Map Across America Winner: Abbie Wager
The DistrictBuilder team knows that redistricting only gets better when more people are involved. We wanted to host Map Across America in order to engage with mappers and get folks participating in the redistricting process in a fun way. Since the first DistrictBuilder implementation in 2010, we have worked with academics, analysts, and other experts in this field to ensure the latest release of DistrictBuilder would be an effective, easy-to-use tool to draw legal maps. We are fortunate to partner with these subject matter experts and are thankful three of them agreed to judge the competition. The DistrictBuilder team is blown away by the many excellent maps that were submitted and happy to showcase Abbie Wager’s North Carolina Congressional map submission.
About Abbie Wager
Abbie is currently a junior at Trinity College majoring in Political Science and minoring in Environmental Science. She is also a member of the cross country and track team. Abbie is from eastern Massachusetts and enjoys spending time on the beach with her friends. You can find Abbie on Twitter @abbiewager.
Judges Statement
Abbie’s map of North Carolina Congressional Districts minimizes county splits while still being among the best North Carolina plans on partisan fairness. The plan has one of the fewest county splits of any plan submitted, fewer than the current districts, and also closely reflects the state’s partisan lean. You can check out the metrics for Abbie’s map here.
Abbie’s Map Narrative
This map of the North Carolina congressional district represents a lot of the judging material along with the legal rules of redirecting as far as the state regulations go. First, with the partisan fairness aspect, there is a decent amount of competitive districts that allow for them to be swing districts if a candidate so comes along and can convince the voters that they are on the fence and do not have a district party they are relentlessly loyal to. The same concept goes for the minority-majority issue that is also being judged on. While there is only one minority-majority district, there is a balance between the minorities that allow for an equal and diverse environment to be created in a good portion of the districts. To talk about the commonly accepted criteria, very minimal number of districts have been broken and that was mainly due to some districts having populations over a million along with the need for populations to be fairly close and to also have the correct number of districts present. The compactness evaluation is also fairly low but not low enough to be anything concerning but enough to just keep the interests of the districts together.
We’re thankful for the devoted mappers that have contributed over 50,000 maps to DistrictBuilder to date. Want to get more involved in the redistricting process and map your own future? Start drawing in DistrictBuilder today. Check out our other Map Across America winners.
