With the 2020 census numbers recently released, rising populations in Montana and several other states will eventually lead to additional congressional seats within the U.S. House of Representatives. Before that can happen, though, each state must undergo a complicated redistricting process to ensure the new congressional districts are drawn to accurately represent constituents without devolving into partisan gerrymandering. While this may seem like a tall order in today’s hyper-partisan political climate, three organizations have already developed powerful webtools that allow anyone to draw new districts according to a variety of criteria. Cooler yet, many states are allowing citizens to submit their evaluated proposals for consideration in how new districts will be finalized. Check out each tool below to see how these new technologies can pave the way toward better representation and empower engaged constituents at the same time.

Districtr

Districtr is a free web-based tool created by the MGGG Redistricting Lab at Tuft University under the leadership of Moon Duchin. Duchin and her team of twenty collaborators provide support to independent districting commissions by analyzing data submitted by citizens through Districtr to provide solid foundations for new districts to be drawn. Their data-focused approach is designed to promote transparency and ensure potential districts comply with state law while remaining “scrupulously nonpartisan”.

To try Districtr for yourself, click here.

Dave’s Redistricting

Dave’s Redistricting was created by Dave Bradlee, a former Microsoft employee that sought to create an accessible way to “game out” redistricting processes while in between jobs in 2009. After a brief collaboration with FiveThirtyEight to create the Atlas of Redistricting in 2018, and discovering his application was no longer supported by internet browsers, Dave teamed up with other former Microsoft engineers to improve upon his original creation. Like Districtr, Dave’s Redistricting aims to produce “fair and transparent redistricting” through nonpartisanship by allowing “regular people” to “understand and evaluate plans” according to multiple factors, including community interests. Dave’s Redistricting is exceptionally robust in that people can “create congressional, legislative, city, county, [or] any kind of local districts for any state, any area within any state”. While he notes that it makes sense to create these maps at the precinct level, Dave’s Redistricting “can go down to the census block level” if needed.

To try Dave’s Redistricting for yourself, click here.

PlanScore

PlanScore is an online resource created by attorney Ruth Greenwood and currently under the leadership of the Campaign Legal Center (CLC). Unlike the previous tools that allow citizens to draft their own redistricting plans for evaluation, PlanScore simply evaluates the partisan outcomes of redistricting efforts by comparing maps drawn by citizens and politicians alike against “Efficiency Gaps”, which measure the probability of either major party converting votes to a congressional seat. The goal is to reduce partisan gerrymandering by producing districts with an efficiency gap of zero, where median legislators are in line with the median voter. Proposed maps can be evaluated in a matter of minutes, which allows them to be viewed on-demand or amended on the fly before being submitted for approval in record time.

To try PlanScore for yourself, click here.