measure no longer do. At the same time, current data indicates that it may be possible to make as many as 4 30%-40% VAP districts. For the purposes of Redistrict Arizona, we will require that maps have at least two of these 30%-40% VAP districts (in addition to the other higher ones), knowing that you can make more if you’d like.

See the original 2001 mapping results here.

If you are a high school student, you have also have shot at the two $300 prizes. If you are entering for the student prize, you can enter the regular contest, but not with the same map.

Here is what you need to know in order to enter:

1) You will need to download your plan to a .csv file from Redistrict Arizona. Look for the “Step 4″ tab and the “download” button.

2) Email that file to azcompetitivedistricts@gmail.com

3) Include your full name, organizations name or team name. Tell us if you are a high school student and what school you go to.

4) Include in your email a max. 500-word statement about the goals of your plan.

Maps will only be considered if they meet the basic criteria set out in the Contest Guidelines. If you have any questions please contact us at azcompetitivedistricts@gmail.com.

NOTE: We find that first time mappers are a little daunted by the software. But stick with it! Before you fret, please view the entire YouTube webinar.