Strategy for Deploying a Modern Redistricting Platform Vision and Approach by Esri 1 Overview Governments must design their redistricting plans to fairly represent the communities they serve. But too often, governments don’t have ready access to the tools they need to apply the latest techniques, keep up with evolving legal requirements, and provide transparency into the redistricting process. With a modern redistricting platform, you can use authoritative data and intuitive tools to develop more inclusive, transparent, and defensible redistricting plans. US states must review and potentially redraw their congressional and legislative districts after each US Census. To meet constitutional and legislative redistricting requirements, states must also ensure that district lines adhere to criteria for compactness, contiguity, equal population, preservation of existing communities, and partisan and racial fairness. By fulfilling these obligations, states maintain electoral district boundaries that reflect the latest population changes so every citizen’s vote can count equally. States face many challenges when establishing new district boundaries. Because redistricting typically only occurs every 10 years, it can be difficult for states to adapt their redistricting approach to take advantage of the latest data, technology, and tools and keep up with evolving jurisprudence—while still leveraging past software investments. In many states, redistricting is handled by independent or bipartisan commissions, which can be expensive and time consuming to set up and run. Likewise, the ability to provide transparency and solicit feedback from stakeholders has historically been limited because few individuals have access to the software and technical skills required to evaluate redistricting proposals and provide alternate scenarios. To meet these challenges, satisfy legal requirements, improve inclusiveness and transparency, and maximize the efficiency of the redistricting process in your state, you need a modern redistricting solution. 2 A Modern Enterprise Approach to Redistricting Increasingly, governments are exploring the use of web-based enterprise technology to manage and enhance the redistricting process. This modern enterprise approach allows governments to more easily create viable redistricting plans, evaluate and compare those plans based on legal criteria, communicate plans to stakeholders, and solicit input from the public and advocacy groups. By doing so, they can more effectively and efficiently fulfill their responsibility to draw fair boundaries and protect the rights of their citizens. With a modern enterprise approach to redistricting, you can: • Meet redistricting criteria— Modern enterprise software provides simple tools that let you quickly check that redistricting plans meet constitutional and legislative requirements, such as criteria for compactness, contiguity, and community preservation. In addition, you can seamlessly bring in Census data and other information that can help inform your district designs. With these capabilities, you can easily create valid and defensible district boundaries. • Improve inclusiveness and transparency— Web platforms help governments reach all relevant stakeholders, from internal users to legislators to constituents. When you share redistricting plans using web maps, you can communicate the details effectively to any audience. In addition, you can enable collaborators to contribute their own input and submit alternative plans for consideration. This framework for sharing information and feedback allows you to improve transparency and create more inclusive redistricting plans. • Increase efficiency— By managing the redistricting process over the web, you can take advantage of powerful, proven mapping software to draw and analyze your district boundaries, while deploying the technology in a more cost-effective way. Straightforward web visualizations and workflow-driven tools allow you to streamline the process of creating, validating, and comparing plans. These efficiency gains enable you to complete each step of the redistricting process faster and at a lower cost. 3 To help you apply this approach, Esri offers a complete web-based redistricting solution: Esri Redistricting. With Esri Redistricting, governments, advocates, and citizens can complete and share regulation-compliant redistricting plans. Based on Esri’s proven ArcGIS software platform—a trusted platform in use by governments across the US—Esri Redistricting provides intuitive tools that help you create, manage, visualize, edit, report, and collaborate on redistricting plans. We designed Esri Redistricting and its tools and workflows to modernize the entire redistricting process. As an enterprise solution, Esri Redistricting allows you to deliver information and tools to stakeholders at all levels, including redistricting committee staff, consultants, advocacy groups, legislators, and citizens. This broad reach expands participation to everyone who needs to be involved at every stage, so you can create inclusive, transparent, and defensible redistricting plans. A screenshot of Esri Redistricting, displaying a live Plan Distribution chart and demographic statistics on the current plan selected from the included Census PL 94-171 data. 4 Features • Create and edit redistricting plans— Esri Redistricting provides a simple web mapping interface for creating, viewing, and editing redistricting proposals. It also includes step- by-step workflows that guide users through each phase of the process. By delivering an easy-to-use redistricting experience, Esri Redistricting helps you streamline the process of drawing new districts, so you can focus on making fair and informed decisions. • Report on redistricting plans— With Esri Redistricting, you get reporting tools that let you summarize the data associated with your plans, then share your reports with others. You can either run the predefined reports provided out of the box or create custom reports that examine any available variable that matters to you and your constituents. These reporting tools allow you to compare proposals, communicate their merits to stakeholders, and develop more justified redistricting plans. • Check the integrity of your plans— Esri Redistricting provides built-in quality checks that evaluate your redistricting plans based on criteria like district compactness, contiguity, and allowable population deviation. These tools can also verify whether a plan includes the right number of districts and assigns every geography to a single district. With these quality control capabilities, you can avoid common missteps and produce valid district boundaries that meet legislative requirements. • Make maps that integrate useful data— You can use Esri Redistricting to create thematic maps that incorporate rich, authoritative data included with ArcGIS, such as PL 94-171 data from the US Census. These maps visualize your data in intuitive and insightful ways, helping you better communicate your plans and differentiate between alternatives. For example, you can select a district to view statistics (like the target mean) that represent critical thresholds for the district. Census 2000 and 2010 data is included, and 2020 data will be added as soon as it becomes available. Your maps can also incorporate data from other sources, such as external ArcGIS services or your own internal datasets. • Share your plans with others— Esri Redistricting lets you manage and share maps and proposed plans within a secure, centralized web environment. You can open your plans for others to make changes or lock them for read-only use. You can also set up user groups that assign different access privileges to members of each group. This allows you to gain internal and external input for your plans while maintaining control over the underlying data. • Collaborate with stakeholders— Because Esri Redistricting is a web-based solution, people don’t need to buy and install special software to interact with and comment on proposed plans. Instead, they can view existing plans as well as map out and share alternate proposals—all from a web browser. This broad accessibility allows you to reduce the costs associated with citizen commissions and stakeholder reviews while still meeting transparency and public feedback requirements. The ability to solicit plans and insights from citizens also helps you gain the perspective you need to keep communities together and achieve optimal fairness. 5 CASE STUDY Utah Adds Citizen Input Utah State Legislature successfully implements Esri Redistricting for citizen involvement and draws districts based on constituent-made district maps. The last time Utah needed to redraw its congressional district boundaries, technology was just beginning to catch up to a need that had existed since the redistricting process first started. Utah was a pioneer in the use of the web to open a process that had repeatedly bred mistrust. The Challenge Redrawing representative districts is a contentious process fraught with political acrimony. Nevertheless, U.S. states must examine and potentially redraw their congressional districts after each U.S. census. Because of the political stakes, the process regularly leads to allegations of unfairness. For the latest redistricting, the State Legislature of Utah Joint Redistricting Committee took a novel step toward mitigating such criticism through education by increasing the visibility of the process and raising awareness among its citizens. The